The Edmunds editors should know something about safety. Their jobs entail extensive test driving, and they've seen it all—or at least most of it—from closed-course tests to interaction with drivers on the L.A. Freeway. Here is what they recommend:
1. Stay out of the fast lane.
2. Keep your eyes scanning the area ahead.
3. Beware of blind spots.
4. Get 'racecar driver control' of the wheel (...) so that, with your arm outstretched and your back against the seat, your wrist could rest on the top of the wheel.
5. Place your hands at 9 and 3.
6. Judge drivers by their cars. Cars with body damage or dirty windows could be indicative of an inattentive driver.
7. Know thy vehicle.
8. Keep your vehicle in shape.
9. Nighttime may not be the right time.
10. Consider high-performance training.
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more.
Thanks to T&J
I recently wrote an article about a heartbreaking new trend in our classrooms. In Universities throughout the US, students are surfing the internet, shopping online, Facebooking, and emailing while their professors speak to disengaged minds.
One can argue that kids have always passed notes, but this semester’s explosion of multi-tasking is on a terrifying scale and teachers nationwide are bereft. The Dean of the University of Chicago Law School just banned surfing during class. Harvard Business School was forced to cut off internet access. Columbia, Barnard and countless others are hustling for solutions, but students demand that their rights are not infringed upon.
You can read my account of this crisis and of the dangers of multitasking in this piece on Tim Ferriss’s blog. What I would like to do now is propose some actionable solutions to a cultural problem that extends far beyond our schools.
In my opinion, cutting off internet access in classrooms, while a good idea, is just addressing the symptom of a much broader disengagement. We have to get to the root of the problem by understanding why kids, and adults for that matter, are not deeply immersed in what they are doing.
What is getting in the way of presence? Alienation. From a very young age, kids are not being listened to and so they are turning off their minds. Horrible policies like No Child Left Behind, and the gauntlet of standardized tests our kids have to endure, are turning education into a forced march. Most of the professional world is an extension of the same problem. Everyone is being jammed into the same cookie cutter mold, and that is not how anyone will thrive. Below are some internal solutions to navigating an increasingly disconnected external environment.
1. Do what you love.
2. Do it in a way you love and connect to.
3. Give people a Choice and they become engaged.
4. Release a fear of failure.
5. Build positive routines.
6. Do one thing at a time.
7. Take Breaks.
Read
more.
Sociologist Harry Collins is interviewed in American Scientist on his fascinating mission to find out what we need to do to be considered an expert and what different types of expertise exist.
Collins has spent many years studying how science works. Not how it is supposed to work, through experiments and falsification and gradual knowledge building, but how it actually works, through social networks, economics and traditions.
Collins and his colleagues wanted to test the difference between tacit knowledge, what we can do without being able to explain, and explicit knowledge, so they devised some fascinating experiments to see if people could tell the difference.
One ingenious experiment involved testing whether people could tell the difference between a colour blind person and normally sighted version from just talking to them about colour. It turns out, they can't.
Technical decision-making is often a matter of debating in committees and the like, so the way expertise works itself out in conversation was always going to be a central concern. We decided to use the forerunner of the "Turing test"—the "imitation game"—to see whether one kind of expert could be distinguished from another in conversational tests. In the imitation game, a judge asks open-ended questions of, say, a full-blown expert and someone with interactional expertise only, without knowing who is who. The judge tries to tell the difference. In the best-known of the experiments we did in Cardiff, color-blind people were found to be indistinguishable from color perceivers, and we argued this was because the former had been immersed in the language of the latter all their lives.
As a result of this project, the research team have created a 'periodic table' of different types of expertise and how they manifest themselves.
More, with other links, via
mind hacks.
Top 10 Life Lessons I’ve Learned From My Daughter (So Far)
Children bring a great amount of wisdom with them when they join us here in this world. I have known this for many years and have always loved being around children. But it was not until I became a father, a bit more than four years ago, that I discovered just how wise these little beings really are.
From the moment of my daughter’s birth (and even before that) fatherhood has been a truly transformative experience. It’s rare that a day goes by without learning something about life from my Ella. And in many ways I really do see her as one of my most effective teachers.
So I thought it would be fun to share some of the personal growth lessons I have learned... Every one of these lessons has had a significant impact on my life.
1. Tomorrow’s Gonna Be a New Day.
2. Sometimes it’s Better to Make Up Your Own Rules
3. Don’t Be Afraid to Show Your Enthusiasm.
4. Feel your emotions fully.
5. Walk On Walls Whenever Your Have The Chance
6. Sometimes you have to do it alone (even if there’s someone right there who could
7. Know When to Ask For Help.
8. Don’t be attached to what you painted yesterday (or 2-seconds ago).
9. Singing Makes Everything Better.
10. Dance like no one’s watching (even when you’ve made sure that everyone is!)
Cool
full article here.
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