Friday Links: Nigerian scammers, Cue, Texas GOP

Inauguration of Friday Links! I've decided to start weekly or bi-weekly short comments on links. This will be in addition to 1.5 posts per week that I've been averaging. After all, I spend a lot of time reading things like this on the Internet, so this really doesn't take extra time out of my day. Writing about these links just helps me solidify the information in my head.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/06/22/155581764/those-nigerian-email-scams-are-ridiculous-for-a-reason

So I used to think that Nigerian e-mail scammers either don't care that their e-mails are ridiculous or don't realize that their e-mails are ridiculous, because they had been receiving money from the extremely gullible either way. However, as the Microsoft research paper cited by NPR shows, ridiculousness is a huge advantage. Nigerian scammers deliberately make their e-mails ridiculous in order to filter out the non-gullible, which represent a far larger portion of the population. Essentially, if the Nigerians tried to make the e-mails reasonable (and hide the fact that they want bank account information up front), then a decent number of non-gullible people would respond expressing interest, but none of them would give up their sensitive information. That would waste all the Nigerians' time and they wouldn't get any money because they can't pick out the gullible ones.

I think this actually points to a possible solution: anytime Google detects a Nigerian scam via people's spam boxes, perhaps they should simply respond to the scammers using automated accounts, in order to flood the Nigerians' inboxes with false responses and fake bank account information. Then the Nigerians would no longer be able to pick out the ones from real gullible people. It would be easier than trying to track them down.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/428321/a-personal-assistant-mines-your-life-to-help-out/?ref=rss

Cue is trying to do what would actually make Siri useful: the ability to scan, read and understand all the information across all your accounts (e-mail, flight info, Facebook, the cloud, your calendar). Rather than searching the web like Siri does, it searches your information and makes it personal. That way you don't need to manually juggle all the information in your accounts.

I don't think Cue would require any loss of privacy, given that Apple and Google already have all of your personal information.

http://s3.amazonaws.com/texasgop_pre/assets/original/2012Platform_Final.pdf

Finally, I'm not even going to comment on this, just let it speak for itself:

From the Texas GOP 2012 official platform:

"We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority."

Also, word of the day: gheegle (Filipino): the urge to pinch or squeeze something that is irresistibly cute.

5x5 idea warm-up: grateful, proud, forgive

As I've previously reported, the Idea Habit has been by far the most fun, successful, and useful goal that I've implemented this month. Thinking back on it, I went through 3 phases. 

1. A fun phase where I was just experimenting with it. I look back and the ideas were just terrible. However, it was relatively easy to get ideas out into Evernote because I wasn't pressuring myself. 
2. A frustration phase. I started subconsciously thinking, "my idea topic and my ideas need to be really good," especially because I started sharing my ideas with other people. Thus it would sometimes take up to an hour to accomplish my habit- and most of it was just trying to come up with a good theme for my ideas. And stress just makes my ideas worse. What a waste.
3. A self-improvement phase. Out of my frustration I started thinking about the process of generating ideas so that I could make myself more efficient. I started deliberately exposing myself to inspirations, reading about creativity, and trying out new environments for creativity (various cafes, nature walks, in a push-up position, etc).

Throughout phase 3, I also started thinking about how to expand my Idea Habit to become more than just a daily exercise. Idea topics such as "How Google Glasses might affect biological laboratory research" and "top 10 animals I'd like to ride" certainly are interesting, but have rather narrow application. While the Idea Habit is worthy in its own right, I feel it has the potential to affect everything else I want to accomplish.

Thus I have just today introduced "5x5 Idea Warm-Up Time" to start off my daily idea sessions. I come up with 5 ideas for 5 idea lists, for a total of 25. These are important topics that are worth thinking about every day, but because I am thinking about them everyday, I don't pressure myself to make them really good ideas. At the same time, it just gets my idea juices flowing so I don't get stuck for an hour just trying to come up with a topic.

