Annals of Notable Baby Names

Artist and polymath Natalie Jeremijenko likes to name her children in unique ways:

Jeremijenko’s experimental streak extended to the naming of her kids. Her oldest daughter is Mister Jamba-Djang Vladimir Ulysses Hope (Jamba for short); her daughter with Conley is E (what “E” stands for is up to E, but so far she has decided to stick with the initial); and their son is Yo Xing Heyno Augustus Eisner Alexander Weiser Knuckles. “I had wanted to give our boy an ethnically ambiguous name to challenge assumptions about race and assimilation,” Conley wrote in a 2010 essay. “For all the Asian-American Howards out there, shouldn’t there be a light-haired, blue-eyed white kid named Yo Xing?”

Previously: Dash Snow's child's name

All things contain within themselves internal dialectical contradictions, which are the primary cause of motion, change, and development in the world.

Wikipedia article on dialectical materialism
See also Heraclitus, Hegel & Marx

Blog All the Foxeared Pages: Buckminster Fuller's Synergetics

Online notebook for the readthrough of Synergetics, an online version of which may be found at:
http://www.rwgrayprojects.com/synergetics/synergetics.html
I am reading the 1982 version of the 1975 text from MacMillan.

141.00 There is a corollary of synergy known as the Principle of the Whole System, which states that the known behaviors of the whole plus the known behaviors of some of the parts may make possible discovery of the presence of other parts and their behaviors, kinetics, structures, and relative dimensionalities.

152.00 Synergetics is the exploratory strategy of starting with the whole and the known behavior of some of its parts and the progressive discovery of the integral unknowns and their progressive comprehension of the hierarchy of generalized principles.

153.00 Universe apparently is omnisynergetic. No single part of experience will ever be able to explain the behavior of the whole. The more experience one has, the more opportunity there is to discover the synergetic effects, such as to be able to discern a generalized principle, for instance. Then discovery of a plurality of generalized principles permits the discovery of the synergetic effects of their complex interactions. The synergetic metaphysical effect produced by the interaction of the known family of generalized principles is probably what is spoken of as wisdom.

162.00 There are eternal generalizations that embrace a plurality of generalizations. The most comprehensive generalization would be that which has U = MP, standing for an eternally regenerative Universe of M times P, where M stands for the metaphysical and P stands for the physical. We could then have a subgeneralization where the physical P = E^r· E^m, where E^r stands for energy as radiation and E^m stands for energy as matter. There are thus orders of generalization in which the lower orders are progressively embraced by the higher orders. There are several hundred first-order generalizations already discovered and equatingly formalized by scientist-artists. There are very few of the higher order generalizations. Because generalizations must hold true without exception, these generalizations must be inherently eternal. Though special-case experiences exemplify employment of eternal principles, those special cases are all inherently terminal; that is, in temporary employment of the principles.

229.02 The notion that commencing the exploration of the unknown with unity as one (such as Darwin's single cell) will provide simple and reliable arithmetical compounding (such as Darwin's theory of evolution: going from simplecomplex; amoebamonkeyman) is an illusion that as yet pervades and debilitates elementary education.

229.06 Universe is the aggregate of eternal generalized principles whose nonunitarily conceptual scenario is unfoldingly manifest in a variety of special cases in local time-space transformative evolutionary events. Humans are each a special-case unfoldment integrity of the complex aggregate of abstract weightless omni- interaccommodative maximally synergetic non-sensorial Universe of eternal timeless principles. Humanity being a macromicro Universe, unfolding eventuation is physically irreversible yet eternally integrated with Universe. Humanity cannot shrink and return into the womb and revert to as yet unfertilized ova.

308.00 Universe is finite because it is the sum total of finitely furnished experiences. The comprehensive set of all experiences synergetically constituting Universe discloses an astronomically numbered variety of subset event-frequency rates and their respective rates of conceptual tunability comprehension. It takes entirely different lengths of time to remember to "look up" different names or facts of past events. Universe, like the dictionary, though integral, is ipso facto nonsimultaneously recollectable; therefore, as with the set of all the words in the dictionary, it is nonsimultaneously reviewable, ergo, is synergetically incomprehensible, as of any one moment, yet is progressively revealing.
 

In reading Synergetics, it becomes abundantly clear where the Wachowski brothers got the speech mannerisms for the Architect.

Sometimes you read this and think that Buckminster Fuller was a genius and cometimes you just think that he really liked tetrahedrons more than is entirely appropriate.

Matt Smith Sends Goodbye Message to Dr. Who Fans

Didier Sornette at TED: Predicting Financial Crashes, Dragon Kings

Links for Later 6-14-13

1. An idea whose time has come: adaptive Bayesian testing and approval of therapeutics. How personalized medicine will look in the coming years.
2. Edward Snowden to South China Morning Post: "I'm neither traitor nor hero. I'm an American."
3. Russian lawmakers are really afraid of gay people.
4. Hugh "Wool" Howey: why all authors should self-publish.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson's Rice Commencement Speech

Joss Whedon's Wesleyan Commencement Speech

Links for Later 6-5-13

First, three from The Browser:
1. Notes on war and return from a soldier's wife.
2. Patrick Leigh Fermor makes fun of W. Somerset Maugham's stammer, and other stories. Third in a series.
3. What it's like to be gay in Moscow at the moment.

Next, one from Jonathan Coulthart:
4. Shoryu Hatoba, modern kamon (crest) artist.

