Alejandro Jodorowsky at the British Library

In conversation with Iain Sinclair, following a screening of Jodorowsky's Dune. Get up and make some art.

EP 021 Shava Nerad

Shava Nerad is the former Executive Director of the Tor Project, open source software that helps users protect their online privacy. She is currently CEO of Oddfellow Studios, and a frequent writer through Quora (where I met her) and on her Patreon site.

Today, we talk about her early days as the youngest female Chief Software Engineer at DEC and IT manager at MIT, how to manage and relate to very different people, how she won an argument with Richard Stallman, and how and why Tor came to be one of the most praised and reviled pieces of software in the world (often by the same people).

Extended bio:

Shava Nerad has been working online since 1982, when she was Chief Software Engineer at Digital Equipment Corporation on the IVIS Project, the first commercial multimedia authoring system in the world. She has been staff or faculty at UMass/Amherst, MIT, UNC/Chapel Hill, and University of Oregon. She’s done commercial work for DEC, Varian, ComputerVision, her own web consultancy Net Prophets, Inc., and eMarket Group, Ltd.

While at eMarket as VP/Marketing and Business Development, she led her company to 3rd fastest growing private company in Oregon, #285 on the Inc5000, 25 in the Inc Urban 100, and Best Companies to Work for in Oregon. She was nominated for Woman Entrepreneur of the Year by reporting staff of the Portland (OR) Business Journal for her business acumen and service to her community. She has a long history of nonprofit and political activism, including leadership positions at Oregon Public Networking/efn.org, The Tor Project, and Democratic organizations in Oregon.

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EP 020 Helen DeWitt

Helen DeWitt is the author of The Last Samurai, Lightning Rods, and, with Ilya Gridnef, Your Name Here. The Last Samurai, originally released by Miramax Books in 2000, is being released in a new edition by New Directions in May 2016. For many years, the book was passed along in secondhand copies among cognoscenti, and I'm glad to see it back in print.

Sibylla, a single mother from a long line of frustrated talents, has unusual ideas about child rearing. Yo Yo Ma started piano at the age of two; her son starts at three. J.S.Mill learned Greek at three; Ludo starts at four, reading Homer as they travel round and round the Circle Line. A fatherless boy needs male role models; so she plays the film of Seven Samurai as a running backdrop to his childhood. While Sibylla types out back copies of Carpworld to pay the rent, Ludo, aged five, moves on to Hebrew, Arabic and Japanese, aerodynamics and edible insects of the world - they might come in handy, if he can just persuade his mother he's mature enough to know his father's name. He is bound for knowledge of a less manageable sort, not least about his mother's past. And at the heart of the book is the boy's changing relationship with Sibylla - contradictory, touching and tender.

Today, we talk about the desire to choose your own parents, your own publishing team, and your own cafe.

Photo credit: Helen DeWitt

A small correction: in our discussion of coffee drinks at Neues Ufer, the drink served in a small ceramic bowl was incorrectly identified as Kremkaffee; the correct drink name is Milchkaffee. I remember ordering Kaffe Krem in Germany at one point, which I suppose would be coffee-flavored cream. Personally, I've always liked the Dutch phrase for cafe au lait: Koffie verkeerd, "spoiled coffee" or "coffee done wrong".

Over on her site, she mentions some verbal tics of her own that annoy her. I am completely immune to hearing these & think she sounds wonderful. On the other hand, I writhe every time I hear my own voice saying anything on any recording: I always say that I have a face for radio and a voice for silent film.

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If you enjoyed this interview, you can also watch a short video interview with Helen by the team over at The Paris Review, done earlier this Spring, but released this month:

 

Show Notes 

EP 019 Luca Turin on the Secrets of Scent and the Scientific Method

Luca Turin is a biophysicist and expert in the sense of smell. He is best known to the scientific community as the proponent of the vibrational theory of olfaction: that smell receptors detect the vibrational frequencies of the molecular bonds of parts of the scent molecule. This theory represents an alternative to the older shape-based theory of smell: that scent molecules bind to specific receptors that conform to the shape of the scent molecule. The debate on this topic is detailed in Turin's The Secret of Scent, and Chandler Burr's The Emperor of Scent.

He is also the author, with his partner Tania Sanchez, of Perfumes: The A-Z Guide, which provides a sensual and witty look at over 1,000 commercially available perfumes. He also writes perfume criticism in several locations online, including at perfumesilove.com, and is a scent molecule designer and consultant to the industry.
  

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Links and bonus materials

Links for Later 5-7-16

1. Tim and Alex Heathfield Vavilova found out that their parents were Russian spies. Now, they've lost their Canadian citizenship. Crazy story.
2. John Gardner, "Personal Renewal"
3. Delmore Schwartz, "The First Morning of the Second World"
4. Problems with John Cochrane's WSJ editorial on opportunities for economic growth.
5. Profile of Navy SEAL Charlie Keating IV, who was killed by ISIS while training Peshmerga, and who was the grandson of Charles Keating of the S&L crisis fame.
6. How to beat procrastination: do a small, concrete step toward the big, scary, abstract goal. (Raise your vision, lower the stakes strategy.)
7. Farnam Street: "What We Can Learn from the Prolific Mr. Asimov", plus Asimov on new ideas.
8. Scott Alexander of Slate Star Codex reviews Albion's Seed, discusses the impact of the four early cultures of America: Puritans, Cavaliers, Quakers, and Borderers.

Links for Later 3-22-16

1. Lessons from the very prolific Isaac Asimov.
2. Sleek cyberpunk fashion short film by ACRONYM (recommended by William Gibson).
3. Generic NYT article on Millennials.
4. Donald Trump is not making a lot of sense.
5. Ted Cruz is the worst person in the world.
6. Mapping creativity. Not sure I buy these studies, or the article's conclusions.
7. Stewart Lee wrote a negative review of his own show.

Hadrian's Farewell to Life

Little soul, sweet one, wandering one,
Friend and companion of this body,
Out you go from your house,
The pale one, still one, naked one,
Not laughing anymore, funny one.

-Hadrian

Animula, vagula, blandula
Hospes comesque corporis
Quae nunc abibis in loca
Pallidula, rigida, nudula,
Nec, ut soles, dabis iocos

-Hadrian

More on Hadrian's Farewell here.

Links for Later 2-13-16

1. Quaker bankers: building trust on the basis of sincerity, reciprocity and charity
2. Henrik Kneiberg explains his iterative car diagram.Not MVP, but Earliest Testable/Usable/Lovable
3. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died today.

History of Japan

Bill Wurtz made a rapid fire, animated, very funny history of Japan. (via Hank Green)

Startup Geometry EP 018 David Heinemeier Hansson

David Heinemeier Hansson is the co-founder (with Jason Fried) of Basecamp (formerly 37signals) , author of Remote and Rework (also with Jason Fried), and creator of the Ruby on Rails framework. He's also a race car driver, having won the 2014 24 Hours of Le Mans endurance race, and an avid photographer.

Today, we talk about why it's best to build products that you would (and do) use, the low-risk approach to building a company, why funding yourself helps to slow the clock, how that approach bleeds over to every aspect of the business (from marketing to management), and why much of his life is lived outside the office.

Long Beach GP 2012

A photo posted by DHH (@dhh79) on Jan 28, 2016 at 8:40am PST

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Show Links and Notes

Basecamp
Ruby on Rails

David Heinemeier Hansson
Website
signal vs noise blog
Twitter: @dhh, @dhhracing
Instagram: @dhh79
Medium: @dhh
Wikipedia

Startup Geometry EP 017 Andrei Codrescu

Long before there were blogs or podcasts, Andrei Codrescu was writing online (much of it through his "hidden literary magazine" Exquisite Corpse) and publishing audio commentary (often as a commentator on NPR). He is the author of many books of poetry, essays and fiction, and has taught literature at Johns Hopkins University, the University of Baltimore and Louisiana State University, where he recently retired as the MacCurdy Distinguished Professor of English.

Now, he's planning on developing a podcast of his very own. Today, we talk about this upcoming project, which comments on his previous radio work, the importance of peripheral locations, and changes in Romania from the fall of Communism to the present day.

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Show Notes and Links

Andrei Codrescu
Website
Twitter: @acodrescu
Exquisite Corpse:Click on the large No to enter site
NPR archive

Ioan Culianu
Mircea Eliade
Lars Iyer
The Original Brothers Grimm translated by Jack Zipes
Lafcadio Hearn

Hollan Holmes - Twilight

Startup Geometry EP 016 Emanuel Derman

Emanuel Derman first had a successful career as a particle physicist, and then an even more  successful career on Wall Street, doing advanced mathematical modeling of financial instrument prices and volatility. Currently, he is a professor at Columbia University, where he directs the program in financial engineering. He's the author of My Life as a Quant and Models.Behaving.Badly.

Today, we talk about the differences between models & theories, finance & physics, and life & experiments. We look under the hood of the Black-Scholes[-Merton] option pricing formula, talk about the gaps in classical and behavioral financial models, and find out what he would change about his life if he could live it again.

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Show Notes and Links

Emanuel Derman
emanuelderman.com
Faculty Page
On twitter: @EmanuelDerman
Books: My Life as a Quant, Models.Behaving.Badly

[0.47] Intro. Models & Theories.
[3.45] What differentiates a theory or model in physics from one in finance?
[5.43] How to protect yourself from self-deception.
[6.55]William Blake "If a fool were to persist in his folly, he would become wise."
[7.26] At Goldman, they used models without idolizing them.
[8.40] What do you teach your students at the Columbia Financial Engineering Program?
[10.15] Example: Black-Scholes[-Merton] model for option pricing. Andy Lowes at MIT, "In physics, you have three laws that explain 99% of phenomena. In finance, you have 99 laws that explain 3% of phenomena."
[12.15] Principle of replication (arbitrage pricing theory).
[16.20] What you need to know to price a derivative. How does it fail? Correcting for that. Paul Wilmott.
[22.02] Physics: better to go deep (abstract principles). Finance: sometimes better to stay on the surface. Eugene Fama: "Finance is what doesn't go away after everyone knows about it." Elon Musk: importance of thinking by first principles vs. thinking by analogy.
[24.50] ED's favorite models. Black-Derman-Toy for interest rate. Local volatility model. Extensions of option pricing. Fixing and extending models by relaxing perfect/Platonic assumptions. Mao Tse-tung: "Let a thousand flowers bloom."
[27.07] Nassim Taleb's critiques of financial  modeling. Heuristics.
[29.30] Using the process of model-building to help discipline your thoughts. Quantifying vague intuitions.
[31.50] Institutional problems. Understanding the underlying assumptions.
[33.17] Exciting areas in finance research. Moving from derivatives to the underlying assets. Market microstructure.
[36.00] Behavioral finance. (I'm a bigger fan of finding better psychological bases to economic behavior and economic concepts like risk or utility, rather than disguising social psychology research as economics through the use of math. That's what I'm babbling about in this section. -SG). Subjectivity in economic models: it's actually "How much money do I stand to gain or lose
Hayek: In physics, the macroscopic things are sense data and real...and atoms are the abstractions. In finance, the only things that are real are the people, the markets are the abstractions. Mel Brooks on comedy vs. tragedy.
[44.24] Recommended reading: Justin Fox The Myth of the Rational Market, John Kay Other People's Money, Emanuel Derman Models.Behaving.Badly, Nassim Taleb's Black Swan & Antifragile, Elie Ayache The Blank Swan & The Medium of Contingency.
[48.48] Manfred Eigen
[49.12] More about Emanuel Derman can be found at..., What he would like to do if he could relive his life over again, How you can respond to a model vs. a theory.

The Models
Monte Carlo method
Black-Scholes-Merton
CAPM
Efficient Market Hypothesis
Geometric Brownian motion (random walk, martingale)
Jump diffusion models
Black-Derman-Toy interest rate model
Derman-Kani trees/ volatility smile models

Links for Later 12-31-15

1. A book cave of about 5000 books, made by a student at Yunnan Normal University (via Marginal Revolution).
2. Venture capital disrupts itself.

3. Kobe said he’d go back & tell his younger self "to understand compassion & empathy." I asked why those two things: pic.twitter.com/ZnpNQ2a6W6

   

   — Baxter Holmes (@BaxterHolmes) December 28, 2015

My Answer to the Question: 90% of the wealth goes to top 1%. Is that good for the country?

Over on Quora, someone wanted to know whether high levels of inequality are good for the country. Here's my answer:

 

A High Level of Economic Inequality is  Economically Inefficient

If we were talking about a microeconomic market where there was extreme market concentration, such that one company either represented 90% of the supply or 90% of the demand, we would have no problem saying that this was a near-monopoly situation (in the case of supply) or near-monopsony (for demand), and that this was undesirable. A monopoly causes high prices in the market, a smaller market overall, and a social deadweight loss from all of the lost transactions that would have benefitted both buyers and sellers. These are all symptoms of a market disease or an economic dysfunction.

Extreme disparity in income and wealth is an economic dysfunction that produces poor results for the economy as a whole. It results in labor resources that are underpaid and underemployed, oversaving by the 1%, underinvestment in public assets, and anemic growth. Growth is anemic for several reasons: 1) the average consumer is too budget constrained to reach optimal choices and not sufficiently incentivized to work any harder, and 2) the consumers who are part of the wealth-holding class become increasingly harried due to the increasing slope of the wealth curve. In other words, if you are poor, you can't afford the necessities of a good life, and also can't improve your life by working more or more effectively, you aren't an efficient participant in the economy, so the economy will tend to shrink or stagnate. If you are rich, you will look to your next door neighbor, who is twice as rich as you, and you will feel poor; you will then look at your other neighbor, who fell on hard times and who is now half as rich as they once were. Looking at these two things, you will spend more and more of your time worrying about what will befall you tomorrow. Instead of being an efficient participant in the economy, you will either begin making unwise gambles to try to catch up to your successful neighbor, or become very thrifty and risk averse to avoid the fate of your unsuccessful neighbor. You will, like the budget-constrained worker, be an inefficient part of the economy, and both you and society will suffer a loss for it. The economy, lacking the driving force of both rich and poor, will stagnate or shrink.

 

A High Level of Economic Inequality is Unethical and Undesirable

The arguments in favor of gross economic inequality fall into three groups: 1) utilitarian arguments that arrangements leading to inequality produces positive results relative to any other arrangement, 2) arguments that some abstract good, such as economic freedom, are so valuable as to outweigh the negatives, and 3) arguments from market theodicy.

With regard to argument (1), there is evidence that some degree of inequality is healthy, because it offers incentives to compete economically, to be financially prudent and to work hard. While society might value everyone equally, and therefore try to offer a fair and level playing field, it doesn't value equality to the exclusion of any other abstract good, and the cost of creating and enforcing complete equality is as impractical and undesirable as creating and enforcing complete inequality (where one person controls all assets, and everyone else is a serf or slave). For these reasons, mixed market economies are favored on the grounds of openness, fairness, freedom, growth, happiness and flexibility, among other abstract values. We tolerate mild inequality of outcomes because the millionaire's success helps make the beggar's life better, and because stamping out mild inequality would be very, very costly relative to the benefit.

To justify gross inequality in this framework, we would have to believe that the social value of an additional dollar's worth of happiness is greater for the millionaire than for the beggar. The more you have, the happier you are to have more, and the happier we should be to give it to you. If this is true for wealth, then wealth is the only known material good for which it is true. This is nonsense.

With regard to argument (2), if we are unwilling to grant equality uncontested priority over all the other abstract goods, then we should also be skeptical that freedom can be an uncontested, singular value. Maximizing economic freedom at all costs leads to unconscionable results, just as does maximizing economic equality.

Instead, societies have a plurality of values, a plurality of abstract goods in tension with one another, and just like physical goods, it's necessary to balance them and arrive at the best possible basket of goods under changing conditions.

As for argument (3), that the market is somehow a perfect moral judge, this is equally foolish. As Mark Twain observed, if God seeks to punish us with thunderbolts in this life, then His aim must be very poor indeed, given the distribution of lightning strikes. The market is a wonderful tool and a servant, but a terrible master. Its thunderbolts (good and bad) are no better distributed than the lightning.

 

In conclusion: No, it's not healthy for the economy or the country to have extreme inequality.

Best Books (I Read) In 2015

On the Move and Gratitude Oliver Sacks
A while ago on reddit, there was a massage therapist who said that 1) everyone's body sags and has other imperfections, and 2) when people relax, they become luminous, lit from within. Oliver Sacks is the patron saint of this dual nature of humanity. He wrote about it, he saw it in his patients, and he lived it. In his writing, he became luminous. In the process, he inspired thousands of future scientists with stories of human beings afflicted in some horrible ways, but also able to connect as humans. Gratitude, which consists of four late essays written after his terminal cancer diagnosis, is really a coda to On the Move, Sacks' record of a remarkable life.
Taken together, these two are the book of the year.

Natural Born Heroes Christopher McDougall and Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure Artemis Cooper
As Oliver Sacks is my favorite science writer, Paddy Leigh Fermor is my favorite travel writer. He is most well known for his pre-World War II walk across Europe from the Hook of Holland to Istanbul, and his actions during the Battle of Crete, during which he kidnapped one of the two German generals in charge of the forces occupying the island. Natural Born Heroes tells this story and the story of the other remarkable people in the Cretan Resistance and the British "Firm", coupled with advice on how to run and climb like a Greek shepherd and fight like the Heavenly Twins. Artemis Cooper's Fermor biography fills in a lot of detail before and after Fermor's travelogues, and makes an excellent companion to his works.

Syllabus and What It Is Lynda Barry
Two classes, ostensibly about how to draw, but also about how to think, how drawing helps you think, and the value of sketching daily. These will do interesting things to the inside of your head.

Galileo's Middle Finger Alice Domurat Dreger
Scandals and controversies involving scientists and activists for whom discretion is not the better part of valor. Alice's own work on human sexuality and anatomy has been at the center of two or three controversies since the book came out earlier this year. I liked this book so much that I invited Alice to be a guest on the podcast.

Lost Enlightenment: Central Asia’s Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane S Frederick Starr
I knew next to nothing about Central Asia during this period (600-1200 CE), other than that the Silk Road ran though it, and that Marco Polo traveled there on his way to China. The area between Persia and China of a thousand years ago remained a blank space until I read Lost Enlightenment and learned about the scientists, conquerors, poets and citizens of this region.

Werner Herzog's Guide for the Perplexed Werner Herzog and Paul Cronin
I have a rule that I have to read any book recommended to me by three or more people. This was the most recommended book of the last year. A series of interviews between Herzog and Cronin covers all of Herzog's movies and much of his biography.
Key lessons learned: The truth is not very good at dispelling a rumor: only a juicier rumor works. Always carry a set of bolt cutters with you. When scouting the top of Cerro Torre, where the winds can blow up to 100 mph, always carry chocolate, always tie in to your fellow climbers, and if you get blown off, remember to enjoy the spectacular view as you glide to your death a mile below. It is possible to haul a steamboat up a mountain if you are sure you have a large enough tree trunk for a linchpin. People are endlessly fascinating. It may take twenty years for you to realize that John Waters is gay.

