« February 2007 | Main | April 2007 »
Behavioral finance? Neuroeconomics?
No.
The Markov Chain Monte Carlo method?
Old and busted.
The new hotness?
"The truth? You can't handle the truth!"
The economics profession gives many thanks to Kerry for the breakthrough.
The Skeptical Optimist has updated his pie chart of who owns the U.S. national debt.
In every aspect, cancer stinks. And this really stinks: the body's own immune response may be partly responsible for prostate cancer metastasis.
Old joke but funny.
Time sure changes your perspective: that sickening plunge in the stock market in 1987 is now just a tiny wiggle on the chart.
I wouldn't know, but it sounds like inside information: "How to Pass a Silicon Valley Software Engineering Interview":
Even if you don't interact with them directly, knowing data structures and algorithms is key to understanding performance. This is not premature optimization - this is choosing the right tool for the job. And that choice is often wonderfully subtle.
And if you decide to do 20 million operations when you could very easily instead do 1 million, eventually we're going to have some problems.
More generic, but sound advice: "How to Ace Your Job Interview: 88 Surefire Tips and Tricks".
The "10 Most Magnificent Trees in the World". (Link via Kottke.)
Last week's post on Danny DeVito's speech in Other People's Money prompted an unusual number of comments and e-mails. A lot of other people are fans of that speech.
When I posted the transcript of it, though, I forgot about the wonderful American Rhetoric site that has audio files, and some video files, of many important movie speeches. So here's both audio and video of Gregory Peck's speech, a ringing defense of his firm and a bitter critique of hostile takeovers. It, too, is wonderfully well-written.
And here's audio and video of DeVito's magnificent reply.
Some of my other favorites are on the site, such as the following.
"If you will excuse me, Your Excellency, it is our view that matters have gone beyond legislation. We think it is time you recognized that you are masters in someone else's home. Despite the best intentions of the best of you, you must, in the nature of things, humiliate us to control us. General Dyer is but an extreme example of the principle. It is time you left."
"This is a different kind of army. If you look back through history, you will see men fighting for pay, for women, for some other kind of loot. They fight for land, power, because a king leads them or -- or just because they like killing. But we are here for something new. This has not happened much in the history of the world. We are an army out to set other men free."
"Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who's gonna do it? You? You, Lieutenant Weinberg? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago, and you curse the Marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know -- that Santiago's death, while tragic, probably saved lives; and my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives."
"What we've got here is failure to communicate."
"Now, I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country."
Like a lot of people I have one e-mail address that I don't use much except for signing up for things that will probably send me lots of spam. The temporary e-mail addresses provided free by Mailinator seem even better. (Spambox does close to the same thing.)
Dan Neil on the Maserati Quattroporte:
The Maserati Quattroporte is the most beautiful, best-handling super-sedan on the planet. Oh, if that were only enough.