Via Gelman. I’m a fan of Plotkin’s interactive fiction, though I haven’t dabbled in that for quite a while. The language being taught in his tutorial is Lisp/Scheme. In college I had taken a course using a functional language (OCaml), but I still found it annoying. Be more like Java! Gelman also linked to a Ruby tutorial, which is nice since I had been thinking about learning it.
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December 27, 2009 at 5:18 am
Theres some computer stuff on Academic Earth, and probably MIT Open. Some of the history is OK too. I enjoyed Donald Kagan’s ancient Hellas, though hes a notorious neocon. He slipped in some nice anti-postmodernist and pro-traditionalist comments, so hurrah, Yale propaganda is like 1% pro-Western.
John Merriman’s OK, though clearly a big ol leftie, but you might have 10x less to learn from him than I since hes a modern europe guy. I dont believe he has any minute-detail specialized courses up, except maybe on France.
On the other hand, I guess you skipped those courses in college so you wouldnt be a captive audience to neos and lefties. But at least this way you can dump these courses at any moment. You can also cheer or boo loudly while hearing them, either at the events themselves or the interpretation.
It sure as heck is easier to “watch TV” than read even if Academic Earth, or Econtalk, is your TV. When my attention span is stronger I go for the books. Weaker, go for TV.
December 27, 2009 at 6:33 pm
Yes, I did skip those courses. I did have to take two years of German, a World Religions course and one in computer ethics, but that was it for anything resembling “the humanities”.
December 28, 2009 at 7:07 am
I like Merriman more every time I watch him. Hes ueberfluessig, which to me is very charming. Reminds me of my 115-lb jewish biochem prof who talked a blue streak, you could tell he loved molecules. Anyone who can without notes for 30 minutes, at an elevated rate, without a single pause of only a few seconds, I just have to like.
December 30, 2009 at 3:41 pm
You might like this:
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/10/sex-is-near-love-is-far.html#comment-439648
I claim here that a number of academic bloggers are lying about the degree to which you influence them, by keeping you off lists of influence, and by not linking to you when it’s implied that their blog rolls are of those commenters who influence them.
December 31, 2009 at 12:59 am
We were searching for Writers to write for our upcoming e-zine “Reader’s
Quotient”which me and some of my friends are going to launch next month, and i came across your blog.
We liked the style and the presentation of your write-ups, and just wanted to enquire,if you shall be interested to write for our e-zine.
In case yes, please go ahead and read below.
The magazine shall be called as Readers Quotient: Understanding the DNA of
Society. We have already booked up the domain and taken up the Hosting
Space and the site is also almost done in my localhost. Logo and other works are going on and we shall be live with the site soon in Jan.
To tell you more, It’s an online magazine which shall cover articles from
all categories ranging from Buisness,Politics, India, World,
Economy,Technology,Lifestyle,Book, Movies,Electronics goods etc reviews, Short stories,Mergers and Acquisition, Philosophy,psychology,Photography,Science, Discoveries And Inventions and a hell lot of things where every reader shall find something or the other to read about.
This magazine is an attempt to bring people with excellent writing skills
come together and pass on some meaningful and productive message in each
of its write-ups and not like writing something for the sake of writing.
Money coming out of it either by means of Google-ad-sense or by exclusive
sponsors shall be used to fund poor and needy children ranging from Middle
School to the Higher Secondary School and writers shall not be paid for any
of their write-ups.
We have a dream to make this a big hit in the near future and start funding at least a dozen student ASAP so that they get the Basic Education and at the same time we have a vision to communicate this concept or any such constructive concept to the society so that we add some values to the
society and make it a better place to live in.
I wanted to know if you shall be interested to Write for our magazine and be a part of an initiative that Understands the DNA of society and aspires to make it a better place to live in. In case of any queries, you can drop me a mail at mihirjha@readersquotient.com or mihirjha27@gmail.com
Please take note of the fact that if you agree to write for us, you shall be writing unique articles for us and not the ones which you have already published on your blog. We just want to be sure that we don’t fall under plagiarism or self plagiarism by any chance at any point of time.
Waiting for your Revert. Keep writing. Wish you all the best and a rocking 2k10.
Regds/Mihir
Readers Quotient
Understanding the DNA of society
http://www.readersquotient.com
January 2, 2010 at 5:05 pm
HA, my blog does not have very high readership. I think my comments are more influential, because they are on topic and usually provide links to relevant material I’ve come across. My blogging serves my own purposes and tends toward incohesive rambling. The last time I can recall Hanson linking to me was in response to the comment you linked to. He responded to it by suggesting that I write a post and he would link to it, which he did after I wrote it and emailed him. In contrast, I think he links more often to Katja Grace because he is a regular reader of hers. Katja writes shorter, accessible posts that are more tied together in theme. I don’t think she’s that much more averse to issues of repugnance or distasteful to be associated with.
Mihir, I am not a student.
January 8, 2010 at 12:14 am
Hmmmmmmmm
January 2, 2010 at 7:16 pm
TGGP,
I think the key difference is that you’re an anonymous blogger, and the lesser difference is that you’re snarky.
Plus females are in more shortage in this space and Katja is attractive.
But you should be putting your comments in this blog anyways, for your own purposes as much as any other. Yeah, I’m a hypocrite.
January 2, 2010 at 10:44 pm
I don’t quite get the value of replicating my comments on other blogs here. It seems rather redundant. Sometimes I want to start up a conversation in this space and collect some strands of thought into a post, but usually the existing comment elsewhere is enough.
I guess I hadn’t read Katja enough to get a good sense of her snarkiness, but I without your mention I wouldn’t have thought of it as a significant difference between us. I agree on the female thing when you use the qualifier “this space”. I’ve gotten auto-generated links from religious blogs which are like an entirely different world I rarely interact with. There are probably lots of female bloggers, they just aren’t read by the same sets of people.