Startup Geometry Podcast EP 014 Renaissance Mathematicus Thony Christie

Thony Christie, historian of science and proprietor of the Renaissance Mathematicus and Whewell's Ghost stops by to talk about Galileo, Newton, the Copernican controversy, and why it was smart to believe that the Earth didn't move.

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The story of how we came to understand that the Earth was not the center of the Universe is one of the most fascinating stories in the whole of the history of science. The debate over Copernicus' heliocentric model lasted for centuries, and was carried out by mathematicians, theologians, philosophers and scientists. Observational evidence initially favored a geocentric model, and definitive proof did not appear until long after the first precise data (captured by Tycho Brahe and compiled by Kepler) had persuaded most scientists of their truth.

Independent scholar Thony Christie takes us through the debate on this episode of Startup Geometry.

Show Notes, Links and Outline:


[0.0.16] How did you get into the study of the History of Science? Eric Temple Bell Men of Mathematics. History of Mathematics and Logic: Church’s list of formal logicians, Boole, Jevons, and others.

[0.3.50] Renaissance Mathematicus and Whewell’s Gazette/Whewell’s Ghost (Whewell pronounced “Hewell”). John Wilkins, historian of biology.

[0.6.30] What was a “mathematicus”? Fields of study: astrology, astronomy, mathematics, cartography, design of engines of war, (sun)dialing, volumetrics.

"DaVinci's Resume": Leonardo DaVinci once sent a letter describing his skills in some of these areas.

[0.14.46] Christoff Clavius. The Galileo Affair. Heliocentricity. Cardinal Barberini. Who can interpret the Bible? Cardinal Bellarmine. The difference between proof and speculation.

[0.27.00] Giordano Bruno. Miguel Serveto (Servetus).

[0.28.14] Newton. Newton & alchemy. Newton & religion. Kepler. Prisca Theologia.

[0.35.44] Interpreting Early Modern systems of thought. Lawrence Principe and William R Newman’s modern alchemical experiments. Phlogiston. Problems with turning lead into gold. (Not a problem for us, but requires a huge particle accelerator.) Roger Bacon.

[0.44.23] Newton predicted the end of the world (not before 2060). Other predictions of the end of the world. Jehovah’s Witnesses. Millerites.

[0.47.47] Discussion of the various Renaissance world systems or models of the universe. Why it’s obvious that the Earth doesn’t move. Tycho Brahe. Johannes Kepler. Gilbert, On the Magnet. How it was finally proved that the Earth does move. Chris Graney on star sizes, Setting Aside All Authority. Torricelli.

[1.00.00] The Rudolphine Tables. Not proof, but Kepler’s system fits the data, so Kepler’s model is probably right. Heliometers and elliptical orbits. Bradley, 1725, finds elliptical movement of stars due to Earth’s movement. Christiaan Huygens. The Earth bulges at the Equator and is flattened at the poles. Later confirmed by stellar parallax, Bessel, 1838.

[1.08.18] Book recommendations. Richard Westfall, Life of Isaac Newton. John Heilbron, Galileo. Chris Graney, Setting Aside All Authority. Eric Scerri, The Periodic Table. My recs: Deborah Harkness, The Jewel House. (she also rediscovered The Book of Soyga, which was part of John Dee’s library, and is a really good fiction writer.) Lost Enlightenment S. Frederick Starr.

Links for Later 10-29-15

1. Maggie Stiefvater reflects on creativity as a form of dream thievery.
2. The Turkish elections are shaping up to be quite a mess. Wishing the Turkish people all the best.
3. Ukrainian elections are shaping up to be just weird. People dressed up as Star Wars characters are winning some elections, getting arrested in others. 
4. The Republican Party's strategy "continues to assume that the government is too mean to rich people and too nice to poor people."
5. A social history of the Salem witches.
6. The soundtrack to Hamilton is on repeat at my house.
7. When Beyonce met Jonathan Groff, as told by Lin-Manuel Miranda: "Groff got embarrassed. But he said I could tell you. Next three tweets.
1.  Beyonce: Did you play the King? Groffsauce: Yes. Beyonce: I'm stealing your walk. I love your walk. Groffsauce: *inarticulate sounds*
2. Beyonce: When you turned away still facing the audience? *BEYONCE DEMONSTRATES FLAWLESSLY* Beyonce: You were your OWN turntable. Love it. 
3. And then, in Groffsauce's own words "Then the ground swallowed me up and I died happy." Thus endeth the meeting of Beyonce & Groffsauce.
4. There is no straight-male equivalent for the ecstasy of Beyonce telling you "I love your walk." ESPECIALLY for Groffsauce, walk enthusiast.
5. Bruce Lee: "Can you teach me that cool kick?" That's the closest I can approximate to what happened to Groffsauce.

