I’ll read one [Emily Dickinson] poem every few months — and if it’s one of those baffling ones, that’s all it takes to humble me into putting reason back in the tool box, and sitting still until a more appropriate tool presents itself.

Pablo Picasso, Three Musicians (1921), Museum of Modern Art

The title of this post makes a good interview question. Usually, the candidate will say something to the effect of “they’re both valuable” to avoid the possibility of slipping up and choosing the one that the interviewer believes is less valuable.

Let’s say we need to get a picture painted. We could say, “Picasso — you’re our best guy in this area. We’d like you to paint the picture for us.”

Or we could say, “Picasso — work with the steering committee to get that picture painted.”

You could make a case for either approach, but you can’t do both. So which is more valuable?

Personally, I think collaboration is overrated. It leads to the knowledge of experts and novices being given equal weight.

There’s a reason why pilots don’t invite passengers into the cockpit to get their opinions on how to fly the plane . . .

Thus spoke The Programmer.

The idea of last words is funny to me, because the whole notion of “last words” suggests they matter. Which they don’t, of course, but this hope we carry that there will be some wisdom or some insight at the last moment, other than “Oh, fuck it, fuck this fucking shit” is so sadly human, I just love it.

Here are some freshman enrollment numbers at UC Berkeley for Fall 2011. The first four groups on the list are considered underrepresented; the others aren’t.

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I soon was taught that [Linus] Pauling’s accomplishment was a product of common sense, not the result of complicated mathematical reasoning. Equations occasionally crept into his argument, but in most cases words would have sufficed. The key to Linus’ success was his reliance on the simple laws of structural chemistry. The -helix had not been found by only staring at X-ray pictures; the essential trick, instead, was to ask which atoms like to sit next to each other. In place of pencil and paper, the main working tools were a set of molecular models superficially resembling the toys of preschool children.

We could thus see no reason why we should not solve DNA in the same way. All we had to do was to construct a set of molecular models and begin to play — with luck, the structure would be a helix. Any other type of configuration would be much more complicated. Worrying about complications before ruling out the possibility that the answer was simple would have been damned foolishness. Pauling never got anywhere by seeking out messes.

— James D. Watson, The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA

Chinese parents can order their kids to get straight As. Western parents can only ask their kids to try their best.

Chinese parents can say, “You’re lazy. All your classmates are getting ahead of you.” By contrast, Western parents have to struggle with their own conflicted feelings about achievement, and try to persuade themselves that they’re not disappointed about how their kids turned out.

— Amy Chua, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother

Lanya Olmstead was born in Florida to a mother who immigrated from Taiwan and an American father of Norwegian ancestry. Ethnically, she considers herself half Taiwanese and half Norwegian. But when applying to Harvard, Olmstead checked only one box for her race: white.

— Some Asians’ college strategy: Don’t check ‘Asian’ – Yahoo! News

That’s a rather modest strategy. Identifying yourself as white does give you a little bit of a boost but to really improve the odds, I’d advise everyone to go ahead and check the Black or Hispanic box. Or Eskimo. Eskimos are kind of Asian-looking.

Princeton sociologist Thomas Espenshade examined applicants to top colleges from 1997, when the maximum SAT score was 1600 (today it’s 2400). Espenshade found that Asian-Americans needed a 1550 SAT to have an equal chance of getting into an elite college as white students with a 1410 or black students with an 1100.

Here in California, state colleges and universities are prohibited by Proposition 209 from considering race in the admissions process. As a result, the student body at UC Berkeley is more than 40 percent Asian, up from about 20 percent before Prop 209 was passed in 1996. (The California population is 13 percent Asian.)

Other top schools that don’t consider race in admissions also have a high percentage of Asian students. Cal Tech is about one-third Asian. (As a private school, Cal Tech is not subject to Prop 209, but chooses not to consider race.)

Yale, Harvard, Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania declined to make admissions officers available for interviews for this story.

Draw your own conclusions. We are being overrun by the yellow horde!

Indonesian students crossing a collapsed bridge to get to school

The conventional wisdom in America is that you have to be rich to get a good primary education.

The real problem is that American kids will not cross a collapsed suspension bridge to get to their school on the other side of the river, like Indonesian kids will . . .

