Pages

Monday, July 29, 2013

Book Review: The Sports Gene - WSJ.com

Another take on reality. Some people are just better at stuff. Get used to it.

Bu from the comments: " The 10,000 hour goal is certainly no guarantee, but what each of us does with God's gifts are what counts. Trying and practicing may not make me better than the next person, but it will make me the best I can be."

Book Review: The Sports Gene - WSJ.com

On Gay Priests, Pope Francis Asks, ‘Who Am I to Judge?’ - NYTimes.com

On Gay Priests, Pope Francis Asks, ‘Who Am I to Judge?’ - NYTimes.com

They Know Much More Than You Think by James Bamford | The New York Review of Books [feedly]


 

Sunday, July 28, 2013

You Can't Teach Speed: Sprinters Falsify the Deliberate Practice Model of Expertise by Michael P. Lombardo, Robert O. Deaner :: SSRN

Download the paper if you like but the abstract is sobering enough. In sports, many times immense talent wins over hard work.

You Can't Teach Speed: Sprinters Falsify the Deliberate Practice Model of Expertise by Michael P. Lombardo, Robert O. Deaner :: SSRN

Budging (Just a Little) on Investing in Gold

Don't go to economists for investment advice. Economics and finance are two different fields.  Mankiw has been listening to his right wing buddies for too long.

Budging (Just a Little) on Investing in Gold - NYTimes.com

The Charitable-Industrial Complex -

Great quote. The leading philanthropic givers are leading lobbyists for preferential tax treatment for their companies. Many hold wages down for their workers.

"Inside any important philanthropy meeting, you witness heads of state meeting with investment managers and corporate leaders. All are searching for answers with their right hand to problems that others in the room have created with their left."



The Charitable-Industrial Complex - NYTimes.com:

This Buffet realizes he won the gene lottery: "Because of who my father is, I’ve been able to occupy some seats I never expected to sit in."

PowerPoint Is Evil


By Edward Tufte

Wired 11.09: PowerPoint Is Evil

Evil if used as a crutch to replace good presentation of data.

Edward Tufte - FT.com

Edward Tufte - FT.com:

One of my favorite books. Should be on everyone's shelf.
The Visual Display of Quantitative Information in 1982

Kooskia Internment Camp Discovered In Mountains Of Idaho

Sober Look: The clock is ticking on Abe to implement labor reform before more workers go "over the cliff" on the wage curve

Sober Look: The clock is ticking on Abe to implement labor reform before more workers go "over the cliff" on the wage curve

Saturday, July 27, 2013

A Private University Might Have Saved Detroit - Business Insider

A Private University Might Have Saved Detroit - Business Insider

Unhappy Truckers and Other Algorithmic Problems - Issue 3: In Transit - Nautilus

The traveling salesman problem. One the final test of CS10 senior year. Did not go well.

Unhappy Truckers and Other Algorithmic Problems - Issue 3: In Transit - Nautilus

Was America’s Economic Prosperity Just a Historical Accident?

Gordon has it wrong. Productivity is increasing. The problem is that the fruits are no longer as equally distributed.
The top .01% has figured out how to retain more.

Was America’s Economic Prosperity Just a Historical Accident?

In Lieu of Money, Toyota Donates Efficiency to New York Charity - NYTimes.com

In Lieu of Money, Toyota Donates Efficiency to New York Charity - NYTimes.com

Number of Catfish Inspectors Drives a Debate on Spending - NYTimes.com


Red States for bigger government and more regulation: Mississippi catfish growers want to add 14 million a year and more bureaucrats to help reduce competition.

Number of Catfish Inspectors Drives a Debate on Spending - NYTimes.com

Japanese Minister Proposes More Active Military Presence in Region - NYTimes.com

A lurking danger of a more resurgent LDP; more nationalistic, more militaristic.

Japanese Minister Proposes More Active Military Presence in Region - NYTimes.com

The Charitable-Industrial Complex - NYTimes.com

Much of charity is "conscience laundering"

The Charitable-Industrial Complex - NYTimes.com

Thursday, July 25, 2013

U.S. Attorney Alleges 'Rampant Insider Trading' at SAC - WSJ.com

The end of long/short equity?

U.S. Attorney Alleges 'Rampant Insider Trading' at SAC - WSJ.com:

The government will seek forfeiture of about $10 billion from SAC

U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against SAC - WSJ.com

Finally

U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against SAC - WSJ.com

Brad DeLong : Illegitimate and Unfair Larry Summers Bashing: The Smart and Thoughtful Matthew Klein Gets One Wrong



Drew Faust is good at PR.

Brad DeLong : Illegitimate and Unfair Larry Summers Bashing: The Smart and Thoughtful Matthew Klein Gets One Wrong

The Earth Seen from the Other Side of Saturn | The Big Picture

The Earth Seen from the Other Side of Saturn | The Big Picture

ataxingmatter: Senators promised 50 years of secrecy on their tax reform proposals

Why real tax reform won't happen; Congressional salaries depend on a convoluted code.

ataxingmatter: Senators promised 50 years of secrecy on their tax reform proposals

Corporate investment: A mysterious divergence - FT.com

There is no mystery, it is called short term greed.

