01-14-2013 | Matthew 7:7

Stephen Pinker on Language Acquisition - excellent, comprehensive & constantly fascinating.

How to Solve Impossible Problems - Daniel Russell - very impressive hands-on example of a battery of search techniques put to comprehensive & efficient use.

Detecting Emerging Conflicts Through Web Mining and Visualization [PDF] - Recorded Future

Fravia's Guide to the Utter Futility of Online Privacy - Searchlores

Spaced Repetition for Learning Acceleration - Gwern

Pragmatic Thinking and Learning, by Andy Hunt. This is a book that took me by surprise: although it’s written for programmers, I found it to be one of the best “meta-productivity” tutorials I’ve ever read. This rewards multiple readings and offers a simple, grounded approach to getting your projects organized, your head straight, and your workdays faster and easier. There are a lot of books that re-organize the basic lessons of Napoleon Hill’s original self-help classic Think and Grow Rich, then sprinkle the cake with recent neuroscience and pop sci speculationizing. This is something much more valuable: a practical, hands-on synthesis that’s purely focused on what works.

The authors carefully selected their ammo on the basis of research and experience, but they opt for the shotgun approach when it comes to the actual presentation. They steamroll over the point that not every idea will work for you personally by providing a compact encyclopedia of motivational, organizational and creative techniques. I dig it...you will, too.