Antoine's shared items in Google Reader

Alexandre (8 ans) atteint de dyspraxie

2011-11-30T20:09:00Z

Une vidéo YouTube m'a plu: Interview d'Alexandre, 8 ans atteint de dyspraxie

Caroline Huron : l'impact de la dyspraxie à l'école

2011-11-30T19:53:07Z

Une vidéo YouTube m'a plu: Lors d'un débat public le 16 mai 2009, Caroline Huron, chercheuse à l'Inserm, est intervenue sur la dyspraxie à l'école et en particulier sur l'ordinateur et l'adaptation des manuels scolaires.

Dyspraxie

2011-11-30T19:52:37Z

Une vidéo YouTube m'a plu: Dyspraxie. Plus de videos sur www.votre-enfant.com

Csound For Live: Powerful Sound Creation in Ableton, With or Without Any Coding

2011-10-15T19:08:43Z

With great power comes great learning curves – or maybe not. Csound for Live, just announced this weekend and shipping on Tuesday, brings one of the great sound design tools into the Ableton Live environment. You can use it without any actual knowledge of Csound, without a single line of code — or, for those with the skills, it could transform how you use Csound.

For anyone who thinks music creation software has to be disposable, you’ve never seen Csound. With a lineage going literally to the dawn of digital synthesis and Max Mathews, Csound has managed to stay compatible without being dated, host to a continuous stream of composition and sonic imagination that has kept it at the bleeding edge of what computers can do with audio.

Csound for Live does two things. First, it makes Csound run in real-time in ways that are more performative and, well, “live” than ever before, inside the Live environment. Second, its release marks a kind of “greatest hits” of Csound, pulling some of the platform’s best creators into building new and updated work that’s more usable.

If you’re not a Csound user, you just dial up their work and see what your music can do. If you are, of course, you can go deeper. And if you’re somewhere in between, you can dabble first before modifying, hacking, or making your own code. And that means for everybody, you get:

Spectral processors
Phase vocoders
Granular processors
Physical models
Classic instruments

More description:

It looks great. It works great. It sounds… beyond great.

CsoundForLive is a collection of over 120 real time audio-plugins that brings the complexity and sound quality of Csound to the fingertips of ANY Ableton Live user – without ANY prior Csound knowledge.

Capitalizing on the design power of Max For Live, what once took pages of text in Csound can now be accomplished in a few clicks of your mouse.

Move a slider on your APC40 and deconstruct your audio through professional quality granular synthesis…

Touch a square of your Launchpad and warp pitch and time with real time FFT processing…

Press letters on your keyboard and create sonically intricate melodies through wave terrain synthesis…

And Dr. Richard Boulanger, unofficial Jedi Master of the Csound movement, instigator of this project, and Berklee School of Music sound and music wizard, posts a bit more:

With my former student, and now partner, Colman O’Reilly, I have been working around the clock for months to collect, adapt, create, wrap, and simplify a huge collection of Csound instruments and make them all work simultaneously and interchangeably in Ableton Live. In this guise, I am able to “hot-swap” the most complex Csound instruments in and out of an arrangement or composition – on the fly. This is something Csound could never do (and still can’t!), but CsoundForLive can, and it makes a huge difference in the playability and the usability of Csound.

Two weeks ago, I played a solo concert in Hanover Germany, at the first International Csound Conference. There, all of my compositions, from 20 years ago to 20 minutes ago, were performed in real-time using CsoundForLive. Tonight, at the Cycling ’74 Expo in Brooklyn, NY, I will be demonstrating the program; and next week, I will be releasing this huge collection (on Tuesday, October 17th, at 12:01am).

A huge part of the complete collection is FREE, and I hope it will make the creative difference in your (and your student’s) lives that it is making in mine. This is a serious game changer for Csound. Check it out. Dr. B.

If you’re at Expo ’74, do say hello to Dr. B for us (and I think you’ll get some nice surprises with this project).

I’ve got a copy in for testing, so stay tuned. And I’ll be doing some follow-ups with Dr. Boulanger and company.

