Links: Collapsing NYC Skyscraper, NCAA Bagmen, Yahoo, Health Insurance, Etc.

Now that my PhD is done—for the water wave aficionados out there, I will post a link to the preprint of my research sometime soon, I hope1—it’s time to start catching up on things. The writeup on my math, linguistics and writing freshman seminar is in the works. For now, here are assorted links. This …

Links: The Future of the Left, Tech Intellectuals, Self-Serve Gas Stations, Etc

Simon Winchester, My First Mistake. An article by Peter Beinart on the future of the left. Paul Berman argues for music lessons. Is anyone else as confused as I am about how it’s possible that a new ligament in the human knee was only just discovered? Interesting interview with literary agent Andrew Wylie. On The …

Links: Pynchon, Marissa Mayer, Larry Summers, Finance, Blogging

I have a bit of a backlog here, but really what’s so important about being timely with these things? Who cares if many of these came out in the end of August…it’s been a busy semester. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Pavlov Poke for Facebook. Slate: This browser shortcut is like ctrl-z for the entire internet An …

Links: On Aaron Swartz, Nate Silver, Detroit, Grace in Teaching, A New Cancer Technology, Etc

Not sure if I will keep doing these links…perhaps will do them less frequently and with less annotation, since even this takes a surprising amount of time. Harry Lewis on MIT’s response to Aaron Swartz, contrasting it with Harvard’s response to the cheating scandal. Note the importance of moral wisdom in universities. (And note how …

Links: The Math of Genealogy, Manic Pixie Dream Girls, Techno-Utopianism, Eric Holder, Pope Francis, etc

A few links, as I prepare some more substantive posts. Laurie Penny, I was a Manic Pixie Dream Girl in the New Statesman. (Opening lines: “Like scabies and syphilis, Manic Pixie Dream Girls were with us long before they were accurately named.”) I recently started using Amazon’s S3 for highly durable, inexpensive cloud-based backup system, …

Links: NSA, New Nobels, Marijuana Legalization, Corporations and the First Amendment, Roger Ebert, etc

A good article in Slate’s Explainer column on what the legal repercussions would be for congressmen who revealed NSA secrets. An interesting article by Graeme Wood in New York magazine about online reputation management. Gene Weingarten, A story that could make Roger Ebert look bad. Too soon? Often Weingarten is a bit (or, well, more …

Links: Number Theory, Mel Brooks, Garden Hermits, Gay Marriage, Passwords, etc

I promise to have some real posts soon—an announcement describing my freshman writing course about math, and a two-part series on the late economist Albert Hirschman, including a discussion of how his theories apply to the tech world—but for now a few links: There’s big news in math with Yitang Zhang’s proof of a big …

Remember Learned Hand Before Criticizing Apple’s Tax Practices

Apple is the news, charged by Congress with evading taxes. In any discussion about taxation, the following quote from the great judge Learned Hand1 should be kept in mind: Any one may so arrange his affairs that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which will …

Interesting Articles: Syria, Free Speech and Privacy Online, Dogs, Fossil Fuels, How to Win at Poker, and More

A good article by Dexter Filkins in the New Yorker on Syria. A really complicated situation. An interesting etymology from the recent New Yorker article (paywall) by Rivka Galchen about Elmhurst Hospital: The word “pedagogy” comes from the Greek term for the slave who escorted a child to school. (p. 55) No comment about whether …

Interesting Articles: Humanities Make Money, The Purchase of Instagram, Kierkegaard, and More

UCLA English professor Robert Watson writes a very interesting article about the economics of higher education: Bottom Line Shows Humanities Really Do Make Money I have a good deal to say about the misleading arguments often made about the cost of higher education. Perhaps at some point I’ll take the time to say that here. …