M@Blog » education

On creating the genius

matt — Sun, 03 May 2009 14:49:05 +0000

Rather good op-ed in the NYT on genius, from which the following quote is pulled:

By practicing in this way, performers delay the automatizing process. The mind wants to turn deliberate, newly learned skills into unconscious, automatically performed skills. But the mind is sloppy and will settle for good enough. By practicing slowly, by breaking skills down into tiny parts and repeating, the strenuous student forces the brain to internalize a better pattern of performance.

The full article has some good examples.

Inspiration from Stanford’s entrepreneurship video library

matt — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 04:13:32 +0000

I’ve been on a video binge watching insightful and inspirational talks by some of the VC and entrepreneurship community’s leaders, all given at Stanford over the past 3-4 years. Many of these were suggested by my friend Greg, who is himself an angel investor in some very promising ventures.

I’m posting these here as both personal reference and to share with others who may be interested. Most of them are short snippets of only a few minutes length rather than your typical 1-hour lecture, so they’re all quite digestible.

Enjoy!

Duke iPodded

matt — Mon, 23 Aug 2004 07:36:30 +0000

Duke freshman get an iPod. The upper class(wo)men are annoyed.

Bilingual Benefits

matt — Tue, 15 Jun 2004 03:06:16 +0000

According to recent studies, looks like I’ll still be able to chew gum and walk when I’m 80 because I’m bilingual! :)

東京大学 iMac Power!

matt — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 07:04:06 +0000

Picked up this month’s MacPower, and opened up to a great picture of 1149 iMac’s at a computer lab in Tokyo University. Very impressive. Google images couldn’t find a pic yet, but someone will probably scan it in soon enough. Funny thing is, they’re all connected to a “Happy Hacking Keyboard Lite 2,” presumably to save desktop space. Is this the first large-scale classroom deployment of iMacs?

More references here (blog) and here (watch.impress).

Language

matt — Mon, 29 Mar 2004 03:31:00 +0000

This interesting article, originally from the NYT, sheds some light in connection to my previous post also originally sourced from the NYT. Being half Japanese, I have Japanese middlenames representable by characters. The English side of my business card has only initials for my middle names, but the Japanese side spells them out in characters. Literally every time a Japanese person sees the Japanese side, they remark in amusement. What’s interesting is that younger employees frequently remark how “cool” the mix of characters looks (the middle-name kanji characters are surrounded by my katakana-charactered english names). No such welcome reaction from the oler generation. Not that I need or want one, but the contrast is noticible. The “inclusionary vs. exclusionary” cultural differences between Japan and China will become increasingly obvious as the level of tourism rises (at least as initiated by the gov’t). Question is, which will “win out”, if that’s right thinking…

Ye ol’ mater

matt — Tue, 23 Mar 2004 00:47:57 +0000

Brown in the news, investigating its connections to slavery.

Appealing Anime

matt — Fri, 16 Jan 2004 01:05:54 +0000

Terrie Lloyd has updated his site, this time with an amusing anecdote on how Japanese animation is reaching overseas. Here’s the beginning:

The huge psychological effect that anime and manga can have on kids was brought home to us just a couple of days ago, when we got an e-mail from a 12-year old boy in the USA. He wanted to know how he could get information about doing a 3-4 year home stay in Japan, so that he could attend school here. Now, we get a lot of mail, but this letter intrigued us, partly because being only 12, this kid had guts. So we wrote back and asked him ‘why Japan?’

His response threw us for a loop, when he explained that he’d heard about a special school for unique and gifted kids outside Tokyo, called CLAMP. And he wanted to attend as a student.

But that’s not all — read on for the kicker.

Missing Mr. Moyer

matt — Wed, 14 Jan 2004 14:43:12 +0000

Jack Moyer sadly passed away a few days ago. I remember Dr. Moyer back in 7th grade at ASIJ leading us on a week-long Miyake-jima trip, teaching us marine biology, local culture, and environmental activism. Every few years since I would hear snippets of his activities and collaborations with the school. He was a fantastic story teller, with the infamous wooden spoon story eagerly looked forward to. Only a handful of daring souls from my entourage managed to grab it, with a few funny “accidents” along the way. Come to think of it, I can still recite the taiko drum rhythm from that night. You will be sorely missed, Jack.

The Pursuit of Happiness

matt — Tue, 13 Jan 2004 06:44:59 +0000

If ever there was a conference to attend this year, TED would probably be it. Check out this amazing lineup of speakers. From Alpana Singh, one of the youngest Master Sommeliers, to famed architect Shigeru Ban, this is quite a gathering. Unfortunately, it’s invite only :(
Monterey Bay at the cusp of spring, mmmm…