I did some tutoring for a girl taking AP Computer Science. She’s a junior in high school and wants to be a veterinarian. Afterwards, she told her dad, “If I decide not to be a veterinarian, maybe I’ll be a programmer.”

Don’t let it be said that I’m not doing my part to address the shortage of women in technology, even though I think it’s baloney . . .

Thus spoke The Programmer.

Five little monkeys jumping on the bed.
One fell off and bumped his head.
Mama called the Doctor and the Doctor said,
“No more monkeys jumping on the bed!”

Theories have four stages of acceptance: i) this is worthless nonsense; ii) this is an interesting, but perverse, point of view; iii) this is true, but quite unimportant; iv) I always said so.

After this debacle of a basketball game, my son, a college freshman, says to me, “I should have gone to USC. I could probably walk on to basketball and make the team.”

“Are you kidding? You could probably walk on and start,” I said.

The first thing he told me was, “I got a workout in this morning before I came over. Great way to start the day!”

Really? How does that information solve any of the problems we’re having with your software? How does it alter my planned activities for the day? You are not a serious person.

The unmistakable mark of the moron is he (or she) tells you about his workout schedule, especially if he has just worked out or is just about to work out.

“It’s becoming conventional wisdom that the U.S. does not have as much [economic] mobility as most other advanced countries,” said Isabel V. Sawhill, an economist at the Brookings Institution. “I don’t think you’ll find too many people who will argue with that.”

Jerry Buss

I’ll argue with it . . . the fact that people are not doing something doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a hard thing to do. Maybe people aren’t trying to do it. Maybe people don’t want to do it.

From Daniel Kahneman‘s Thinking, Fast and Slow:

A large-scale study of the impact of higher education . . . revealed striking evidence of the lifelong effects of the goals that young people set for themselves. The relevant data were drawn from questionnaires collected in 1995-1997 from approximately 12,000 people who had started their higher education in elite schools in 1976. When they were 17 or 18, the participants had filled out a questionnaire in which they rated the goal of “being very well-off financially” on a 4-point scale ranging from “not important” to “essential.” . . .

Goals make a large difference. Nineteen years after they stated their financial aspirations, many of the people who wanted a high income had achieved it. Among the 597 physicians and other medical professionals in the sample, for example, each additional point on the money-importance scale was associated with an increment of over $14,000 of job income in 1995 dollars!

In other words, one reason that people differ in their incomes is that some people care more about having a high income than others. People have different ambitions. Some people will gladly sacrifice things like family and leisure time for money and some people won’t.

Here’s an example of what it takes to be rich in America: Laker owner Jerry Buss spent so little time with his family when his kids were growing up that when he and his wife separated, they didn’t tell the kids, and it was five years before any of them noticed the difference.

True story.

Not everyone is willing to show a Jerry Buss level of ruthless disregard for their family in their pursuit of financial success.

I’ve spent a lot of time with my family. Jerry Buss owns a basketball team and I don’t. Good for him! I’ve lived my life a certain way and I could have lived it a different way if I’d wanted to.

A lot of Americans are self-absorbed morons whose principal activities are eating and watching television. The fact that these people are not shooting up the economic ladder doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a hard thing to do if you really want to do it.

The goal is not just to hire people who need a job; it’s to hire people who believe what you believe. I always say that, you know, if you hire people just because they can do a job, they’ll work for your money, but if you hire people who believe what you believe, they’ll work for you with blood and sweat and tears.

What is amazing is not just that people are greedy and prone to engage in ethically questionable activities; the big lesson is how people can reach unimaginable positions of power and essentially be (a) incompetent, and (b) not willing to do even the most mundane and trivial parts of their job.

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What would Heracles have been if he had said, “How am I to prevent a big lion from appearing, or a big boar, or brutal men?” What care you, I say? If a big boar appears, you will have a greater struggle to engage in; if evil men appear, you will free the world from evil men.

“But if I die thus?”

You will die a good man, fulfilling a noble action.

— Epictetus, Discourses, Book IV, Ch. 10

“I’ve got to say we out-physicaled them today,” Alabama linebacker Courtney Upshaw said.

You attend the University of Alabama. You’re not going to out-mental anybody . . .

