Links: Crowds and the Recession, Snowden, Win $1 Million with Circuits, Social Choice Theory, and More

As promised, more substantive posts (including a reflection on my freshman seminar on math, linguistics, and writing) to come soon, once I finish my thesis.1 For now, assorted links accrued over procrastination during thesis-writing. Terry Tao has a really cool idea about using circuit design from electrical engineering to solve the million-dollar Navier-Stokes problem. A …

Links: SWAT Teams, Nostalgia, Lemonade Stands, Why Ice Cream Sounds Fat, Gluten Intolerance, Etc.

An interesting article by Stanford linguist Dan Jurafsky on why different sounds have different associations, e.g., why “ice cream sounds fat”. I’ve always been interested in the Saussaurean arbitrariness of sign—the notion that the sound or form of a word is independent of the meaning. (I hope to write on this in the future.) This …

Larry Summers and Glenn Hubbard Shooting Hoops

This week’s New York Times magazine features an article by Adam Davison about economists Larry Summers and Glenn Hubbard. Forgive me for being superficial and ignoring the weighty macroeconomic topics discussed in the article; instead I’m going to offer three thoughts about the basketball tie-in. On Scrawny Moderately Athletic Kids The article begins with Larry …