5. Nikola Tesla's productivity hacks.
6. "Erick Erickson is derpy."
7. Dutch postal art.

Nihil est quod perstet in orbe.
There is nothing in the world that does not change.

Kevin Smith v. Grant Morrison

On Batman and how to gain enlightenment in this life.

Erased Advice for College Grads

This month, hundreds of thousands of new college graduates will be swamped with advice, from "plastics" to "follow your dreams", as well as some very nice engraved pens. Much of the advice is, as Garrison Keillor called it, "self-erasing", particularly that delivered by well-meaning relatives and commencement speakers. I've given and received my share of this advice, but there's one thing I forgot to say: right now, you're in the process of dumping not only the self-erasing platitudes, but also a lot of the knowledge and skills you've built up to this point. Instead, you should be thinking about how to store them more effectively. Somewhere in the confusion of starting in a real job, moving to a new city, getting a first real apartment, we regularly discard or ignore some big skills we've built up to this point. We lose the musical instruments we've played, the foreign language, the sport we lettered in.

I know a lot of thirty and forty year olds who used to play the piano, used to speak French fluently, used to be nationally ranked swimmers. Then, one day, the last recital, final exam, or swim meet happened, and they never used the skill again, only to miss it ten years later. It takes a lot of effort to recover at that point; the better course is to continue to do somewhat less practice of the skill, rather than none at all. Somewhat less doesn't seem like a particularly attractive option at first, but it's the option that keeps the skill alive and on backup without taking up huge amounts of time. It's also a good deal more fun to spend twenty minutes in the water than it is to have a full-on two hour practice with a coach, or twenty minutes playing pop songs rather than hours practicing scales. So, do somewhat less of the things you've been doing, because it's somewhat more than what you'll do if you try to keep going full bore on everything despite the pressures of life.

The second thing is, look over all the notes for all of your classes, and condense the greatest hits from them. If you've just finished college, the temptation is to pitch everything from your memory and from your dorm room so you don't have to ship it home. The smarter thing to do is to sort out the most useful things, dump them in some kind of word processor file or single notebook, and keep them organized for when they might be useful. Remember, you probably won't need all of this, but something is going to come in handy some time in the future. Write it up with one of those fancy pens they gave you, if it makes you happy.

Space Oddity - Chris Hadfield

Music video rom the International Space Station.

The New Unbanked

Medical marijuana dispensaries in Colorado and California cannot access banks (or American Express), and have to either pay taxes in cash, launder their money (legally) through a shell corporatioin, or use the owner's personal accounts.

Links for Later 5-9-13

1. The NSA's guide to searching the web.
2. Visualizing 0.5 seconds of high frequency trading.
3. US Dialect Map.
4. Brain boosting drugs.
5. Font guys Hoefler & Frere-Jones.
6. The astonishing life of Sadakichi Hartmann.
7. Free diving and attention deconcentration.
8. Shane Black, director of Iron Man 3, writes funny scripts. You should read them.
9. How to brand a "useless" degree.

Nimoy vs Quinto

An Audi commercial featuring smack talking, Spock playing, car driving actors.

Richie Havens - Freedom

Links for Later 4-11-13

1. Is grad school a cult? “In academia, perseverance is redefined as the ability to suffer silently or to survive on family wealth.”
2. CISPA is an idiotic intrusion on your privacy by people who have no idea about technology or civil rights.
3. Scott Turow also seems to have no idea about technology in publishing or the true scope of property rights.
4. Ten websites that will get you started on coding.
5. The real pivot.
6. Time series in big data.
7. Why funding science is always a good idea.

Sleeping Forest - Rise of Nature

Listening to this after hearing on Echoes.

Protips for Psychonauts

Lessons for those of you trying out those wacky new psychedelic molecules ginned up in offshore Chinese drug fabs or Idaho missile silos or wherever, according to the cover story in this week's New York Magazine:

1. Do not sell bulk quantities of esoteric drugs, much less LSD, to people who are described as "big fans of yours". This is a euphemism for "DEA agents". You will go to prison for a very long time.

2. Do not inject high doses of something called bromo-dragonFLY into your arm. It is evidently the strongest serotonin agonist known to humanity and will shut off your circulation, possibly causing you to lose that arm. That would be bad.

Transparent Brains

Kwanghun Chun and members of Karl Deisseroth's lab at Stanford have developed a technique for making preserved brains transparent, so an in-situ 3-D model can be seen. The process, called Clarity, allows for multiple rounds of staining and microscopic examination to occur. More at The New York Times.

Links for Later 4-5-13

1. Someone tries Modafanil as a cognitive/performance enhancer, gets mixed results.
2. BJ Fogg's Behavior Grid: 15 ways behavior can change.
3. Ukelele Orchestra of Great Britain plays Wheetus' "Teenage Dirtbag".
4. Obama Administration makes another attempt to gut Social Security.
5. Another PhD begs you not to get one.
6. Tim Ferriss/Bittorrent explain why you should treat your book like a startup.
7. Tim Ferriss's Quantified Self notes, and his undergrad LSD cognitive enhancement study.
8. Massha Gessen explains how The Americans gets Russians right.

Alec Baldwin Interviews Lewis Lapham

This Lewis Lapham interview from last December is fascinating throughout, as Lapham's Quarterly is:

Lewis Lapham: Right. On the other hand by the time grandfather got to be Mayor of San Francisco in 1942 he ran as an Independent. He was very open. I mean he would pick hitchhikers up. He never had a bodyguard, he never had tinted windows –

Alec Baldwin: He was more genuine. 

