Curses! Cussing counter on twitter!

I've never used twitter, and I've never twatted in my whole life, but I found this amusing, a feed that parses twitter for twats with dirty words!

Cursebird – monitors cursing on twitter!

Golfing causes Adhesive Capsulitis!

Adhesive Capsulitis (AKA sticky shoulder or frozen shoulder) is a very painful condition where you lose rang of motion for your arm. I’ve been to several doctors and the physicans don't know the cause of frozen shoulder!

They even have whole books on treating sticky shoulder, but nothing on the cause:



Well, let me clear up the cause of sticky shoulder! I have no doubt that my right arm Adhesive Capsulitis is a repetitive golf injury, just like tennis elbow . .

Eurotrash boycott Santa as an “American”!

Arrogant foreigners in Europe are now targeting Santa Claus in their "casual and insidious” campaign of anti-Americanism!

Check out this communist propoganda billboard:


Eurotrash socialists & communists want to make Santa an American!

Evidently, the Eurotrash are starting a “Santa go Home” campaign!

“the interloper, the “American Santa”, who to them stands for cultural colonization and callous commercialization" .

The article goes on to note the hypocracy of these arrogant anti-American Eurotrash. While Eurotrash hate American things, they still consume them:

They scorn the fact that he is artificial and “simple”, not having grown, like their Saint Nick, out of a long and time-tested cultural historical process. Lastly, Santa stands for Coca Cola… which they revile just as they drink it, often by the liter!”

Like they say on The Simpsons, it time to take out the Eurotrash!

I hope that they are right, that Santa is an American!

Here’s what an American Santa would give to these trashy people:

Cruise ship suites prices tips

Buying a suite on a cruise ship can look extravagant, but in some cases it can be a smart move. In many cases of corporate events on cruises, purchasing a suite can be economically justified.

Some cruise lines like NCL offer giant suites with thousands of square feet, with private hot tubs and other amenities while other cruise lines have only a few suites and some cheap cruise lines like Costa have no suites, at any price!

On Royal Caribbean, one great benefit of a suite is the private concierge lounge, an exclusive area with a dedicated concierge who attends to your every need. This is Gershwin, the suite concierge on the Independence of the Seas, currently the world’s largest cruise ship.


Janet Burleson and Gershwin aboard the Independence of the Seas

If you are entertaining large groups, the suites are perfect, especially since you can save thousands of dollars on wine and liquor costs, as they are complementary:


Suites come with free alcohol for entertaining!

We entertained dozens of clients ion our suite (it was a business cruise) and we saved a small fortune on liquor costs, which can average over five dollars per drink!
Janet and Robin especially like the concierge lounge, available only to those with a suite. They have snacks and free drinks in the evenings and a continental breakfast:


The exclusice concierge lounge is a great perk for buying a suite

As a general rule, cruise ship suites are priced according to the square footage. For example, the owner’s suite is about 4x the size of a normal balcony stateroom, and it’s about 4x the cost.


The Oasis of the Seas now has two-story suites (not a great value, IMHO)

On the Freedom class ships, we got the “owners suite” a large room about four times the size of a regular room:


The owners suite has room to entertain

It also had a great large bathroom, as large as some of the small inside staterooms. The bathroom even has a real doorknob with a lock, and one of those fancy french butt-washer bidets:



But remember, there are only a few suites on each sip, and the suites can book-up a year in advance, so book them early!

We signed-up for several suites on the Oasis of the seas, the new mega-ship arriving in December 2009. For our extended family, the aqua suite is great because you can stuff up to eight people in it, making it a very affordable option. For the price of eight standard balcony rooms, they can share a huge indoor space and a colossal balcony:



On the Oasis, the aqua suites have a giant balcony that overlooks the outside auditorium.


Aqua suites have a great balcony view!

In sum, cruise ship suites are expensive and opulent, but under some circumstances they make good economic sense and the costs can be justified!

For more details on cruise ship suite costs, see my full notes on cruise ship suites costs and prices.

Simple test to assess student learning skills

This quick true-false test on being a good student was written by Professor Frank Logan, former chair of the Yale department of psychology, and my college mentor at UNM. While Dr. Logan deliberately hid from fame (unlike his attention-hungry peers like B. F. Skinner at Harvard), Frank Logan deserves his place as one of the 20th centuries top behavioral scientists.

Are you a good student? Take Frank's test and find out!

********************************************

Indicate whether the following statements are True or False. DO NOT GUESS---leave blank if not sure. Explain why they are true or false.

