Maths Podcast of the Day - A short history of symmetry

Why Beauty is Truth - A short history of symmetry by Ian Stewart

Related:
Maths Book Recommendations

Digital Age Literature Analysis

Dan Cohen and Fred Gibbs, the two historians of science at George Mason University who have created the project, have so far charted how frequently more than two dozen words — among them “God,” “love,” “work,” “science” and “industrial” — appear in British book titles from the French Revolution in 1789 to the beginning of World War I in 1914. To Mr. Cohen, the sharply jagged lines that dance across his graphs can be used to test some of the most deeply entrenched beliefs about the Victorians, like their faith in progress and science: “We can finally and truly test these and other fundamental claims that have been at the heart of Victorian studies for generations.”

Mr. Cohen said that he and Mr. Gibbs hoped that their work could serve as a model for how scholars might use the shopping cart of new digital tools to challenge longstanding assumptions and interpretations across the humanities.

-Analyzing Literature by Words and Numbers

Related:
Digital Humanities Award

Book Recommendation

In an essay in his just-published Natural Experiments of History, Jared Diamond puts the question the way you want it to be asked – comparatively. He examines the histories of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, the two halves of the island of Hispaniola, the first place Columbus stopped in the New World. Natural Experiments is an exemplary book, short and graceful, conveying a broad swathe of the most interesting work going on today around the world in departments of economics, political science and anthropology, under the heading of comparative political economy. The story of Haiti is especially compelling.

- David Warsh

Jared Diamond's Natural Experiments of History- podcast

Contents:
* Prologue: Natural Experiments of History
Jared Diamond and James A. Robinson

1. Controlled Comparison and Polynesian Cultural Evolution
Patrick V. Kirch
2. Exploding Wests: Boom and Bust in Nineteenth-Century Settler Societies
James Belich
3. Politics, Banking, and Economic Development: Evidence from New World Economies
Stephen Haber
4. Intra-Island and Inter-Island Comparisons
Jared Diamond
5. Shackled to the Past: The Causes and Consequences of Africa's Slave Trades
Nathan Nunn
6. Colonial Land Tenure, Electoral Competition, and Public Goods in India
Abhijit Banerjee and Lakshmi Iyer
7. From Ancien Régime to Capitalism: The Spread of the French Revolution as a Natural Experiment, Daron Acemoglu, Davide Cantoni, Simon Johnson, and James A. Robinson
* Afterword: Using Comparative Methods in Studies of Human History
Jared Diamond and James A. Robinson

The School of Athens - History podcast of the Day

The School of Athens ;

Despite commissioning the Sistine Chapel, Pope Julius II is better known as a warrior than a scholar. But when he did put down the sword and pick up a book, he would have done so under a magnificent if slightly unexpected fresco. It is called The School of Athens, it was painted by Raphael in 1509 and it sits in a room in the Vatican that housed Julius’ private library.

The School of Athens depicts an imaginary scene in which all the philosophers of antiquity are gathered together. At their centre stand Plato and Aristotle, deep in discussion. Plato is pointing at the sky and Aristotle at the ground.

In that pairing of gestures, Raphael captured something essential about the philosophies of these two men, but he also revealed much about his own time. That such a pagan pair could be found beside a Pope in private tells of the complexity of intellectual life at the time when classical learning was reborn in what we now call the Renaissance.

Nassim Taleb on the History of Medicine

What's Taleb upto now;

History of medicine, anti-academic, anti-knowledge. Medicine: whenever we use knowledge as a driver instead of tinkering, we get in trouble. Examples: Our understanding of biological processes led to a decrease in cures. When just tinkering we did better than with directed research. Directed research gives us a strong bias and blinds us to things we don't know are there. In medicine, most medicines are used to cure something completely different from what the intention was. Side-effects dominate. Try to collect positive black swans. Hubris problem, overestimating our knowledge. Difficult to think rationally about uncertainty and risk. Trust the science part, ask the doctor, but the doctor has no idea about the probabilities. Each person, disease is different. Minimize the harm coming from theories. Empirical doctors were successful until eliminated after the rise of Arabic medicine. Western medicine was rationalistic after the Arabic tradition. Improvements after that came from the barbers, not from the doctors. Thinking has not helped us a lot. Evidence in option trading. People think that quants make option formulas, therefore the market uses them. Bogus. Supply and demand. Did a lot better before the Black and Scholes formula...