1) 5 things I'm grateful for (i.e. brainstorming things I can do for other people)

2) 5 things I'm proud of (i.e. what are my strengths and how can I maintain them)

3) 5 things I forgive myself for (i.e. what are my weaknesses and how can get better)

4) 5 new things I can try today that I've never done before

5) 5 things I can do today to make myself a better scientist and thinker

Again, if these ideas suck, so what? It just takes 1 good idea out of 100 to make a difference in my life. I'm going to limit this 10-15 minutes per session so that I can move on to my main idea list of the day.

Separately, I've also started coming up with 5 ideas for experiments while I'm doing my morning routine of writing out all the experiments I need to do in a day. Usually I end up doing one of them that I otherwise don't "need" to do.

Starting off with a "lite" version of whatever you need to accomplish is generally applicable. It's pretty much a combination of two eternal motivation pearls: 1) tell yourself you're going to just start your task, dedicating just 5 minutes to it and 2) break your task up into smaller chunks. Aren't feeling social but you're going to an important social event? Just start talking to someone, accept that it's going to be awkward, and give it your best shot. Feeling tired but you are committed to working out everyday? Just start doing your routine with lighter weights. Don't waste time stretching- it's just procrastination and there isn't any evidence of benefit. Just start, just start, just start.

In completely unrelated news, I donated blood this week.

This is what will happen to whoever receives my blood.

Also, I found this epic video while researching my idea list "top animals I'd like to ride." 

Water buffalo herd versus lion pride versus crocodiles. AWESOME.

Update: Tracking my Monthly Goals

I briefly mentioned at the beginning of one of my recent blog posts that May felt like it lasted the equivalent of 3 months. It's still true- when it's Tuesday, the weekend feels like it happened a week ago. Why? I couldn't really put my finger down on this until I started thinking about this blog post. I realized I'm spending far more of my waking hours fully conscious. I'm no longer shutting down my brain for hours everyday by wasting time on the Internet. I'm deliberately planning and working towards my goals and developing my habits. Therefore, it feels like I have three times as much… time. Concrete accomplishments and productivity are a natural and happy outcome, but they are almost incidental at this point.

Today is an update on the goals I established at the beginning of the month.

I had 5 goals that I established for myself this month. These are, of course, in addition to everyday work.

• Focus: An incredibly important meta-goal. I'm trying to stop myself from becoming distracted by cool-sounding goals other than the 5 I've listed here. It's way too easy to move from goal to goal because of the allure of novelty, at the expense of never fully internalizing any habit and never satisfactorily completing any goal. I have specific criteria for checking this off each day, based on how many of the following goals I finish each day and how early in the day I finish them.
• Idea habit: The most enjoyable goal so far. Each morning I spend up to 30 minutes coming up with lists of ~10 ideas, to actively develop my creativity. These can be relevant to my day or not. Some example lists.
• Wake up at 6am: This one is fantastic when I actually do it because it's a productivity bonanza. However, waking up early is not a priority when I have evening social obligations or when I'm hosting someone at my place.
• Reading habit: Keeping up with the literature is critical to any career in science, and I've been neglecting it. I try to read at least an hour each day, or read to the point that I feel like I've gained an important insight. I'm also trying to develop a systematic way to proceed through the literature, but I've made minimal progress.
• Long-term lab plan: This one didn't really work out as I hoped. I've been treating it as a two-step process. First, developing a list of experiments that would be critical for proving a case in a manuscript. Second, putting it into a calendar format with 1-3 critical experiments I could perform each day in addition to run-of-the-mill labwork. However, I haven't actually done the second part because the first part keeps on changing (ah the realities of science).

I'm using Evernote to keep track of both my "Big Rocks" for each week as well as my progress on goals.

And how have I actually been doing? This morning I'm experimenting with graphing my results and seeing if it's useful.

Yes, I used Microsoft Excel to do this. So sue me.

