less code, more software

is an excellent book by David Shenk, subtitled why everything you've been told about genetics, talent and intelligence is wrong (isbn 978-184831218-0). As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages:

We're better at stuff because we've figured out how to become better. Talent is not a thing; it's a process.

We do not inherit traits directly from our genes. Instead we develop traits through the dynamic process of gene-environment interaction.

In truth, the [word] 'intelligence' has become a mere vocal sound, a word with so many meanings that finally it has none. [Charles Spearman]

Stability does not imply unchangeability. [Michael Howe]

In 1932, psychologists Mandel Sherman and Cora B. Key discovered that IQ scores correlated inversely with a community's degree of isolation.

Talent is not the cause but the result of something.

People make a great mistake who think that my art has come easily to me. Nobody has devoted so much time and thought to composition as I. [Mozart]

Heritability is a population average, meaningless for any individual person. When someone says that heritability of height is 90 per cent, he does not and cannot mean that 90 percent of my inches come from genes and 10 percent from my food. He means that variation in a particular sample is attributable to 90 percent genes and 10 per cent environment.

Genes don't directly cause traits; they only influence the system.

Genes are probabilistic rather than deterministic. [Michael Rutter]

We have far more control over our genes - and far less control over our environment - than we think.

What would be really interesting for people to see is how beautiful things grow out of shit. [Brian Eno]

The brain circuits than moderate a person's level of persistence are plastic - they can be altered. They key is intermittent reinforcement.

When I read a good book I highlight passages that catch my attention. I copy a few of the highlights into a book-snippet.

This photo is of page 75 of my battered copy of The Secrets of Consulting. The yellow highlights are from the first time I read the book, the pink ones from the second time, the blue ones the fourth time. At the bottom right is one sentence outlined in pen and marked with an eight. That tells me I marked that sentence on my eighth re-read. (I've run out of new colours.)

I find it better to re-read a really good book 10 times rather than read 10 average books once each. It's the really good books that provide new insights each time I re-read them. Marking highlights in this way allows me to go back in time. What topics caught my attention in early readings? What topics in later readings? I can explore the differences. Of course, part of that newness is that I'm a different person each time I re-read. I'm older. A sentence triggers a new thought based an experience I've had since my last read. Also, I remember more of the book each time. For example I can see on my seventh re-read I marked this

The toughest problems don't come in neatly labeled packages. Or they come in packages with the wrong labels.

and I underlined the words labeled and labels because I'd consciously connected them to The Label Law (on page 64).

The name of the thing is not the thing.

Underneath that I can see I've written "The Dread Pirate Roberts". That's a connection to a scene from one of my favourite films, The Princess Bride. Westley is in the fire swamp explaining to Princess Buttercup how he has become the Dread Pirate Roberts...

Westley: I, as you know, am Roberts.

Buttercup: But how is that possible, since he's been marauding twenty years and you only left me five years ago?

Westley: I myself am often surprised at life's little quirks...

Westley: Well, Roberts had grown so rich, he wanted to retire. So he took me to his cabin and told me his secret. "I am not the Dread Pirate Roberts," he said. "My name is Ryan. I inherited the ship from the previous Dread Pirate Roberts, just as you will inherit it from me. The man I inherited it from was not the real Dread Pirate Roberts, either. His name was Cummerbund. The real Roberts has been retired fifteen years and living like a king in Patagonia." Then he explained the name was the important thing for inspiring the necessary fear. You see, no one would surrender to the Dread Pirate Westely.

John Gall (who was born in 1925), recently gave a fabulous talk called how to use conscious purpose without wrecking everything. He said:

As the years go by, the brain begins to put the dots together, to make conscious links between one experience and another, between one historical fact and another. A person begins to experience one’s entire life history as an integrated narrative.

This integrating capacity of the human brain is perhaps its most marvelous achievement. And you have to be old—usually fifty or sixty years old—to reach that point where it dawns on your conscious mind that that’s what’s going on. Unless you are already in your coffin, your mind is always a work in progress, an ongoing process of continual growth and greater differentiation, richer and more far-reaching correlations.

He chatted about how much his mind had changed during the first 40 years of his life compared to the most recent 40 years of his life. He said the latter change was far greater.
Isn't that amazing. Fantastic.
I'm looking forward to getting older!
I'm looking forward to seeing more and more patterns of connection.

is an excellent book by A. A. Milne (isbn 1-4052-1117-2). As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages:

'Now,' said Rabbit, 'this is a Search, and I've Organized it - '
'Done what to it?' said Pooh.
'Organized it. Which means - well, it's what you do to a Search, when you don't all look in the same place at once. So I want you, Pooh, to search by the Six Pine Trees first, and then work you way towards Owl's House, and look out for me there. Do you see?'
'No,' said Pooh. 'What -'
'Then I'll see you at Owl's House in about an hour's time.'
'Is Piglet organdized too?'
'We all are,' said Rabbit, and off he went.