Lewis Lapham: – he used to like to go into the saloons in San Francisco late at night and the – he wanted to get a bond issue passed to replace the street cars on Market Street with busses, and there was some resistance about that, so he put it to a bet. He said, ‘Okay, there will be a race. I will race from the Ferry building to City Hall. I will ride an elephant against a trolley car, and if the elephant beats the trolley car we have the bond issue. If not, not.’

But he was a gambling man so he insisted on a handicap, and the handicap was that the elephant would be allowed to go through red lights. The elephant won. The bond issue passed.

Links for Later 4-1-13

1. The anti-rentier agenda.
2. Network theory reveals altitude sickness is actually two (or more) separate diseases.
3. How Kickstarter worked on Craig Mod's republishing effort.
4. Microsoft fails to listen to its user base, continues Modern push.
5. Adam Grant on the importance of helping and giving.
6. Mapping with dollars.
7. Anne Carson profiled in the NYT
8. Effects of vasoactive intestinal peptide on the response properties of cells in area 17 of the cat visual cortex. My go-to reference for attention at the cellular/molecular level.

Aleksandar Hemon Interviewed in Guernica

Sasha Hemon knows writing is nonlinear:

In writing class, it’s easy to fall into the trap of saying, “Oh, this draft is a little better than that one. Anything can be incrementally improved.” But there’s a very simple rule of writing: it’s all shit, until it isn’t. Steady, incremental improvement does not work in art. Some people wake up one morning and they write a fucking great book. Or they write shit for twenty years and somehow, miraculously, one day, because they have made all the mistakes they could have made writing shit, they write something that contains no mistakes. It’s fucking perfect. I’d written shit for many years. Then I came here and looking through what I’d written in Bosnia, I found a paragraph, randomly, that was not shit, and I thought, “That’s how I want to write.” 
 

I used to live down the block from Hemon, and a couple of blocks away from Studs Terkel. You never knew who was going to be out for a walk on a Saturday.

Hemon's new book, The Book of my Lives, looks like a heck of a read.

Bruce Sterling's "Closing Benediction" for SXSW 2013

Now let's all head over to his house with a keg and our Google goggles.

Links for Later 3-19-13

1. Kirtsaeng v. Wiley decided: first sale is first sale, even if publisher wishes it were otherwise. Heinlein's pre-comment.
2. More good decisions: Why the EFF won on the National Security Letter issue.
3. Urban Explorer Bradley Garrett profiled.
4. Anne Carson talks about Red Doc>.
5. Elon Musk at TED.

Thomas Nagel Mind and Cosmos Roundup

I'm going to end up reading that Thomas Nagel book that has everyone atwitter, even though the reviews of it so far make me think that his alternative theory of non-reductionist, non-materialist reality is like watching Kirk Cameron explain Christianity, in that it's so poorly done that it encourages you to believe the exact opposite, due to the sloppy thinking exhibited in the argument. Though I'm a christian, Cameron makes a stronger argument for atheism that Hitchens ever did. Though I'm sympathetic to critiques of the materialist worldview, I think Nagel makes a stronger case for why the physical world is all there is than most materialists.

Reviews of Mind and Cosmos:

Jennifer Slusser, New York Times
H Allen Orr, NYRB
Andrew Ferguson, The Weekly Standard
Brad DeLong's comments from his blog
Leiter Reports, also here, here
Leiter & Weissberg, The Nation

On the Limits of Empiricism

Those in the world who speak of the regularities underlying the phenomena, it seems, manage to apprehend their crude traces. But these regularities have their very subtle aspect, which those who rely on mathematical astronomy cannot know of. Still even these are nothing more than traces. As for the spiritual processes described in the [Book of Changes] that "when they are stimulated, penetrate every situation in the realm," mere traces have nothing to do with them. This spiritual state by which foreknowledge is attained can hardly be sought through changes, of which in any case only the cruder sort are attainable. What I have called the subtlest aspect of these traces, those who discuss the celestial bodies attempt to know by depending on mathematical astronomy; but astronomy is nothing more than the outcome of conjecture.

-Shen Kuo

 



RIP Shannon Larratt

This morning, Shannon Larratt, founder of BME.com, body modifier and longtime internet personality, posted posthumously to his website. It appears that he's passed away following a long and extremely painful illness. He was a unique character and will be sorely missed by many.

Links for Later 3-13-13

1. How to get set up with an API in Pharma (hint: get an experienced consultant on board first).
2. The Feltron Annual Report 2012 is out.
3. Management advice for Pope Francis I, who was elected today.
4. Drawers, well organized.
5. How many books do you have to sell to get on the Amazon bestseller list?
6. Michael Crichton on Jasper Johns.

Shape-shifting Jesus Found in Coptic Text

From the Manuscript of Pseudo Cyril, as quoted by LiveScience:

"Then the Jews said to Judas: How shall we arrest him [Jesus], for he does not have a single shape but his appearance changes. Sometimes he is ruddy, sometimes he is white, sometimes he is red, sometimes he is wheat coloured, sometimes he is pallid like ascetics, sometimes he is a youth, sometimes an old man ..."
 

Possibly the most satisfying headline to write since "Headless Woman in Topless Bar".

Bradley Manning's Statement in Audio

The Freedom of the Press Foundation released a leaked copy of Bradley Manning's statement from the recent plea hearing. A transcript of the statement can be found at Freedom of the Press Foundation's website. A commentary on Manning's statement by Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg can be found at ellsberg.net. Commentary from Glenn Greenwald is available from The Guardian.