What greater good do you look for than this? You were shameless and shall be self-respecting, you were undisciplined and shall be disciplined, untrustworthy and you shall be trusted, dissolute and you shall be self-controlled. If you look for greater things than these, go on doing as you do now, not even a god can save you.

Freak out. This is a very important part of the process. Seriously. Look at the list of everything you’ve been trying to work on concurrently, or meaning to work on, and see how infeasible that list really is. Then look at the one or two or three things you really really really want to accomplish, and let yourself soak in the truth: you are not going to get your most valued goals accomplished when you are trying to do this many things.

I now have the answer: the divorce came first.

We never did get the thank you note . . .

Why do you not come forward and openly proclaim that you are at peace with all men, whatever they do, and that you laugh above all at those who think that they are harming you? saying, “These slaves do not know who I am, nor where to find what is good or bad for me, for they have no way of getting at my position.”

Sparrows were feeding in a freezing drizzle
That while you watched turned into pieces of snow
Riding a gradient invisible
From silver aslant to random, white, and slow.
There came a moment that you couldn’t tell.
And then they clearly flew instead of fell.

There is but one way to peace of mind (keep this thought by you at dawn and in the daytime and at night) — to give up what is beyond your control, to count nothing your own, to surrender everything to heaven and fortune.

Ought you to desire what is not given you, or to be ashamed if you do not attain to it? Is this all the habit you acquired when you studied philosophy, to look to others and to hope for nothing from yourself and your own acts?

These are the books I read in 2011, roughly in the order listed. The ratings and tags are mine. They don’t represent a consensus of opinion.

Best Novel of the Year: A Fan’s Notes by Frederick Exley

Best Non-Fiction of the Year: Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

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“Look at me, I have no house or city, property or slave: I sleep on the ground, I have no wife or children, no miserable palace, but only earth and sky and one poor cloak. Yet what do I lack? Am I not quit of pain and fear, am I not free? When has any of you ever seen me failing to get what I will to get, or falling into what I will to avoid? When did I blame God or man, when did I accuse any? Has any of you seen me with a gloomy face? How do I meet those of whom you stand in fear and awe? Do I not meet them as slaves? Who that sees me but thinks that he sees his king and master?” There you have the true Cynic’s words; this is his character, and scheme of life.

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A gentleman brings a basket of books to the checkout . . .

“Do you have the 50 percent off deal?” he asks.

The clerk looks genuinely confused.

“No,” he says. “Nice try, though.”

“I thought it was through the end of the year.”

“Are you on the mailing list?”

“Yes.”

“That’s 25 percent off.”

“Oh. Why am I thinking it was 50? Maybe I’m on a special mailing list that gets 50 percent off.”

“Maybe you’re on the special list that pays 50 percent more.”

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There’s no one behind the customer service counter at Barnes and Noble but there is a woman doing something with the books in front of the counter . . .

“Do you work here?” I ask.

“Yes,” she says, but not in a friendly way . . . more like yes, I work here but I regret it.

‘I’m looking for The Book of Holiday Awesome,” I say.

“I’ve never heard of that,” she says.

I don’t care if she’s heard of it. I just want to know if they have a copy of it on hand.

“Do you know the author?” she asks.

“No.”

She types a couple of things into the computer. “Nothing is coming up,” she says.

It’s a popular book so something should be coming up, even if it’s just to say they don’t have it in stock.

I lean over the counter to see what she’s typed in the search box. Here it is: the book of holiday awsum.

It is where you think not, and will not seek for it. For if you had wished you would have found it in yourselves and would not have wandered outside and would not have sought the things of others as your own.

I just met the world’s fattest vegetarian. He’s not a short man but there’s no human height for which his weight would be considered normal.

He must be consuming entire orchards, uprooting trees and munching them like broccoli . . .

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Did Laius obey Apollo? Did he not go away in his drunken stupor and dismiss the oracle from his mind? What then? Did Apollo withhold the truth from him for that reason? Indeed I do not know whether you will obey me or not, but Apollo knew most certainly that Laius would not obey, and yet he spoke. Why did he speak? Nay, why is he Apollo, why does he give oracles, why has he set himself in this position, to be a Prophet and a Fountain of truth, so that men from all the world come to him? Why is “Know thyself” written up over his shrine, though no one understands it?

— Epictetus, Discourses, Book III, Ch. 1