Information Processing

Today someone I've known for a long time -- a former physicist who develops software in Silicon Valley -- mentioned to me that he has tr...

The Times magazine has a long profile of Freeman Dyson this week. The article focuses mainly on his heretical stance on global warming, but...

I thought this was quite funny -- it's from the cover of the March 31 Economist (note the Foreclosure Sale sign; the version at the fol...

Sorry for the lack of posts! I've been at Vanderbilt since leaving Fermilab. I was pretty busy giving two talks and meeting with a lot ...

Robert Rathbun Wilson (March 4, 1914 – January 16, 2000). American physicist who was a group leader of the Manhattan Project, a sculptor, a...

The other day on Jay Leno, Obama said (video here ; @13 minutes in): We need young people, instead of a smart kid coming out of school want...

Instead of hitting the beach next week during spring break I'll be visiting Fermilab and Vanderbilt University to give the following tal...

If I read this figure properly, US taxpayers could be on the hook for as much as $513 billion dollars of CDS insurance issued by its 377 per...

NYTimes writer Judith Warner objects to the characterization of Wall Street titans as the "best and brightest" :-) Of course, one...

New paper! http://arxiv.org/abs/0903.2258 The black hole information problem (Wikipedia entry ) is considered one of the deepest puzzles i...

The Times has a long piece on quants by Dennis Overbye. The usual suspects are interviewed, but Overbye doesn't really engage with the d...

I haven't read it yet, but I probably will. I was underwhelmed by Grossman's Life and Fate but perhaps this is better. Already I am...

My blog is now syndicated (is that the right word? aggregated?) by MIT Technology Review . For this I am paid a modest fee, which I promise ...

Jon Stewart notices that financial experts know nothing (very funny): The Daily Show With Jon Stewart M - Th 11p / 10c CNBC Gives Financial ...

As I mention in my talk on the financial crisis, the best journalism I've seen on the topic has come from the public radio show This Am...

I just returned from NYC. The mood there is pretty bleak :-( It looks like people are deserting the city in droves. Entire areas of finance ...

New paper! http://arXiv.org/abs/0902.4699 Dark radiation as a signature of dark energy Sourish Dutta, Stephen D. H. Hsu, David Reeb, Robert ...

Another great EconTalk podcast , this time a discussion with Alan Meltzer of CMU, a leading expert on monetary policy and the history of th...

My student David Reeb will be attending this meeting at ECT Trento next week: Sign Problems and Complex Actions workshop at ECT* Trento Mon...

An interesting new report on innovation competitiveness. Click below for some summary statistics and rankings. The US placed 6th overall. T...

Some interesting graphs from Danny Quah , head of the LSE economics department. Note the US trade deficit is almost as big as India's en...

I've been seeing a lot of hits from searches on "Gaussian Copula" or "David X. Li" lately. Li is a quant who develop...

There is no way government stimulus can replace the trillions of dollars of debt driven demand that the US and world economy have relied on ...

Anyone using a netbook? About 6 years ago I had a tiny Sony Vaio with a 9 inch screen that I loved. Ultimately I couldn't stand XP anymo...

The following paper has some beautiful figures, including the one below illustrating the heritability of physical brain structure based on M...