Fred Wilson Interviews Jack Dorsey

Fred Wilson (Union Square Ventures, AVC) and Jack Dorsey (Twitter, Square) had a really interesting conversation at the NYU Entrepreneur Festival.(Video on Fred's blog)

A few notes from the talk:

• A good company favors a VC with good questions & intelligent perspective over a VC with just a check. Checks are easy to come by, good insight is rare.
• Fast prototyping: Twitter v. 1.0 took two guys two weeks to code. Square took four weeks to MVP.
• "It's good to have friends with problems." Problems tell you where the business needs to go.
• Making something look pretty (or changing marketing) is easy. It's the deep stuff (the "soul") that's hard to get right.
• Obstacles are impermanent: example, Visa's objections to Square. (see also Randy Pausch's Last Lecture, re: brick walls)

Karl Pilkington Meets Michael Palin

Daniel Radcliffe's Guide to Being Daniel Radcliffe

(via Bookshelves of Doom)

Links for Later 2-5-13

1. Best long reads about Adam Swartz; Larry Lessig's talk on Adam's Law
2. Mark Suster interviews Clayton Christensen about the future of education
3. Kieron Gillen's playlist for Young Avengers
4. Roko's Basilisk as creepypasta
5. Peonies
6. Nine Inch Nails vs. Carly Rae Jepson, "Call Me a Hole"

Amanda Palmer: The Art of Asking

Or, how Amanda Palmer became Queen of TED.

Charlie Munger on Human Judgment

Charlie Munger, the other great investor behind Berkshire Hathaway, gave a speech on misjudgment in 1995 at Harvard. Here it is.

(via boingboing)

Bruno, De Umbris, 12th Concept (M)

Deformed animals take beautiful forms in the heavens. Metals which lack luster shine when in their own planets. For neither man, nor animals, nor metals, exist here as they there exist. For whatever happens here, occurs there with greater vigor. The virtues, which separate and multiply in matter, there combine and unify. Clearly, as the Platonists say: ideas are not the only part of living life and developing reason; illumination, lifebringing and unification, conforming to superior agencies; these are the reasons by which one develops intelligence and memory of the forms.

-Giordano Bruno

De Umbris Idearum

Twelfth Concept M

Bruno, De Umbris, 23rd Intention (Z)

For shadows, there is no time save this time, no space save this space, no motion save this motion. It is abstracted from all truth, yet is not without it. But, it’s also not impossible to think (if this is an ideal shadow) that the opposite, or something else is also true, since it is all one. With shadows, there is no opposite, neither darkness nor light. So man took refuge in the Tree of Knowledge, and knew shadow and light, truth and falsehood, good and evil, when God called out to him: “Adam, where are you?”

-Giordano Bruno

De Umbris Idearum

Twenty-Third Intention: Z

 

Fresh Guacamole - PES

Oscar nominated short film. Tasty.

Links for Later 2-22-13

1. Boiling Spacetime: how time works in the graphic novel
2. "The body is everywhere"
3. Do you own your cell phone? DMCA says, not so much
4. The brain is not computable
5. Shortage of PhD jobs

Meteorite Strikes Russia

Lots of amazing footage is coming out today following a meteorite impact in the Urals region of Russia. Big validation for the Russian car cam trend.

Links for Later 2-14-13

1. Oscar Pistorius charged with murdering Reeva Steenkamp.
2. Tesla reveals trip log for NYT review, revealing anomalies.
3. Notes from Webstock. Great material here.
4. Mouse models of inflammation called into question.

Quote of the Day

The best way to complain is to make things.

-James Murphy

Links for Later 2-9-13

1. Justin Peters has a long profile of Aaron Swartz in Slate
2. Dan Blank and Seth Godin talk about Seth's Kickstarter, multi-book publishing
3. Early color film footage from 1922

Memento Mori

Take a look at this photograph of a group of naval cadets on the front porch of the superintendant's residence. It's a fine day, sometime around 1900, probably in the spring. Meaningful glances are passing among several of the young people on the porch, suggesting a lot of stories in their future.

But from our standpoint, all of the stories are done. All of the people in this photo went about their lives, fell in love, fought, grew old, died. A lot of art is like that, but very little of it states this fact so clearly.

Paul Laffoley on Alchemy

(via boingboing)

The Future University

There's a heated debate going on over the future of higher education. Will the Next Big Thing be MOOCs/online classes? Over on The Awl, Clay Shirky responded today to Maria Bustillos's earlier article, which was critical of the MOOC model, and which followed Aaron Bady's earlier Inside Higher Ed post on the disruption of higher education's ecosystem by the online hordes.

Judah Pollack Defends the Liberal Arts

Or, the importance of narrative in our thoughts.

Rail Riding Surfer Hatchets 300 Pound Jesus, Saves Woman

Rock on, Kai, rock on. Best interview ever.

Marcin Ryczek - Swans

Marcin Ryczek found the crucial moment in this scene of a man feeding swans on a snowy day.

(via Colossal)

Links for Later 2-3-13

1. How to debate Paul Krugman (like an idiot)
2. How to write your PhD Thesis in three months
3. Ex-votos
4. Bill Gates' annual letter
5. The history of the Liberal Arts
6. Visualizing neural activity in the brain of a zebrafish in real time
7. The Lost Labyrinth of Versailles

The Return of Nic Jones

Folk legend Nic Jones made rare concert appearances in 2011 and 2012, playing in the videos above with his son Joseph. Good to see him up on stage after a long absence.