Clearly, I'm having bursts of productivity (at the beginning of each week, I noticed) and then I slip up as the week goes on. That's just good to keep in mind as I finish the month- I don't necessarily have a plan to correct it. Notably, I'm pretty happy that my reading/plan habits are hovering in the 60-80% range, and the idea habit is a stunning success.

Observations on how I can keep up each habit:

• Focus: When I have an idea for a self-improvement project, I just write it down in a note in Evernote and then forget about it until it's time to make next month's goals. Don't want to get distracted. Also, waking up early gives me a boost of motivation that allows me to finish all my goals early in the day.
• Idea habit: Just continue my excitement over being creative each day. Also, I want to try mixing my already-generated ideas in non-intuitive combinations. That's also one reason why I share my ideas- because maybe one of your ideas will have sex with mine have a bunch of little baby ideas.
• Wake up at 6am: Have something I'm excited to do that day. My buddy Jake mentioned this piece of wisdom: "If you don't know why you're getting up in the morning, you should just go back to sleep."
• Reading habit: I can really only accomplish this when I drag myself away from lab to a cafe somewhere and tell myself "OK you are going to read now." Perhaps I should start reserving a specific timeslot for this each day.
• Plan: Just start with the calendar. Use the calendar as my mechanism for generating experimental ideas, rather than trying to list out all experiments first and then stick them into a calendar.

Finally, I have another habit that I've picked up even though I'm not actively focusing on it. And its quite simple: try something new everyday.

Idea Habit: 2-letter Scrabble words and Blue Harvest

At the beginning of June I listed 5 goals for the month that I wanted to accomplish each and every day. I will likely post an update on my progress next time, but today I will just quickly share some fun results of my idea habit. Essentially, I practice using my "idea" muscle by coming up with lists such as "10 chapter names for an autobiography," or "ways to stay awake during a lunch talk," or "10 skills I need to learn in lab." It's the only habit that I've fulfilled this month so far without fail, probably because it never takes more than 30 minutes each day. So far it has two advantages: #1 I actually use the ideas I generate, and #2 I have an easier time being proactively creative in lab. I organize all of my ideas into a note in Evernote.

Today I'm just going to share two of my idea lists that I created this week.

Memorizing two-letter words in Scrabble (6/11 and 13)

Knowing all the 101 two-letter words allowed in Scrabble would be really useful for even the casual Scrabble player, but how to remember all of them? For each letter, I've created acronyms, mnemonics, visual images, and word play to help me remember what other letters can be paired with that letter. The more ridiculous a memory trick is, the easier it is to remember. My favorites are bolded.

A full list of two-letter words can be found here: http://www.trussel.com/scrabble/2words.htm

A: A MAN'S SEXY RIGHT LAW BLADE

B: B a vowel but don't B U

D: DOE

E: E is too good for other vowels. E fed me red sexlet hens  

F: FAr East

H: HAI EMO

I: ISN'T DIF

K: KIA (killed in action)

L: LIe On your Ass

M: M&Ms + vowels (imagine M&Ms with all the vowels written on them)

N: NAh, NEed NO NUts

O: OX FED, Y PRESS HIM NOW

P: A PIE

S: OH SHI-

T: TO TAme TIme

U: U PUSH MUTT

W: WOE

X: I + U = XXX

Y: Imagine a slingshot dealing AOE (area of effect) damage

letters with only one word: JOe's ZAny GO-RE and QI

Since when are ut, ti, na, ne, and qi official words of the English language?

Space-themed names for Frisbee team (6/12 and 14)

For the summer I joined the Ann Arbor Summer Frisbee League to get my Ultimate on. About 210 people, split up into teams of 15 (>>7 since a lot of people will take weeks off in the summer). We were asked to come up with ideas for a team name based on Space, this year's theme. Also, our team color is Blue, so bonus points if a name takes that into consideration.