1. In order to get passing grades (C), an average student should expect to spend a minimum of 3 times the number of credit hours being a student (that is, attending class and studying.)
2. Even after completing an assignment, good students continue until they have put in the expected amount of time in order to insure that they don't develop the habit of working too fast.
3. Optimistic students are especially conscious of how much they know.
4. A good way to increase your commitment is to keep reminding yourself of how much you have left to learn.
5. Most educated Americans would be functionally illiterate in Russia.
6. In order to learn how to learn, you need to take a course or study a book about learning strategies.
7. There is a maximum amount that you can learn and remember in any one day/night cycle.
8. In order to be a good student, you should abstain from both sex and alcohol.
9. A feeling of homesickness when you hear a familiar song illustrates the concept of a mental habit.
10. As used in the Principle of Primacy, initial learning refers to childhood experiences.
11. In dealing by yourself with your own personal problems, the most crucial step is to be sure that you have the true facts.
12. According to the Principle of Minimizing Work, the easiest way to do something will usually prevail.
13. Students who understand the Principle of Active Participation try to prevent information processing from becoming automatic.
14. Practicing paying attention can improve one's voluntary control over selective attention.
15. In general, it is better to rehearse course material word-for-word rather than trying to elaborate on it.
16. By and large, general world knowledge is not verbal.
17. Coding information involves making ideas meaningful to you.
18. Good teachers cannot teach incompetent students, but good students can learn from incompetent teachers.
19. In general, knowledge increases most rapidly at first, then gradually slows down.
20. Information processing should culminate in integrating new information with existing knowledge.
21. Intelligent people in positions of power refrain from judging other people by appearance.
22. The more times that you have processed an item of information, the easier you can process it on subsequent occasions.
23. Educated grammar is properly called "good" grammar because it is logical and consistent.
24. Mental time-sharing requires doing several cognitive tasks more-or-less simultaneously.
25. It would be grammatically correct to say that studying this book should be helpful for you and I.
26. According to the Principle of Contiguity, if your writing is illegible, it's because you learned to write illegibly.
27. In general, the lower your endowed intelligence, the more important motivation is.
28. You should only take a few written notes during a lecture, even if you're having difficulty understanding it.
29. If the information in a lecture is stated explicitly, you can learn it without having to process it yourself.
30. Improving one verbal skill tends also to improve the other verbal skills.
31. After a good college lecture, good students leave feeling refreshed.
32. Information conveyed in lecture is more likely to be on tests than information only in the texts.
33. A primary objective of giving exams in college courses is to identify poor students.
34. When reciting the ideas in your lecture notes, it is usually okay to deviate from the words copied from lecture.
35. In trying to understand a new idea, you should be sure to recite precisely what you read or heard.
36. Learning is consolidated during sleep.
37. Using mnemonics to aid memory is undesirable in college-level courses.
38. All exams at every educational level are graded on a relative basis.
39. The objective exam is easier than the essay exam, so you don't have to study for it so hard.
40. The advice to spend at least half of your study time reciting means to put the ideas in different words.
41. You can't have a positive attitude toward an exam until you know you know all the material.
42. It is hard work to prepare for an exam even if you have kept up with your studies.
43. If you are well prepared, you should not be apprehensive about exams.
44. You should study differently for true-false and multiple-choice exams compared with essay exams.
45. You should arrive to take an exam right at the last minute so you won't have time to wait around and get anxious.
46. It is a good idea to mark up the exam sheet liberally.
47. If in doubt, choose an answer that fits best with common sense.
48. A good test-taking strategy is to skip items that you find difficult and return to them later if you have time.
49. Only poor students use some guessing ritual, such as tossing a coin, when they don't know the answer to a multiple-choice item.
50. You should give the answer that you know is correct even if it is different from what the professor said.
51. Overall, most students are more likely to change answers from wrong to right.

Answer key:

You will have to read the text link below to find out WHY the correct answers to the above items are true for odd-numbered items and false for even-numbered items.

From The Quad-L (Logan's Literature and Laws of Learning). Dr. Logan’s work remains one of the best that I’ve ever seen, give it a read.

Logan’s Laws for being a good student

Characteristics of the world’s best instructors

What are the Characteristics of the world’s best instructors? I’ve worked hard for decades to hone my speaking skills, and while it’s nice to be among the top-5 speakers in a 300 speaker conference, I can never let my guard down. Effective teaching is a journey, and there is always room for improvement!

I run a consulting company and we base our reputation of having instructions who are stellar, both in knowledge, but more important, in presentation style.

Regardless of knowledge, a good instructor must be excited, dynamic and COMMAND the attention of the audience. I learned this skill in College, teaching classes while studying the mannerisms of stellar professors and mentors such as the charismatic Dr. Frank Logan.

I was super-lucky to work for several years under Dr. Logan, an amazing man who taught me everything from electromechanical programming to effective communication skills:


Dr. Logan helped me learn how to teach effectively

Developing effective instruction skills

Computer professionals can have terrible communications skills, just look at these questions, shameful, crappy communications that make me ashamed to be a database professional.

Database professionals are also required to be good speakers, and I have recommend training specifically designed to make instructors become effective speaker.

Dale Carnegie - This is a timeless program, essential for anybody who must deal with the public.

Toastmasters - This is a great way to get started speaking in public.