The Future Is Now, Vol. LXXXVII, Good News Edition

In Mali, it appears that many or most of the rare manuscripts had been spirited away from the Ahmed Baba Institute by local Malians before retreating Islamists burned the library down.

In America, quadruple amputee and veteran Brendan Marocco received a double arm transplant that may enable him to have fine motor control over his new limbs. Awesome.

The Art of the Pitch

From Michael Weinreb's wonderful profile of Donald E. Westlake, prolific writer of mysteries and other books at Grantland:

[Westlake] used to attend a weekly poker game with Block, Penzler, and a group of writers and editors, and once he made an offhand mention that someone ought to write a satire of Arthur Hailey's disaster novels, Airport and Hotel, set in the men's room at Bryant Park, and call it Comfort Station. The next day, his agent called to say he'd sold the book.

"What book?" Westlake said.
He published Comfort Station in 1973, under the name J. Morgan Cunningham, seven years before the release of the first Airplane! movie. (Cover blurb: "'I wish I had written this book!' — Donald E. Westlake.")
 

Read the whole thing.

People are Awesome 2013

The latest annual installment of people doing things that make you want to go out and do those things. (via kottke)

Majorized REM

REM's "Losing My Religion" mode-shifted into a major key, which produces a really interesting self-cover of the original. The band subsequently reposted this on their own website. (via boingboing)

All Verbs

 from Wikipedia's copula article:

In Siouan languages like Lakota, in principle almost all words — according to their structure — are verbs. So not only (transitive, intransitive and so-called 'stative') verbs but even nouns often behave like verbs and do not need to have copulas.
For example, the word wičháša refers to a man, and the verb "to-be-a-man" is expressed as wimáčhaša/winíčhaša/wičháša (I am/you are/he is a man). Yet there also is a copula héčha (to be a ...) that in most cases is used: wičháša hemáčha/heníčha/héčha (I am/you are/he is a man).
In order to express the statement "I am a doctor of profession," one has to say pezuta wičháša hemáčha. But, in order to express that that person is THE doctor (say, that had been phoned to help), one must use another copula iyé (to be the one): pežúta wičháša (kiŋ) miyé yeló (medicine-man DEF ART I-am-the-one MALE ASSERT).
In order to refer to space (e.g., Robert is in the house), various verbs are used, e.g., yaŋkÁ (lit.: to sit) for humans, or háŋ/hé (to stand upright) for inanimate objects of a certain shape. "Robert is in the house" could be translated as Robert thimáhel yaŋké (yeló), whereas "there's one restaurant next to the gas station" translates as "owótethipi wígli-oínažiŋ kiŋ hél isákhib waŋ hé".

Lakota also has men's and women's spoken language versions. What a delightful language.

Links for Later 1-18-13

1. John Crowley on death, infinity and Giordano Bruno in Lapham's Quarterly
2. N+1's Gary Sernovitz profiles Steven Cohen, hedge fund manager and art collector
3. WG Sebald's writing tips
4. The Platonist of the Midwest (via @t3dy)
5. Writing on a windy day

Why the Platinum Coin Must Never Be Minted

Tim Duy's post on why the Very Serious People inside the Beltway couldn't countenance the Big Coin option is deeply insightful:

As the debate continued, it became increasingly evident that the platinum coin threatened the conventional wisdom in very deep and profound ways.   It was a threat that could not be endured by Washington.

This realization hit me this morning, working on my last piece.  Begin with the effectiveness of monetary policy at the zero bound.  Or, more accurately, the lack of effectiveness as the Federal Reserve is swapping one zero-interest asset for another.  Rarely do we take this to its logical conclusion for fiscal policy:  If there is no difference between cash and Treasury bonds, why should we issue bonds at all?  Why not simply issue cash?  In other words, at the zero bound, what is the argument against monetizing deficit spending?

Indeed, the lack of any difference explains how Japan can sustain massive fiscal deficits year after year.  At the zero bound, cash and government debt are the same thing.  We would assume that as long as inflation was not a concern (which it wouldn't be at the zero bound), the fiscal authority could issue as much cash as it wants, so why couldn't it issue as many bonds as it wants?  After all, at the zero bound the two are equivalent.  Hence Japan continues to defy predictions of doom despite ongoing debt issuance. 

Carrying the argument further, the illusion of a difference between cash and debt at the zero bound is counterproductive because it prevents the full application of fiscal policy.  Fears about the magnitude of the government debt prevent sufficient fiscal policy, but such fears are not rational if debt and cash are perfect substitutes. If cash and debt are the same, the fiscal authority should prefer to issue cash if debt concerns create a false barrier to fiscal policy.
...
Bottom Line: The platinum coin idea was ultimately doomed to failure because neither the Federal Reserve nor the Treasury could allow for even the remote possibility it might be successful. Its success would not just alter the political dynamic by removing the the debt ceiling as a threat. The success of a platinum coin would fundamentally alter the conventional wisdom about the proper separation of fiscal and monetary policy and the need to control the debt immediately.

(via Mark Thoma)

RIP Aaron Swartz

Internet Activist and Reddit co-founder Aaron Swartz committed suicide this morning in his New York apartment. Appreciations of his life by Cory Doctorow and Lawrence Lessig.

Teething

A nicely done dissection of the laminar bone layers of mandible and maxilla to reveal the adult tooth buds and cancellous bone prior to eruption of the buds through the gumline. Note how the canines are situated deeply within the jawbones, and how the buds are situated among the roots of the baby teeth.

