May 2009
1 post
April 2009
3 posts
March 2009
26 posts
My Manhattan Project: How I helped build the bomb... →
langer:
Pretty fascinating read by the Lehman engineer who first automated the collateralized mortgage obligation:
I made $125,000 in my bonus that year and bought an apartment on Gramercy Park. I had first-tier seats to the ballet, but I still rode my bike to work. The traders pocketed multiple millions. I wasn’t poor, but I wasn’t a plutocrat. I could live with myself. If there was a...
“Because they are so long lived, atoms really get around. Every atom you possess...”
– Bill Bryson
(via tmblg) (via radarchive)
Last Bullet
yourmonkeycalled:
“Some tribe in the future, far in the future, might find a pistol, perhaps the world’s last pistol, and one hundred rounds of ammunition. The priests of that tribe, in tribute to the unknown, might invent a holiday and fire one bullet each year as a link to the unknown. After ninety years, it isn’t difficult to imagine that a new bull might be put forth that shots were to be...
“Lego is now so popular that there are 62 little coloured blocks for every person...”
Conceptual metaphor - Wikipedia link of the day →
randomonium:
In cognitive linguistics, conceptual metaphor refers to the understanding of one idea, or conceptual domain, in terms of another, for example, understanding quantity in terms of directionality (e.g. “prices are rising”).…
While neither a cognitive linguist nor a conceptual metaphor theorist per se, another prominent linguist, Noam Chomsky, proposed, along with Edward S. Herman, a...
Conflict Resolution in Small Wars (Journal... →
Third Reich & Roll: Episode 1 →
Stephen Fry tells the story of how Hitler’s huge financial investment in recording for propaganda purposes gave rise to the technology used in modern music techniques.
WatchThe Secret Map of Britain
"we're fucked" recap
vruz: langer:
So Geithner’s plan is out, and a consensus is beginning to emerge: we’re fucked!
James Galbraith says “the Geithner plan is a Rube Goldberg device for shifting inevitable losses from the banks to the Treasury, preserving the big banks and their incumbent management in all their dysfunctional glory.”
Dean Baker notes that “house prices have another 20 percent to fall to correct...
The Morality of Drones →
Rethinking Security: BSG and Cyber-Security →
theministryoftruth:
A simple explanation of LSD flashbacks, and of their changed character after 1967, is available. According to this theory, almost everybody suffers flashbacks with or without LSD. Any intense emotional experience—the death of a loved one, the moment of discovery that one is in love, the moment of an automobile smashup or of a narrow escape from a smashup—may subsequently and...
WatchAimee Mullins: How my legs give me super-powers
“Billy asked for something to read on the trip to Tralfamadore. His captors had...”
– From Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut.
Sounds a little like Twitter, doesn’t it? Only, I rarely find anything on Twitter to be “beautiful and surprising and deep.”
(via johncommoner)
February 2009
1 post
