A few Sundays back, Beth & I were lucky enough to get to a Mountain Stage live recording in Morgantown. For those that don’t already know, Mountain Stage is a music radio show that plays on NPR stations. Each week they feature 4 to 6 musicians on their show, often in the folk, singing songwriter or bluegrass genre. Luckily, the program is based in “the mountain state of West Virginia” and tickets to the live recordings of the show are quite reasonably priced.

This time there were 5 groups that performed: Will Hoge, Sonny Landreth, The Great Lake Swimmers, Yo La Tengo, and Regina Spektor (who was the reason we wanted to get to this show in the first place). The first two guys were quite good, but neither was my cup of tea, style-wise. The Great Lake Swimmers seemed like they had a lot of potential as a bluegrass group, but their songs were just a little too laid-back & slow going for my mood at the time. I had listened to Yo La Tengo online before coming to the show & was really quite excited to hear them live. Interestingly enough, they kinda fell flat on their face in the live performance. The vocals were barely distinguishable throughout, and two of their songs turned into marathons for me as I worked to pick pieces of melody and musicality out of the 10-minute-long floods of sound that were the songs. All that being said, I went back to their albums afterward & I think I’ll probably listen to more of their stuff. I can’t say I’ll try to see them live again, though! And then there was Regina. She simply hit the spot! Performing with a cellist, violinist & drummer, it was a ton of fun watching her songs come to life and sounds so remarkably polished & clean. The only minor complaint I had was that she didn’t connect with us (the audience) at all. At a venue like Mountain Stage there’s plenty of room to talk about your work and banter with the crowd & I missed that, but her music more than made up for that shortcoming. If you haven’t listened to her latest album, give it a shot. I find her unique, sometimes light-hearted, sometimes shockingly honest style very enjoyable.

Today, I’d like to share with you two true gems that I think are very sadly under-used or unknown by people in the “real world.” The two ideas are near & dear to me because they have their origins in my home turf, the world of computer geeks and science fiction.

First, you should know Godwin’s Law. It states that the longer a discussion continues, the more likely it becomes that someone will make a comparison with Hitler or Nazis. Seems simple, but knowing the law can be really helpful in avoiding use of inflammatory or irrelevant comparisons when you’re having a discussion. Perhaps more importantly is the common addition to Godwin’s Law; the first person to use Hitler or Nazis in a debate automatically loses. Simple, effective, beautiful

Secondly, you should know the word grok. The word has it’s origin in a sci-fi novel (it’s a Martian word) and literally means “to drink” but more practically means “to deeply understand” or “to be one with.” When you grok something, you not only know what it means, you have a deep, natural connection with it. Not only is it slightly poetic, but can be quite practical at too. When you read a book the first time you may know what the author is saying, but it’s not until you spend time re-reading and thinking about what they’re saying that you can truly begin to grok the author’s work.

So, what are your hidden gems? Have you ever found yourself in a conversation but didn’t use a specific word or idea because the people you’re talking with probably won’t know what the heck you’re talking about? Share the joy, share the wisdom! I’m sure computer-science isn’t the only field that has it’s own great ideas.

Another summer, full of family, travel & adventure, is drawing to a close. Even though I traveled for all sorts of reasons and had more wonderful experiences than any one person probably should in a summer, a consistent theme has been the gratefulness I feel as I’m on that last stretch of road back to Philippi. I’ve definitely come to love this community, even if it isn’t my “soul-mate” city Now, that the “goings” are out of the way, it’s time for the “comings.” The new group of Service Adventure participants arrive this weekend! Time to embrace another year of growth, challenges, community & overall craziness. Life is good!

My fascination with metacognition (thinking about thinking) and delayed gratification started a month ago when Jocie posted another cool link on Facebook. It was an article explaining “4 easy steps” to find happiness. The article certainly hasn’t change my life, but did link to a very interesting piece in the New Yorker about a 1968 study by the psychologist Walter Mischel. In the study, Mischel presented children with a bowl of marshmallows & told them that they could eat one marshmallow now, or if they waited, they could have two marshmallows a little bit later. The researcher then stepped out of the room, leaving the each child alone with a heaping bowl of temptation on the table in front of them. Some kids gave in within seconds, others held out for 15-20 minutes! Ultimately, Mischel discovered that the difference between the “low delayers” and “high delayers” wasn’t that some wanted the treat and others didn’t, it boiled down to what he calls “the strategic allocation of attention.” The children who could move their attention away from the marshmallows (whether by covering their eyes, singing a song or even pretending the marshmallow was a space ship) were the ones who could wait the longest. At some level, these children understood how their brains worked & had strategies to control their brains.

