I haven’t read this book, and I probably won’t, but the book review in the NYT is pretty compelling in and of itself: “Mountains Into Molehills.” I lived in Kentucky for four years, and once I went on a trip to coal country, where I saw first-hand the kind of unnatural destruction that this book is about. It’s tragic in the truest sense of the word.
Archive for January 18th, 2008
Big Coal in West Virginia
Posted by Ted Hopton on January 18, 2008
Posted in Economics, Environment, Ethics, Politics | Tagged: energy, Environment, Ethics, Politics | Leave a Comment »
Google Analytics – OMIGOD
Posted by Ted Hopton on January 18, 2008
Wow, I have read about Google Analytics for quite some time, but I just set up an account and I am blown away. Wow. All that tracking and analysis power, for FREE? I thought Gmail and Google Calendar were great, but this program is amazing. All I really wanted to know was how many people had subscribed to this blog. That’s it. I thought it had to be somewhere in my Blogger account, you know, some simple little number telling me the total and maybe who the subscribers were.
Couldn’t find anything like that, so I tried the Help section and eventually found my way to Google Analytics (Blogger is owned by Google, after all). So, why not set up an account and see what it offers? It was pretty simple to set up, and then I saw all the data it provides. All the different reports. The custom filters. Wowwwwwwwwwwww. And it’s free. Just like this blog is free.
It really is astonishing what Internet technology has unleashed . . .
Posted in Technology, Web 2.0 | Tagged: Blogs, Marketing, Media, SEO, Technology, Web 2.0 | Leave a Comment »
Midlife Crisis? Just Another Lame Excuse
Posted by Ted Hopton on January 18, 2008
This headline got my attention: “Crisis? Maybe He’s a Narcissistic Jerk“
Is the midlife crisis the newest excuse for poor behavior? Popularly viewed as a unique developmental birthright of the human species, it supposedly strikes when most of us have finally figured ourselves out — only to discover that we have lost our youth and mortality is on the horizon.
I like the insights here about how overblown the actual occurrences of mid-life crises are: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Human Interest, Research, Science | Tagged: Human Interest, mental health, Research, Science | Leave a Comment »
Exercise Even When It’s Freezing – But Wear a Hat
Posted by Ted Hopton on January 18, 2008
I just read this article in the NYT, and they had me pegged: “Too Cold to Exercise? Try Another Excuse.” That’s been my excuse all winter! I guess I have to come up with something else, or just put on layers and get outside and work out. I’m certainly going to be sure to wear my hat, after reading this gross part!
Ms. Davis got frostbite when she went out for a run early in the morning on a cold, windy day with temperatures in the teens. She ran for about an hour wearing a baseball cap. Her ears hurt for a while, then the pain went away.She took off a glove to touch her ears so she could find out just how cold they were. To her shock, one of her ears cracked. “It was sort of like semi-frozen meat,” she recalled.
Posted in Health, Science | Tagged: fitness, Health, Science | Leave a Comment »
Can We Really Explain How Voters Think?
Posted by Ted Hopton on January 18, 2008
In reality, all of us make emotional, intuitive decisions about who we prefer, and then come up with post-hoc rationalizations to explain the choices.
This NYT column, “How Voters Think,” by David Brooks, makes a good case for analysts to bite their tongues and quit trying to explain why every primary result came out the way it did.
Posted in Politics, Research | Tagged: Media, opinion, Politics, Research | Leave a Comment »
The Decline and Death of a Childhood Hero
Posted by Ted Hopton on January 18, 2008
Bobby Fischer, the most powerful American chess player in history, died on Thursday in a hospital in Iceland. No cause of death was given.
I heard the news before I saw the headline: “Bobby Fischer, Chess Master, Dies at 64.” I admired Bobby Fischer when I was a boy. His accomplishments seemed legendary, and since he was so young when he burst onto the chess world stage, it gave me a feeling that anything was possible. If he could do those things . . . it was not unlike imagining oneself as a pro athlete, except no specific body type was required.
I became aware of Bobby Fischer from reading his step-by-step guide to chess. It must have been a Christmas present, I suppose, but I read that book over and over. It was programmed learning (remember those things?) so you were presented with a situation, asked how to respond to it, and then when you turned the page you saw his answer. I grew quite fond of chess, and played many games, primarily against my father, who would always win. Until one day when I got good enough to win, and then I don’t recall that we played so much after that — I’m not sure exactly why, but for some reason I just didn’t want to play chess that much anymore.
Of course, later in his life, Fischer became quite an oddity. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Human Interest, Nostalgia | Tagged: Human Interest, Nostalgia | Leave a Comment »