Earthshine

Blue shift

NepTune Up

SaTurn Over

Hammer Time Continuum

Helio Hammers

Solar Flick

Space: the final FUNtier

May the Force Flick be with you

My buddy Jake came up with Blue Harvest (Family Guy reference), which I loved instantly and everyone jumped on. So here's to a great season Blue Harvest!

Edit: I deleted the Family Guy picture after I realized that it was solely responsible for this post getting 5 times more hits than any other post. It comes up way too high up on Google Image.

Obstacles to starting a blog don't actually exist

Hello world! Today I'm discussing the common obstacles people face when trying to start up a blog (or any other side project), and why those obstacles don't actually exist. This is a continuation of my last post on the benefits of blogging. Notably, all the benefits of blogging that I listed in the previous post can be achieved in other ways. But if you're missing any of them from your life (I know I was missing, um, ALL of them before I started blogging), ask yourself if you're just being stopped by the imaginary obstacles that I discuss in this follow-up post. Furthermore, I'd like to reminding everyone that while I'm writing about blogging, none of this is specific to scribbling in the cyberdust (hat-tip to Holly). For me, blogging is an example of deliberately making a change in my life. I've applied these same ideas to learning how to chat up strangers in cafes, remembering names, fitness, and other side projects (all of these may be addressed in future posts).

For a long time I thought blogging would be cool but I had all sorts of self-doubts: "Do I have enough time? My writing skills atrophied in college by stuffing my schedule with science courses! Do I have anything novel to say? What if people judge my opinions? My prose? Am I qualified? Do I have the right topic yet? Who would want to read my blog?" I didn't feel comfortable communicating on a really deep and personal level, even to my closest friends. And because I couldn't flesh out my ideas in detail, I didn't even fully understand the benefits of blogging- I only discovered them as I progressed, which fuels the excitement. This is why it took me almost a year to get started. And that was my biggest mistake.

Obstacles preventing you from starting a blog (or delve into any new experience that requires commitment) fall into two categories:

1) Yourself. My own perceptions of what blogging would actually entail held me back for quite a while, in spite of the excitement of taking on a side project that requires new skills, new experiences, and a little bit of self-exploration.

2) Others. For a while I was worried about the response to my blog. I guess I'm naturally self-conscious. I don't want to waste anyone's time with boring stuff, after all.

Let's break it down.

Yourself:

• Mistake: thinking it's not worth it unless you do a really good job. "I shouldn't write a blog because I'm not a good writer. Because I have nothing interesting to write about." OK, this is just silly. How does one get better at writing? By writing. A more nuanced way of looking at it is that in any self-development project, there are no stakes, only possibilities. In the professional world, crappy work won't be tolerated. But if your first blog post is crap and gets 4 page views, so what? No problem, and you likely identified a few concrete weaknesses in your writing style in the process. In fact, even if 9 out of 10 of your posts are pretty blah, isn't that one really awesome post worth it? Especially if the alternative is sitting around on your butt.
• "I don't have enough time." I used to make this excuse all the time. But how much mindless crap on the Internet was I looking at everyday? Furthermore, blogging IS relaxation. It's just a better kind of relaxation than watching TV, playing video games, or wasting time on the Internet, because you don't need to wake up your brain again when you're finished. Finally, never say "I have to do X" or "I can't do Y because I'm obligated to or supposed to do X". Say "I choose Y over X." Take responsibility.



Your blog doesn't have to be 100% unique to be something special

• Thinking that you have to be novel. You don't have to be completely original when blogging. You just need to be honest and write about things that truly interest you. If you do that, you will eventually develop your own original angle. There's no way you can be novel just sitting around and thinking about it- you need to actually start writing.

