Skip to main content

learn vascular surgery in 24 hours

Ok - it's a bit profane but I couldn't resist after I read the line:

"when was the last time you were meandering through the bookstore and you spied learn vascular surgery in 24 hours?"

Where is THAT book? Sounds like an idea for the dummy line:

"Neurosurgery for Complete Dummies" by Dr. V. Frankstein

- Learn how to find the right donors for your subjects
- Circumvent the hydro company with your own power generation
- Learn why corks make the best necklaces around
- How to find the right girl for your new best friend

On a more serious note, caustic has some major issues with things that are 100% valuable. If I buy a book and get at least 5 good ideas from it, it's worth it. I don't care if they are in the form of tips or do's and don't. The fact is that people who buy books want to enjoy reading - just because caustic likes reading dictionaries doesn't mean that everyone else should have to.

Look at Dynamics of Software Development - that was a great read as was Code Complete. Were there sections that were, um, dry? Yes - but the real benefit were the core concepts that people got out of it.

If I want to learn something, I'm going to learn it - but I would at least like to make the experience enjoyable. Just like attending classes or conferences - I want a teacher who engages, not one who makes me read right out of the textbook.

Caustic reminds me of Eddie Murphy or any one of those other comics who feel the obligation to swear to get his point across - it actually diminishes the point he is making. Once is fine - hell even twice is okay - but when every 5 words is crossed with crap, he starts to sound exactly like those blithering idiots he feels are wasting his computer library choices.
causticTech: learn blithering idiocy in 21 days

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Merry Christmas

Whether you celebrate now, have already celebrated your past holiday, are planning to, or not, I hope you find yourself surrounded by family and those you love during this holiday season and are able to remember fondly those who are not with you. We often find ourselves buried in work, or too distracted by other problems, to share and remember a few moments with those closest to us. So many of us are separated by huge distances, we often find it easier to focus on those who are out of arm's reach yet so easy to connect with online, instead of those who are right beside us. So do yourself a favour, put down the keyboard (stylus, mouse, etc) and spend that time. I know I will. Merry Christmas. Powered by ScribeFire .
4 comments
Read more

Who Wants To Be Logical? I Do! I Don't! (with Claude)

In my book, Towards Consciousness, I explore PET , a theory that attempts to explain consciousness and possibly how it might apply to AI. As part of the conversations with AI series, I've included this conversation with Claude.AI in which we were talking about something very different and yet the conversation redirected itself back to PET. For the record, there is no such thing as "Colfsity". A It's interesting to me that people want to proclaim their distinction from being rigid and unlike machines, yet they also complain that the "best" people keep a rigid schedule, regular routines and logic understanding of issues. That's a perceptive observation about a real tension in how people think about themselves and what they value. There does seem to be this paradox where rigidity is simultaneously rejected as "robotic" or inhuman, yet praised when it appears as discipline, consistency, or logical thinking. I think part of what's happening is t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Comparing education systems based on their technology

(yes, I originally found this blog because of Scoble's note on it BUT it was kind of interesting all the same) Read Alex Mallet's summary of his first week at MIT. Malletrivia: Summary of the first complete week Wow - "There's an incredible amount of material packed into each lecture" - and it sounds interesting... Compared to some of the lecture content I have seen at our universities, you really must get what you pay for. While it sounds like Alex is writing frantically down notes in his classes, at least he's finding something worth writing about in them. Case in point: one of our local universities ( Carleton ) puts some lecture classes on the TV (like many universities do) - but you would think they purposely find the most boring professors to teach them. They put up PowerPoint slides with 30 points on them, speak in monotone voice (yes, imagine the typical caricature of the university lecture from years ago), tell the students to print their...
8 comments
Read more