"And I worry that the idea that learning in relation to history can easily be kept within some type of bounds implies, to a degree, that the importance of history is its factual content. Generations of captive history students, face-down and drooling on their desks, indicate that approaches of this nature are not only unfortunately limited, but also a fatal blow to any intrinsic interest in examining historical/cultural change."

"There are a number of qualities that can't be copied. Consider "trust." Trust cannot be copied. You can't purchase it. Trust must be earned, over time. It cannot be downloaded. Or faked. Or counterfeited (at least for long). If everything else is equal, you'll always prefer to deal with someone you can trust. So trust is an intangible that has increasing value in a copy saturated world."

"In recent research experiments, Derek Rucker and Adam Galinsky, found that people who felt powerless were willing to pay more money for luxury or status items than people who’d been conditioned to feel more powerful and in control."

"Building communities is vital today, whether it's to build a reliable support network, serve as a valuable source of new ideas, or provide a powerful marketing tool. In The Art of Community, you'll learn about the broad range of talents required to recruit, motivate, and manage community members. The book takes you through the stages of community, and covers topics ranging from software tools to conflict resolution skills. "

"But if an entire team walks, that’s much more like an addict’s “hitting bottom”. The consequences are going to be huge because any new team would have to learn the system from scratch. (Though I suppose management could delude themselves into thinking they have the project documentation to make that tractable.) And the departure of any series of employees [or, in the case of an addict, friends] is easy to rationalize: “he’s just a malcontent [no fun any more since he got married]”. But when *everyone* rejects you at once…"

Nice images of the few times we got outside without totally freezing

See in particular Chapter 2, on Data Balancing. This is important stuff for those of us dealing with data-driven models and techniques, especially those not based on analytical closed form first-principles junk.

Wandered here after following up on the A2 Mech Shop open house http://annarborchronicle.com/2009/04/13/electric-vehicles-to-be-produced-in-scio/

I had no idea; met a re-enactor at a party the other day. The world is full of interesting things.

Thinking seriously about how to use this, and how often I might do so. Seems rental might be the way to go….

Proof-of-concept of distributed population-based metaheuristics running on a number of phones.