Pooh was sitting in house one day, counting his pots of honey, when there came a knock at the door. 'Fourteen,' said Pooh. 'Come in. Fourteen. Or was it fifteen? Bother. That's muddled me.'

Pooh hadn't thought about it at all, but now he nodded. For suddenly he remembered how he and Piglet had once made a Pooh Trap for Heffalumps, and he guessed what had happened. He and Piglet and fallen into a Heffalump Trap for Poohs! That was what it was.

And he respects Owl, because you can't help respecting anybody who can spell TUESDAY, even if he doesn't spell it right; but spelling isn't everything.

it suddenly came over him that nobody had ever picked Eeyore a bunch of violets, and the more he thought of this, the more he thought how sad it was to be an Animal who had never had a bunch of violets picked for him.

Rabbit came up importantly, nodded to Piglet, and said, 'Ah Eeyore,' in the voice of one who would be saying 'Good-bye' in about two more minutes.

and the big one came out first, which was what he had said it would do, and the little one came out last, which was what he had said it would do, so he had won twice... and when he went home for tea, he had won thirty-six and lost twenty-eight, which meant that he was - that he had - well, you take twenty-eight from thirty-six, and that's what he was. Instead of the other way around.

'They always take longer than you think,' said Rabbit.

'And I was here myself a week ago.'
'Not conversing,' said Eeyore. 'Not first one and then the other. You said "Hallo" and Flashed Past. I saw your tail a hundred yards up the hill as I was meditating my reply. I had thought of saying "What?" - but, of course, it was then too late.'
'Well, I was in a hurry.'
'No Give and Take,' Eeyore went on. 'No Exchange of Thought. "Hallo - What" - mean, it gets you nowhere, particularly if the other person's tail is only just in sight for the second half of the conversation.'

Christopher Robin was telling them what to do, and Rabbit was telling them again directly afterwards, in case they hadn't heard, and then they were all doing it.

'And what about the new house?' asked Pooh.
'Have you found it, Owl?'
'He's found a name for it,' said Christopher Robin, lazily nibbling at a piece of grass, 'so now all he wants is the house.'

He had to write this out two or three times before he could get the rissolution to look like what he thought it was going to when he began to spell it;

'Don't Bustle me,' said Eeyore.

The fact is this is more difficult than I thought,

is an excellent book by A.A.Milne (isbn 978-1405223980). As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages:

Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming downstairs, but sometimes he feels that there really is another way, if only he could stop bumping for a moment and think of it.

He was getting rather tired by this time, so that is why he sang a Complaining Song.

"What do you want a balloon for?" you said.
Winnie-the-Pooh looked round to see that nobody was listening, put his paw to his mouth, and said in a deep whisper: "Honey!"
"But you don't get honey with balloons!"
"I do," said Pooh.

"I have just been thinking, and I have come to a very important decision. These are the wrong sort of bees."

"I mean," said Rabbit, "that having got so far, it seems a pity to waste it."
Christopher Robin nodded
"Then there's only one thing to be done," he said. "We shall have to wait for you to get thin again."
"How long does getting thin take?" asked Pooh anxiously.
"About a week, I should think."

He sat down and thought, in the most thoughtful way he could think. Then he fitted his paw into one of the Tracks … and then he scratched his nose twice, and stood up.
"Yes," said Winnie-the-Pooh.
"I see now," said Winnie-the-Pooh.
"I have been Foolish and Deluded," said he, "and I am a Bear of No Brain at All."
"You're the Best Bear in All the World," said Christopher Robin soothingly.
"Am I?" said Pooh hopefully. And then he brightened up suddenly.
"Anyhow," he said, "it is nearly Luncheon Time."
So he went home for it.

Pooh felt that he ought to say something helpful about it, but didn't quite know what. So he decided to do something helpful instead.

But Owl went on and on, using longer and longer words, until at last he came back to where he started...

"You don't often see them," said Christopher Robin.
"Not now," said Piglet.
"Not at this time of year," said Pooh.

Owl was explaining that in a case of Sudden and Temporary Immersion the Important Thing was to keep the Head Above Water.

Owl hasn't exactly got Brain, but he Knows Things.

It wasn't what Christopher Robin expected, and the more he looked at it, the more he thought what a Brave and Clever Bear Pooh was.