The only bad news here, of course, is that both a supported version of Ableton Live and Max for Live are required to be able to run Csound in this way. In fact, sounds like we have a nice four-horse race going. Max 6 overhauls how multiple patches work (on top of Max for Live), SuperCollider has its own possibilities for multiple real-time patch loading, someone suggested in comments using pd~ inside Pd to manage multiple Pd creations (something fairly new even to most experienced Pd users), and now we have Csound in Live.

But overall, Csound for Live looks like a no-brainer for Max for Live owners, no question, and an exciting taste of the ongoing convergence of cutting-edge creative sound and code with live music making for everybody. As I hinted at in the Max 6 post, I think it’s suddenly a Renaissance for all these platforms.

http://www.csoundforlive.com/

Silly geeky footnote: With pd~ for Max, I know it’s possible to run Pd for Max. And via another external, Pd can also run Csound. So we could theoretically run Csound in Pd in Max in Live. But let’s not get carried away.

Time Banks: Got Time for Lunch?

2011-10-20T15:45:11Z

Last weekend, I was walking around New York’s Lower East Side when I stumbled upon an interesting restaurant. The counter was serving Thai food, but they didn’t take cash – they only took time.

For a home-cooked lunch (with table service), I was told I’d have to pay with a half-hour of my time. This was an alternative economy staged by artists Julieta Aranda and Anton Vidokle as part of Creative Time’s Living as Form exhibition, part of a larger community movement of time banks going on nationally.

A time bank is not a barter system. Your good (or service) is not directly exchanged for another good or service. There’s a medium of exchange: it’s time, not money.

Some interesting history from their artist statement:

The origins of time-based currency can be traced both to the American anarchist Josiah Warren, who ran the Cincinnati Time Store from 1827 until 1830, and to the British industrialist and philanthropist Robert Owen, who founded the utopian “New Harmony” community. While both systems are based on the principles of mutualism and the labor theory of value, Josiah Warren’s currency was explicitly pegged to time as a measure of specific goods or labor.
The first successful contemporary time bank was started in 1991 by Paul Glover in Ithaca, New York. Following his idea, people began to exchange time, which led to the creation of a time-based currency—the “Ithaca Hours,” which even local businesses began to accept, and which still flourishes. Time banking and service exchange have since developed into a full-fledged movement, usually centered around local communities.

I was intrigued but taken aback as I realized that I value my time a lot. I don’t have a good reason to — I don’t have kids or multiple graduate degrees or a special skill that makes my time particularly valuable. I do however have a lot of hobbies and friends, and I love to sleep 8 hours a day.

But since time was being treated as a currency here, I sat down and figured out a quick personal exchange rate. I took my current salary (since I supposedly would have to work to pay the time back) and divided it to approximate how much one minute of my time is worth in the current market economy, and I compared that against how much I value a home-cooked Thai lunch. I also considered the value I place on participating in a public art project, and whether I could pay the time back doing something I enjoy. This is a really rough approximation, but it helped me think about paying with time more clearly.

I think time banks are a good way to get people thinking about value on a personal level, but, for practicality’s sake, the scale of such a currency can only be small and locally-based. Time is finite, whereas money is not, and we all only have 24 hours a day — so what would we do for the things in our world that cost more than the amount of time we have?

Incidentally, there’s a Justin Timberlake sci-fi movie coming out next week about a world where the currency is time. Maybe we have time banks to thank for that. (Or not.)

Always Look on the Bright Side of Life Sing-Along

2011-10-18T19:14:07Z

Une vidéo YouTube m'a plu: Not The Messiah (He's a Very Naughty Boy) DVD, Blu-ray and Soundtrack available from June 8th: www.notthemessiahmovie.com/

Argument Clinic

2011-10-18T19:06:17Z

J'ai ajouté une vidéo YouTube à mes favoris.: Monty Python's Flying Circus http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Monty-Pythons-Flying-Circus/dp/B001E77XNA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1226597796&sr=1-1

Anthony Freda: Too Big To Fail

2011-10-14T22:00:05Z

Anthony Freda:

What’s In A Tweet

2011-10-02T20:30:02Z

Source:
What’s In A Tweet
Economist, September 29, 2011

WCS to Blues

2011-10-02T13:55:11Z

J'ai ajouté une vidéo YouTube à mes favoris.: Robert Royston & Katie Boyle dancing West Coast Swing - the ideal swing dance for blues! Looks like it is at the Boston Tea Party event but I can't tell what year. -- emariaf, wcsdancebaby (Thanks!)

