Month: February 2017

memorizing vocabulary is critical in learning a language. however, memorizing words out of context is sometimes ineffective because, without an anchor, they just sink into oblivion. how can one etch the context in one’s memory at the same time as the word? memorize a whole sentence. well doesn’t that sound like a waste of time? not at all. in addition to memorizing the word and the context, you’ll also be committing to memory the other words in the sentence and their contexts and meanings. it might also help to imagine for the sentence a visualization and possibly even other sensational semaphores such as voices, emotions, haptics, odors, or relationships. in other words, engage as many neurons in as many engrams as possible. that’s the ultimate secret. "Er beugte seinen großen, struppigen Kopf über Harry, und gab ihm einen gewiss sehr kratzigen, barthaarigen Kuss." now and hopefully forever, i will remember all of those german words with the help of Hagrid’s giant, windswept face leaning over the infantile Harry and scratching his face with a giant beard. 

a friend was hit by a car in los angeles. traumatic brain injury. facebook is how someone found out about it and told me. i only keep in contact with a certain few friends whom i share with him. i will have to dig up the old "social network" (direct contact with old acquaintances) to find out what’s going on. 

english inherited this interesting legacy from germanic which is primarily lacking in the romances: compound words. i’ve studied romances so intensely and for so long that i’m rusty with the compounders. studying german again reminds me that i need lots of practice when translating because german words are much simpler than they seem. i need my system 1 brain to be better trained to produce answers automatically. today i ran across the word breitbeinig. obviously in retrospect there are three simple rootish words: breit + bein + ig. In other words, wide + leg + ish. craziness! in latin? never in a million years. in spanish? don’t you dare. spanish would probably say something like "legs of the wide stance" naturally. i love languages. so many pathways! 

there are two of me. there is the person i want to be, who is imaginary and there is the real me, who is the result of actions and behaviors from moment to moment. in one sense i can imagine myself in any scenario and script out my interactions and reactions down to the microsecond. on the other hand, when similar situations come up in real life, i rarely execute that script. most of the time, i’m on autopilot. that autopilot really is my only link between my two selves. i have been able to reprogram that autopilot to carry out my wishes in some sense. sadly, it’s not like programming a machine. there are still realities that come into play, such as social, cultural, and evolutionary programming. 

if you ever write a text message and you send two thoughts, the one you consider more important will always be ignored and you will be disappointed. change your expectations by never sendinh important thoughts. 

i made a minor mistake in a calculation that altered some indicator on 4 records, but they were very big records. they got moved from one classification to another so it was not the end of the world. i fixed the calculation but it took a few hours to resync all the data and the users were grumpy. but i took decisive action to stop work for 2-4 hours and fixed the problem. that’s the action of a leader and i wonder if they’ll recognize it or if they’ll focus on the inevitable mistake. i guess the problem with making every data system look magical is that one mistake can get blown up into a big deal. i don’t expect that to happen, but i plan for the worst. all systems should have buffers, especially "efficient" ones.