Others:

• Being overly focused on what you think others do and don't want to read about. #1 you will always be able to find an audience. Don't worry about it. #2 Having an audience should be a secondary goal. Instead of asking what people will think about your blog, you should be asking what do YOU want to write about? What do YOU need to do to become a better writer? But you might ask- then why don't I just keep a diary? Well, just knowing that someone COULD read your blog should be sufficient to motivate you to make your ideas as crystal-clear as you can manage, and motivate you to keep up the habit of writing. #3 So what if your interests are… quirky? Want to blog about Magic the Gathering? No problem. It might even help you connect with others who share the same interests but are too shy or embarrassed to go around advertising it.
• Fear of being judged. See my last post. If you open up to people, they won't judge you. Maybe a few trolls on the Internet will, but just ignore the haters.
• Fear of coming off as a snob. Sure, you think that you're expert enough to post your opinions on the Internet for everyone to read, right? What a snob. But that's completely missing the point. You don't have to be an expert to blog about anything! Writing is a MEANS to learn and gain expertise. Imagine you just read something interesting. How do you retain it? You either need to talk about it, write about it, or engage with it in some other way. Furthermore, having a blog will motivate you to go find interesting things to read about in the first place. If you're blogging with the correct intent, no one will think you're a snob.

I've realized that obsessing over questions like "What will others think of my blog?" and "What if no one reads my blog?" is completely pointless because I do not have direct control over those things. It's better to focus on questions like "What skills can I develop by doing this? What do I need to do to follow through on my goal or habit? Did I successfully complete the act of writing today? What are some things that I want to learn but haven't had a chance to? What would I enjoy writing about?"

The only thing in life over which you have complete control are yourself and the activities you voluntarily choose to do. If your job sucks or life just isn't going well for you, that has almost zero impact on your ability to write a blog entry, because it's entirely on your own time and it's entirely your own choice. For side projects like getting fit, writing a blog, taking an online course on a topic you've never studied before, or learning to chat up strangers, all obstacles are imagined. So if you want to do it, just start. Remember, there are no stakes, only possibilities.

This person spent too much time worrying about pandas and 

not enough time thinking about what he would actually do for pandas.

Meta-Blog: Practicing honest self-expression makes you better at it

Time for the start of the June blog! I really can't believe it's only been a month since I started- it seriously feels like May lasted at least the equivalent of 3 months...

This week, I've decided to write a two-parter entry about... blogging. Yeah, I know it's meta and perhaps a bit self-serving, and I'm going to take some risks with this one. Furthermore, there are already lots of similar articles from other people, like this fantastic one from James Altucher. But I'm not worried about being novel, because that shouldn't stop me from writing. Just like it shouldn't stop anyone else who is interested in blogging. So today's entry will be about why one would want to blog. The next entry will be about common reasons why one would NOT want to blog (or take on any other side project for that matter), and why those reasons are all just silly.

Several of my college friends have recently started blogs:

• Scribbles in the Cyberdust: generally awesome person working in the consulting industry. Will be musing on life, relationships, and transitions.
• Greg Poulos: college roommate and computer science major who recently quit his tech start-up job to start writing novels and short stories
• The Literary Fix: humanities-expert extraordinaire writes reviews, reactions, responses to books and literature. 10X more culturally adept than I.

Our monolithic group of friends (aka Blocking Group One) had a long e-mail thread tossing around topic and name ideas for these blogs, so I threw in my two cents based on my own experience. It would seem natural that I offer my advice given my fresh experience on the topic, but I have to admit I was a little hesitant at first because I wasn't sure how it would come off. I used to fear offering advice to people because I was afraid people might interpret it as an I'm-better-than-you attitude. As cockiness or arrogance. Some of that fear was mixed in with a lack of self-confidence, which was compounded by a further fear of telling others about things I lacked confidence in. So I used to be afraid of both acknowledging my strong points and of showing my vulnerability, solely because of what other people might think. That's where blogging comes in.

Good blogging is an exercise in being honest. This is by far the most important thing one can gain from blogging. For people like me who have trouble connecting on a deep level with others, it is a wonderful stepping stone to getting comfortable sharing one's thoughts with all the other human beings who inhabit this planet. For more extroverted individuals, it is a constant exercise and reminder to trust other people and strive to make social interactions meaningful. A blog is a great way to develop honesty because it is public enough to take you out of your comfort zone and enable you to grow, but it's a solitary enough that it lets you develop your thoughts deeply without all the complexities and anxieties of face-to-face interaction. It's an interesting dichotomy.

