Lisa Gold is an accurately self described Research Maven, who help Neal Stephenson write the Baroque Trilogy, about late 17th Centery and ealry 18th Century physics, banking, and world politics. Here she points out that Banned Books Week is September 27 to October 4. Noting Sarah Palin’s propensity to block purchases to her local library,…
Month: September 2008
Cognizing and offloading Cognitive Load
In linguistincs and psychology we talk about the cognitive load of any task. A task that requires calculation or analysis has a larger cognitive load. A task in a foreign language, or using an unfamiliar tool, like a computer, also increases cognitive load. David Peskovitz over at BoingBoing has a friend at the Institute of…
The Ellsberg Paradox
Mark Frauenfelder over at BoingBoing is reading Gregory Bern’s Iconoclast. He talks about the Ellsberg Paradox. Read his description of aversion to ambiguity. Which one would you choose?
Utterly Cynical GOP
Saw this first on Digg, where the GOP is trying to use foreclosure roles in Michigan to deny people the vote. How sadly, sinisterly ironic is this. Deregulate the mortgage lending industry so that the market collapses and voters get booted from their homes. Use this information to eliminate these disgruntled voters from the polling…
Woes on Wall Street, Black Swans
I woke up this morning and opened my browser, and found the Dow down 500 points, to less than 11,000. Lehman Brothers is filing for protection against bankruptcy (Chapter 11, the lesser of the two evils.) Merrill Lynch sold itself to Bank of America for the bargain basement price of $50 billion. AIG needs about…