Anatomy is cool.

(photo via @jebcorliss)

Tanlines - Brothers

Links for Later 1-3-13

1. Sharers, takers, carers, makers 
2. The amusement park abandoned at the heart of Berlin, used in Hanna
3. Aaron Carter is, surprisingly, a human being
4. Where murders happen in Chicago
5. Hypomania, schizotypic disorder and creativity

The Fiscal Cliff Deal: the Stupid-Evil Axis Returns

We are once again at a point where we must allocate the Obama Administration's handling of a fiscal deal along the Stupid-Evil Axis.

Paul Krugman votes for Stupid, and thinks that future deals will be worse because the President is a perpetual caver. Tim Duy thinks we need to move somewhat toward the Evil end of the Axis, and that the President wants to structure future deals so that they are unpalatable to all parties, because he truly believes in centrism. As Robert Reich put it, centrists believe that the correct answer lies halfway between right and wrong. Duy:

I frequently see commentators saying that Obama is terrible at the bargaining table, but I can't help thinking that he is getting pretty much what he wanted.  Despite all the hate heaped upon him by the right, Obama just isn't a progressive, and we shouldn't expect him to seek a deal as if he was one.  After all, what progressive ensures a tax hike on the lower and middle classes (the expiration of the payroll tax cut with no offsetting cut elsewhere)?  Obama seems to believe the best deal is the one no one likes.
 

Bonus Evil vote from Andrew Samwick, who believes that the Obama-Bush tax cuts make our current fiscal position untenable.

For my part, I simply think that you're in a bad place to begin with if you've made a choice that lies anywhere on the Stupid-Evil Axis. We cannot afford another administration that ends up on the Axis as regularly as the last two (Obama and Bush) have.

(links via Mark Thoma)

Quote of the Day

“You remain invested in your inner child by exploding every day. You don’t worry about the future, you don’t worry about the past — you just explode.”

—Ray Bradbury

God's Own Prototypes

“There he goes. One of God's own prototypes. Some kind of high powered mutant never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die.”

― Hunter S. Thompson

2012 in video

Links for Later 12-20-12

1. A genetic basis for exploration? (via boingboing)
2. Know when to fold 'em

United States of Pop 2012 - DJ Earworm

Everything is delightful about Joshua Foer's profile of John Quijada, who invented a "precise" and "concise" language called Ithkuil. The language attracts the attention of some very strange Russians and a Ukranian right-wing terrorist, who initially think Foer is a spy from the Pentagon. The language is quite complex, requiring a very long time to formulate sentences, even for Quijada, making it challenging for daily use.

In the original version of Ithkuil, the word Ithkuil literally means “hypothetical representation of a language,” which reflects the fact that it was never meant to be casually spoken. It was an attempt to demonstrate what language could be, not what it should be. “The idea of Ithkuil is to convey deeper levels of human cognition than are usually conveyed in human language,” Quijada told me. For example, the phrase “characteristic of a single component among the synergistic amalgamation of things” is a single adjective: oicaštik’.

If that word looks as though it required extreme acts of tonsillar gymnastics to produce, it is because no sound or syllable is wasted in Ithkuil. Every language has its own phonemic inventory, or library of sounds, from which a speaker can string together words. Consonant-poor Hawaiian has just thirteen phonemes. English has around forty-two, depending on dialect. In order to pack as much meaning as possible into each word, Ithkuil has fifty-eight phonemes. The original version of the language included a repertoire of grunts, wheezes, and hacks that are borrowed from some of the world’s most obscure tongues. One particular hard-to-make clicklike sound, a voiceless uvular ejective affricate, has been found in only a few other languages, including the Caucasian language Ubykh, whose last native speaker died in 1992.

Links for Later 12-12-12

1. Last triple date day for a while.
2. Seeing the emerald foliot
3. Post in which several fraught comments attempt to show us reasons why Misha Collins, who plays the angel Castiel on Supernatural should not "just die". I judge that "once arrested for reading a book atop a bank, because he was looking for better light" is sufficient reason for continued life
4. How to get real startup ideas vs. "sitcom" startup ideas

Links for Later 11-28-12

1. Kill Math (via @kortina)
2. Mother Jones profile of Harper Reed
3. Data Analysis Class Notes

Brad DeLong Begs to Differ with Thomas Nagel

By the rising of the sun, DeLong refutes Nagel's proposition that the human mind has privileged access to objective reality, that consciousness is not the product of evolution in a physical context, and that Nagel knows what the hell he's trying to prove. The discussion continues here. DeLong, not content to disabuse false-thinking economists, has embarked on correcting false-thinking philosophers:

Thomas Nagel argued that his reason could not have been the result of blind Darwinian evolution. He said:

• My reason tells me that I know the sun rises in the east.
• My reason tells me that I know that if I am facing north then east is on my right.
• Therefore my reason tells me that, if I see the sun rising on my right, I know I am facing north.
• And my reason tells me that I know that if I see the sun rising on my right I know I am facing north.
• Et cetera…
• This kind of transcendent access to truths of objective reality is not something that a jumped-up monkey with Darwinian heuristics can have.
• Therefore I am more than a jumped-up monkey with Darwinian heuristics: I am angelic reasoning being with direct unmediated access to objective reality.