Opening up to others is undoubtedly scary and opens you up to judgment, but like anything else it gets less scary the more you do it. Just practice expressing your opinions, just practice revealing your weaknesses and vulnerabilities, and just practice giving advice to other people in a way that really shows you care about them. Acknowledge that it will definitely be awkward at first, but have fun working at it. Soon, the questions holding you back disappear. Questions like "What if people have no interest in what I'm talking about? What if it creates conflict? What if this person doesn't like me anymore? What if my concerns or ideas are dismissed? What if I look stupid? What if I'm proven wrong?" When I started acknowledging my weaknesses and vowing to address them, both publicly on this blog and privately with my friends, did anyone judge me? Perhaps, but I didn't hear about it, nor does it really matter. In private, others have done the same and opened up to me- you'll have to take my word for it but I feel more connected to my friends than ever. Heck, because I now feel like I can open up to complete strangers (to a lesser degree than my friends, but still) I also feel more connected to the human race in general. I hope it continues to deepen my relationships. In public, other bloggers bravely share their ideas and opinions with the world, and that is a good thing.

There are many other reasons to open yourself up in a blog:

1. Find other people with similar interests. Lots of people are introverts and won't reveal their personal interests widely, leaving lots of discoveries of mutual interests up to chance. If you post a specific topic, perhaps a majority of people won't be interested in it, but you've have provided a conduit for others who are interested to find you.
2. Practice fully fleshing out your ideas. Good writing demands this. While I'm not a good writer, what matters is that I'm practicing and slowly getting better. I've never been a very detail-oriented person. This is unfortunate for my graduate studies, which require very detailed analysis of numerous experiments, papers, and ideas. I need to be able to communicate not just big ideas but also very specific logic. Now by habit whenever I'm reading a science article or designing an experiment I think about how I'm going to talk about it. You haven't fully mastered an idea until you can teach it. Also, now before I start an experiment I automatically write out all the possible outcomes and what they would tell me, and if it's not enough information then I re-design the experiment. Detailing the logic of your ideas can change what you end up deciding to do about your ideas
3. Make yourself accountable for your goals. Tell everyone what you're doing. In your heart, you will not want to disappoint anyone else. Knowing that others know your goals will make you constantly remind yourself what your goals are. This point might run contrary to some experience- I found that in the past I would tell someone else about something great I'm "planning" to do, but it was just to make myself feel better that I WASN'T doing it. But I only did this if I knew it was unlikely that this person would ask me next week how my great idea was progressing. Again, I wasn't being honest. Because you constantly blog about what you're doing, you HAVE to be honest with yourself about whether or not you're making progress on your goals.
4. Motivation to learn new things and grow yourself. No one wants to be boring. Knowing that I could choose anything happening in my life or any of topics I'm reading about on the Internet to be the subject of a PUBLIC blog entry is a fantastic incentive to try to make my life interesting and learn things I never would have touched otherwise.
5. Do more than click the "share" button. You know the drill. I do this all the time: I read something that's really cool, I share it on Facebook, and then I forget about it. I feel like I'm just observing the world happening. But a blog post is your own creation. And when you make something that's your very own, you won't forget about it.

Finally, a blog is completely unnecessary. Wait, what? That's a good thing? Yes indeed, it is. You know there are dozens of things that you could do that are completely voluntary, i.e. not in your job description. But they help you grow as a person and see another side of life. Challenge yourself.

Anyway, I hope that this blog entry didn't come off as one of those braggy it-changed-my-life-and-it-will-change-yours-too articles. If you decide call me out on it, maybe I'll go cry now. Yeah, I do cry sometimes.

Keep reading Part 2.