joshuago’s Bookmarks

The pattern of the basic curriculum is extraordinarily rigid, and has never been critically reconstructed from the ground up. The schools continue to teach it for no better reason than that it has always been taught.

The endurance running hypothesis, the idea that humans evolved as long-distance runners, may have legs thanks to a new study on toes.

The lesson for GM and its American rivals now struggling to stay in business is that when they launch daring innovations, they need the will and a way to ensure that those ideas don't get drowned by the corporate mainstream.

On the difference between the industrial and academic mindset, as typified by punctuation marks.

Expect failures and embrace them. Fully automate your infrastructure deployments. Design your infrastructure so that it scales horizontally. Establish clear measurable goals -- for example, response time. Be prepared to quickly identify and eliminate bottlenecks. Then play whack-a-mole for a while, until things get stable.

How do you know what ideas will work? How can people try a lot of ideas without bankrupting themselves or running themselves ragged?