Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years
Researchers (Hayes, Bloom) have shown it takes about ten years to develop expertise in any of a wide variety of areas, including chess playing, music composition, painting, piano playing, swimming, tennis, and research in neuropsychology and topology. There appear to be no real shortcuts: even Mozart, who was a musical prodigy at age 4, took 13 more years before he began to produce world-class music. In another genre, the Beatles seemed to burst onto the scene with a string of #1 hits and an appearance on the Ed Sullivan show in 1964. But they had been playing small clubs in Liverpool and Hamburg since 1957, and while they had mass appeal early on, their first great critical success, Sgt. Peppers, was released in 1967. Samuel Johnson thought it took longer than ten years: "Excellence in any department can be attained only by the labor of a lifetime; it is not to be purchased at a lesser price." And Chaucer complained "the lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne."

Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years

Cofer Black, vice chairman of Blackwater USA, said that his company could supply private soldiers to any country. Blackwater has been marketing the concept of private armies for low-intensity conflicts.

"About a year ago, we realized we could do it."

He said the company was capable of providing a brigade-sized force on alert.

Can I place an order over the Web? Can I designate targets with a web-enabled camera phone?

Cofer Black offers 'private armies' for low-intensity conflicts

For almost two years, intelligence services around the world tried to uncover the identity of an Internet hacker who had become a key conduit for al-Qaeda. The savvy, English-speaking, presumably young webmaster taunted his pursuers, calling himself Irhabi -- Terrorist -- 007. He hacked into American university computers, propagandized for the Iraq insurgents led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and taught other online jihadists how to wield their computers for the cause.

Suddenly last fall, Irhabi 007 disappeared from the message boards. The postings ended after Scotland Yard arrested a 22-year-old West Londoner, Younis Tsouli, suspected of participating in an alleged bomb plot. In November, British authorities brought a range of charges against him related to that plot. Only later, according to our sources familiar with the British probe, was Tsouli's other suspected identity revealed. British investigators eventually confirmed to us that they believe he is Irhabi 007.

Terrorist 007, Exposed

It was about this time I conceived the bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection.

For this purpose I therefore contrived the following method.

Pair it with Rumsfeld's Rules and Powell's Rules.

Read while listening to Johnny Cash's "Old Chunk of Coal".

Benjamin Franklin's 13 Virtues

To make a distance-time graph for Claude Lelouch's trip, we tried to mark off Paris landmarks such as large boulevards and restaurants. Between each landmark, we would record the times then, using MapQuest and Expedia, recorded the distances between each landmark. Lelouch traveled down some roads in the wrong direction, making our job tougher.

Speed of a Car: C'etait un Rendezvous

You may have missed this over the weekend: The Saturday WSJ reports that "More than $2 trillion of U.S. mortgage debt, or about a quarter of all mortgage loans outstanding, comes up for interest-rate resets in 2006 and 2007, estimates Moody's Economy.com, a research firm in West Chester, Pa."

Let's repeat that number: Over the next 20 months, more than two trillion dollars worth of adjustable rate mortgages will reset at higher interest rates.

That sound you hear is the ship hitting the iceberg.

The Big Picture: Coming Soon: Mortgage Payment Resets

Here's the latest news about performance artist Rachel Bevilacqua (AKA Rev. Magdalen), a SubGenius reverend who lost custody of her 10-year-son after a pink judge saw photos of a SubGenius convention she participated in.

Boing Boing: Update on SubGenius child custody case

This is the entire Scientology South Park Episode.

YouTube - South Park - Scientology Episode

Something extremely weird is going on over on Digg.com. Today for the third time in a short period, a story got promoted to the front page where a blogger raises a baseless rumour about Google buying Sun. And as is explained further down, it appears that this is the result of a coordinated effort to fool Digg into promoting the story.

Here is the money quote:

"I don't think it's possible to game Digg because it requires such a mass of people who have been vetted through our algorithms." - Digg CEO

Sure dude. Thats not a story thats going to work for very long...

Silicon Valley Sleuth: Scoop: Digg is used for Sun stock manipulation

Creamy pink snow has covered the northern regions of Russia’s Maritime territory, news agencies reported Monday.

Creamy Pink Snow Covers Russian Region - NEWS - MOSNEWS.COM