Nobody really knows anything

Thesis

2010-09-04T20:17:00.002+02:00

or (wordle)

Which Springer Graduate Text in Mathematics would you be?

2010-07-31T12:27:00.001+02:00

If I were a Springer-Verlag Graduate Text in Mathematics, I would be Saunders Mac Lane's Categories for the Working Mathematician.I provide an array of general ideas useful in a wide variety of fields. Starting from foundations, I illuminate the concepts of category, functor, natural transformation, and duality. I then turn to adjoint functors, which provide a description of universal

David Foster Wallace

2010-01-31T10:29:00.001+01:00

kids get exposed very early to the idea that "you are the most important" and "what you are is the most important" and "your job in life is to gratify your own desires"...that's not happiness, that feeling of having to obey every impulse and gratify every desire, it seems to me to be a strange kind of slavery, nobody talks about it as such tough, they talk about freedom of choice, and you have

Flies and male psychology

2010-01-17T21:27:00.001+01:00

Why is there a fly in the urinal?Answer: To reduce spillage."So what do you think most men do? That's right, they aim at the fly when they urinate. They don't even think about it, and they don't need to read a user's manual; it's just an instinctive reaction. The interesting feature of these urinals is that they're deliberately designed to take advantage of this inherent human male tendency."The

Colombian spanish

2010-01-07T23:34:00.001+01:00

Originally uploaded by 9 0 0 0

Logicomix

2010-01-07T11:59:00.001+01:00

I picked up a copy of Logicomix (A. Doxiadis) last fall in Vancouver. The prospect of seeing Bertrand Russell turned into a comic character was enough of a motivation, not to mention the likes of Wittgenstein, Gödel, and Alan Turing. Always since I heard about Russell's paradox I've had some sort of mathematician envy. Understanding this very simple contradiction changed the way I looked at maths

Economics degree

2009-12-14T22:52:00.000+01:00

I get the feeling here "philosophy degree" could be perfectly swapped for "economics degree". Just to give an example.

Tumblr

2009-10-09T00:16:00.000+02:00

Not blogging that much lately. Blame it on tumblr. Tumblr gets the job done for small posts (laziness, busyness ...)

Economists...the truth might not be beautiful

2009-09-10T14:10:00.000+02:00

I once heard a professor at my faculty say that computer simulations are not economics. That's at the very least naive. Take away numerical solutions from physicists and we probably wouldn't have cellphones. Economists strongly prefer beautiful math over more insightful potentially less beautiful things, and that is hurting the field as a science.... the economics profession went astray because

Total eclipse flow chart

2009-08-26T13:40:00.000+02:00

See the flowchart here.Alternating between crooning and belt singing is very important...(source)

How fair is that some are smarter?

2009-08-21T12:48:00.000+02:00

How willing people are to give to others depends on what they like and what they believe. There's (between-individual and between-group) differences in what is considered (believed) to be fair......Turning to the effects of the belief variables, our results showed that these too vary significantly across countries. Believing that coming from a wealthy family is important to get ahead in some

we are the wwworld

2009-08-03T20:08:00.000+02:00

we are the wwworld, originally uploaded by 9 0 0 0.5,113,758,962 humans don't give a shit about comments, profiles or your favorite song of Morrissey ... Congrats b#tch, you are the minority!illustration + text by 9000{entrevista con 9000 - in Spanish}

Animatronics by Banksy

2009-07-20T11:56:00.000+02:00

Here's a small (self-made) video from the animatronics at the Banksy vs Bristol Museum exhibition. Most of them were already shown at the Pet Shop project in NYC (see coverage by the wooster collective).(source)

Narcissism and Facebook

2009-07-19T11:05:00.000+02:00

Not that it's a particularly surprising result, but at least it's been given scientific rigour now... Narcissism predicted (a) higher levels of social activity in the online community facebook and (b) more self-promoting content in several aspects of the social networking Web pages facebookhere's the paper. Hat tip to the marginal revolution.

It's anarchy! (Amsterdam)

2009-07-19T10:22:00.000+02:00

“The liberty of man consists solely in this: that he obeys natural laws because he has himself recognized them as such, and not because they have been externally imposed upon him by any extrinsic will whatever, divine or human, collective or individual”Bakunin(source)pd: Now maybe that's because the US has ten times as many people, right?....EDIT: See English coverage by NRC

No more googling for LaTeX

2009-07-17T11:14:00.000+02:00

just draw it...get the code.

Parkway (holiday read)

2009-07-14T18:24:00.000+02:00

Parkway is a novel about a group of youngsters devoted to the britpop scene in mid-90's (probably the only novel with a myspace). It takes place in London's Camden Town, of course, and the soundtrack features blur, oasis, pulp, suede and so on... The target readers, I suspect, are those like me: britpop moaners. Those who cling to a very short-lived and local scene that is well gone. The book

9000

2009-07-13T17:08:00.000+02:00

, originally uploaded by 9 0 0 0.Other favourites...Love.Fool / we are the wwworld / it ain't me babe / Now start a band / Pffff! / Try harder / Untitled / Miss you / WYSIWYG / Just friends.

and June becomes July...

2009-07-01T01:25:00.000+02:00

sourceIt`s warm outsideBut I can hear the snowFalling on my windowI had to go awayTo somewhere deeper downI know it`s my mistakeTo take off out of this townAnd June becomes JulyThis road`s on fireAnd my train`s running slowIt rains against my windowI had to get awayTo somewhere no-one knowsI know it`s my mistakeTo take off now in this wayAnd June becomes JulyThe air is thinWhen you`re above the

Banksy in Glasto?

2009-06-26T12:46:00.000+02:00

Plain clothes drug dealers in operation.Ketamin ParkingIs Banksy in Glastonbury? Maybe...Maybe not.(via this)

Covers....

2009-06-23T16:09:00.000+02:00

Robert Smith, and not these guys, should have made that cover...Covers I particularly like....I am very fond of Kate Nash's fluorescent adolescent, it brings good memories (original version by The Arctic Monkeys). Placebo's where is my mind is almost as good as the pixies' original. The wallflowers' I'm looking through you is good, respectful and different from the Beatles' original. The

Predictably Irrational

2009-06-18T20:37:00.000+02:00

Economists usually assume that people are rational. This has a very specific formal meaning, but it basically means that people know exactly what they want, know everything there is to know about their options, and make choices in a way that maximizes their own happiness - whatever this may mean. People are assumed to be selfish and very good at computing and pondering their options. This

Summer light

2009-06-16T18:38:00.000+02:00

It's 7 PM, and people blissfully ride their bikes on the way to some daylight leisure, wearing sunglasses...working hours were not invented in the tropics.

Good CPR

2009-06-03T23:40:00.000+02:00

Good CPR is about tempo. You need to have the right rhythm while resuscitating someone - push the right number of times per minute. Ideal speed is hard to memorize without a song... Turns out, ironically, that this song has exactly the right tempo. Now you know what to sing next time you trying to bring someone back to life. Hat tip to the last radiolab. pd: this one also works but there's no

Straight 8

2009-06-01T10:01:00.000+02:00

Straight-8 is just not a combustion engine. It is also a film competition. Filmmakers are invited to request a Super 8 cartridge. They get it by post, shoot a 3 minutes film, and send the roll back. This means that there's no chance for editing - everything has to be shot in order, no re-takes, not even the chance to see a single frame before the competition develops the film and puts on the