Information Processing

The Chronicle of Higher Education ran an article asking Are too many students going to college? Having recently taught some large lecture c...

Some interesting graphs from Clarium's August 2009 commentary. Clarium is the hedge fund run by Peter Thiel, of PayPal fame. (Click for...

While in China I asked a number of people the following question: What is the worst case scenario for China in the next 10-20 years which h...

Linus said it best in A Charlie Brown Christmas (Luke 2.14): And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watc...

The most read articles of 2009 in the journal Classical and Quantum Gravity -- see under JULY :-) JANUARY What is a particle? D Colosi and ...

Sorry for the lack of posts -- I just returned from China, where blogging had to contend with the Great Firewall and a busy schedule. Below ...

From The Scientific Life , by Harvard historian of science Steven Shapin. This book is full of realistic descriptions of the "late mode...

Can anyone identify this corporate headquarters? Hint: it belongs to one of the largest tech companies in China. I'll be there for a mee...

This time the invaders are Chinese! In the 1984 original , starring Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen, the US and China were allies and the i...

The evening began ominously. Dyson had a stomach bug -- he declined to eat anything at dinner, and made several emergency trips to the bathr...

I got this email message today. Again, I haven't done my homework on this issue, so I don't have a strong opinion. But the signator...

Be sure to look at the hundreds of comments! Tierneylab : ... I’m not trying to suggest that climate change isn’t a real threat, or that sci...

This is turning into a bit of a production -- 4 HD cameras and professional editing will hopefully result in a nice documentary video. Click...

These figures are from lecture 1 of Economics 2328 at Harvard. (Click for larger versions.) See also here and this podcast . Lecture 1 : Th...

One of the most mysterious aspects of the nature-nurture question is the difficulty in characterizing the nurture component. Turkheimer a...

I get yelled at from all sides whenever I mention IQ in a post, but I'm a stubborn guy, so here we go again. Imagine that you would li...

Does being smart help you become rich? Folksy Warren Buffett once said that an investor with IQ of 150 should sell 30 points to someone el...

Strangely we haven't heard much recently about impending gigantic Goldman bonuses. Once the issue hits the news radar again, I hope to s...

Some WWII book recommendations. Lately, I've been most interested in first hand accounts, or novels written by those who actually experi...

Perhaps fittingly, the first use of "igon value" was in a profile of (then obscure) hedge fund philosopher Nassim Taleb. (See earl...

Ouch! Thanks to a reader for pointing out this Steve Pinker review of Malcolm Gladwell's latest collection in the Sunday Times. I had m...

What should be the goals and responsibilities of a great university? Should it strive to maximize the future contributions of its graduates ...