Economist.com | Special Report on Japan's Humanoid Robots
HER name is MARIE, and her impressive set of skills comes in handy in a nursing home. MARIE can walk around under her own power. She can distinguish among similar-looking objects, such as different bottles of medicine, and has a delicate enough touch to work with frail patients. MARIE can interpret a range of facial expressions and gestures, and respond in ways that suggest compassion. Although her language skills are not ideal, she can recognise speech and respond clearly. Above all, she is inexpensive . Unfortunately for MARIE, however, she has one glaring trait that makes it hard for Japanese patients to accept her: she is a flesh-and-blood human being from the Philippines. If only she were a robot instead.
This is the most funny/ironic introduction to an Economist story I have ever come across :)
That said, I am not too positive about this grand experiment in using technology to solve a cultural problem.
Performancing for Firefox | Performancing.com
Testing the extension on Firefox 1.5 on Ubuntu Linux.
Found on Slashdot, in response to Paul Graham's article on procrastination.
Manics can also be procrastinators. I did RTFA from Digg yesterday and while I found it interesting I thought it showed a misunderstanding of procrasination. One thing it is not is lazyness, often extrememly active people procrastinate. Another thing it is not is disorganisation, or lack of coherent thought as you describe above. Sometimes people with fine strategic minds are also terrible procrastinators. We all know the pop psychology of the 'completer/finisher' too, the ability to go for the kill in the final stages of a venture. Many who have this ability to deliver on target are still victims of procrastination.
So what is it? Well, notice I use the word 'victim'. You don't choose to procrastinate. Subtle but true, you have to choose not to Procrastination is either a fear of success or failure, actually the outcome is unimportant. Or better still a fear of change and progress. Perhaps with a programming problem you are secretly worrying where the next contract will come from once you finish this one, which you could so easily do if you just let yourself. In relationships it is the fear that it might "actually work", thus robbing one of the circumstances that excuse or explain a neurosis. This subtle and often unwilling holding back can be explained by the fact the mind enjoys struggle, we are most alive during struggle. Myself I've spotted procrastination because I am enjoying a difficult problem so much I don't want to commit to solving it and 'trivialising' my efforts. What is undone is full of potential, yet what is done and dusted is consigned to the ordinary.
A coder who considers 10 different solutions for weeks on end is not procrastinating, not if, as is usually the case with intelligent circumspect thinkers, they engage the problem with full gusto once they've decided upon the preferred line of attack. Rather, a procrastinator would be someone who, confident in their vision, still finds a reason to hold back. TFA describes nothing more than prioritisation and tasking. Procrastination is a subtle and devilish thing to defeat, often requiring you to look deep behind the facade of your behaviour to discover why you're really doing it.
The cure, imho, is often to embrace a more carefree attitude.
Despite being on a personal record of ten flights in the past two weeks, I managed to finish A Suitable Boy in time.
Really great book. But you really should take time off to read this book. I read the book all over the place - on the way to work, on flights, inside buses and wherever I found myself waiting. Ideally, I would have read this book on a long lazy holiday.
This book is LONG. It figures on Wikipedia's List of longest novels. My print had close to 1500 pages.
The story revolves around a host of characters and each one of them is interesting in their own way. With that kind of length, the author manages to do justice to all the sub plots in the book.
The description of India in the 1950s is really lucid and detailed. It really captures the spirit of that time from many different points of view.
This concludes the Reading Marathon, and I am glad I made it in good time. An entry wrapping it all up is next.
Lately, I have been reading up a lot on sleep. Here is a sample.
Nature has free access to a series of articles on sleep.
Harvard magazine had an article a while ago on Sleep which is very interesting. In fact Harvard School of Medicine has an entire deparment dedicated to sleep medicine, apparently the first of its kind in the world.
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Steve Pavlina, has been following a polyphasic sleep cycle for close to a month now, and has been logging his experiences. Latest at the time of writing this is here. But in effect, the previous article recommends against a polyphasic cycle.
There is a blog dedicated exclusively to sleep related research.
A delicious search for sleep reveals a lot more stuff, which you might want to peruse, especially this watch, which claims to wake you up without any sensation of drowsiness, by monitoring your sleep cycle.
Apart from hacking (which is on a bit of a downturn nowadays) and reading books, the one other thing I really like doing is to watch TV shows. I guess that makes me some sort of a popular culture addict :). So much so that I once watched an entire season of 24 in an 18 hours non-stop binge (each episode is only 45 mins long btw)!
So here are some TV shows that I recently watched/am watching. Note that due to the power of the internet, I am following some shows on US schedules (I would rather not elaborate further :>).
House M.D.: Amazing show, just for the main character of Dr. House played by Hugh Laurie. But what I really like about the show is that apart from the medical histrionics, each episode delves into a certain aspect of human nature and delivers a powerful message in the end. This show makes you think!
Lost : The suspense is getting a bit too overbearing in Season 2. And in typical style of US TV shows, the episodes in the middle of the season are extremely boring. Season 1 was nice, especially the whole thing of going back forth in time and dealing with the past of each of the survivors at some point. But, somehow too many mystery elements are continuously added. It makes you wonder if the authors actually plan on tying it up or not :).
Firefly : This show aired on Fox a long time ago, but was cancelled after just eleven episodes. Probably because it was unadulterated science fiction, with some heavy storylines. Even the tempo of the plots were rather slow. But it had a large enough cult following to prompt Joss Whedon, the creator of the show (who later went on to make made Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel) to release it on DVD. That is where I picked it up. A movie called Serenity also got released a few days ago which basically has the same setting as Firefly, but takes off from where it ended. The movie is also quite good.
The hallmarks of the show are the conversations between the characters. The dialogues are really amazing. Combined with that are some excellent special effects and interesting costumes and sets. I also like the title soundtrack.
Cowboy Bebop : This is another show that got made into a movie later. There are slight similarities to Firefly, but the main difference is that Cowboy Bebop is Japanese Anime. In fact this show, with its western setting and characters is largely responsible for popularising Japanese anime in the United States.