Corporate investment: A mysterious divergence - FT.com

Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Here's What Wi-Fi Would Look Like If We Could See It - Business Insider

Here's What Wi-Fi Would Look Like If We Could See It - Business Insider

GDX: What The Heck Happened?

Gold miners

GDX: What The Heck Happened?

Atul Gawande: How Do Good Ideas Spread? : The New Yorker

Atul Gawande: How Do Good Ideas Spread? : The New Yorker

Obama administration packed with lobbyists he vowed not to hire | WashingtonExaminer.com

Obama administration packed with lobbyists he vowed not to hire | WashingtonExaminer.com

Want A Simple, 3-ETF Portfolio? Here Are 25 Of Them

Possibly the best way to manage money.


Want A Simple, 3-ETF Portfolio? Here Are 25 Of Them | ETF Database

Why It’s Absurd that America Doesn’t Tax Wall Street’s Transactions � naked capitalism

Why It’s Absurd that America Doesn’t Tax Wall Street’s Transactions � naked capitalism

Harold Meyerson: Big banks’ dangerous commodity monopolies - The Washington Post

Harold Meyerson: Big banks’ dangerous commodity monopolies - The Washington Post

Monday, July 22, 2013

Nate Silver Went Against the Grain for Some at The Times - NYTimes.com

Nate Silver Went Against the Grain for Some at The Times - NYTimes.com

Regulators Not Happy With Guy Whose Algorithm Tricked Some Other Algorithms � Dealbreaker: Wall Street Insider – Financial News, Headlines, Commentary and Analysis – Hedge Funds, Private Equity, Banks

Regulators Not Happy With Guy Whose Algorithm Tricked Some Other Algorithms � Dealbreaker: Wall Street Insider – Financial News, Headlines, Commentary and Analysis – Hedge Funds, Private Equity, Banks:
Quote of the year about Wall Street.

An important element of any Wall Street education is figuring out what shady practices will win you a reputation as a genius, what shady practices will win you a reputation as a scumbag, and what shady practices will win you a prison sentence. There is substantial overlap

The Insurgents’ Head Game | James Holmes – The Naval Diplomat | The Diplomat

America rarely wins the "small wars"


The Insurgents’ Head Game | James Holmes – The Naval Diplomat | The Diplomat

Is this goodbye to Lonely Planet? | Bronwen Clune | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

My favorite guild. I have one of the originals. SE Asia.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jul/22/lonely-planet-melbourne-staff

Thursday, July 18, 2013

Monday, July 15, 2013

Nantucket and Malibu, Disappearing: The Environmental Factors Destroying the Summer Enclaves | Vanity Fair

Fights with conservation commission. It could be a whole lot worse.


http://www.vanityfair.com/society/2013/08/end-of-malibu-nantucket-erosion

Ask a Korean!: Culturalism, Gladwell, and Airplane Crashes [feedly]

Interesting throughout.  Lengthy but high quality comments. 
 

Saturday, July 13, 2013

How the Rich Get a Big Real Estate Tax Break - NYTimes.com

How the Rich Get a Big Real Estate Tax Break - NYTimes.com

Amar G. Bose, Acoustic Engineer and Inventor, Dies at 83 - NYTimes.com

Amar G. Bose, Acoustic Engineer and Inventor, Dies at 83 - NYTimes.com

The Whitewater Scandal and Our Two Americas in the Raw, by Tom Junod - Esquire

Inequality manifests itself everywhere.


The Whitewater Scandal and Our Two Americas in the Raw, by Tom Junod - Esquire

Modern Luxury | San Francisco magazine | The best investment advice you'll never get

Modern Luxury | San Francisco magazine | The best investment advice you'll never get

Golf in China Is Younger Than Tiger Woods, but Growing Up Fast - NYTimes.com

Golf in China Is Younger Than Tiger Woods, but Growing Up Fast - NYTimes.com

Who Ruined the Humanities? - WSJ.com


Books took me far from myself into experiences that had nothing to do with my life, yet spoke to my life. Reading Homer's "Iliad," I could feel the uncanny power of recognizing the emotional universe of radically alien people. Yeats gave me a special language for a desire that defined me even as I had never known it was mine: "And pluck till time and times are done/The silver apples of the moon/The golden apples of the sun."


Who Ruined the Humanities? - WSJ.com

Thursday, July 11, 2013

Yes, Barry Goldwater and Rand Paul--Like Stephen Douglas and Roger Taney--Don't Think African-American People Are Fully Fellow Americans. Why Do You Ask?: Thursday Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot-Bang-Query-Bang-Query Weblogging [feedly]


 
 
Shared via feedly // published on Brad DeLong // visit site
Yes, Barry Goldwater and Rand Paul--Like Stephen Douglas and Roger Taney--Don't Think African-American People Are Fully Fellow Americans. Why Do You Ask?: Thursday Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot-Bang-Query-Bang-Query Weblogging

Jeff Weintraub sends us to Matt Yglesias:

I've been in a long and winding multi-front Twitter exchange over… my assertion that Paul's opinion that democracy "gave us Jim Crow" relates to his white supremacist inclinations… evidenced by, for example, his previous stated opposition to key provisions of the Civil Rights Act…. Charles C.W. Cook taking the view that Paul is right and the Civil Rights Act is bad while David Freddoso thinks that the Civil Rights Act is good but associating Civil Rights Act opponents with racism is slander. So to return to the beginning, there's no plausible meaning of "democracy" in which democracy gave us Jim Crow.