Am I Good Enough to Compete In a Prediction Tournament?

2011-09-23T19:03:55Z

(Stockbyte)

Last spring, we posted on Phil Tetlock’s massive prediction tournament: Good Judgment. You might remember Tetlock from our latest Freakonomics Radio podcast, “The Folly of Prediction.” (You can download/subscribe at iTunes, get the RSS feed, or read the transcript here.)

Tetlock is a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, well-known for his book Expert Political Judgment, in which he tracked 80,000 predictions over the course of 20 years. Turns out that humans are not great at predicting the future, and experts do just a bit better than a random guessing strategy.

Good Judgment is Tetlock’s latest project, an ambitious plan to put 2,500 volunteers to the test in a forecasting tournament sponsored by the U.S. government. The Good Judgment research team includes Barb Mellers and Don Moore, with an advisory board of Daniel Kahneman, Robert Jervis, Scott Armstrong, Michael Mauboussin, Carl Spetzler and Justin Wolfers. The criteria for selection is for those “who have a serious interest in and knowledge about world affairs, politics, and global economic matters and are interested in testing their own forecasting and reasoning skills.”

Considering myself someone who fits this description, I signed up to represent Team Freakonomics in the tournament. I have an econ degree from the University of Chicago (and consider myself a decent tarot card reader) so, why not? Plus it pays $150 a year to answer some questions online, and at worst I could use a “random guessing strategy” that would give me pretty good odds in this game.

The entry process started innocently enough, with a survey designed to gauge one’s interest in forecasting. Then came a test of world knowledge, which was hard for a couple of reasons. First, Google searching isn’t allowed; additionally, the test is timed, so you’d barely have time for Google in any case. Second, the test questions asked for a range of how true a given statement might be. For instance: a certain country’s GDP is $X in a given year; how true is that claim? This made the exercise incredibly difficult, as I have enough knowledge to give an extreme answer – true or false – but not enough to give a more subtle one.

I also knew about “anchoring” (which Richard Thaler speaks about in our “Mouse in the Salad” podcast). My mind was probably playing tricks on me with answers that seemed right, but probably weren’t.

This whole process did a number on my self-esteem: if I didn’t know about the world here and now, how could I possibly predict the future? I ended up completing the survey in segments; luckily there were some LSAT-type logic questions at the end and a fun IQ-shapes game.

I know what I was thinking by the end: boy, this should definitely pay more than $150! And I’m not even in the tournament yet!

Thankfully, I got notice yesterday that I’ve been accepted into the tournament (phew!). So let the games begin! Now all that’s left is for me to decide on a strategy: random guessing or actually trying to predict the future. Given what Tetlock’s research shows, that’s a tough call.

La commande Vocale pour Android

2011-09-19T13:05:40Z

I liked a YouTube video: Commandez votre téléphone Android avec votre voix. Téléchargez l'appli Recherche vocale pour vous servir des commandes vocales

RIAA

2011-09-09T16:36:40Z

Indeed.

“The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is a trust that represents the recording industry distributors in the United States. Its members consist of record labels and distributors, which the RIAA say “create, manufacture and/or distribute approximately 85% of all legitimate sound recordings produced and sold in the United States”.” – Wikipedia.org

via thisisnthappiness.com

Crania Anatomica Filigre by Joshua Harker

2011-09-13T19:43:38Z

Une vidéo YouTube m'a plu: filigree skull sculpture...ultimately 3D printed

Cartoon of the Day: Western Fetish

2011-09-06T13:37:00Z

Featured in James Joyner's article about "the Western fetish for turning cheap, efficient food into expensive, inefficient fuel."

Massive Employment Chartfest

2011-09-06T15:30:05Z

Here’s something to distract you — or perhaps help to explain? — today’s markets. Its from Ron Griess of The Chart Store, and it is a massive NFP chartfest.

