mattwrench

13 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

I made the same mistake a few weeks ago because it's especially deceitful. uTorrent disguises this SearchProtect program with what appears to be a ToS agreement page after you've already rejected another piece of crapware, making you assume you're already in the clear.

mattwrench

13 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

My suggestion for all non-fiction writing is On Writing Well by William Zinsser. It's got sections on many different topics (including some technical writing), but its stylistic advice is the best.

mattwrench

14 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

We may be capable of sequencing DNA cheaply enough for the average consumer, but what's the point? Issues like the missing heritability problem and an incomplete understanding of protein folding show we lack a full comprehension of the information DNA tells us. Cancer-killing bacteriophages are still years from being relevant as a treatment for the general public.

The Human Genome Project has yet to provide substantial medical advances. Genetic sequencing only seems useful to look for diseases with an explicit genetic link like Huntington's, and many people aren't going to want to know they have diseases like that. Otherwise genetic sequencing seems as useful as a full-body scan.

mattwrench

14 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

I agree with the sentiment here, but the bigger issue is most games may not have a cool unique new thing that is communicable to listeners. Considering most games take at least a year to create, they usually stumble upon at least a few innovative, but small, ideas. Looking back at a game like Halo, probably the coolest feature was the ability to only hold two weapons at a time, a nowadays popular design choice which radically alters gameplay balance. However if you had told me before release that was the "killer feature", I would have been bored and uninterested.

mattwrench

14 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

Rather than worry about scaling, why not get rid of the essay sections completely? I have an issue with standardized tests basically setting public school curriculum, but most of the essays I remember didn't even do that (and based on the OP's piece, these essays aren't testing writing ability either.)

I recall the (Texas) essay prompts used to be incredibly vague and had nothing to do with what we were learning in class at the time. Prompts like "Write about a time you overcame a challenge" come to mind. Back then, I assumed they were just testing our ability to communicate ideas to an audience, but really all they wanted was the default 5-paragraph essay. It was little more than fill-in-the-blanks to this outline, rather than actual writing.

What made the AP Literature and Rhetoric tests so good was that everything we learned in class was applicable to them. Obviously, my teachers took time to explicitly practice the AP essays, but every other activity also helped feed my knowledge of the subject that I could use to answer the essays on the AP test. Other standardized test essays just seem to be antithetical to any possible purpose.

mattwrench

14 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

That makes a lot of sense. The above criterion I mentioned does seem to fall apart since I do consider problem solving to be inherently creative even though oftentimes there is only one answer.

Good to hear from an actual physician though. Do you think that your initial disappointment is a unique response or do most med students go through it? I ask because everyone I know who is getting accepted to med school has wanted to be a doctor since high school. I assume that makes med students get tunnel-vision when deciding their career choices and have an idealized, incorrect view of the field. (I figure most future doctors just get over this pretty quickly by finding different, but equally important reasons to be in the field.)

mattwrench

14 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

"Blue collar" was a poor voice of words. You're right that the white/blue collar divide is not a creative difference.

But I still feel that software development is a creative field whereas most of medicine is reactive. All fields are based upon past knowledge so the use of APIs seems irrelevant since they are just tools used to create.

The criterion to differentiate between creative and non-creative fields seems to be whether multiple "correct" answers exist. Obviously in programming the solutions to problems vary in terms of algorithms,implementations, etc. On the other hand, medical diagnosis is either correct or incorrect. Even prescribing treatments seems to be more of "do X with A factors, do Y in the presence of B factors" rather than an individualized, creative approach.

mattwrench

14 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

This article touches on why it somewhat bothers me to see some of my smartest friends applying to med school right now. I'm sure being a doctor is a rewarding profession and the work they do is so incredibly important to their patients--but it's not particularly unique work. Medicine is the application of the already known. (Most med students are not going to be the next DeBakey.) Rather than contributing original work, most doctors seem to be well-paid (and deservingly so) blue collar workers. If someone turns down a med school acceptance, that school can instantly pull 100 names of their waitlist who will be more-or-less just as qualified.

Sivakumar is right in that there aren't many doctors who can also code. While he may not get to feel the joy of directly improving patients lives, this goal of his seems far more important to the well-being of everyone.

mattwrench

14 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

I agree that going public hurts companies but not because the partners/founders can cash out. At least in the tech world once a company reaches a certain size, it seems as though founders can liquidate a large portion of their stock pre-IPO; Mark Zuckerberg doesn't need to worry about Facebook's IPO in order to get rich. Rather, I feel that having a somewhat-arbitrary, short-term indicator in the form of stock price is what hurts public companies and their culture much more than the loss of its leaders.

mattwrench

14 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

This is exactly why I don't think we'll see any media companies like Mashable being bought anytime soon. Writers can move on too easily. Why would you invest in something with so little retainable value?

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