This book was given to me by
![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
aliothsan, because of our mutually high level of tactileness and interest in research thereof.I read the book with a positive bias. I am, indeed, extremely touch-oriented; I've had professional training in massage and various related practices; I've given 'em professionally; it's probably one of the most important senses to my enjoyment of the world.
So I'm very disappointed to say that the book is 99% bullshit. Hardly a single page went by that did not include fallacious reasoning, unstated or unproven assumptions, appeals to authority or tradition, uncritical acceptance of unproven (or disproven) "Eastern" practices, fundamentally flawed conceptions of study design, flippant dismissal of the same, false claims about neuroscience, pure speculation, dewey-eyed wistfulness about the moral and familial superiority of indigenous cultures, or similar.
That's unfortunate, because I do believe touch is important (to me and others like me, at least), and would like to see books out there that support my beliefs. But in this case, while it preaches a message I like, its support for that message is thoroughly porous.
On the positive side, there was the small portion of studies that were correctly done (at least if described accurately, for which I've been giving benefit of doubt) and had interesting results; it is highly probable that most touch is good for people or at least not bad; etc. And it was an interesting read.
aliothsan. Many thanks!Cutting Remarks is primarily about Dr. Schwab's experience in residency at UCSF, through various wards (surgical, pediatric, vascular, etc).
To a certain extent, it reminds me of Heart Failure, though rather than being bitter, Schwab speaks from a highly successful retrospective. In that sense, I see some of what Heart Failure describes - the quasi-abusive social structures, excessive hours, and frequent trauma of patient death, tempered by decades of distance and time to forget the worst.
Schwab's account is enthralling enough that I read it in one sitting; it made me both laugh and cry, often simultaneously or near to it. He manages to find a certain humor even when starkly describing what are clearly memories that have stayed with him through the years as personal failures. His description of surgery itself is quite interesting; jocular, visual, visceral. Even (especially?) when describing what would otherwise be rather squicky aspects of his obvious love, trauma care.
If you read his blog (which is also excellent and well worth reading) you will get a feel for his style; it seems to be native, and not just merely a touchup by some top-notch ghostwriter.
I'm not sure what more I can say about it other than that I recommend it without reservation, and will loan on request.
ETA: As regards personal reaction: I am fairly sure that I do not myself want to go into surgery. Psychiatry or neurology perhaps, but I've already discussed my qualms about medical school compared to a straight Ph.D. I'm still somewhat uncertain about trying for an MSTP (MD + PhD); while I admire what he does - and that he has remained human despite it - I do not think it is for me, and I would likely need to force the MD part to work for my true interests.
But it is, nevertheless, fascinating stuff.
ETA2: You can also hear him read part of it at http://surgeonsblog.mypodcast.com/i
- Music:Bach - Concerto for 2 Violins in D Minor
All I know is he's got an excellent blog which I've mentioned before. Hopefully the book should be interesting (though I currently have no intention of going into surgery...)
And I have no idea whom it's from. The username 'sucinen' is on the receipt, and while I'm fairly sure I've seen that before, I can't remember any context at all, nor do I see any relevant logs / emails / accounts. A new WP account that doesn't overlap with my edits at all, an inactive OKC account, and that's it.
So, whoever you are, thanks. :) I'll post my thoughts about the book once I've read it.
I'd like to know what your techniques are for meditation, tantra, self-hacking, etc. Please ping me to talk about it (or leave a comment).
I want to know:
a) detailed instructions for doing the technique
b) where you got it / what religion(s) or tradition(s) it is part of
c) what its effects are
FYI, I wrote up mine a while ago, and am currently working on a book length (= ~5-10x) expansion of that post.
The working title is "A Hacker’s Guide to Meditation: Practical recipes without the dogma". As implied, it would have much more emphasis on specific 'recipes', i.e. diverse implementations of the techniques that I wrote up almost exclusively at a meta level. Also as stated, the perspective I use is pragmatic, dogma/religion free, and diverse - aimed more at giving someone all the available tools and a meta framework rather than indoctrinating into any particular world view or dwelling a lot on unsubstantiated theory about the causal mechanisms involved and similar woo.
