Likes & Launch

"When researchers studied an incoming class of cadets at West Point, they measured their grade point..."

Sat, 26 May 2012 11:45:14 -0500

“When researchers studied an incoming class of cadets at West Point, they measured their grade point averages, physical aptitude, military abilities, and self-discipline. When they correlated those factors with whether students dropped out or graduated, however, they found that all of them mattered less than a factor researchers referred to as “grit,” which they defined as the tendency to work “strenuously toward challenges, maintaining effort and interest over years despite failure, adversity, and plateaus in progress.”

- The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg (via anoemi)

Yes.

Mayor Bloomberg Receives Webby's Lifetime Achievement Award

Tue, 22 May 2012 10:40:14 -0500

nycdigital:

Last night, Mayor Bloomberg received the 16^th Annual Webby Awards Lifetime Achievement Award. Tumblr CEO, David Karp, introduced the Mayor, who was recognized for his lifelong and continued support of technology, including his leadership in transforming New York City into a true global technology center. In his allotted 5-word speech, Mayor Bloomberg proudly stated, “Make it here, then everywhere”.

Your browser does not support iframes.

Make it here, then everywhere.

radstake: Google Search Just Got 1,000 Times Smarter - The...

Wed, 16 May 2012 13:00:54 -0500

radstake:

Google Search Just Got 1,000 Times Smarter - The long-talked-about Sematic Google Search of the future is here, now, today!

Google doing what Google does best: organizing data. This is the type of social network they will excel at - connections in the past. This will be exciting to watch grow, especially as visualization of the data gets better.

"Carroll was miffed that someone had appropriated all of time just so they could have a fourth..."

Tue, 15 May 2012 20:49:39 -0500

“Carroll was miffed that someone had appropriated all of time just so they could have a fourth component to allow them to rotate things properly, so in the tea party he took it away. In the movie, no one explains why the Doormouse, the Mad Hatter, and the March Hare are all going in a circle around a table in a perpetual tea time during a perpetual unbirthday. In the book, Time had been the fourth member of their party, but had gotten fed up and walked out. That left the other three to keep going around in circles forever, like an incomplete quaternion. Alice, free of the madness of requiring an extra dimension in order to be of any use, leaves the tea party.”

- A Math-Free Guide to the Math of Alice in Wonderland

Best math geek read. I’m a sucker for math riddles in stories and in real life.

"Here is an idea, let’s make education a core value of our nation again. Instead of massive..."

Tue, 15 May 2012 20:39:59 -0500

“Here is an idea, let’s make education a core value of our nation again. Instead of massive bureaucratic and wasteful government programs, we need to get hyperlocal with education. Instead of expecting things to come to us, let’s learn to forge our own paths again. Instead of filling our minds with junk, let’s fill our minds with knowledge and apply that knowledge with our hands. The need and desire to learn needs to be internalized and driven by the individual. We need to become the “University of You” and value education again. This value is not in terms of test scores or graduation rates or relevancy towards a career path. Rather it is the foundation for elevating our minds and equipping us with the tools to succeed in an increasingly complex world.”

- Strong Opinions @marksbirch

Great post by Mark. There is no easy path. I think people have mistaken “school” for “education”. And “attending” for “learning”. Through the use of the public library and the internet, we can learn anything. You do not need a class, a school or a teacher.

You, free resources, hard work and practice can become whatever you want. There are no excuses for Americans especially. The world’s information is available, most of it for free, what are you going to do with it?

hydeordie: How the Getty protects their sculptures from...

Tue, 15 May 2012 19:20:09 -0500

hydeordie:

How the Getty protects their sculptures from earthquakes.

So cool.

I now want to go to the Getty during an earthquake. Or an exhibit should have a room where the ground shakes and the art stays still.

"The study, “New Tech City,” conducted by the Center for an Urban Future, concluded that the tech..."

Sun, 13 May 2012 15:27:06 -0500

“The study, “New Tech City,” conducted by the Center for an Urban Future, concluded that the tech sector is growing faster in New York City than anywhere else in America and that the city now trails only Silicon Valley as a hub for the development of new technology companies.”

- I’m looking forward to being back in NYC!

New York’s Tech Industry Tops U.S. in Growth, Study Finds - NYTimes.com

Neon Carnival is a grown-up playground. Check out the awesome...

Fri, 11 May 2012 08:29:00 -0500

Neon Carnival is a grown-up playground. Check out the awesome video Atif from Reno Nights put together. Looking for a video for your next event/party? Hire Reno Nights.

Extra points: spot the famous people in the crowd (hint 1: Bianca). Oh, you might also see a familiar face dancing in a ferris wheel.

Having an awesome Friday? Share a little sunshine by donating...

Fri, 04 May 2012 09:32:00 -0500

Having an awesome Friday? Share a little sunshine by donating $1+ to Digital Hope to buy books for children in Columbia. If you can’t find it in your heart, just think how cool you’ll feel telling friends over cocktails “I helped make children in Colombia smarter this morning. What did you do today?”