Enjoy:

Unemployment Rate

˜˜˜

U6 Unemployment Rate

˜˜˜
NFP Post WW2 Recession/Recoveries

˜˜˜

2007-09 Compared to Post WW2 Composite

˜˜˜

Nominal and Real Average Hourly Earnings of Employees

~~~

Employees on Nonfarm Payrolls by industry sector

˜˜˜

Total NFP

˜˜˜

Total Private Service Payrolls

˜˜˜

Total Private Goods Producing Payrolls

˜˜˜

Total Private Manufacturing Payrolls

~~~

Total Government Payrolls

˜˜˜

Average Hourly Wages

˜˜˜

Randy Wray: Helicopter Ben – How Modern Money Theory Responds to Hyperinflation Hyperventilators

2011-09-07T15:39:18Z

L. Randall Wray is a Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and Senior Scholar at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. Cross posted from EconoMonitor

In the first part of this series on hyperinflation I addressed the critic’s view that if Modern Monetary Theory were adopted, this would inevitably lead to hyperinflation. I argued that this is obviously false—MMT describes how any sovereign government that issues its own currency spends. They’ve all done it for the past “4000 years at least” as Keynes put it. All modern sovereign governments spend by “keystrokes”—making electronic entries onto balance sheets—what most critics somewhat misleadingly call “printing money”. There is no other way to spend a sovereign currency into existence. Only the sovereign government can create it. If you try to create US currency in your basement, you go to jail.

In the second part, I argued that hyperinflation is a rare occurrence. Obviously, if “keystrokes” inevitably lead to hyperinflation, then hyperinflation ought to be a common feature of just about all economies for the past 4000 years. Instead, we find that experience with hyperinflation is quite limited, and seems to result from very specific circumstances such as unwillingness or inability to impose and collect taxes, with civil war, or with huge external debts denominated in a foreign currency. And while goldbugs and others think that tying a currency to gold (or to a foreign currency) is a sure-fire way to avoid inflation, what we actually observe in the real world is that such systems are inherently unstable and rarely last long before they crash—often with an exchange rate crisis and high or hyper-inflation.

In this final part of the series I will address the belief that the US (and other countries with large budget deficits in their own floating rate currency) faces hyperinflation. Many fear that “Helicopter Ben” (Chairman Bernanke) has pumped so much “money” into the economy that high inflation, if not hyperinflation, will be the inevitable result. This is one of the reasons for the run into gold—supposedly an inflation hedge.

In reality, there is no surer bet than the wager that the US will not experience significant inflation for many years to come.

Let us first deal with the helicopter story. In the aftermath of the financial collapse of 2008, the US government (Fed plus Treasury) spent, lent, or guaranteed to the sum of $29 trillion to save Wall Street. (That, in itself, is the story of the century; but it will have to wait for another day.) What concerns our hyperinflationary hyperventilators is the record increase of bank reserves—created as the Fed lent reserves, purchased toxic waste assets, and bought Treasuries from banks. The Fed makes purchases and lends by crediting banks with reserves (the Fed’s liability) in exchange for an asset (either the bank’s IOU, or the asset sold by the bank to the Fed).

Most of this occurred during QE1 and QE2, undertaken in the Fed’s misguided belief that it could pursue a “quantity target” (increasing reserves) rather than simply a “price target” (low interest rate) to stimulate the economy. (That too is an amazing story of self-deception, to be told another day.) It didn’t work. Now QE3 seems inevitable, and it will not work, either. But in any case, the banks have got a couple of trillion dollars of reserves that they do not need.

The hyperventilators scream hyperinflation! As soon as banks start to lend out those reserves, borrowers will pump up the economy beyond full employment, causing inflation. Worse, banks can lend a multiple of the reserves (the so-called deposit multiplier)—so rather than lending a measly $2 trillion, they might lend $20 trillion or more. That would add trillions to our GDP of about $14 trillion, obviously way beyond the capacity to actually produce goods and services. And all that comes on top of the Federal government’s record budget deficits—and its borrowing. So a debt-fueled spending bubble will make us the next Zimbabwe or Weimar.

Here’s what is wrong with the analysis. First, it misunderstands the relation between bank reserves and lending. Second, it misunderstands the economic situation.

Banks do not lend reserves. Indeed, they cannot—there is no balance sheet operation that allows banks to lend reserves to anyone except to another bank that has an account at the Fed. The reason is quite simple: reserves are an entry on the balance sheet of the Fed. When a bank lends reserves, the Fed debits that bank’s account and credits another bank’s account. You and I do not have accounts at the Fed. No bank can lend reserves to us. Period.