The crazy part is that years later, when the kids who were originally tested were in High School, Mischel started a series of follow-up tests & discovered that high delayers had significantly higher SAT scores. Now, 40 years later, Mischel & his colleagues are still in contact with many of the original participants & it turns out that a test taken in elementary school has shown associations to everything from the jobs they hold, to body-mass index and illegal drug problems. A fairly startling proposition if you think about it too much. Mischel admits that genetics likely plays a role in self control, but rejects the idea that biology is the only factor at work. For example, there is a “substantial subset” of people who were low delayers in the original study, but went on to become high-delaying adults. Several of his graduate students now plan to perform brain scans on the original participants to study which parts of brain are at work during acts of self control. Mischel himself is working with a number of elementary school on a long-term study trying to determine how to teach children metacognition skills that would help them become high delayers.

At the end of the day, we still know very little about the human mind & human behavior. There may be hundreds of other variables, besides self control, that are shaping these peoples lives but haven’t been uncovered yet. Still, I find the topic fascinating. I would definitely recommend reading the original article in the New Yorker as it contains a lot of interesting details that I’ve glossed over. If you’re more the audio type, Radiolab has a 15 minute segment titled Mischel’s Marshmallows that you can check out too.

HP recently released two apps that let you run an 12C Financial Calculator or 15C Scientific Calculator on your iPhone. The apps cost $15 and $30 respectively. Initial reactions around the internet so far seem to show outrage over the price, but considering the fact that you can’t find a 15C on eBay for less than $100 I’d say the price point isn’t too bad. With a phone, GPS, music player, PDA, gaming system, and more all in one device already, it’ll be interesting to see how quickly more tools & gadgets that we interact with on a daily basis will be virtualized, and available in one (hopefully easy to use) package. Who’s gonna give me my TV remote control & garage-door opener apps?

It’s official, the 08-09 Philippi Service Adventure crew is now safely at their respective homes. Ok, technically Eva is jet-setting around the country for a few more weeks, but she’s pretty at home on the road, right?  I won’t spend too much time gushing about our unit because they know how much we’ll miss them. But for those of you who weren’t here to enjoy the past weeks in Philippi, I decided now is the perfect time to link to a few more photos.

The New River Bridge & Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine	Backpacking in Otter Creek Wilderness Area	Blue & Grey Reunion and Closure week adventures

Now it’s time for me to get lots of work done in preparation for the upcoming school year (and a few weeks off in South America!), for Beth to get in some summer travel to hang out with friends, and for both of us to just spend some time together and with family. Please remember the girls in your prayers as they adjust to life after SA and us as we prepare for the next unit.

 I just love the random connections we make through Service Adventure. For example, wednesday, Jim Skidmore took us to visit Orchard Hill Aplacas. Rebecca & her husband (the owners) gave us a tour of the place & shared a wealth of knowledge about all things alpaca. I’d seen llamas in Peru, but they were mostly in pens & I didn’t pay that much attention to them. The really cool thing about this trip was that we spent a lot more time around the animals. There were 15 or so animals in a big pasture where they were… I guess you would call it frolicking. The more I watched the alpaca, the more I realized that they acted like big cats, or maybe dogs, and less like cows or some other type of livestock. Anyway, I snapped a few photos with my cell phone if you want to check ‘em out.

Layne Wyse recently posted a link about a book by photographer Alex MacLean titled Over: The American Landscape at a Tipping Point. It’s filled with aerial shots showing human patterns of development and their impact on the environment. I didn’t realized there was a fair amount of waterfront property near Phoenix Arizona before seeing this book. You should definitely check out his pictures, either on NPR or by visiting Alex’s website and clicking the “New Book: Over” link. You can also buy the book (and see even more photos) on Amazon.

As you may recall, the Philippi Service Adventure group had the chance to take in Barack Obama’s Inauguration back in January. I posted photos on Facebook & Flickr a while back, but never linked to them from here. So, in case you haven’t seen them yet, you should definitely take a look. The captions of my Facebook Album tell the story of our day in D.C. while my Flickr Set contains a couple more random shots.

I’ve definitely been keeping busy at Haiku too. I won’t say too much here, but I’ve been collaborating with a company named Noteflight to make Haiku a great place for teachers & students to share music. If you need a few examples of how sweet Noteflight is, check out these two scores. Take care!

I don’t know why I didn’t discovered these until just this morning, but there’s an excellent collection of time-lapse videos on Flickr. To watch them, click the little play icon in the bottom-left hand corner of the video. To watch the video in full size click anywhere within the video. Here’s one of my personal favorites:

P.S. I’ll post our inauguration story & photos here before too long, I’m just trying to get caught up first