I responded that he knew nothing of the kind:

His Darwinian heuristics had made a Humean guess that because the sun had risen in the east every single previous day and because facing north had placed east on his right every single previous day that the same held true today. I pointed out that this might be wrong--that he did not know that because the sun was on his right he was facing north, and did not know that he knew that he was facing north, and did not know that he knew that he knew he was facing north, but that he was just guessing.

And, to underscore this, I pointed out that I had once seen the sun rise due south, in which case if I had put the sun on my right I would have been facing not north but east. (I did not point out--but could have--that the claim that if you are facing north east is on your right fails at the South Pole: at the South Pole east is not on your right, north is on your right.)

While I am entirely sympathetic to and willing to entertain the position that consciousness is a fundamental entity, even without physical instantiation, and that we are indeed angelic beings inserted into the meat, I think that Nagel has failed to prove such a position, and has in fact tripped over his own feet in an attempt to do so. Point to DeLong.

Lest You Think Your Thanksgiving Feast Too Large

In the restaurant on the Rue Saint-Augustin, Parisian actor and gourmand Yves Mirande would dazzle his juniors, French and American, by dispatching a lunch of raw Bayonne ham and fresh figs, a hot sausage in crust, spindles of filleted pike in a rich rose sauce Nantua, a leg of lamb larded with anchovies, artichokes on a pedestal of foie gras, and four or five kinds of cheese, with a good bottle of Bordeaux and one of champagne, after which he would call for the Armagnac and remind Madame to have ready for dinner the larks and ortolans she had promised him, with a few langoustes and a turbot — and, of course, a fine civet made from the marcassin, or young wild boar, that the lover of the leading lady in his current production had sent up from his estate in the Sologne. "And while I think of it," I once heard him say, "we haven't had any woodcock for days, or truffles baked in the ashes, and the cellar is becoming a disgrace — no more '34s and hardly any '37s. Last week, I had to offer my publisher a bottle that was far too good for him, simply because there was nothing between the insulting and the superlative."
-AJ Liebling
Between Meals

I'm not a scientist, man. I don't know whether the Earth is a sphere revolving around the Sun, or if the world is flat, and the Sun is just some guy in a glowing chariot flying overhead. All I know is that one of his horses pooped on my lawn once, and that I flew from Florida to Iowa in the dead of winter for reasons having nothing to do with the scenery.

Links for Later 11-19-12

1. Harper Reed and Obama2012's tech team
2. Decoding the secrets of the Oculists

Links for Later 11-16-12

1. Elle Luna: "User research doesn't produce user-centered design." Advice for designers in startups.
2. William Langwiesche joins the French Foreign Legion (for a profile)
3. Kelly Starrett, physical therapist and CrossFit coach
4. "His works in number, bulk, and uselessness are not surpassed in the whole field of learning"

The Prague Astronomical Clock

The 600 Years from the macula on Vimeo.

Photo: Andrebnu on Flickr

The Prague Astronomical Clock, built 602 years ago into the walls of the old Town Hall, expanded and rebuilt multiple times, tracks the sun, moon, zodiac, standard time, the twelve hour variable day, the calendar, and other variables, and features moving figues of the twelve apostles, cardinal virtues and vices, and animals.

For its 600th anniversary, the city of Prague put on this display.

(via The Long Now Foundation)

Zola Jesus at the Guggenheim

(via Pitchfork)

Deficit Math

I was recently asked the following question on Facebook by a high school classmate of mine:

In 2011 the fed gov collected $2.303 trillion in tax revenue. Interest on debt that year totaled $454.4 billion, mandatory spending (read entitlements required to be paid by law) totaled $2.025 trillion. So mandatory spending plus interest on debt exceeded total revenue by $176.4 billion, that is without one dollar being spent on discretionary gov (read military, DHS, FBI, CIA, education, energy, etc.). In 2012 the shortfall increased 43% to $251.8 billion. So what is BO going to do to fix this?

This is my answer:

Ok, so when we think about deficit reduction, I always like to start with a graph from the Center for Budget Policy and Priorities. (cbpp.org) Graph is here. and shows that there are, in 2012, three major factors driving the deficits: a war (mainly in AFPAK currently), the Bush tax cuts, and the economic downturn + economic recovery measures. So, the three things he should do is end the war(s) in AFPAK, end the Bush tax cuts (for everybody, or at least on the top earners), and do more stimulus in the form of infrastructure purchases (e.g., rebuilding after the hurricane). That last will push up the deficit in the close years, but shrinks the impact of the economic downturn overall. The remaining deficit is a rounding error.

Now, what has he done? He's moved toward an exit for most of the troops in AFPAK. He's pushing a jobs bill of some sort, which is a wait-and-see proposition. He could do nothing on the fiscal cliff and close a big chunk of the remaining deficit, but I suppose he & Congress will cut some sort of foolish deal on that. If we're lucky, they'll rearrange the defense cuts to fall on the programs the Pentagon has been trying to get rid of for a while now, and keep just the 3% tax hike above $250k, plus a similar bump on cap gains & dividends.

In the out years, past 2030, the biggest driver is expected to be healthcare costs, so the Obamacare health cost controls are a first try at reining those in--if healthcare keeps growing as it is, we're all in serious trouble. Social Security needs some rejiggering, ideally by adjusting the maximum payroll tax to whatever it would have been if they'd passed inflation-based increases like they were supposed to over the past 40 years.

Clement Briend

Clever combinations of photos projected onto trees from Clement Briend's Cambodian Trees project.