What do banks actually lend? Their own IOUs. Let us say that you are credit worthy (maybe a stretch, given the state of the economy—perhaps like many Americans you’ve lost your job and are delinquent in your house payments). You go to your bank and ask for a loan—for a car, a boat, a house, a TV. You provide your IOU to the bank (promising to make payments) and the bank provides you with a check (its IOU) that you hand over to the seller. The seller deposits the check and gets a credit to a demand deposit. (If it is a different bank, there is a clearing of accounts using reserves—we’ll get back to that.) In other words, banks make loans by crediting demand deposits—which are the IOUs of banks. As we MMTers say “loans make deposits”.

(When you repay a loan, the deposits are debited, or “destroyed”. You write a check, the bank debits your demand deposit and your IOU to the bank is simultaneously debited. The process is the reverse of bank lending.)

So to be clear: banks create demand deposits when they make loans; they do not lend reserves.

Now, what about check clearing? When a bank gets a check from another bank, it credits a demand deposit and sends the check to the Fed for clearing; the Fed credits that bank’s reserves and debits the reserves of the bank on which the check was written. The reserves “move” from one bank to another. Again, no reserves have escaped into the economy—they are all safely locked up at the Fed. They cannot get out except through ATM machines, in the form of cash. When you make a withdrawal of cash from your demand deposit, your bank debits your account and the Fed debits the bank’s reserves. Of course, you could just have well spent using a demand deposit—you took out the cash for convenience (perhaps to finance illegal purchases?).

The only other way that reserves disappear is when the banks buy Treasuries from the Fed or from the Treasury—they essentially “pay for” Treasuries using reserves. That is the end of the story of reserves. Except for cash withdrawals or purchases of Treasuries, they stay locked up at the Fed.

What about Helicopter Ben? When the Fed bought all that junk as well as Treasuries from banks, Ben had the Fed credit their reserves. The Fed also changed its practice and began to pay interest on reserves—25 basis points. So effectively reserves became indistinguishable from Treasuries—they are government IOUs that pay interest. Banks can choose to hold a Treasury that pays interest, or reserves that pay interest—it is a portfolio choice. One has a maturity (maybe as short as 30 days), so it is like a time deposit, and the other has zero maturity so it is like a checkable deposit. But since the market for Treasuries is highly developed and liquid, banks have no problem moving from their “time deposits” (Treasuries) to their “demand deposits” (reserves). (No substantial penalty for early “withdrawal”!)

The main case for hyperinflation rests on the misguided belief that banks are for some reason more willing to pump up lending when they hold “demand deposits” rather than “time deposits”. Clearly they do not lend either one. They use reserves (“demand deposits”) for clearing with other banks, and for ATM withdrawals. But Treasuries (“time deposits”) serve just as well—banks can always borrow reserves from other banks or from the Fed, using Treasuries as collateral (and they’ve got other assets that also serve as collateral except in a run to liquidity).

Indeed, banks do not need either reserves or Treasuries in order to lend. Recall they lend their own IOUs. If they then find they need reserves for clearing (or, later, to meet required reserve ratios), they borrow them from other banks (fed funds market) or from the Fed (discount window), or they sell assets to obtain them.

Turning to the state of the economy, except for the final stages of the speculative boom in commodities (that will surely end soon) there are no significant inflation pressures. Fourteen million people are looking for jobs. Even the most rosy projections see high unemployment for years. As Eric Tymoigne has demonstrated, at the current pace of “recovery” we will not get back to the employment levels of January 2008 before 2017—and meanwhile the potential labor force will have added millions of high school and college graduates as well as immigrants. (http://neweconomicperspectives.blogspot.com/2011/09/after-great-recession-bleaker.html)

And the US is in relatively good shape—compared with Euroland and Japan. Further, all the recent evidence for the US shows a “double-dip” is underway. I expect resumption of the financial crisis any day (the lawsuits against the biggest banksters will help hasten that). Even the Chinese economy is slowing—which could increase their efforts to produce competitive exports.