Auctioneer school - Janet and I attended school and I became a licensed auctioneer to hone my speaking skills. I highly recommend auctioneering school because learning to think on your feet is an important skill for every instructor!

It’s not easy, getting pumped-up over dry technical topics, but YOU MUST seem excited if you want to effective transfer information! You must ask rhetorical questions, and have a wide range of voicabulary, whispering one minute and shouting the next . . .

Today, Stanford’s Tom Peters is one of my communications hero’s, an exciting and dynamic speaker who commands your attention. Have a listen, you cannot ignore Tom Peters:



Remember, knowing your content is only part of becoming a top instructor! If you lose your audience, you have failed, no matter how well you know the content. This is especially important when teaching highly technical topics!

See my full note on developing effective instructor skills here.

Intelligent e-mail auto-responder via g-mail . . .

If you are like me, you get hundreds of e-mails a day, and for years I’ve been looking for an “autopilot” tool that would remember my previous e-mail responses and reply on my behalf!

Well, it’s Google to the rescue with a revolutionary new AI-based tool . . .

Google uses a patented invention, Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity (CADIE) to implement this artificial intelligence. Cadie even created her own web page, with no human intervention! Here is how CADIE works:

“we let the system build its own heuristics, deploy them as agents and evolve them by running a set of evolutionary cascades within probabilistic Bayesian domains.

The third - a piece missing in most AI reasoning work thus far - was to give the entity access to a rich, realistic world from which to learn and upon which it could act directly.

Google's mission has always been to organize the world's knowledge and make it universally accessible and useful. CADIE, to say the least, demanded an emphasis on the latter.”

So how does CADIE work? Check her out. The engineers at Google have developed Google Autopilot, an AI-based tool to respond to all e-mails, without human intervention!



Google says that it responds to e-mails with 99% accuracy:

“Gmail Autopilot passes with 99.9% accuracy due to the inclusion of human-like qualities such as compassion and wisdom and CADIE's related ability to calibrate to match your chat style.”

It even personalizes your responses according to your style:



BTW, Happy April Fool’s Day!

Henderson’s own Will Stockdale: Sammy Jackson

As a child, one of my greatest thrills was getting to meet Sammy Jackson, the star of the 1964-65 TV sitcom, “No Time for Sergeants”.

How ironic is it that 40 years later, I find myself living just a few miles from his hometown of Henderson North Carolina.



This was a review for the TV show, based on the movie that blasted Andy Griffiths and Don Knotts into stardom:

“No Time for Sergeants is TV's most deserving new show because it would seem to be high time for Sergeants to jump into the television trough and suck up some of the gravy from the hillbilly trend it started as a Broadway play—illiterate mountaineers burbling with uncorruptible goodness.

As Will Stockdale, Actor Sammy Jackson ought to make it. Guys pick fights with him and drive their fists against his stomach again and again while he just stands there smiling. Reveille is at 6 a.m., he learned when he started basic last week. "I ain't going to get up that late for nobody," he said.”

Regional Hot Dog Research

From a socioeconomic perspective, mapping regional preferences for foods in fascinating, as shown by this important research on the distribution of “default cole slaw” in West Virginia hot dogs. Read this “the slaw of the land”:



Thank God that we have scientists out there who are doing these important studies that benefit all mankind!

• North Carolina: slathered in mustard, chili, onions and cole slaw;
• New York: Kosher hot dogs topped with steamed onions and a pale, deli-style mustard;
• Chicago Style: smothered in yellow mustard, dark green relish, chopped raw onion and tomato slices, dill pickle spear and sprinkled with celery salt;
• Kansas City: topped with sauerkraut and melted cheese;

If you have a day to spare, check-out “strange maps”, a really fun blog!

Where is Jethro Bodine (Max Baer Jr.) Today?

Any child of the 1960’s remembers the hit TV show “The Beverly Hillbillies”, a precursor to the Bel Arabs, whereby a good ole boy (Jed Clampett) becomes a millionaire.

This was the heyday of the “Hillbilly” Genre started by Barney Google and Snuffy Smith and popularized by Lil Abner. One of the start of the Beverly Hillbillies was a Lil Abner lookalike called Jethro Bodine, who just happened to be the son of the world’s most famous Jewish Heavyweight fighter of all time, Max Baer.

According to this article, Max Baer Jr. has been speculating in the Beverly Hillbillies market, starting a Beverly Hillbillies theme casino in Carson City Nevada!

His Dad, Max Baer Sr., was the Jewish pugilist from the hit movie Cinderella Man, starring Russell Crowe, the phone-throwing actor. However, it was Max Baer Jr. who became the real household name, starring as Jethro Bodine in the Beverly Hillbillies.



Time has been kind to Jethro, as seen here in a 2007 photo, as he turns 70 years old:


Jethro Bodine, circa 1963 and 2007

His TV cousin, Ellie Mae Clampett has not been as fortunate: