Math paradoxes

http://www.quora.com/Mathematics/What-are-the-most-basic-mathematical-proofs-or-facts-that-the-majority-of-people-would-benefit-from

Start-up idea

Product ratings that take into account the entire lifespan of the product. Better product ratings.

Learning to love volatility

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324735104578120953311383448.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Articles

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/04/magazine/how-do-you-raise-a-prodigy.html?pagewanted=4&ref=general&src=me

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/04/education/edlife/a-new-kind-of-tutoring-aims-to-make-students-smarter.html?src=me&ref=general

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/01/world/asia/wary-of-future-many-professionals-leave-china.html?src=me&ref=general

Do you remember how you acted, thought, and behaved as a teenager at King, and how, looking back now, you can see how all of this could be explained by your background and your experiences, i.e. your wish to make more friends that were white, your need to be athletic? What if your behavior and thoughts and philosophy continue to be a product of experience only, and you continue to fulfill some predetermined archetype?

Ideas from wired

1. Create a prize for medicine (or sustainability apps) => similar to X Prize for space
2. Beer markets: "crash" the market so that prices change.
3. Nate Silver: Play poker to deal with luck, uncertainty, and accounting for new information.
4. Make lists: Folders and subfolders on your PC.
5. Short vigorous workouts over 30 minutes (e.g. 60 seconds on 10 seconds off) are just as effective as longer workouts

China's high speed rail

This is a phenomenal article: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/10/22/121022fa_fact_osnos?currentPage=1

Equality is as American as freedom and liberty - what happened to "Equality University?"

http://www.economist.com/node/21564413

'There was little social mobility except, as Elizabeth found, through marriage. Colonial America was an exception to this feudal sclerosis. Research by Peter Lindert and Jeffrey Williamson shows that on the eve of the American revolution incomes in the 13 colonies that formed the United States were more equal than in virtually “any other place on the planet”.'

More ed reform

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/10/why-kids-should-grade-teachers/309088/3/

Two articles on ed reform:

1. Kids can't write because they haven't been taught the basics of how writing flows, i.e. the tools for constructing a sentence, a paragraph, and an essay - words like "if, but, although": New Dorp
2. Student evaluation of teachers is most correlated with improvements on standardized testing. Student surveys only cost $5 compared to other measures. Also, most teachers can't be evaluated on  standardized testing subject because they don't teach the subject.

Sleep and exercise

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/26/how-exercise-can-help-you-master-new-skills/

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/opinion/sunday/rethinking-sleep.html

Aluminium cans

Used beverage cans usually trade at around 20% less—currently at about 81.5 cents a pound versus $1.04 a pound—than the value of primary aluminum.


It takes about 25 cans to make a pound. By comparison, recovered paper is currently trading for between five and 20 cents a pound, and the plastic used in beverage containers for between 15 and 30 cents a pound, according to the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries.

Wayne Baker delivers three bags of cans every Monday. The 41-year-old father of two says he's diabetic and receives $900 of disability payments a month.

On a recent day, he collects $6. Mr. Castriota is currently paying 55 cents per pound. The $6 "will go toward milk, eggs and bread," says Mr. Baker.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443589304577633410750041328.html

Musk interview

http://www.autoblog.com/2012/09/07/tesla-ceo-elon-musk-q-and-a/

Musk: Well, I don't want to get suppliers mad at me, but some of them are some pretty big name suppliers and you think, "How the heck can this big-name supplier not get their shit together?" and I call the CEO and he's like, "I promise I'll get my shit together," and I'm like, "Your shit is not together." 

Abercrombie Sales Slide as Half-Naked Models Underwhelm

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-22/abercrombie-sales-slide-as-half-naked-models-underwhelm.html

Today’s teens are “radically different” from other generations, including Millennials now in their 20s, because they are rejecting uniforms, according to Marcie Merriman, founder of retail and brand strategy consultancy PrimalGrowth in Columbus, Ohio.

Dubbed Generation C -- for creative and connected -- they have a bevy of clothing options thanks to the boom in fast- fashion from Forever 21 Inc. and Hennes & Mauritz AB’s H&M, said Merriman, who has consulted for Jack Daniels and Nike Inc. and is a former director of brand planning and strategy for Limited Brands Inc.’s (LTD) Victoria’s Secret. Gen C also has developed a more individual style from the Web and social media, she said.

Abercrombie must “look at ways to tie in with this creative class in a way that their brand will continue to resonate,” Merriman said. “They’re positioned well to take advantage of this group’s desire to be rebellious and indie and different, because that’s what the brand is about, but right now the product mix doesn’t communicate that or facilitate it.”

“Abercrombie is still running an offense which is a huge banner of a bare-chested guy with a cute girl who’s not wearing enough clothing,” said David Maddocks, a former chief marketing officer for Nike’s Converse sneakers label, who now runs a lifestyle brand consulting firm based in Portland, Oregon. “It’s vacuous, there’s no core idea there anymore and people want the richness that comes with real authenticity.”

The company shows no signs of changing its brand message. A page laying out Abercrombie’s capital-allocation philosophy in an Aug. 15 investor presentation features a photo of two barely clothed teens making out.

读万卷书不如行万里路

What Makes Obama Great

The president’s decision reached forward into the impersonal future—Qaddafi would be killed, Libya would hold its first free elections—but it also reached back into the personal past, to the things that had made Obama capable of walking alone into a room with a pencil and walking out a bit later with a conviction.

Crowd-sourcing, polling, and collective decision-making as a means of building support

CA: Five thousand fewer children dying every day. I mean, it dwarfs, dwarfs everything that is actually on our news agenda, and it's invisible. This must drive you crazy. JD: It does, and we're having a huge debate in this country about aid levels, for example, and aid alone is not the whole solution. Nobody thinks it is. But, you know, if people saw the results of this smart aid, I mean, they'd be going crazy for it. I wish the 250,000 people who really did march outside this very building knew these results. Right now they don't, and it would be great to find a way to better communicate it, because we have not. Creatively, we've failed to communicate this success so far. If those kinds of efforts just could multiply their voice and amplify it at the key moments, I know for a fact we'd get better policy. The Mexican G20 need not have been a bust. Rio, if anyone cares about the environment, need not have been a bust, okay? But these conferences are going on, and I know people get skeptical and cynical about the big global summits and the promises and their never being kept, but actually, the bits that are, are making a difference, and what the politicians need is more permission from the public.

30,000 days

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/304202/were-just-not-important-response-anne-marie-slaughter-david-french

http://www.gq.com/news-politics/big-issues/201207/amber-waves-of-green-jon-ronson-gq-july-2012?printable=true

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/05/the-10-things-economics-can-tell-us-about-happiness/257947/

NPR: American dream

"The archetypal American dream was deeper than being richer and better looking than your parents," he says. "It was about identity — forging it, discovering it yourself, not inheriting it." But as it became easier, and even expected, to be self-made, the moral and spiritual pull of family, village, calling and religion receded into the mist, Meyer says. And along about the 1960s, "self-determination essentially became a consumer choice. Pick a religion and find an exercise regime, diet, clothing brand and favorites list to match." For many Americans, he says, the challenge of near total life freedom ...has been that shedding old ties and traditions turns out to be easier than finding meaningful new ones; forming a modern 'lifestyle' often ends being narcissistic and consumerist." This choice overload, Meyer says, "has proven to be spiritually hollow. We've found nothing to replace community, hard morality, religion and vocational pride to guide us through life. We're existentially in the dark." And that, he adds, is the place where the American nightmare takes hold.

Swimming and learning Senior Kevin Hudiono leaps off the side of the pool, hits the water - and goes down like a rock. This first, hourlong fall lesson will be enough for him. Soon he stops showing up. On the surface the kids are different. Together in a basement pool they're alike: teenagers who can't swim - the admission an embarrassment - but are eager to learn. The new swimming course was teacher Coder's idea. As a former lifeguard, he learned that African Americans drown at twice the rate of whites. The rates for other minorities are high, too. Many grow up with no access to pools, and never learn to swim. Coder thought he could teach a life-saving skill and simultaneously promote understanding. He took the plan to Hackney, who immediately approved it. City Councilman James Kenney found money for fees. The Fels Center, run by the nonprofit Caring People Alliance, opened its pool. All that work turned out to be the easy part. Although 10 students signed up, on the first day, only three appeared. A few more straggled in the next week. By the third session, a core group of three or four was making progress. Maria Ordinola, a senior who immigrated from Peru a year ago, notices that Uyen Pham, a senior from Vietnam, struggles to float. Ordinola tries to help. She puts her hands under Pham's back - and Pham freaks, jerking upright and moving away. She does not want anyone holding her in the water. Pham again leans back, and this time, it's she who reaches for support. Pham grabs Ordinola's hand and holds tight. At the end, only a few kids have stuck it out. None will be Olympic swimmers. But none will drown if they fall off a boat. And all have learned more than aquatics. "We help each other," Ordinola said. Senior Jasman Hill, who is African American, says she doesn't want the class to end, she's made such rich friendships. She moves through the water, stroke by stroke, and when she gets tired, she doesn't sink. She floats.

Bernanke could do more

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/magazine/chairman-bernanke-should-listen-to-professor-bernanke.html?pagewanted=4

Everywhere we turn at Yale, leadership is the prism through which our success and worth are evaluated. Professors praise and academic prizes reward classroom leadership. Student culture is far worse: I watch classmate after classmate fall into a sickening rat race of institutional ladder-climbing.

The message we are receiving is overwhelming: If by the time you graduate you have not been the musical director of an a cappella group, the editor-in-chief of a publication, the captain of a sports team, the president of a cultural group and the chairman of a political society, then you probably shouldn’t have been admitted in the first place.

On its most basic level, leadership culture suffocates individual students, pushing us in ill-fitting directions and creating bizarre incentives. How many of us find ourselves devoting hundreds of hours into causes we care little about in a desperate climb to official leadership? In the process, we lose hundreds of irretrievable hours we may have spent studying and serving causes closer to our hearts. Worse, we perform our duties shallowly and opaquely, looking for accolades and positive feedback rather than genuine accomplishment. This is an impressionable time, and these are the worst sorts of work habits we could possibly be forming.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/magazine/why-are-harvard-graduates-in-the-mailroom.html

Ours is a society of strivers - the so-called "job lottery." All jobs are essentially becoming a high stakes lottery. At the same time, middle-class Plan Bs are being whittled away.