Just where are all those borrowers who are willing and able to borrow the $2 trillion or $20 trillion that hyperventilators believe banks want to lend? The US private sector (firms and households) have instead ramped up their net savings—they are not borrowing, they are not even spending their diminished income. They are scared. They are (rationally) tightening belts, paying down debt, and accumulating claims on government and banks.

In short, the prospects for inflation have not been smaller since 1930.

Channeling FDR: The Moral Case Against Unemployment

2011-09-07T16:01:46Z

Photo: jimcintosh

My last weekend in D.C. provided a final chance to enjoy my favorite haunts. And so I found myself walking amongst the memorialized giants of U.S. history: Washington, Lincoln, and now, Martin Luther King. On I walked, through the FDR Memorial, where I stumbled across the chiseled message below. Sure, I had seen it before. But I had forgotten how beautiful it is. And with the President about to announce his new jobs package, and Congress set to (hopefully!) debate these measures, it seems well worth sharing my serendipitous moment with Franklin Delano Roosevelt. A reminder, if you like, of why we care.

If my photo isn’t entirely clear, let me reproduce the full quote:

No country, however rich, can afford the waste of its human resources. Demoralization caused by vast unemployment is our greatest extravagance. Morally, it is the greatest menace to our social order.

I’m sure FDR would acknowledge the usual economic case against unemployment—billions of dollars of lost output and rising fiscal pressure. And certainly, we hear this a lot in Washington. But I find FDR so persuasive because he advocates an explicitly moral argument, reminding us of the corrosive and demoralizing effects of unemployment.

This speech continues beyond the parts that were memorialized, and it is just as important:

I stand or fall by my refusal to accept as a necessary condition of our future a permanent army of unemployed. On the contrary, we must make it a national principle that we will not tolerate a large army of unemployed and that we will arrange our national economy to end our present unemployment as soon as we can and then to take wise measures against its return.

Wise words, worth bearing in mind when the policy debate heats up.

The Future Of iOS Music

2011-08-26T20:54:30Z

Since we posted last week about the Open Music App Collaboration Manifesto - a call to iOS music developers to push ahead with inter-app collaboration features – there has been an explosion of discussion and development. We noted developer Rob Fielding’s thoughts on best practices for iOS MIDI instruments yesterday. There also an active developer discussion going on [...]

Music in Space and Time: Wild Geometries and Sequencing in Iannix, Free

2011-08-15T16:22:59Z

Nerds: It’s an OSC sequencer. It’s JavaScript-programmable for making your own generative music. It works with hardware and other software. You can use it in real-time.

Everyone: it makes spectacularly strange sounds out of spectacularly beautiful flows of geometries through space.

IanniX, the latest-generation descendant of work done by pioneering experimental composer Iannis Xenakis, has been evolving at rapid pace into what may be the most sophisticated graphical sequencer ever. Xenakis originally had to content himself to drawing elaborate, architectural graphics on paper, then later being one of the first to use a graphical tablet for interactive scores. IanniX, backed by the French Ministry of Culture, is now barely recognizable even from more primitive versions that carried the same name. But the idea is the same: graphical geometries represent events in pitch and time, now sequencing other software (any software that can handle OSC or MIDI) to produce sound.

Free on Mac, Windows, and Linux, and now with growing documentation, IanniX can be seen producing the kinds of warped sounds Xenakis made in his music. But it is one of the first steps toward a graphical sequencer that could be used in all kinds of cases. And it’s free and open source under the GPL v3.

I’ve included some of the recent videos that show off what it can do. I especially like the recursive demo. But since it runs on your OS — well, unless you’re sticking to your beloved Atari ST or BeBox — you can just go grab it yourself.

http://iannix.org/en/index.php

My sense is that IanniX could have implications even beyond this software. Imagine a greater variety of music software that begins to work in spatial and graphical interfaces, not just the traditional piano rolls and linear tape-style arrangement views. And imagine that such tools, using protocols like OSC and MIDI, begin to establish common means of communicating with one another over a network. (OSC and, in particular, MIDI, are in need of some evolution to fully satisfy that. But these kinds of tools might be an ideal way to prod that very evolution.)

Speaking of prodding, thanks to Mark Birchall on Twitter for reminding me to write this up.

Now, if I can just find some hyperspace portal to additional space and time to play with this properly… there must be a productivity jump gate around here somewhere.