(via This Isn't Happiness)

Links for Later 11-13-12

1. In which Snake Plisskin sends a postcard from Venice
2. "Lumpers and hair-splitters"
3. How Joshua Foer learned a language in 22 hours, and how you can too.

Do It With a Rock Star

You see, liberal America, what you have done to this country? ...and may I say, well done.

The Low Anthem - To Ohio

Flail!

For those of you with a difficult-to-shop-for hunter of the undead on your Christmas list, here's a handy little gift guide. I'm a little surprised by how much of this is available on Amazon.

Also, flail!

The Desert of the Real

Andrew Solomon's NYT article on the family life of prodigies has a lot of good material in it; it avoids a lot of the cliches about prodigies, while also avoiding the cliche about avoiding the cliches. This quote from pianist Ken Noda struck a particular chord, as it deals with the lifelong developmental challenges faced by anyone in their creative life:

“Young people like romance stories and war stories and good-and-evil stories and old movies because their emotional life mostly is and should be fantasy,” says Ken Noda, a great piano prodigy in his day who gave up public performance and now works at the Metropolitan Opera. “They put that fantasized emotion into their playing, and it is very convincing. I had an amazing capacity for imagining these feelings, and that’s part of what talent is. But it dries up, in everyone. That’s why so many prodigies have midlife crises in their late teens or early 20s. If our imagination is not replenished with experience, the ability to reproduce these feelings in one’s playing gradually diminishes.”

The difficulty faced by the families of prodigious children is how to balance feeding the talent against feeding the person who has the talent. I'm reminded of an article by Cynthia Gorney about Rafael Nadal (discussed elsewhere in BRS), which mentioned that his uncle trained him to be not just a great tennis player, but also a gentleman and decent human being, and that both of them were of the opinion that if you couldn't be the latter things, then being a great tennis player wouldn't be worth it. There has to be something that helps bridge across the desert.

A Message from the Rosebud Nursing Home

"If you let the Republican voter suppression steal the election, we're gonna burn this motherf*cker down!"

Joss Whedon Endorses Mitt Romney

for the zombie apocalypse, vote Romney.

Gorey's Miniature Manifesto

From a recent review of Edward Gorey's works in the LA Times:

In his letters to Peter Neumeyer, a university professor with whom he collaborated on three children's books, Gorey offered a mini-manifesto, "E. Gorey's Great Simple Theory About Art." Gorey being Gorey, his artistic credo could fit on the head of a pin. Simply put, it's "the theory ... that anything that is art ... is presumably about some certain thing, but is really always about something else, and it's no good having one without the other, because if you just have the something it is boring and if you just have the something else it's irritating."

Links for Later 10-23-12

1. How to make xkcd-style graphs using R, javascript or python.
2. How to save your kindle books from being deleted by Amazon.
3. How Intrade manipulation provides a positive return to smart investors.

Letters from the Front

A grim letter published in the Washington Post from Afghanistan in the waning part of the war from all around good guy, 1st Lt. Adam Swartzbaugh:

“Whether we are winning a war is irrelevant in my platoon,” Swartzbaugh said in his letter to the editor that was posted in the newspaper’s full-page “Free For All” section on Saturday.

“What do my men and I consider a successful mission? It is when we have done something, anything, to further protect the lives of our soldiers, period,” Swartzbaugh said. “In so far as we are able to do this, my men will continue pushing themselves further and deeper in every dimension of the physical, psychological and spiritual -- to the very limits of war, and to the end of life.”

The Question Is

Can Mitt Romney close the deal tonight? This is his last chance to show the American people that he's going to be the best representative for America out in the world. We know Obama can do the job, but we don't have the answer to whether the Mittster can do any better; I think that he's another smirking plutocrat, but I'm prepared to be proved wrong. Let's see what happens tonight.

Contact Juggling

Akihiro Yanai does some wonderful contact work in this video.

Quote of the Day

Traveller, there is no path,
The path must be forged as you walk.

-Antonio Machado

Links for Later 10-16-12

1. The Desert of the Real: when quantum finance shows up, things get weird
2. Medical devices pipelined from academia to industry
3. Why the tea party won't just die
4. Vikram Pandit ousted at Citigroup. Citigroup stock still down 89% from peak.
5. Art heist: Where was Thomas Crown at the time?
6. William Carpenter interviewed by Days of Yore
7. La Serrrata ("the closing"), the downfall of Venice, and the self-destructive impulses of the 1% by Chrystia Freeland

LP: The Mountain of Books

Those Dutch sure know how to build a library. Just look at it.

(via marginal revolution)

Who Won the Debate?

If you believe that what is said is less important than how one looks when saying it, then clearly, Mitt Romney won the evening. It's a statement on the pundits that this was their nearly unanimous view. As far as it goes, Barack Obama needs to speak in short, concrete sentences, use periods at the end of sentences rather than dashes, and look like he's actually more interested in being reelected than the average voter is in reelecting him. It would also be helpful if Mr. Obama didn't betray Social Security in the course of the upcoming budget negotiations, as he did in the debate.

On the other hand, the candidate who is not Mr. Obama did the following:

• Repudiated his own tax scheme;
• Denied that Romneycare and Obamacare are virtually identical, which they are;
• Claimed that his own healthcare plan has characteristics that it doesn't;
• Developed amnesia over the past twelve months of his campaign;
• Failed at basic arithmetic

And Mr. Obama got Mr. Romney to do all that by, as Paul Krugman puts it, "going for the capillaries."

If one looks at the content together with the optics, it is much less clear who won last night.