Over the past week, I have converted my blog from Wordpress to the static site generator Jekyll, written in Ruby. I have also merged my blog at Informed Skeptic to my personal home page. This post talks about this transition -- why I did it, what are the benefits and pitfalls of using static sites, and some miscellaneous other thoughts
Why leave Wordpress?
Wordpress is a modern and quite-extensible piece of blogging software. It has served me well over the past two years for my current blog, and I also used it years ago for a different blog that is no longer online. Among full-featured blogging platforms, it reigns supreme.
Unfortunately, the popularity of the platform has also encouraged feature-creep. Wordpress, even with caching, is remarkably sluggish. This is particularly true for the administrative panel, where it can take 2 minutes of wasted time just to get access to the blog post editor (not to mention that every time I log in, there is always a plugin to update which adds to the administrative time of the system). Part of the success of Tumblr has been its focus on reducing posting time, since delays almost always discourage users from writing updates. I finally decided that I wanted a faster platform.
The other concern I had was security. Wordpress' popularity encourages more attacks, and I am not at all convinced that the system is written in a secure way (for instance, Wordpress allows infinite login attempts on the administrative panel). Part of this will be true for any dynamic web application, but I felt there must be some alternative that allows me greater performance with less interface sugar while also increasing the general security of the system.
Fulbright Program
Research
“Growing Korea's Innovation Garden Toward Decentralization in Education and High-Tech Policy”
Travels around Korea
Fulbright Program
Some Facts
Started in 1946 to encourage mutual understanding
First English Teaching Program started in Korea in 1992
Today, the second largest program in the world behind Germany
Today, 8000 grants annually in 155 countries
Fulbright Student Grant
Three Components
Research
Language
Cultural Engagement
Fulbright Student Grant
Three Components
Research
Language
Cultural Engagement
Research
Research Synthesis Innovation Garden
Seeds: Start-Ups
Germination: Growth
Blooming: Success
Wilting: Missed
Tree: Super Success
Start Up Funnel
Rational Innovator Model
Ceteris Paribus...
People are more likely to start a company if:
Probability of Success is Higher
Discounted Cash Flow is Higher
Opportunity Cost is Lower
Innovation Garden Probability of Success
Soil: Policy and Talent
Soil: Policy and Talent
Policy Infrastructure
Intellectual Property
Justice/Court System
Finance System
Start-up-friendly taxes and regulations
Many more...
Finding Talent
Engineers
Business executives
Designers / Artists
Marketers
Managers
Technologists
Salespeople
Accountants
Lawyers
Negotiators
Writers
Translators
Supporters
Many more...
Pollination: Advisers
Silicon Valley Pollinators
Water: Money
Desert: Too Little Money
Flood: Too Much Money
Sunlight: Attention
Pollination: Advisers
Innovation Garden Summary
Seeds as Companies
Soil as Policy and Talent Environment
Bees as Pollinators (Advisers, etc.)
Water as Finance
Sunlight as Attention
Research Application South Korea
Research Observations
Innovation Garden Summary
Seeds as Companies
Soil as Policy and Talent Environment
Bees as Pollinators (Advisers, etc.)
Water as Finance
Sunlight as Attention
One Interesting Statistic
“In 2011 [...] out of 300 teams that applied to the JFDI-Innov8 2012 bootcamp, none were from Korea.”
This NYT Teardown is part of a new series in which I tear apart NYT articles that should never have been published. An occasional feature.
The article for this installment of NYT Teardown is The Go-Nowhere Generation written by Todd G. Buchholz and Victoria Buchholz. The basic thesis of the article is that Americans used to move all the time across the country to seek opportunity - if one state wasn't great, they would get into their cars and move across the country to begin their life anew. Think Mary Tyler Moore moving to Minneapolis. Today, however, students and young people are staying home in droves, by and large avoiding improving their economic lot.
Let's look at the evidence that backs up such a sweeping claim:
Americans are less likely to move according to Census data (how less likely is not clear. 1%? 25%? Such a magnitude would have been helpful)
More students are living at home after graduation
My favorite: A kid from Columbus who avoided a teaching career to work at a factory so that this person could stay in Columbus (and from a second-hand source too!)
Fewer proportion of young people getting drivers licenses
Too much Facebook usage (because, as we all know, that is the cause of everything)
Risk aversion due to cultural changes like a new Disney show called "So Random!" (a title that describes the evidence in this piece quite effectively)
Changing song lyrics from Bruce Springsteen
Convinced?