Links for Later 10-20-15

1. Kevin Kelly and Mark Frauenfelder list the Top 50 factual podcasts. We are not on this list. Yet.
2. A very good, foul mouthed rant about the status of brain simulation.
3. The frenzy over the puzzle book Masquerade.
4.  Mr. Robot gets introduced to the UK.

Startup Geometry Podcast EP 013: Andrew Johnson

Andrew Johnson wants help you relax. He's an online hypnotherapist and designer of a wildly popular series of hypnotherapy apps and mp3s.

Today, we talk about how to use relaxation techniques, including hypnosis and guided meditation, to change habits and improve quality of life.

We also contrast the mental state of relaxation produced by hypnosis or guided meditation from that of simple mindfulness techniques and the memory palace technique I discussed with Anthony Metivier in the previous episode, which I'm using while I'm interviewing Anthony, as I mention during our conversation ("the beach in Greece"). Anthony is a "non-visualizer", while I'm at the other end of the spectrum.

Anthony also takes us through a simple "aliveness" meditation inspired by Eckhart Tolle, which you can use to help you focus, relax and feel more at home in your body.

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Show Notes and Links

Startup Geometry Podcast EP 012: Anthony Metivier

Anthony Metivier, proprietor of MagneticMemoryMethod.com, has taught fifty thousand people how to improve their memory using the memory palace technique. He is a one man content factory, producing books, podcasts, online videos and courses to teach foreign languages, meditation and relaxation, and memory improvement.



Today, we talk about how you can improve your memory, what makes for a good online course, and why friendship can be  monstrous.

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Show links and notes

Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal reached

Trade representatives reached a deal on the Trans Pacific Partnership this morning. Here's the live press conference:

Links for Later 9-4-15

1. If we regulated firearms like abortions.
2. Why the world is getting weirder.
3. Moog stopping production of the Voyager.
4. Shakespeare's father appears to have been a wealthy wool merchant & tax evader with dodgy connections. Shakespeare himself may have been the family's representative in London who did theatrical producing gigs on the side.
5. Anne Sexton, "The Truth the Dead Know".
6. Paul Romer's article "Endogenous Technological Change" introduced the concept of nonrival and excludable goods 25 years ago. Joshua Gans has a review of its impact. Paul Romer looks back.

The Mysteries of Planned Parenthood

I do not understand how or why a Planned Parenthood counselor would or could advise Sarah Jones to get an abortion when that counselor presumably knew that Sarah Jones was not pregnant.

Startup Geometry Podcast EP 011: Warren Ellis

Warren Ellis is a master storyteller with over twenty years experience producing amazing stories as serials, singles, graphic novels, books and films. He is also a very funny man, in all the best senses of the word.

From his website:

Warren Ellis is the award-winning writer of graphic novels like TRANSMETROPOLITAN, FELL, MINISTRY OF SPACE and PLANETARY, and the author of the NYT-bestselling GUN MACHINE and the “underground classic” novel CROOKED LITTLE VEIN. The movie RED is based on his graphic novel of the same name.

Today, we talk politics, life in the Thames Delta, managing the creative pipeline, quiet technology, glamorless utilities and cunning folk. His new and forthcoming work includes TREES and the new James Bond graphic novels.

Listen on iTunes.
Please subscribe, rate and review us there as well.

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Startup Geometry Podcast EP 010: Nicolas Cole

Today, I talk with Nicolas Cole, a Creative Director with Idea Booth, a branding consultancy and think tank. When he was a teenager, he was a  highly ranked World of Warcraft player and blogger, spending hours online as an Undead Mage while skating through high school. Now, Cole is a Quora Top Writer, author, fitness model, and marketing expert. In this episode, we talk about how he physically and mentally transformed himself over the last seven years, and what it takes to overcome the limitations you impose on yourself.

Listen to us on iTunes

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Show Notes and Links

Links for Later 9-20-15

1. Canada's vanishing data and archives.
2. Warren Ellis' work tools.
3. Are Ad Blockers ethical? I say yes.

Startup Geometry Podcast EP 009: Alice Dreger

In this episode, I talk with Alice Dreger, author of Galileo's Middle Finger and former Professor of Clinical Medical Humanities and Bioethics at the Feinberg School of Medicine of Northwestern University in Chicago. She resigned from the position following a dispute over censorship of an issue of the medical humanities journal Atrium.

I first heard about Alice when she livetweeted her son's sex ed class, and in this episode we talk about the state of sex ed today, her work as an advocate for intersex individuals and conjoined twins, how she became interested in studying scientific controversies and contrarians, and answer some questions from listeners.

Listeners who have what used to be called a "sensitive constitution" may wish to avoid this episode, as we speak frankly about several adult topics, including genital anatomy, sexual behavior, and academic funding. Due to a higher than normal amount of email this month, any complaints about this episode must be hand-delivered to our Complaints Department, located in the secret caverns underneath Ulaan Bator, Mongolia.

If you enjoy these podcasts, please use iTunes to download, subscribe, rate and review each podcast, as this helps introduce us to new listeners.

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Show Links and Notes:

Oliver Sacks on Smell: The Nervous System and the Soul

Startup Geometry Podcast EP 008: Justine Simonson and Marcus Lehmann of How To Make It In Berlin

Today, I talk with Justine Simonson and Marcus Lehmann, filmmakers and creators of the YouTube series How To Make It In _________.

From Justine &  Marcus:

How To Make It In: Berlin is the premier season of a web series about small businesses and the owners who took a risk in creating them. This season features 10 unique entrepreneurs and small business owners from Berlin's street food scene, tech startups, the service industry and more. Each season will be filmed in a different city around the world; Berlin is the premier location. Part travel show, part business series, How To Make It In:________ presents an in-the-know guide to its location while also delivering helpful tips for anyone who's ever dreamed of quitting their day job and starting fresh.

The How To Make It In: Berlin series is available at  www.howtomakeitin.co and  on YouTube

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Show Notes

• What makes Berlin a good city for startups?
• The essentials of a good documentary funding pitch
• Ratio of shooting and editing
• Good, fast, cheap. Pick two.
• Justine's work on Years of Living Dangerously and Doomsday Preppers
• Marcus's work on an Antarctic Icebreaker and Punkin' Chuckin'
• What goes in your gear bag or go bag? Headlamps, a legal release app for filmmakers on iPad, a wireless boom mike
• Cameras: Canon 5D, Sony FS7, GoPro
• Where else they'd like to film 

If you enjoy these podcasts, please use iTunes to download, subscribe, rate and review each podcast, as this helps introduce them to new listeners.

Witness Me!

If I'm going to die, I'm going to die economic on the Fury Road.

I have an interesting observation about wages and the attention we pay to different types of inflation:

An interesting reaction to prices: we would be terribly concerned about 6% wage growth, yet find 6% energy price growth (or growth in any other volatile price) perfectly acceptable, because we have found a lot of volatility in the latter and less in the former in recent decades. Following decades of increases in worker productivity coupled with an absence of wage growth, we could have 30 years worth of catch up growth in median worker wages before we really need to worry about runaway inflation. Yes, automatic labor price increases embedded into contracts in the 60's and 70's contributed to high inflation in the 70's; however, those automatic increases leading to wage spirals are gone for most workers. Yet, members of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors are having conniption fits over a tight(er) labor market, worried about "inflation" which has not appeared yet.

More than that, there remain substantial pools of workers who have passed in the opposite direction from "employment" to "unemployment" to the invisible category of "discouraged worker" who must be employed before we need to start worrying about labor costs increasing very much. Until then, the Fed should not raise its rates.

Witness me! 

or 

Refute me!

Links for Later 8-3-15

1. Why do student loans cause the cost of college to rise?
2. Why are students at Princeton so stressed out?
3. Why have productivity and pay diverged for so many workers?
4. Can machine learning methods teach economics some new tricks?

Startup Geometry Podcast EP 007: Alex Bandar of the Columbus Idea Foundry

Live from the Columbus Idea Foundry makerspace and incubator, I talk with Alex Bandar about protoyping products, neighborhoods, cities and the Idea Foundry itself.

Alex Bandar is an engineer with a specialization in materials science and computer assisted design. In 2008, he founded the Columbus Idea Foundry, which has recently moved into a new and larger space, becoming the largest makerspace in the country. It is an anchor for the redevelopment of the Franklinton neighborhood of Columbus, and an important part of the Columbus entrepreneurial ecosystem.

September 19th and 20th, 2015, the CIF will take part in the Independents' Weekend and will hold an open house as part of the event. If you're in their neighborhood, please stop by for a visit.

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Show Notes & Links

Columbus Idea Foundry

Franklinton Development Corporation

IC3D Printers Printers and high spec filament developed at the Foundry.

"Scrape" the electric motorcycle, designed by Todd Perkins, who also developed "The Inhaler", a high speed electric car, and other high performance experimental vehicles.

Jotnot

The Four Hour Workweek Tim Ferriss

Over on Twitter, Mattermark's Danielle Morrill is laying down some good tips for founders who are out pitching for A Rounds.

Links for Later 8-22-15

1. Putin is reshuffling his inner circle as money runs out. (via Marginal Revolution)
2. Did socialism keep capitalism equal? (via Economist's View)
3. What kept population from growing in the ancient world?

Links for Later 8-15-15

1. Nonsensical centrists and debt stupidity.
2. Several things that needed to be said, but would not have needed to be said if the world was a better place: Chicago does not need a Katrina. New Orleans did not need a Katrina. Teachers are better at educating children than are random entrepreneurs. If you give away too much of your taxes as tax expenditures and/or fail to make pension contributions, your budget will break.
3. The John Feathers Map Collection, acquired by the Los Angeles Public Library, instantly doubled their map collection. Feathers had collected an entire house-full of maps. Maps on the walls, maps in filing cabinets, maps, maps, maps.
4. The dreadful, data-driven culture that is Amazon. A current employee pushes back.

Startup Geometry Podcast EP 006: Ed Cooke

Ed Cooke is a Memory Grandmaster and CEO of Memrise, a company dedicated to making you better at learning and memory. Today, we talk about ways to maximize your memory, how get more out of life by paying better attention to it, and the Epicurian value of having good friends around you in life and work.

Links and transcript to follow.

Please subscribe, download, rate and comment through iTunes. This helps our ratings and allows us to reach more listeners.

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Classics are Fun

A reblog from astinomi's tumblog:

andquitefrankly asked: 13. TRIVIA. GIVE ME ALL THE TRIVIA. please. :)

Ooh! Let’s see, here are some of my favourite bits of classical trivia (I know no other trivia). I should warn you that my idea of amusing trivia is quite… esoteric :’) (A couple of these are a little gruesome)

• Ancient Greek had a pitch accent (i.e. the pitch of the syllable went up or down depending on the accent). This mattered, because once during a performance of a tragedy, an actor got the pitch accent wrong and said ‘weasel’ instead of ‘calm sea’ and we are still laughing about it 2000 years later.
• Once during a battle between Argos and Sparta, the Argive generals told their troops to do whatever the Spartan herald shouted. The Spartan generals figured this out and ordered their troops to attack when the herald shouted ‘have breakfast’
• The tyrant Polycrates of Samos was so lucky in everything that he did that his friend Amasis, king of Egypt, advised him to get rid of the thing he valued the most. This was a golden and emerald ring (?????). Polycrates threw it into the sea. Soon afterwards, it turned up in the belly of a fish that a fisherman had caught and presented to Polycrates. Amasis said, ‘That’s it, you’re too lucky, I’m cutting off our friendship before the gods screw you over.’
• The tyrant Peisistratos of Athens married an aristocratic girl in order to form an alliance with her family, but he thought the family was cursed, so he would only have sex with her ‘not in the customary way’ and I still do not know what this means because my Greek history tutor was the most awkward person ever and would not tell me
• An Ancient Greek word for ‘extravagant dandy’ was ‘someone who is obsessed with fish’
• The Greeks described the sea as ‘wine-dark’
• Socrates didn’t wash 
• Hippocleides doesn’t care
• The great Greek general Pericles was mocked because he allegedly allowed his mistress to boss him around in bed
• It is 100% true that Plato published a serious piece of work criticising Aeschylus for making Achilles top and Patroclus bottom
• This is the what the Greeks came up with to explain intersex people: Hermaphroditus, son of Hermes & Aphrodite, was born a boy but attracted the attentions of a rather obsessive girl who tried to force herself on him. Fortunately for her, they were in a magic spring and she prayed to be joined to him always, so they were joined together in one body that was part male and part female
• In Cyprus, the goddess Aphrodite was represented with both male and female sex organs
• Alexander the Great used to get foreign kings to line up their favourite prostitutes and then he would make a big show of walking along the line and acting disinterested
• Allegedly, Alexander met the cynic philosopher Diogenes and asked if there was anything he could do for him. Diogenes said, ‘Get out of my sunlight.’ Alexander said, ‘If I were not Alexander, I would wish to be Diogenes,’ and Diogenes replied, ‘If I were not Diogenes, I would also wish to be Diogenes.’
• The Roman playwright Terence, considered by later writers to be the best example of ‘pure literary Latin’, might have been an African immigrant and is widely thought to have been a slave
• Julius Caesar annoyed the populace of Rome because he used to answer his mail during the races
• Cicero was told to change his name because it meant ‘chickpea’ and he responded that he would make it the most glorious name in Rome
• It is 99.9% likely that it is actually the case that Cicero was not let in on the assassination of Caesar because he couldn’t keep his mouth shut
• Caesar once said, ‘I know I am the most hated man in Rome, because Cicero hates me, and God knows Cicero is easy to please’
• Cicero and his brother Quintus seemingly spent an alarming amount of time chasing Cicero’s secretary around, asking for kisses
• The poet Vergil (Vergilius), for sadly modern-esque reasons, was nicknamed ‘Parthenias’ (which renders itself quite nicely as something like ‘Virginia’)
• Augustus nagged all his poet friends to write an epic about him, and when Vergil said he would do it, Propertius published a poem saying ‘THANK THE GODS: someone else is doing it - and it’s pretty good btw you should read it when it comes out’
• The poet Ovid was exiled for a ‘poem and a mistake’ and we STILL DON’T KNOW WHAT THAT IS
• The emperor Augustus was teetotal and lame in one leg
• As part of his propaganda against Augustus, Mark Antony claimed that Augustus singed off his leg hair
• Augustus responded that Mark Antony was a drunken hooligan. Antony wrote a pamphlet defending himself, entitled ‘On the subject of my drunkenness’. To me this is one of the greatest losses of antiquity
• The emperor Tiberius was obsessed with pears and cucumbers
• The emperor Claudius allegedly ordered for his third wife to be executed, then got so drunk that he had to ask why she was not at dinner
• Claudius had a son who died when he threw a pear core in the air, tried to catch it in his mouth and choked
• Augustus complained that Tiberius used words in their strict etymological sense (or used literal equivalents of phrases that were used in a non-etymological sense), and the emperor Hadrian, when reading about this, commented, ‘It sounds like Augustus was not very well educated if he chose his words according to their usage and not their etymology.’
• The emperor Galba is the only Roman male who is explicitly said to have had a sexual preference for adult males (i.e. of his own age) and not boys
• Hadrian and his wife went travelling with Hadrian’s lover Antinous and an aristocratic woman named Julia Balbilla. At a tourist site in Egypt, Julia Balbilla carved a poem in the style of Sappho on a famous statue. One of my history professors said that this suggests Hadrian’s wife was a lesbian and they covered for each other
• The historian Tacitus was a keen hunter. His friend Pliny went hunting one day and sent him a letter, ‘You won’t believe it, Tacitus, I went hunting, and I enjoyed it! I took all my books and I sat in the shade by the nets and it was so peaceful, I got so much done. You should try it!’

Links for Later 7-28-15

1. Sergei Pugachev, Putin's former banker, is in exile in Nice.
2. The Happy Birthday song may have been public domain all this time, dates to 1922.
3. Amazing photos of the Milky Way over Yellowstone.
4. Donald Trump's rape problem & lawyer problem.
5. Italy's brain drain.
6. Interview with psychedelic researcher James Fadiman on muses, daimons and other non-corporeal entities in mystical experience.

The Greek Job

The Greek finance ministry had a Grexit plan after all, involving hacking their own servers and setting up a system of tax reserve accounts. Perhaps understandably, this has the Greek opposition parties upset; on the other hand, they were also upset that no Grexit planning had taken place.

Transcript of the OMFIF call where this emerged. Audio. Varoufakis comments.

Bonus: Ian Parker did a Yanis Varoufakis profile in The New Yorker:

The government had made contingency plans for a temporary alternative currency, in the form of electronic I.O.U.s. On June 30th, Greece missed a payment to the I.M.F., joining three other countries in arrears: Somalia, Sudan, and Zimbabwe. Three days later, Klaus Regling, the head of the European Stability Mechanism, which was managing the debt that Greece owed to the countries of the E.U., e-mailed Varoufakis to remind him that, because of the missed I.M.F. payment, the European Financial Stability Facility had the option of asking for immediate repayment of E.U. funds. “I personally owe €142.6 billion,” Varoufakis said. “It’s my name on the contract.” He recalled that his response, delivered with war-weary humor, and some contempt, was a two-word quotation of the King of Sparta: “Molon labe,” or “Come and get it.” On the night of July 3rd, Varoufakis was mobbed as he passed through a crowd of tens of thousands of Greeks, to a final rally for the “no” cause. Walking behind him, I saw a man in his seventies kiss Varoufakis’s shoulder.

Michel Thomas On Resisting The Lure Of Surrender

Michel Thomas, the language teacher, was in his teens when he escaped the Nazis and joined first the French Resistance and then the US Army. In this interview with the BBC, he describes seeing people being loaded onto cattle cars to be taken away to concentration camps. He also describes that he felt at one point when he had been sentenced to death, as if Nature had reached out to embrace him and calm him in preparation for death, and that only by resisting that welcoming embrace was he able to survive.



Previously: Michel Thomas, The Language Master, a documentary about Thomas's teaching methods.

Hello, Pluto

NASA's New Horizons mission passed within a few thousand miles of Pluto this morning.

Family portrait
(via @missambear)

Greek Eurogroup Meeting Link Roundup

1. Yanis Varoufakis gives his first interview since resigning as Finance Minister. “You’re right in what you’re saying, but we’re going to crunch you anyway.”
2. Greece and Germany have a long history together.
3. IMF sez, if only someone were willing to buy the Greek banks for billions of euros from the Greek government, no more loans would have been necessary.
4. "An Indecent Proposal From Greece"-John Cassady
5. "Killing The European Project" and "Disaster In Europe"-Paul Krugman
6. Larry Trainor: "Alexis Tsipras pledged to end austerity. And now he is asked to sign up for more. "

7. FT: “They crucified Tsipras in there,” a senior eurozone official who had attended the summit remarked. “Crucified.” European solidarity.

   — Stefanos Livos (@stefivos) July 13, 2015

8. #greece merkel/holland session with tsipras said to resemble 'extensive mental waterboarding' - top official

   — Ian Traynor (@traynorbrussels) July 12, 2015  

Links for Later 7-3-15

1. The new tech entrepreneurs and culture of Iran. I am not sure who is more representative of Iran, them or the hardliners, than I am sure who is more representative of America, us or our hardliners.
2. "Everything is Yours, Everything is Not Yours."
3. How the Greek bailout deal fell apart, or, Finance ministers acting like children. Also, EU politicians campaigning in Greece.
4. How productivity affects demand for manufacturing labor.
5. Faberge fractals by Tom Beddard
6. This bodes ill for the quality of Matt Damon's next movie.
7. Fazal Sheikh's Erasure. Photographs.

Transcript: Startup Geometry Podcast EP 004 with Brad DeLong

Scott: Hello again and welcome to the Startup Geometry Podcast. I'm your host, Scott Gosnell. For more episodes of this series, please visit iTunes or Stitcher and look for a Startup Geometry Podcast. For show notes, please go to bottlerocketscience.net or to windcastlevc.com/podcast.

Today's interview is with Brad DeLong who is the chair of the Economics Department at California, Berkeley and is a senior economist with the Center for Equitable Growth in Washington, DC.

Brad: . . . intelligent swarm of bees masquerading as a human being for purposes of preparing delay for alien invasion. I thought everyone knew that.

Scott: You're perhaps the third person who said that to me this week or at least in my presence.

Brad: Bees?

Scott: Bees, yeah. John Scalzi said that on Twitter yesterday.

Brad: I think Scalzi must be the source of the meaning then.

Scott: It could be.

Brad: He is the person who has the potential reach to do so to get that meaning into people's minds. So have you read his latest?

Scott: I have not, no. Although I've been reading his battles with the Sad Puppies.

Brad: I see. Well, yes.

Scott: And the other puppies.

Brad: That's a sad story, or a rabid story, or simply a crazy story. I suppose it's ultimately the craziest because the font and origin of social justice warriorhood and weird gender presentation of self stuff in science fiction is really not so much Joanna Russ who is always way out there or Ursula Le Guin who was an elite taste, but rather Baen Books' Lois McMaster Bujold who has been writing space opera and military science fictions. But it's really about gender relations and similar things for three decades or so now, and winning huge numbers of Hugo Awards doing it.

So it's just that a lot of people who've been reading Lois McMaster Bujold's books from Baen Books have simply not been understanding the authorial intent or indeed authorial execution at all.

Startup Geometry Podcast EP 005: Claudia Azula Altucher



Claudia Azula Altucher is an idea machine; an accomplished yoga practitioner and teacher; and a popular podcaster, author and YouTuber. Today, she brings all of this to the podcast to help you get your life on the move. She'll teach you what you need to do to clean up your life, how to get your idea muscles sweating, and why she should be the next CEO of Twitter. You canfind her online at claudiayoga.com, through her podcasts, which include Ask Altucher and Claudia Yoga, and through the Claudia Yoga YouTube Channel. Her books, including, Become an Idea Machine: Because Ideas Are the Currency of the 21st Century are available through Amazon and, as they say, wherever books are sold. From the book's description:

HOW DO I TRANSFORM MY LIFE? The answer is simple: come up with ten ideas a day. It doesn't matter if they are good or bad the key is to exercise your 'idea muscle', to keep it toned, and in great shape. People say ideas are cheap and execution is everything but that is NOT true. Execution is a consequence, a subset of good, brilliant idea. And good ideas require daily work. Ideas may be easy if we are only coming up with one or two but if you open this book to any of the pages and try to produce more than three, you will feel a burn, scratch your
head, and you will be sweating, and working hard. There is a turning point when you reach idea number 6 for the day, you still have four to go, and your mind muscle is getting a workout. By the time you list those last ideas to make it to ten you will see for yourself what "sweating the idea muscle" means. As you practice the daily idea
generation you become an idea machine. When we become idea machines we are flooded with lots of bad ideas but also with some that are very good. This happens by the sheer force of the number, because we are coming up with 3,650 ideas per year (at ten a day). When you are inspired by an extraordinary idea, all of your thoughts break their chains, you go beyond limitations and your capacity to act expands in every direction. Forces and abilities you did not know you had come to the surface, and you realize you are capable of doing great things. As you practice with the suggested prompts in this book your ideas will get better, you will be a source of great insight for others, people will find you magnetic, and they will want to hang out with you because you have so much to offer. When you practice every day your life will transform, in no more than 180 days, because it has no other evolutionary choice. Life changes for the better when we become the source of positive, insightful, and helpful ideas. Don't believe a word I say. Instead, challenge yourself to try it for the 180 days and see your life transform, in magical ways, in front of your very eyes.

If you enjoy the show & would like to hear more episodes, please download, rate and subscribe through iTunes, as your enthusiasm for the show means a lot. Please comment below if you have suggestions for future episodes.

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The book on organizing your house Claudia mentions is The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing by Marie Kondo.

James Salter 1925-2015

Startup Geometry Podcast EP 004: Brad DeLong

Brad DeLong visits Startup Geometry today to talk about economic currents and current economics. He may or may not have confessed to being a hyperintelligent swarm of bees in human form, a historian in disguise as an economist, and/or a Keynesian. He reviews the effects and effectiveness of US economic policies including the 2009 Recovery Act; the Trans-Pacific Partnership; tax, education, infrastructure and other proposals. We discuss the entertainment revolution and the fall of middle class security, and what to do if someone has a bigger yacht than you.

If you enjoy the show & would like to hear more episodes, please download, rate and subscribe through iTunes, as your enthusiasm for the show means a lot. Please comment below if you have suggestions for future episodes.

Note: I have to apologize for referring to Lois McMaster Bujold a "very competent writer" in the podcast. I tend toward understatement when in interview mode. She's a tremendous writer, and I read everything she publishes greedily, as soon as it comes out. I facepalm myself regularly.

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Show Notes

[0.00.36] Brad DeLong is a hyperintelligent swarm of bees in human form, John Scalzi, Lois McMaster Bujold, gender politics in SF, Science fiction and economics as worldbuilding exercise.

[0.05.48] How economists are made. Jay Forrester's world dynamics model, education with Roger Wood, Gregg Erickson, Andrei Schleifer, Larry Summers, being an assistant professor applicant in economics vs. history.

[0.09.25] Trends in the economic profession, economics considered as the Nile delta. Ulrika Malmendier , Stefano DellaVigna, and Raj Chetty as leading researchers at the behavioral, individual scale. Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez at the macro, sociological scale.

[0.13.58] Keeping in mind the lessons of the Great Depression. George Osborne and the perpetual budget surplus idea.

[0.16.00] Why is Ricardian Equivalence not a thing? Why should the government invest? What's the benefit to putting off our bills?

[0.21.19] What about tax cuts as stimulus?

[0.23.23] Why transfer payments, tax credits, infrastructure spending, are better than cutting taxes on the rich from either an efficiency and equity standpoint. The effectiveness and politics of the 2009 Recovery Act. Christina Romer, Barack Obama. $600B in stimulus, where we needed $4T. A fire engine intervenes.

[0.29.54] Prospects for improving the situation now. Impact of the social safety net on JK Rowling & entrepreneurs. "You get very few tightrope walkers without a powerful safety net."

[0.32.40] Hillary Clinton's agenda. Zero debt grads, infrastructure broadly defined.

[0.38.20] Costs and benefits, 20th c. vs. 21st c. Losing the secure middle class existence, gaining better entertainment and communication. Who's rich, and what does that mean psychologically? George Romney vs. Mitt Romney. Jann Wenner vs. Paul Allen. Spalding Gray on the Hamptons. The Buddha: "Desire is infinite."

[0.43.00] The end of the fundamental problems (fire, flood, famine, marauding Huns & water buffalo) as we climb the Maslow hierarchy. Noah Smith. The entertainment revolution.

[0.47.30] The trade deals. How the TPP could be improved, and what its flaws are. How to negotiate a trade agreement that's better in its distributional effects.

[0.55.45] One policy recommendation & one personal recommendation for the listeners. Obama's most costly mistake. The R statistical package. Controlling your infinite desires.
Read more from and about Brad DeLong at the Equitablog at the Center for Equitable Growth, or at his blog, DeLong's Grasping Reality, and is readily Google-able.

Why does Obama want the trade deals?

And why these trade deals on these specific terms? His reasoning and negotiating stance are opaque. This is never a good place to be on anything, especially if you are President.

Here's William Finnegan in the New Yorker:

Nearly every constituency in the Democratic Party opposes it; and the more they learn about it, the more they oppose it. And yet their leader, Obama, wants it badly.

But why? Maybe it’s a better agreement—better for the American middle class, for American workers—than it seems in the leaked drafts, where it appears bent to the will of multinational corporations. John Kerry, the Secretary of State, and Ashton Carter, the Secretary of Defense, co-authored a column on Monday in USA Today arguing, in evangelical tones, that the T.P.P. will usher in a glorious new era of American-led prosperity, a “global race to the top” for all parties. Meanwhile, the A.F.L.-C.I.O. sees only a race to the bottom. Organized labor, by all accounts, plans to punish any elected Democrat who supports the T.P.P., or even supports fast-track for Obama, in the next campaign. It’s difficult, again, to evaluate the agreement when we can’t see it. And it will be difficult for Congress to do its job if its members can’t study each part of the many-tentacled T.P.P. on its merits, but must simply vote yes or no on the whole shebang. What’s the rush? Is it simply Obama’s wish to make his mark on history and to complete his pivot toward Asia before his time is up? Politicians are often accused of supporting pro-corporate policies to please wealthy backers, looking toward the next campaign. That can’t be Obama’s motive now.

And John Cassidy:

On one of the specific issues Warren raised, about whether the trade deal could be used to undermine the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform act, Obama might be right, although we’ll have to take it on trust; the text of the provisional agreement is classified. (When Senator Barbara Boxer went to inspect it in a secure room at the Capitol, a guard told her she couldn’t take notes.) A number of legal experts, however, including Yale’s Judith Resnik and Harvard’s Laurence Tribe, have raised similar concerns to the ones Warren expressed, warning that the T.P.P. could allow corporations and investors to challenge the laws and policies of member countries, including the United States, outside the scope of their existing legal system. In a recent letter to congressional leaders, the experts referred to a known provision of the T.P.P., which would see disputes resolved not by the courts but by a new conflict-resolution panel, the prospective makeup of which is far from clear. This panel “risks undermining democratic norms because laws and regulations enacted by democratically elected officials are put at risk in a process insulated from democratic input,” they warned.

President Obama hasn’t addressed all of these concerns, and he has also failed to provide much backing for his assertion that the T.P.P. would be beneficial to the middle class. The most widely quoted study of the deal’s likely effect, which was carried out by three economists associated with the pro-free-trade Peterson Institute for International Economics, found that its impact would be modest. By 2025, the study said, the deal would boost over-all U.S. income by about 0.4 per cent of G.D.P. If this is accurate, the new trade deal won’t have much effect either way on American incomes.

But that isn’t the full story. In an important recent paper, Josh Bivens, of the liberal-leaning Economic Policy Institute, pointed out that estimates like the one produced by the Peterson Institute don’t take into account the distributional aspects of trade agreements. The traditional argument for free trade is that it reallocates resources, workers included, to their most productive uses, and that this causes over-all income and output to rise. But this churning process doesn’t only create winners, such as consumers who can buy lower-cost imported goods. It also creates losers, such as the Maytag-plant workers in Illinois and many others who make things that poorer countries can produce more cheaply because they have lower wages.

 

Brad DeLong on the TPP

In this short preview of my interview with economist Brad DeLong, we discuss the economic and social impact of the trade deals currently being negotiated by the US Trade Representative, including the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), Trade Promotion Authority and related bills under consideration in Congress this month.

The full interview will be available next week. Please check back regularly, and please subscribe on iTunes to get all of our episodes.

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Links for Later 6-11-15

1. Electrical stimulation of the vagus nerve may help migraine, tinnitus, epilepsy, stroke...
2. The role of the default mode network in creativity. Effect of training on the DMN.
3. Did Nancy Pelosi "misread" the Democratic Caucus on trade and the TPP?
4. Brad DeLong misjudged Niall Ferguson, Paul Krugman didn't.
5. On the trail of the Last Universal Cellular Ancestor, before the kingdoms of life were separate.
6. Proportional map of the world's languages.
7. The stoners who became the US government's source for guns & ammo.

The Future Is Now, Vol. LXXXVIII: Researchers Grow Rat Limb In A Jar

A team from Massachusetts General Hospital under Harald Ott regrew rat and primate forelimbs ex vivo, and then transplanted it back into a host animal. They did it by removing all of the cells from an amputated arm, reseeding it with appropriate cell types for the various tissues in a bioreactor atop the existing extracellular scaffolding, and then reattaching it.

This is not quite as impressive as growing it up from nothing, but it represents a substantial step forward from existing technology which is capable of doing single or dual cell type tissue growth. This is multiple tissue, structured repopulation and regrowth of tissue. That's huge.

Library Porn: Karl Lagerfeld's Shelving Method

 

I had seen the photos of Karl Lagerfeld's enviable library before, so of course I could tell that most of the books are shelved horizontally. What I did not realize until Rain Noe pointed it out over on Core77 is that this is not just an eccentricity. It's an ergonomic hack, so Lagerfeld doesn't have to turn his head to read the titles. Note that in the closeup of the shelves below, all (or at least most) of the titles are turned for easiest reading.

Bonus Karl Lagerfeld item, from his daily schedule:

I never have lunch, but when I do, I ask them to bring it to me in the house. I actually have two houses. This house here, it's only for sleeping and sketching, and I have another house two-and-a-half meters away for lunch and dinner and to see people, and where the cook is and all that. I don't want that here. Even if the place is huge, I want to be alone. If I want something, I call them, and they're next door, they come. The studio is next door, the office is next door. If I have guests and butlers, I don't want them in my house. Everything is next door.