(via Digital Hope - Colombia Sin Fronteras)

"Online education mostly helps students with Step 1. As Richard A. DeMillo of Georgia Tech has..."

Fri, 04 May 2012 09:26:55 -0500

“Online education mostly helps students with Step 1. As Richard A. DeMillo of Georgia Tech has argued, it turns transmitting knowledge into a commodity that is cheap and globally available. But it also compels colleges to focus on the rest of the learning process, which is where the real value lies. In an online world, colleges have to think hard about how they are going to take communication, which comes over the Web, and turn it into learning, which is a complex social and emotional process.”

- The Campus Tsunami - NYTimes.com

The potential to learn is unlimited, question is whether the work ethic will come up to match it.

Goodbye for now - Thursday 6:30pm

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 01:27:52 -0500

Goodbye for now - Thursday 6:30pm:

In Chicago? Come have a farewell drink on Thursday at the Kerryman with me. It’s my last night as a Chicago resident. East Coast bound this weekend.

bpsquared: I’ve never been the biggest concert enthusiast,...

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 23:29:06 -0500

bpsquared:

I’ve never been the biggest concert enthusiast, because, let’s be honest: at 5’1”, I don’t exactly receive the ideal experience. But for some reason, I knew this was the year I had to go to Coachella. So with a lot of luck, I scored tickets, made plans with Brittany, trekked across the US, through LA to Indio, and finally made it to the desert for a weekend that turned out to be incomparable to any other.

Before I left for Cali, people told me, “Coachella will change your life.” And to be honest, I brushed them off. I was excited, but I hardly thought a weekend spent listening to music could be that life altering. I’ll admit right here - I was wrong. Dead wrong.

It’s not the music … though that’s a huge part. And it’s not being with your friends … though that’s a huge part too. It’s the fact that there’s this moment, when you’re actually listening to the music, and you take a second to realize - I’m in a desert with 100,000 other people, dancing harder than I’ve ever danced before, and nothing nothing else matters right now. The moment when you are singing, not caring how tone deaf you may sound, and the voices of thousands of other individuals come together to make one song is so crazy amazing that I spent half the weekend in chills … not due to the freak chilly weather.

So did Coachella change my life? Yes. I expected a fun, relaxing weekend, away from the regular pressures of my life, but what I got was so much more. And I can’t wait for more.

Coachella 2013- done.

"Extreme knowledge is not something for which he programs a computer but for which his computer is..."

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 16:26:21 -0500

“Extreme knowledge is not something for which he programs a computer but for which his computer is programming him.”

- Want to Remember Everything You’ll Ever Learn? Surrender to This Algorithm

gtrot: The new gtrot is live!

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 21:06:49 -0500

gtrot: The new gtrot is live! :

gtrot:

It’s here guys and gals- a new gtrot focused on making your local experience even better. The new gtrot helps you discover, organize, and share local favorites, to-dos, and much more in your home city (or travel destination!). It’s something you can use wherever, whenever.

We’ll take…

Check it out!

“Buy the ticket, take the ride” - Hunter S....

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 20:14:56 -0500

“Buy the ticket, take the ride” - Hunter S. Thompson

Make It Count (by caseyneistat)

Pretty much all of this.

What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not...

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 12:19:57 -0500

What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?

(via Regina Dugan: From mach-20 glider to humming bird drone | Video on TED.com)

"Life can bestow unexpected gifts, and sometime in her late 40s, Martin, a real estate agent living..."

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 16:47:00 -0500

“Life can bestow unexpected gifts, and sometime in her late 40s, Martin, a real estate agent living on Long Island, a busy working mother who had never been in a track meet, discovered a glorious secret hidden away in her body. Not only was she a good runner, she was also an outstanding one. In fact, she was one of the most remarkable female distance runners in the world.”

- Kathy Martin Started Late but She Is Catching Up - NYTimes.com

It’s never too late to start. Martin is running faster than any 60-year-old woman ever has before.

"You have to fight this feeling. The best way I’ve come up with is to think of a startup as an..."

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 16:39:04 -0500

“You have to fight this feeling. The best way I’ve come up with is to think of a startup as an experiment, not as a business. Your early experiments are supposed to go wrong. Your goal is to find out what went wrong and iterate.”

- How to Make It as a First-Time Entrepreneur | Vinicius Vacanti

Travel doesn’t always require a plane.

Sun, 01 Apr 2012 14:48:24 -0500

Travel doesn’t always require a plane.

"What if you dropped out of school and walked across the country? What if you decided grades were..."

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 16:06:51 -0500

“What if you dropped out of school and walked across the country? What if you decided grades were sort of silly, and instead read all the interesting things you could find? What if you volunteered some time in a developing country and met someone who’d never spent a moment thinking about Chandler and Monica? What if you tasted every taste, saw every sight, faced the things that frightened you, and got a couple of scuffs along the way? You have one life. Live it as you will, but perhaps take a moment to consider an alternative path. There is a wide chasm between the ways you could pass through existence and the lame-ass lives most choose. Besides, should you fail, you’ll at least have a couple of good stories to tell.”

- Fuck ‘em | Deliberatism