Two trips to Auschwitz this year, my friend. I was responding -- in a perverse and ironic fashion -- to this meme that I hear oft repeated that the US gov't wouldn't conspire to kill its own people ...
OK, before the conspiracy theorists on this board start coming out of the woodwork, let's try to keep this in perspective: they were drunks -- they deserved it!
I, for one, am not worried; especially b/c "true innovation" is an entirely subjective quality, and even if
we could agree on a comprehensive definition agreeable to all camps, the effect of innovation is not necessarily salutary. I think it's important to point out that
creativity, 'constructive' engineering endeavors included, is literally destructive. You understand probably better than I that nothing that gets designed today by a reputable engineer is done so w/o giving consideration
to its ecological impact. From my perspective, this is where true innovation needs to start, in cultivating a deep understanding of how we fit into the earth's ECOSYSTEM and cultivating technologically appropriate responses to the same.
On a side note, I also think you highly underestimate the technological advances that continue to be made under the infrastructural hood of the internet, b/c it's almost completely transparent. iPhone apps and websites in and of themselves may not be a big deal, but the growing scale of digital distribution channels and the level and scope of our interconnectedness certainly is. Not to mention, managing this growth in a way that is environmentally sustainable? Not a trivial engineering problem, and, in my estimation one of pressing concern...
I'm delving into learning Polish myself but have been taking mostly a whole language, immersion approach. For example, when I was in Krakow I bought myself a book on CD and the book itself, so I can 'read' along as I listen. I use translation tools to put selected passages into English. I also spend time listening to Polish radio. I know at some point I will have to develop some discipline about tackling grammar in a systematic fashion the way you are doing, but for the moment I guess I'm content to as much as possible to get a feel for the language. Japanese is my second language and its challenges are almost completely different... anyway, good luck!
It turns out that the obstacles are the same for both: tonal inflection. Most people are familiar with this fact as it pertains to Chinese and many of the languages of southeast Asia (Thai, Vietnamese, Cantonese et al) but remain completely unaware that it also a core feature of the languages of Scandinavia, Danish included. btw, Google translate does an excellent job translating Chinese (but a pretty terrible job with a superficially related language like Japanese). It turns out Chinese and English word order are the same.
I'm glad someone has addressed this work-life balance canard. I would go further: getting hard things accomplished tends to take over one's life, and I don't think there's any way around it. Unless, of course, you live in Norway...
I also think humans on an individual basis are inherently unbalanced; that's why we're social creatures.
As much as I respect John Carmack, I have to say that I'm a little disappointed that he is rehashing this meme of software development not being a science... OK, wonderful, the state of the art in his shop doesn't rise to the level of being a consistently reproducible, measurable process, but that doesn't mean that this is a permanent condition or that its an insurmountable one.
Mac OS X: Avadis Tevanian - B.A. in Mathematics from the University of Rochester, and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University
Python: Guido van Rossum - masters degree in mathematics and computer science from the University of Amsterdam
Ruby on Rails: David Heinemeier Hansson - bachelor's degree in Computer Science
Ruby: Yukihiro Matsumoto - He graduated with an information science degree from University of Tsukuba
Linux: Linus Torvalds - master's degree in computer science from NODES research group
SpaceX: Elon Musk - From the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, he received an undergraduate degree in Economics, and stayed on another year to finish a second bachelor's degree in physics.
I bought the ipad on a total whim and have been repaid many times over by the enjoyment it continues to provide. I'm an old-school musician from the days when sounds were 'etched' on analog tape and I can tell you that as far as I'm concerned, it is a GREAT device for making music and one that is only going to get better as software evolves to exploit the full potential of its touch panel.
I also recently took it to Poland for a month and used it to compile a hundred pages of typed and handwritten notes and video footage--all the while using it to navigate my way around the unfamiliar terrain. I keep being surprised by my little sidekick's range of uses and flexibility...
I've been a jack of trades in the web dev/IT space for an embarrassingly long time (considering how little money I make). Two years ago I decided to go back to school to finish college (I'm 45), this time w/ the aim of pursuing a degree in computer science. So far so good: I'm less mystified/intimidated by math than I was and the intellectual stimulation of the academy is a refreshing change from corporate software engineering shops where innovative, forward-looking ways of doing things is not necessarily embraced as a virtue. Anyway, nothing ventured, nothing gained I say.
Great story. You have to admire this young man's drive, determination, and obvious intellectual precocity. He'll surely go far (he already has).
I also think it's inspirational b/c it points up the importance of synthetic scientific research done by folks who are so to speak 'out of the fold'. We need institutional science, clearly, but we also need people who can take a step back and look at the big picture and see how things fit together.
It's interesting you bring up food. Everything goes much more smoothly when I'm fasting: I'm way more focused, and the problems that do crop up, I feel I'm able to negotiate more effectively. I tend to look at it as a kind of perverse karmic trade-off, but that's just me...
>I read that a NASA subcontrator wanted someone to design high-efficiency power supplies for the Space Shuttle. So I wrote up a decent design and showed up. There were maybe 20 candidates at the office, all equipped with advanced degrees. But I didn't have a degree, I had a design. They hired me on the spot and sent all the degree holders away. True story.
In the post-9/11 era this is de rigueur and at some level socially sanctioned in the name of keeping us safe from terrorists and social deviants. And I don't think you can argue credibly against these operations w/o first interrogating the various pretexts that have set the stage for them: Oklahoma City, 9/11, 7/7, 3/11 etc.