Perhaps I am crazy, but to say that the entirety of people under the age of 30 are going nowhere because of this level of evidence is ridiculous. It certainly doesn't meet the standards of the NYTimes. While I question the thesis as a whole, I want to break apart
It looks like his fashion sense hasn't improved. Picture from the Atlantic.
There have been dozens of news stories this year about the silly antics of presidential candidates. From calling people snobs for wanting kids to go to universities to reopening the contraception battle, the issues are petty, weird, and bizarre: almost like a real version of the Twilight Zone (which, unlike the television show, never really ends). What is most shocking about the race though, is not that presidential candidates make ridiculous comments, but the support they seem to garner in response.
Why is it that Americans, who by most counts are generally decent and rational people, can suddenly be whipped up into a frenzy to support positions against their own interests by such provocative language? Considering the vast changes facing the white working class, who really represents the heart of the Republican party (the Tea Party tends to skew upper middle class), it's a little surprising that they are the ones cheering for reducing scholarship aid or ending contraception.
There have been a lot of discussions about this issue, with talking head theorists discussing all kinds of different explanations. I'll throw my hat into this ring with my own theory, that of the psychology of decisions and loss recognition. Let me explain.
Daniel Kahneman (along with the late Amos Tversky) developed a theory in psychology about how humans react to loss. They found through experiments that humans actively avoid recognizing a loss, and will continue a losing endeavor even in the face of overwhelmingly clear evidence that such a decision is not the prudent course. Thus, gamblers often go into massive debt, since to not play another hand would be to recognize a loss - and therefore force them to confront the bad decisions they had
Finishing up the Jeju Island trip photos series (part 1 and part 2 are available here) with some of the other sites available on the island.
While Jeju Island is generally marketed (effectively) as a resort island, the island has a rich and deeply moving history. One facet of this history is Jeju's prominence in the Pacific theater of World War II, since its proximity to the Japanese mainland made it a likely last stop on the Allies island-hopping campaign to end the war. Japan created an elaborate sequence of tunnels and fortifications on Jeju Island to protect against this invasion, mostly using Korean slave labor to build it. Korea had been annexed by Japan decades before in 1910, but the needs of the war dramatically increased the pressures on the colony to produce more raw material and manual labor. Like much of the rest of the Japanese empire during this time, there were numerous atrocities (something I also noticed in my recent trip to Singapore).
I visited one of these Japanese barracks on the island. The taxi driver was a little surprised, because no one had ever requested to see the exhibits (he ended up coming in with me since he had never been there himself). The following are scenes from that underground tunnel and fortification system.
The tunnels below Jeju for Japanese infantrymenA weapons storage site below groundThe wardroom with (obviously) fake Japanese soldiers and officers
Jeju Island originated from volcanoes, and one of the most beautiful vistas available to the traveler is at Sunrise Peak (성산 일출봉 - Seongsan Ilchubong). The mountain is located on the east side of the island, and if you come early enough, you can watch the sunrise begin to arrive over the ocean. The volcanic history of the mountain
As with many of our society's institutions, charities have increased in their complexity and sophistication over the past few decades in response to better research and new approaches to donor engagement. One needs only to look at the most recent scandal of Kony2012 to understand the very different environment we live in for those who wish to do well (for an excellent take down of the Kony2012 campaign, see Stanford Alumnus Michael Wilkerson's piece at Foreign Policy). Indeed, there is now a whole cottage industry that has developed to bring some measure of transparency to charitable giving (for instance, my friend Alex works at one organization called GiveWell, but others exist like Charity Navigator).
This continual transformation of charities is the backdrop for my fears related to the most recent push to donate to Stanford. I have previously written at Fiat Lux about my concern that the Senior Gift campaign wasn't sustainable, since one-off funds are not all that useful in the context of higher education financing. Now, there is a new push to donate again to the Stanford Fund [purposeful lowercase of the "the" intended] in a battle of the classes format to see which class can get to 100 donors fastest.
Why am I fearful of donating? Because I am worried that by doing so, I am merely encouraging the sort of cynicism-producing activities that made me fearful in the first place.
Let me illustrate the different facets of my concern. When I was attending Stanford and participating in activities, we used to write thank you letters to donors. Makes sense. But these letters weren't allowed to just be custom written, or "from the heart." Instead, they had to match the Development Office's very specific guidelines on
Hi, I'm Danny. I'm Partner, Research at VC firm Lux Capital, where I publish the Riskgaming newsletter, podcast, and game scenarios. I'm also a Fellow at the Manhattan Institute in New York. I analyze science, technology, finance and the human condition.
Formerly, I was managing editor at TechCrunch and a venture capitalist at Charles River Ventures and General Catalyst.
