Any offense, real or imagined is a problem. More specifically, not mine.
Hmm…
How to Listen to and Understand Great Music, 3rd Edition
The Symphony & How to Listen to and Understand Great Music (Set)
Great Ideas of Classical Physics
Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition, 3rd Edition
And more… wow, not cheap (even the sale ones are prcey), but they seem like what I want… They aren’t short either… the last one has 84 thirty minute lectures…42 hours.
Hmm, this is interesting. It is better to cooperatively retaliate than always screw the other guy or to be screwed by the other guy.
Wow. This is really weird. I can’t even really describe the article. Just go read it yourself. But here is a taste:
The Prisoner’s Dilemma, therefore, is an analogy we use to test the results of how people treat each other(emphasis mine).
Now, if this game is played one time, the winning strategy invariably is to Screw the Other Guy. If he doesn’t screw you, you get off free. If he does, you serve two years. But if you didn’t, and he decided to screw you – ten years. No one wants to risk that. Screw the Other Guy is the only smart position, and when the game is run thousands of times on computers it comes out the very clear winner.
But! What happens if the game is played again and again, against the same person? Does Screw the Other Guy continue to be the best strategy?
It does not!
The best strategy for a repeating game (called the Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma) is not Screw The Other Guy, and — surprisingly at first glance — it’s not Always Cooperate With The Other Guy, either.
The winning strategy is Tit-for-Tat. That is, you do to the guy what he did to you last turn. If he cooperated, you cooperate. If he screwed you, you screw him back. Over thousands and millions of computer runs, using every strategy from complete aggression to complete forgiveness, Tit-for-Tat “wins” every time – that is, it results in the least jail time for you.
So a lot of the problems we see in other cultures is an insufficient scope of the interactions. That is, they actors focus on the present interaction, not on the ongoing series of interactions. They focus on the things that are seen (the one-in-the-hand) rather than the things that are not seen (the two-in-the-bush).
This isn’t that easy. This requires more thought…
We went to see King Tut and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs yesterday. It was interesting, if a bit pricey. The sarcophagus was not there, and the main icon is actually only 12-15″ tall, but has a lot of details.
I got a kick out of the historians guesses as to the meanings of various items. You know, the ‘This widget may have been part of an elaborate ritual used to inter the King’s favorite servant’s pet monkey’). I could not help but remember the Futurama episode (can’t remember if it is The Series has landed, A Fishful of Dollars, or Jurassic Bark) where Fry goes to a museum exhibit of the year 2000 and sees stuff that has totally ridiculous labels and presumed uses.
Sounds neat.
Howto Books:
Community:
Outlines / Reading Notes
UPDATE (8/8/2007):
Howto Books:
Hmm, I wonder what my Mom thinks of this…
The priest-gods. She is a Professor of Nursing.
Direct Instruction sounds interesting. I wonder if there is a DI curriculum for home schooling?