Even if you take "democracy" to relatively narrowly mean "majoritarian voting procedures" this doesn't work. In the period between the Civil War and World War II, African-Americans were a majority in quite a few southern states and would have been a large—and potentially decisive—voting bloc in the others. If, that is, they were allowed to vote… African-Americans were disenfranchised via a systematic campaign of terrorist violence… that gave us the Jim Crow social system. The point of the Civil Rights Act, including its provisions regulating private businesses, was to smash that social system. And it succeeded…. I think the Cook/Paul view that we should somehow regret this and pretend that everything would have worked itself out on its own is bizarre.

But it's not only bizarre. It seems to me that it necessarily has to stem from not taking the interests and history of African-Americans seriously to even be comprehensible. The "respectable" thing to say about people like Paul or the late Barry Goldwater, I suppose, is simply that they are ideologues rather than people driven by some kind of racial animosity. But I think it's selling free market ideology short to suggest that opposing government regulations meant to undo the outcome of a century long campaign of terrorist violence is just a straightforward consequence of a general support for free enterprise. You need to combine that ideology with a sincere indifference to black people's welfare… just as you need to combine Paul's ideology with genuine indifference to the history of race in America to reach Paul's conclusion about democracy's relationship to

And Jeff sends us to David Frum:

"How did the party that elected the first black U.S. senator, the party that elected the first 20 African-American congressmen, become a party that now loses 95 percent of the black vote? How did the Republican Party, the party of the Great Emancipator, lose the trust and faith of an entire race?" Rand Paul posed that question in his speech last week at Howard University. Coming from him, it does seem a singularly naive question. He might have found an important piece of the answer at RonPaul.com, where he will find this statement by his own father on the 40th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, explaining the Texas congressman's continuing opposition to that law:

[T]he forced integration dictated by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 increased racial tensions while diminishing individual liberty. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 gave the federal government unprecedented power over the hiring, employee relations, and customer service practices of every business in the country. The result was a massive violation of the rights of private property and contract, which are the bedrocks of free society....

Goldwater's platform issues were anti-communism and anti-statism. Yet we make a mistake if we forget, or choose to forget, that he not only opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but also the Brown v. Board of Education decision and its subsequent enforcement by the Eisenhower administration….

It so happens that I am in agreement with the objectives of the Supreme Court as stated in the Brown decision. I believe that is both wise and just for negro children to attend the same schools as whites, and that to deny this opportunity carries with it strong implications of inferiority. I am not prepared, however, to impose that judgment of mine on the people of Mississippi or South Carolina, or to tell them what methods should be adopted and what pace should be kept in striving toward that goal. That is their business, not mine.

In assessing those words, begin with this one fact. Until the 1920s, both Mississippi and South Carolina had black majorities. In the year Goldwater published, blacks made up more than 40% of the populations of the two states. In what sense can we say that "the people" of a state have adopted a decision if the majority or near-majority of those people have by violence and threat of violence been excluded from participation in that decision? Goldwater probably never thought very hard about that question, but the logical implication of his words is that their author… did not consider black people as belonging to "the people."

I think Frum is wrong: I think Goldwater thought about the question--and concluded that of course African-Americans did not fully belong to "the people".


Drones in Niger Reflect New U.S. Tack on Terrorism - NYTimes.com

China invests in infrastructure we send drones.

Drones in Niger Reflect New U.S. Tack on Terrorism - NYTimes.com

Tuesday, July 09, 2013

Happy Birthday, Sliced Bread! The 'Greatest Thing' Turns 85 This Week - Derek Thompson - The Atlantic

Happy Birthday, Sliced Bread! The 'Greatest Thing' Turns 85 This Week - Derek Thompson - The Atlantic

Gmail Network Map - Chart Porn

Gmail Network Map - Chart Porn

xkcd: Settled

xkcd: Settled

Tell-all telephone | Data Protection | Digital | ZEIT ONLINE


This is all that is done with your telephone data, nothing to worry about.

Tell-all telephone | Data Protection | Digital | ZEIT ONLINE

Not Like Ike - NYTimes.com

Not Like Ike - NYTimes.com:

One of Ike' great quotes


Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas.Their number is negligible and they are stupid.

Some Econ 101 Myth-Busting-Busting, And The Dumbest Thing I’ve Read Today…

Maybe Ec10 is okay...

Some Econ 101 Myth-Busting-Busting, And The Dumbest Thing I’ve Read Today…

Pakistan's Bin Laden Dossier - Al Jazeera English


A rare opportunity to see from the other perspective.
The Pakistan report on the Bin Laden raid.

Pakistan's Bin Laden Dossier - Al Jazeera English

Monday, July 08, 2013