I want to expand it to include non-solo techniques as well as the simpler solo stuff. This would include things that aren't normally thought of as 'meditation', like ergonomics ("set & setting"), desensitization therapy, etc. I see them as all variants of the same thing, and find the secrecy even in the medical community towards the outside world about what they are exactly as rather irritating.
If anyone is familiar with the details of what the 'transcendental meditation' people use I'd like to know; they're also kinda cult-like and secretive about their techniques, and I want to open-source them.
BTW, the talk I'm listening to now is pretty good. Go listen.
- Location:desk
- Music:TEDTalks - Jeff Hawkins
I find it fairly sad / annoying that it's so bound up with both - either the utter bullshit (sorry, "unproven and unsupported speculation") about crystals and whatnot, or the clearly religious dogma about past lives, rebirth, karma, Buddha, God / 'holy spirit', etc.
For that matter, I find that most things that are attributed to "ki" or equivalents seem to fail the Ockham test; it's really unnecessary to postulate such a thing, since you can explain all related phenomena as either unsupported / confabulatory, synaesthesis of subtle (5-sense) perceptions like heat and smell, or various known physiological effects.
The problem here is that almost everyone conflates the real / supported / core elements and the unreal / unsupported / dogmatic ones, and:
a) people who are logical, or who don't want to be enmeshed in various religious beliefs that may conflict with their existing ones, find meditation and related techniques repulsive; and
b) people who aren't very logical, and learn meditation, make huge false attributions, are easily cult-ified, and easily springboard from the real to the unreal
... and without separating what's true from what's false, neither side can make good, convincing, or accurate arguments.
So I wonder if people have actually tried to write a clear, well-supported, non-dogmatic, non-single-technique (e.g. TM...), non-indoctrinating (e.g. 'the Holy Guy sayz...') book on the subject? Anyone tried and succeeded?
If not, maybe I should try someday.... flooded market, though, so it'd have to be seriously damn good to succeed. Not sure I could pull that off.
- Location:desk
- Mood:
contemplative
- Perceived area of a circle = (actual area)X, where X = .8 ± .3
- Don't use more dimensions than variables (e.g. area to represent a linear change). Preferably, show each variable in a different dimension (or other feature, if >3)
- Don't use the same dimension to represent different things (or different scales or units) in the same graphic
- includes using multiscalar color - but color as one variable and darkness as another should be OK
- Use adjusted standardized measures - e.g. show budget in inflation-adjusted spending per capita, not just nominal cost
- Show context - both before/after of the same measure, and other similar measures for comparison
- Don't add false 3d; it drastically distorts the perception of change (e.g. a x=y bar graph w/ 3d vanishing point towards center looks like slow-stable-FAST growth)
- Graphics are best used to show large amounts of data densely
- Erase whatever doesn't add information
- Graphs can be revised to be denser & clearer (quasi-minimalist in that function>>form):
- Quartile plot instead of box-and-whisker plot (turned horizontal and ASCIIfied):
----- * ---
Lower line is from minimum to 25%ile; * = median; white space in center = 25%-75% (the "box"); etc. - his "preferred version" with an offset middle 50%ile and gap median is horrible though IMO
- ... but yes the box-and-whisker plot is 80% clutter - especially if it's combined with a shaded bar graph (which I've seen in numerous research papers... ugh what a bad design; you can't even see the lower tick because it's obscured by the shading)
- don't shade using hashing or Moiré patterns, or better, don't shade at all
- another alternate: ---==*======--
- don't show top & right borders; they're superfluous
- cut off border ruler lines at the min & max rather than at origin & rounded-max
- even better: replace the simple border line with a quartile plot of the marginal probability, leaving just the tick marks and scale numbers (or here with his "preferred" style quartile plot & frequency graphs)
- improvement: replace cut-off parts with light gray lines, so the visual reference is still there
- for low-density graphs use regular spacing but make the numbering individual for each datum (e.g. instead of 0 5 10 15 show 3.2 9.3 etc [if those are the data])
- go very very easy on graph lines, and if using any at all make sure they're very thin and gray
- or use lines to add data - e.g. on a graph of years, show events with graph lines
- for a bar graph, use "white space" graph lines and eliminate ticks, frame, and graph lines
- don't use alphabetic ordering for labels that appear on the chart if some other order (e.g. date) would add useful info
I like all of these (except his offset quartile graph - it's very hard to read). I think though that the whole book can be summarized like I did above with perhaps a halfdozen annotated examples to illustrate before-and-after.
