Ken Nelson

Most of them I can sort out, but not the 4 circles with one blacked out. Probably obvious, but I’m missing it…

Personally, I don’t think that that tuft of grass is worth the risk dude!

http://www.bannedinhollywood.com/30-pictures-of-goats-being-crazy/

Cool name, and a cool picture:

That is snow, ladies and gentlemen, lots of it!

My son arranged for a tour of our local bullet making company.  His write up of the tour can be found here:

http://briankevinnelson.com/a-tour-to-berrys-mfg-80

Yesterday Dad and I went on a tour of the Berry’s Manufacturing factory. Berry’s, a business local to us in St. George, Utah, makes some of the finest bullets for competition and hunting. But Berry’s offers much more than just bullets, as Dad and I found out…

I suggested one minor edit, but other than that one sentence change, it is all him. As usual, feedback welcome.

Over 2500 left-handed people a year are killed from using equipment made for right-handed people.

The right-handed power saw is the most deadly item.

Via http://omg-facts.com/

Help available here

Related: Odd ways to die

 
Actually bullying in progress, via Wikipedia

I RSS subscribe to Live Science and consider it to be a pretty decent source of information if you factor out global warming/environmental science mumbo jumbo.

Their article “Studies Reveal Why Kids Get Bullied and Rejected”, caught my eye today. Not so much about my kids, but about a few kids I know, and one in particular.

The article summarizes recent research saying that kids bullied and rejected by peers may have trouble in their future. The article also implies that their social skills cause (but don’t warrant) the rejection and bullying.

In the United States, 10 to 13 percent of school-age kids experience some form of rejection by their peers. In addition to causing mental health problems, bullying and social isolation can increase the likelihood a child will get poor grades, drop out of school, or develop substance abuse problems, the researchers say.

I read the above as “consistently experience” – after all everybody has been rejected at some point in their socialization.  If just by a prettier girl, or boy with more options, we each arrive at out own social level through a process of risk.  What is different in kids that experience rejection or bullying is they don’t adjust based on the peer feedback.

The article posits that the lack of adjustment is because they don’t pick up on non-verbal cues.  The article then, correctly, suggests that parents and teachers work proactively with kids to teach how to detect the feedback, and if the rejection has happened how to decode what happened and adjust.

One of the reasons we yanked our son out of public school was that for all the touted “socialization” advantages of school, they were really quite limited. With just 3 minutes between classes, no talking allowed in class prior to the teacher starting, and a compressed 20 minute lunch schedule spent mostly in line for lunch, when exactly was he going to speak to anybody?  

As a home schooler, he still plays with the same neighborhood kids and meets home school groups plus all the other mixed group socialization he gets at the range, stores, and various other outings we engage in (like a tour of the bullet making plant here in town that we did this morning).

As to parents helping with socialization.. that is key. Pay attention. Correct. Parenting is teaching. Show how to do it right, gently correct. I do this ALL the time with my kids.  I let them order at restaurants, and then go over how it went.  I regularly have my son explain stuff to people in my lieu.  We even have a code, where I’ll stop him and say “audience analysis”, and he knows he is not giving the listener what they want.  I send them in to get something at the store. I let them handle stuff now, with my help, so they can safely get better at it.  I’m spending a good deal of effort teaching new methods of communication – like e-mail.

How else will it happen?  By osmosis I guess.  But I see working proactively at this as an advantage I can leave to my kids. Most people think my 12 year old is older – based on size (he’s a gentle giant) and also verbal and written skills. That doesn’t happen by accident.   These are areas I can affect with modest effort, so why not?  It seems obvious.  Yet a lot of parents don’t bother. That mystifies me.  These kinds of things I can give my kids, (tax free!), that will help them forever.

Other thoughts….

Bullying… As the new kid in MANY schools, I had a lot of experience with bullies. As I think back on them, most bullies were very insecure. I’ve made friends with bullies and I’ve beat the snot (or worse) out of bullies. Both were very satisfying, but the first is probably better for the long term.