At some point I need to decide whether I believe in determinism or free will. I came to this thought because I don't often believe that I have much control over my own life but I want to believe that I can and should fight the easy slippage into routine.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/24/opinion/brooks-america-is-europe.html

Supposedly America is a bigger welfare state than Europe when tax breaks are taken into account.

Be a planet not a satellite!

Many people have argued that these changes have led to a culture of atomization, loneliness and self-absorption. That’s overdrawn. In “Going Solo,” Klinenberg nicely shows that people who live alone are more likely to visit friends and join social groups. They are more likely to congregate in and create active, dynamic cities.

It’s more accurate to say that we have gone from a society that protected people from their frailties to a society that allows people to maximize their talents.

The old settled social structures were stifling to many creative and dynamic people (and in those days discrimination stifled people even more). But people who were depressed, disorganized and disadvantaged were able to lead lives enmeshed in supportive relationships.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/21/opinion/brooks-the-talent-society.html?src=me&ref=general

Is this the end of market democracy?

http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/is-this-the-end-of-market-democracy/

"Overall, Autor has found that the combination of three trends — automation; the emergence of a trade-based international labor force; and the movement of jobs offshore — has polarized the job market. There is growth at the high and low ends, but the middle collapses."

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&hp

The results were dramatic. Over the next four months, those participants who deliberately identified cues and rewards spent twice as much time exercising as their peers. Other studies have yielded similar results. According to another recent paper, if you want to start running in the morning, it’s essential that you choose a simple cue (like always putting on your sneakers before breakfast or leaving your running clothes next to your bed) and a clear reward (like a midday treat or even the sense of accomplishment that comes from ritually recording your miles in a log book). After a while, your brain will start anticipating that reward — craving the treat or the feeling of accomplishment — and there will be a measurable neurological impulse to lace up your jogging shoes each morning.

Education Gap

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/10/education/education-gap-grows-between-rich-and-poor-studies-show.html?pagewanted=all&src=ISMR_AP_LO_MST_FB

Jeremy Lin

http://freedarko.blogspot.com/2010/01/lives-of-others.html

Mark-to-Market Tax

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/08/opinion/the-zuckerberg-tax.html

Prison incarceration

"Curbing crime does not depend on reversing social pathologies or alleviating social grievances; it depends on erecting small, annoying barriers to entry.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/01/30/120130crat_atlarge_gopnik#ixzz1kteuk79q"

The trouble with the Bill of Rights, he argues, is that it emphasizes process and procedure rather than principles. The Declaration of the Rights of Man says, Be just! The Bill of Rights says, Be fair! Instead of announcing general principles—no one should be accused of something that wasn’t a crime when he did it; cruel punishments are always wrong; the goal of justice is, above all, that justice be done—it talks procedurally. You can’t search someone without a reason; you can’t accuse him without allowing him to see the evidence; and so on. This emphasis, Stuntz thinks, has led to the current mess, where accused criminals get laboriously articulated protection against procedural errors and no protection at all against outrageous and obvious violations of simple justice. You can get off if the cops looked in the wrong car with the wrong warrant when they found your joint, but you have no recourse if owning the joint gets you locked up for life. You may be spared the death penalty if you can show a problem with your appointed defender, but it is much harder if there is merely enormous accumulated evidence that you weren’t guilty in the first place and the jury got it wrong. Even clauses that Americans are taught to revere are, Stuntz maintains, unworthy of reverence: the ban on “cruel and unusual punishment” was designed to protect cruel punishments—flogging and branding—that were not at that time unusual.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/01/30/120130crat_atlarge_gopnik#ixzz1ktaNLahT

Reminds me of Dave's "Its against the spirit of the law..."

Gay won't go away, genetic or not

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/29/opinion/sunday/bruni-gay-wont-go-away-genetic-or-not.html?src=me&ref=general&gwh

Its hard to identify any group genetically once the physical marker is removed. For example, if the gene for the presence of melanin would were excluded, what else would continue to make blacks black? A group can only be defined by physical characteristics because anything else might be subject to the environment.

Inevitability

As applied to the financial meltdown a la "Margin Call"? As applied to the movement of U.S factories to Asia?

A primary reason why I want to go into start-ups. Entrepreneurship prevents inevitability and provides a countering force to global corporate capitalism's inertia...

Systems

Reminds me of the same reason Yalies go into consulting and finance:

“The consumer electronics business has become an Asian business. As an American, I worry about that, but there’s nothing I can do to stop it. Asia has become what the U.S. was for the last 40 years.”

I think one has to believe that there are actions to stop inertia, actions to stop a path-constrained route.

Debt

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/02/opinion/krugman-nobody-understands-debt.html

"Britain, in particular, has had debt exceeding 100 percent of G.D.P. for 81 of the last 170 years."