The Raven Boys, The Dream Thieves, Blue Lily, Lily Blue and The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater
If, like me, you remember reading Susan Cooper and Madeleine L'Engle's books as a key childhood experience, you will want to pick up some of Maggie Stievater's books. If, on the other hand, you get your media recommendations from Tumblr and fanfiction sites, you'll also want to pick up these books. Books where place is a character. Books where even the villains are three dimensional characters, or perhaps just enjoy exotic cheeses and magical artifact collecting. Books where the heroes are cross with each other, or insecure, or just difficult to get along with. Books with dead Welsh kings, forests that speak Latin, and bloodthirsty horses from the sea.
Stiefvater is also an accomplished artist, musician and race car driver, which is a distressing amount of talent to find concentrated in one person.

Golden Son Pierce Brown
Pair Stiefvater's YA fantasy books above with Pierce Brown's Golden Son, follow up to Red Rising, about a highly stratified society spanning the Solar system, and Harrow, the man from the lowest caste, the Reds, hidden among the society's elite, the Golds. Good old-fashioned, over the top space opera paired with bildungsroman. I can't wait for the third volume to come out in a few weeks.

Links for Later 12-15-15

1. Another mansion with an invisible owner, this time in Los Angeles.
2. What was going on in London in 1606, the year Shakespeare wrote Lear?
3. Lengthy profile of strategist Edward Luttwak.
4. Emma Willard's "Temple of History", a memory palace or just an infographic?
5. Why there will not be a draft.

Drawing Technique: Foreshortening

Using the "coil technique" to do foreshortening during the sketching phase. This method is so good that you'll think, "Why didn't I know this already?"

Startup Geometry EP 015 Barry Michels and Phil Stutz

Barry Michels and Phil Stutz are two of the most sought-after psychotherapists in Los Angeles, particularly by creative professionals. They are also the authors of The Tools, a book that teaches you the techniques they use in their practice to help unlock creativity, decrease anxiety and to correct the negative patterns that interfere with your life.

In this podcast, we discuss the relationship between the Shadow (Carl Jung's term for a subconscious part of your mind that contains your inner shame and other unconscious material) and creativity, plus the three immutable rules of dealing with a perpetually changing world. We also talk about their next book, dealing with Part X, or the inner enemy that tries to sabotage your growth and development.

“But the worst enemy you can meet will always be yourself; you lie in wait for yourself in caverns and forests. Lonely one, you are going the way to yourself! And your way goes past yourself, and past your seven devils! You will be a heretic to yourself and witch and soothsayer and fool and doubter and unholy one and villain. You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame: how could you become new, if you had not first become ashes?”

― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

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Show Notes and Links

Paul Laffoley has Merged with the Infinite

Paul Laffoley, one of our favorite artists here at Bottlerocketscience, has died today. He will be sorely missed.

From Kent Fine Art's email:

NEW YORK PAUL LAFFOLEY (b. Cambridge, August 14, 1935 - d. Boston, November 16, 2015) The visionary artist and luminary, Paul Laffoley, has died today after a long battle with congestive heart failure. He had an extraordinary grasp of multiple fields of knowledge compulsively pursing interests that often lead him into uncharted territory. His complex theoretical constructs were uniquely presented in highly detailed mandala-like canvases largely scaled to Fibonacci's golden ratio. While an active participant in numerous speculative organizations including his own Boston Visionary Cell since the early 70s, his work began to attract an increasing following in his late career with shows at the Palais de Tokyo (2009), Hamburger Bahnhoff (2011), Hayward Gallery, London, Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (2013). The first book on Laffoley's oeuvre was The Phenomenology of Revelation published by Kent Fine Art in 1989, followed by several subsequent publications beginning with his first retrospective organized by the Austin Museum of Art (1999). Forthcoming in March of 2016, the University of Chicago Press will be releasing the long awaited book entitled The Essential Paul Laffoley. He was a kind and generous giant, and he will be sorely missed by all of us. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be . . . Henry David Thoreau CLICK VIMEO TO SEE PAUL LAFFOLEY ON VISIONARY ART 210 ELEVENTH AVENUE (between 24th and 25th Streets) 2ND FLOOR NEW YORK, NY 10001 212-365-9500 WWW.KENTFINEART.NET For all further inquiries contact Douglas Walla at dkw@kentfineart.net