I've been meaning to sharpen my math skills via +Khan Academy  for several years now.

The problem is that I usually don't have any use for it right now, and so I don't stick with it.  I've tried various methods over the years to make myself keep grinding away at it, but nothing has worked.

That is, nothing has worked until I tried out www.beeminder.com.  It's a site that gives you an effective pre-commitment device:  you commit to giving them X dollars if you don't stick to your plan.

As you can see in the below graph, it has worked quite well for me for 3+ weeks now.  I set a goal of 45,000 energy points (energy points are Khan Academy's method of tracking learning progress) a week.  

That big spike today is from earning a badge for mastery in 100 unique math skills.

In school I had all the way through what they called "College Algebra", but it's been years and I've forgotten most of it, so I've been doing Khan's Algebra Mission.

Here's hoping +Beeminder gets an automated method of importing Khan Academy energy points soon.  Currently, every time I get points I have to manually input them into beeminder.  It's not a horrible chore, as I keep a second window open to beeminder, but it would be super nice if I didn't have to do that.

I’ve been meaning to sharpen my math skills via +Khan Academy  for several years now.

The problem is that I usually don’t have any use for it right now, and so I don’t stick with it.  I’ve tried various methods over the years to make myself keep grinding away at it, but nothing has worked.

That is, nothing has worked until I tried out www.beeminder.com.  It’s a site that gives you an effective pre-commitment device:  you commit to giving them X dollars if you don’t stick to your plan.

As you can see in the below graph, it has worked quite well for me for 3+ weeks now.  I set a goal of 45,000 energy points (energy points are Khan Academy’s method of tracking learning progress) a week.

That big spike today is from earning a badge for mastery in 100 unique math skills.

In school I had all the way through what they called “College Algebra”, but it’s been years and I’ve forgotten most of it, so I’ve been doing Khan’s Algebra Mission.

Here’s hoping +Beeminder gets an automated method of importing Khan Academy energy points soon.  Currently, every time I get points I have to manually input them into beeminder.  It’s not a horrible chore, as I keep a second window open to beeminder, but it would be super nice if I didn’t have to do that.

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I've got a new project I'm working on and I've been trying to think of  a new domain name all day.

I finally got tired of that so I whipped up a python script that uses a Markov chain seeded with a list of 6000 "interesting" words I found to generate interesting and realistic-sounding fake words.  It then checks to see if that word plus ".com" is an available domain.  

Out of the few hundred it's tried so far only about 19% are actually available.

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Space videos set to moody instrumentals always get me.

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(from NASA by way of http://www.contriving.net/link/ey where Ethan Siegel explains why constantly increasing amounts of space and dark energy doesn't lead to a violation of conservation of energy)

We live on the the red curve.

(from NASA by way of http://www.contriving.net/link/ey where Ethan Siegel explains why constantly increasing amounts of space and dark energy doesn’t lead to a violation of conservation of energy)

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Watch a robot print in 3d with metal.

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What happens when an economist in China publishes negative things about a large Chinese company?

I have personally made my peace with what has happened and have chosen to continue to write about what I believe the data says and what companies are doing.  It is extremely intimidating to receive the threats, intimidation, and daily reminders that my activities are so closely monitored.  I personally know others who have left China because their “safety could not be guaranteed”.

For most academics not in China, it is difficult for them to understand the level of scrutiny and monitoring we face on regular basis.  Most professors have students assigned to monitor them and security officials approaching many people to report on our behavior.  Our email is widely acknowledged, even by students, as being read.  While there are some overt obvious forms of intimidation as I have detailed, much of it is also the “deal you can’t refuse” variety.  There are no overt threats but the message is clear.

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The Life of a Chinese Economist

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Then he sped up halfway through.

And then he started going fast.

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adult-onset—diabetes in their late 30s. In contrast, the average age of diagnosis in the U.S. is 54. Sure, Cambodians now eat more and do less physical work than they did in decades past. But that's not enough to explain their unusual diabetes rates, PRI reports. Something else is happening.

Another thing mentioned is that the Dutch who were starved by the Nazis had smaller children.  The interesting part is that those children also had smaller children.

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How Nutrition In One Generation Can Change The Genetics Of The Next
A Cambodian case study finds that people developing diabetes today have parents who went hungry in the 1970s.

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And yes, they do acknowledge correlation vs causation issues.

After combing through the health records of 1.3 million people over 10 years, researchers found an unusual link between cat bites and depression. More than 41 percent of those who had presented to hospitals with cat bites were also treated for depression at some point. Furthermore, 86 percent of the people that had been both bitten and diagnosed with depression were women. If you are a woman who's been bitten by a cat, there's nearly a 50 percent chance that you will be diagnosed with depression at some point, the study suggests.

(First sentence in this post trolling cat lovers)

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Cat Bites Are Linked To Depression
The reason why is not fully clear. Maybe cats just dislike depressed people. 

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Intuit the Pythagorean Theorem.

Intuit the Pythagorean Theorem.

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