I also can't hold a Solstice (I live a bit far away from the nearest LW Meetup, and my family has family Christmas plans I've already agreed to), but I am interested in reading about your celebration. It's great to have a secular alternative to the religious tones of the holiday season.
Took the survey, but I didn't have time to finish most of the extra credit questions. I liked how the survey really made me think over a lot of my positions more critically than I otherwise would have. It will be interesting to see if I change much next year.
A question regarding your title: are you looking for the programming language that best teaches rationalist thinking (if there is one in particular)? Or are you asking for a more general analysis of what the various languages are best at?
Regardless, as a novice programmer (I'm taking my first Java class right now), I would be interested in hearing what LW's opinions are. I chose Java because I wanted to develop Android apps, and because of the large number of jobs calling for Java programmers in my area.
Since you said she's interested in fantasy, I'd suggest the Enchanted Forest Chronicles by Patricia C. Wrede (Dealing with Dragons is book one.) Unfortunately it's not on the Kindle yet, but it does a good job of pointing out common fantasy tropes in an entertaining way. Also, the main female character is a very good role model.
If you want more of a scientific mindset applied to fantasy, I'd say The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles by Julie Andrews Edwards instills scientific curiosity very well. Also not available on Kindle...
Finally, (this time a...
I followed the standard Questioning Religion(TM) route. When I was twelve, our family had a bit of a crisis: my dad's job looked insecure, my mother was having difficulty with her side of the family, and I was home schooled and acutely aware of the fact that this was why I had no social contact with my peers. At all. The solution, as my fundamentalist curriculum (complete with pictures of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden with dinosaurs(!) in the science texts (!!!) ) put it, was to pray for God to magically fix it. Which of course he could do, he's o...
Hello Less Wrong!
I am a twenty year old female currently pursuing a degree in programming in Washington State, after deciding that calculus and statistics was infinitely more interesting to me than accounting and economics. I found LW via HPMOR, and tore through the majority of the Sequences in a month. (Now I'm re-reading them much more slowly for better comprehension and hopefully retention.)
I wish to improve my rationality skills, because reading the Sequences showed me that there are a lot of time-wasting arguments out there, and I want to spend my t...
I found it interesting that you mentioned Alicorn's Luminosity series, as that is the single most helpful, life-changing work I've read on Less Wrong. Certainly not the "lifehack" in the sense of procedures one can implement, but her work has helped me identify problem areas in myself with much more accuracy than before.
By contrast, I find lukeprog's Procrasination Equation intimidating at first glance, and I have to work up my willpower to make a commitment to it. Pomodoro and Exercise have both worked well for me in the past, but I've backslid from using them. Leechblock doesn't appeal to me as an idea at all, because the barrier is too easy to delete. I'd rather develop my willpower instead.