Rejection… parents and teachers that tell kids to stop rejecting other kids do the OTHER kids a disservice. Better would be to enlist their help in teaching the other kids how to adjust to the rejection feedback. 

Here are 30 examples of nifty infographics. I liked:

and

Click the images to see them bigger.

Wow… I wish somebody would do this for Rush…

http://www.mikemake.com/#72772/Charting-the-Beatles

He charted the Beatle’s song keys, writing collaboration, self-referencing of past Beatles songs, and their work schedule.

 
Contour map of earths crust. In kilometers.

Source: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/research/structure/crust/index.php

Calculated using seismic refraction

Via http://cinema-and-movie.com

The inspiration for the film “Rain Man” has died at age 58:

Mr. Peek was not autistic — not all savants are autistic and not all autistics are savants — but he was born with severe brain abnormalities that impaired his physical coordination and made ordinary reasoning difficult. He could not dress himself or brush his teeth without help. He found metaphoric language incomprehensible and conceptualization baffling.

But with an astonishing skill that allowed him to read facing pages of a book at once — one with each eye — he read as many as 12,000 volumes. Even more remarkable, he could remember what he had read.

Read the whole thing. His life was both fascinating and inspiring.

Learn chess and meet woman!

Magnus Carlsen, age 13 of Norway, would rather be a famous footballer, but the youngest Grandmaster of Chess, and the ranking #1 in the world will have to do..

As for Carlsen’s genius – and one can hardly avoid the word – there were clues long before he started showing his paces at chess. Before he was two, he could solve jigsaw puzzles with more than 50 pieces. From jigsaws he graduated to Lego, constructing models that would have challenged teenagers. Feats of memory came easily to him. By the age of five, scarily, he knew the area, population, flag and capital of every country in the world.

And this is cool… they took off from school and toured Europe for  a year:

Instead he has enjoyed a normal, even outgoing, childhood. In 2003, when he was still 12, his parents took him and his sisters out of school for a year, packed them into a minibus and, in the adventure of a lifetime, embarked on a tour of Europe.

That sounds familiar…

I like his attitude – when it stops being fun he will stop doing it. I wonder, though, if that will modify if chess becomes his job.  I hope not, I make money doing what I like to do, and I encourage everybody to do so!

Meanwhile,  Marginal Revolution wonders, in context of this article, if the world’s best chess player has never played the game.  He thinks it above 10% but under 50%. I think it higher than that.

In the “kick them when they are down” department… Jupiter Island style aficionados do not like Tiger Woods’ new mansion he is building there:

She’s hardly alone in her assessment. In a recent informal poll of 5,500 readers at page2live, a Web site of the Post columnist Jose Lambiet — who called the new house “a cross between a discount motel and a beachside nursing home” — 60 percent said the house was “too ugly” for Jupiter Island, part of Florida’s hallowed Treasure Coast.

It cost $44.5 million for just the property. Add in building costs and taxes running $500+K a year and you have to wonder just how far a billion goes these days…

Gratuitous Pierce Brosnan picture for my wife

A woman has trouble in her life, starts writing to earn extra money and struggles… until she uses a male pen name.

Instantly, jobs became easier to get.

There was no haggling. There were compliments, there was respect. Clients hired me quickly, and when they received their work, they liked it just as quickly. There were fewer requests for revisions — often none at all.

I wonder what the reason having a male name worked?  My company contracts a female tech writer. We love her work and pay her well.  She beat out a few other guys for the gig based on work quality.

I do know I can readily tell women and men e-mailers apart, even with names like Devin, Kim, or Tracy.  So maybe women do write differently from men and perhaps less effectively for the market this writer served?

I don’t know.  I don’t mind that she hid her sex. I don’t mind that customers in her market might prefer men writers.  Vive le difference!

New York Magazine deconstructs a fancy restaurants menu showing how its design lures you to higher margin dishes.