Deliberate practice

1. Thanksgiving movie
Q: The only good Thanksgiving movie?

A: Planes, Trains and Automobiles (rotten)

2. Hugo, the (disappointing) movie

Movie: Hugo
Review: 2 bill-stars (out of 5)... not good

Oh well, he said...

• I liked the book, 3 bill-stars: williamt review
• 97 flippin percent on rotten tomato: www.rottentomatoes.com/m/hugo/
• Ebert gave it 4 stars: ebert review
• And it's Martin Scorcese, for jiminy sake

Hugo was a dud. It wasn't just me. The credits rolled, the lights came up, and the bored Saturday night crowd walked out of the theater without any buzz or laughter or even discussion. Like I said, oh well.

3. YAGWOOPS

Yet another global warming oops.
Climate models have overstated the impact of CO2in warming the Earf (as Ty would say). Oops.

bbc - CO2 climate sensitivity overestimated

Absorb this nonsense, back to back...

"The effect of CO2 on climate is less than previously thought"

"The authors stress the results do not mean threat from human-induced climate change should be treated any less seriously"

4. Deliberate practice
The Freaks talk about (freaks - Motivation is necessary, but insufficient) learning through what they call, deliberate practice:

• We must somehow think deeply about the problems and reflect on what did and did not work

• Deliberate practice requires sustained concentration, and the rewards are subtle and apparent only in the long term.

• Thus, one needs motivation in order to enter into and sustain the hard work of deliberate practice.

Excellent!

5. One more Ted RIP

QOTD

They print the money. When they print too much, it goes into activities that aren’t economic. When the interest rate is too low, people aren’t careful. Borrowers can pay back in depreciated dollars. They barely need to put any of their own money into a project. If interest rates are 7%, they need to calculate its potential profitability.
- Ted Fortsmann, on the Federal Reserve, big picture post

Is this a fundamental notion? Not a symptom. Cheap dollars have floated around for more than a decade sending our economic system whirring in the wrong direction, uncorrected by market discipline. It certainly sounds good and reasonable. You can apply this principle to the feds as well... cranking out $10 trillion in deficit spending since 2000 on all manner of nonsense.
yow, bill