Antibloggies [en]

So you want the whole story about this AntiBloggie award, huh? How much are you willing to pay?

I’ll give you a hint, though: take a look at the prize.

Now, who wouldn’t love to have a t-shirt with naked Karl posing on it, front and back? Well, what do you think? Would you have hesitated?

Obviously, you all did — that’s why I‘m the one who won the t-shirt (and the *hrmm* honours). I won’t tell you what it cost me in bribery, though. Ask Dave if you really want that part of the story.

[Actually, you don’t want to know that part. No, Grandma. You really don’t.]

Oh and of course, the most important. There never was any CafePress gear on this site. *Scandal, scandal!*

I won! I won! I won! [en]

Wil didn't get one

Wil did get an obscene amount of Bloggies, though. Oh, and for the record, I only discovered he was an offline celebrity two days ago. Yeah, I know. No culture whatsoever. I did watch TNG, though – all the way from India.

I’m aware you’re all here looking for the CafePress gear. Actually, it sucked so badly I had to take it offline. Honest. (No, don’t you go and peek in the Google cache to check.)

I’ll comment on this extreme honour tomorrow, once I’ve finished dealing with all the fan email I received. Well yes, what did you think? (Thanks for the mail, Meryl, by the way!)

Vacances [en]

Les vacances s’étiraient interminablement devant et derrière elle. Une grande plaine de vide, morne et grise.

Elle avait épuisé les activités qu’elle pouvait mener d’elle-même. Elle avait ralenti et n’attendait plus que la rentrée, là , dans plusieurs semaines.

Tout serait simple. On lui dirait quoi faire, elle le ferait, on serait content d’elle, elle serait heureuse en retour. C’est important de faire pour quelqu’un.

Sans le regard des autres, d’ailleurs, elle n’existait pas vraiment. C’est pour cela qu’elle n’aimait pas l’été. Trop long, trop vide, plus personne ne la regardait.

Procrastinator? Yes! [en]

At many points in my procrastinator’s life, I’ve had an inkling this was the way to go.

All procrastinators put off things they have to do. Structured procrastination is the art of making this bad trait work for you. The key idea is that procrastinating does not mean doing absolutely nothing. […] The procrastinator can be motivated to do difficult, timely and important tasks, as long as these tasks are a way of not doing something more important.

John Perry, Structured Procrastination.

Look at what I’m doing now: I have exams to prepare, laundry to do, piles of books to read, a website to update. And I’m writing for my weblog. Writing for my weblog is definitely not a high-priority task. But on the other hand, over the past year or so, I’ve started to gain a reputation for being an active weblogger, worth reading by some.

Now, this doesn’t mean that I’m going to stop fighting my procrastination. Actually, one of the reasons I’ve been “going the wrong way” lately (ie. refusing commitments) is very precisely because I’m trying to get to the root of my procrastination. I’m inching nearer each day, actually. But on the other hand, when I’m deep in it, I might as well do something useful, mightn’t I?

[link from Glenn, again!]

Incompetent? Never! [en]

Abstract: People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. The authors suggest that this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it. Across 4 studies, the authors found that participants scoring in the bottom quartile on tests of humor, grammar, and logic grossly overestimated their test performance and ability. Although their test scores put them in the 12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd. Several analyses linked this miscalibration to deficits in metacognitive skill, or the capacity to distinguish accuracy from error. Paradoxically, improving the skills of participants, and thus increasing their metacognitive competence, helped them recognize the limitations of their abilities.

Unskilled and Unaware of It [PDF]

The article is pretty long: read the beginning, hop over the study reports and go directly to the analysis at the end.

A very interesting article which studies the fact that unskilled individuals tend to overestimate their skills. There seems to be a correlation between lack of expertise and lack of metacognitive ability.

[via Glenn]