... that I find particularly good.
high-res color original French
lower-res b&w English translation
The chart shows:
* horizontal & vertical: geographic location of the army within Russia
* thickness & numbering: population of the army (from 422k -> 100k -> 10k)
* to and from (light / brown = entering, black = returning)
* temperature & dates on return trip
* movement of reserves
* major rivers
... and all quite comprehensibly.
- Mood:
impressed
“You take too much of a black and white view.”
If our tone seems too know-it-allish, bear with us. We think it’s better to present ideas in bold strokes then to be wishy-washy about it. If that comes off as cocky or arrogant, so be it. We’d rather be provocative than water everything down with “it depends...” Of course there will be times when these rules need to be stretched or broken. And some of these tactics may not apply to your situation. Use your judgement and imagination.
37 Signals, Getting Real - Caveats
Yup. :-)
Probably that's part of why I tend to sound arrogant - while I know that I might be wrong, I don't see any benefit in constantly secondguessing myself or listing a "... but I might be wrong" next to everything. So I act on the assumption that I'm right, and try to be quick to incorporate / adjust to signals to the contrary where it seems appropriate.
Perhaps this is also why I've had some comments (e.g. from ex-roommates) that I never or hardly ever seem to doubt myself - even though they were aware enough of the stuff going on inside my head, which had plenty of doubt.
At present, it only manages stuff for our team, which is relatively small. It manages (or will soon) most of what we do though - projects, [censored]s, contacts, etc.
However, I think it could be scaled to be something run across the company. This would be of course Very Interesting, and AFAIK it'd be a damn sight better than what's being used now. *cough*
Of course, scaling from a handful of users and maybe a thousand records to hundreds or thousands of users and 100k-1M records is, ah, non-trivial.
I wonder how much in the way of extra features I'd need to add, aside from scalability concerns / easier UI / etc.
It'd be really really nifty to do, though. Evidently my boss is going to show it off to some of his fellow high-up people within a few weeks. (My boss is 2 away from the company president. And Medtronic is a bloody huge company.) So if I can make it pretty / stable enough by then and perhaps put together a good pitch of what the enterprise-ified version would like like, it would actually happen.
I should get around to reading 37 signals - Getting Real.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0323032
/me want. But too 'spensive and not out yet anyway.
Probably can get the 4th ed electronic version for free though.
EDIT: If you have library rights at UCD, UCI, UCLA, UCR, UCSD or UCSF, please see if you can access the 4th ed book at http://home.mdconsult.com/das
Thanks!
Edit 2: Found it on ISOHunt... but it's locked in iSilo format. :-/
Which means I can indeed read it, but it's a bit of a pain. I can extract pure text from it, but that's stripped of formatting and images. Haven't seen any converters that will handle those. So I'm stuck with the iSilo reader.
So still - if you can get the online version I'd quite appreciate it. (WebReaper is a great program for downloading it, if it's in HTML.)
- Mood:
hungry
What the hands reveal about the brain, by Poizner, Klima, & Bellugi.
SCORE.
- Mood:
geeky - Music:the rain and Ki’s purring