Religion and probability. Most people think that religion is about belief, but it is about practice. Greek Orthodox but Arabic-speaking. The way Arabs say is not "I don't know" is "God knows." Allows you to say you don't know, transfers from yourself to another entity. Allows you to be humble. History of medicine: accounts of giving a fortune to the Temple of Apollo: You saved me when my doctors failed me. Doctors gave negative contributions, particularly by bleeding; or more recently, delivered a baby after going to the morgue. Brought in religion. Error we have in believing religion is about belief, but it's about commitment, the system, living with something. We're not yet good with ideas. Can see from this crisis. Great Moderation turned out to be not so great. What does probability have to do with religion? Idea of true/false; degree of belief. May do something against the odds because the consequences or large or even without analyzing it. Probability is not opaque; and even if it were, we wouldn't use it because of the consequences. Pascal's wager: Since God might exist, I might as well be a religious person. Payoffs from being religious are much higher than negative payoffs if God doesn't exist. Had to also assume that God doesn't exist and also not know about gaming the system. Maybe actions are more important than beliefs--in some religious systems the actions count. Greek Orthodox, Easter; Judaism, Maimonides, not every Jewish sage lists belief in God as one of the commandments because there is a debate about whether you can mandate belief. In Arabic, the name for religion, din, is the same as the word for law in Hebrew. To be a law-abiding citizen, keep the rules. Hard to keep the rules if you do not keep the faith. Motivating people without faith. Losing patience about people who are skeptics about religion, and at the same time are not skeptical about economics or VAR. Solving our own problems. Hayek, lot of instinct, contributions part of philosophical thinking.

The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan

The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony that Shaped America

Russell Shorto interview.

Related;

American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House

American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House

Podcasts

Ellis on American Creation and the Founding


Oil Prices and the Cost of Logistics

What do Greta Garbo, Madonna and Napoleon have in common? Why Glamour, Darling!

How Psychology Affects Our Credit Card Payments

Calomiris Says Treasury Made Right Move on Fannie

Freddie, Fannie Scam `Hidden in Broad Daylight'

Orenbuch Says $60-100 Billion Needed to Capitalize GSEs

Hendra and the bats

The Gridlock Economy

Skills, Rights and Resources in the East Asian Path to Development

The Challenge in the Middle East: An Egyptian Perspective

The Future of Social Policy: Hard Lessons from the United States

'Allah' in Malay

Romani: a stateless language
Between three and five million people speak Romani, the language spoken by the Rom people, yet it originated in India. Professor Yaron Matras explains how this Indic language is thought to have become so widespread in Europe.

George Washington on leadership

Podcasts

The great grammar debate
Is learning formal grammar essential to becoming a good writer and communicator? Or is it more important to develop a feeling for language that can be applied in different contexts?

John Milton: 400 Years On

Restructuring secondary education

Being your own therapist - Buddhist style

Is being gay in your biology?

Cuba: socialism with salsa

Post traumatic stress disorder

Oral cancer

Why Most Published Research Findings Are False

Pole to Pole: A vet on the ice with seals

The Wallace-Darwin papers on biological evolution - 150 years ago

Buckminster Fuller

Chinese contemporary art

State-Building: Governance and World Order in the 21st Century

Goldman Says Economic Recovery Requires More Saving

Public Bailout of Bank’s Recklessness
In response to the ongoing sub-prime crisis, the recently published Crosby Report recommends that the Government uses public money to swap bank’s seriously damaged mortgage-backed securities for pristine government bonds. Matthew Watson from the Department of Politics and International Studies at Warwick University talks about these recommendations, and how the global ‘credit crunch’ is affecting Labour’s popularity with the electorate.

Chilli, Chocolate, and Chips: Foods that Originate from the New World

Blast from the Past

Northwoods Memo via Angry Bear

‘Powers that be’ and 'Powers that aren’t in Iraq

“The most prominent dividing line in Iraqi politics now is between the ‘powers that be’ and the ‘powers that aren’t,’ ” Sam Parker, an Arabic speaker who works for the United States Institute of Peace, a policy center in Washington, told me recently. “The ‘powers that be’ spent much of the 1980s and 1990s in open opposition to Saddam. Nearly all of these leaders spent substantial time outside of Iraq. They have well-organized parties but lack a strong social base and have an outsize degree of influence in the national and provincial governments. Because of their disproportionate dominance of the political process, they only stand to lose by any movement toward political openness.

“The ‘powers that aren’t,’ ” Parker added, “are fragmented and weak. What they want is in.”

Where does the U.S. stand? “They seem to be working hard for provincial elections,” Parker said, “which would make the system more inclusive and give the ‘powers that aren’t’ and the popular forces they represent an opportunity for a share of the power. But at the same time, the United States’ main priority appears to be buttressing the state security apparatus that belongs to the ‘powers that be.’ ”

In an ideal world the two policy imperatives would be balanced. The politics of inclusiveness would lay the foundation for the long-term stability of the country, while improvements in Maliki’s capacity to govern would lead to a state that could supplant the Hobbesian state of nature that has typified Iraq — and make it easier for the United States to reduce forces. Iraq, however, is far from an ideal world, and Maliki’s growing confidence in his own power leaves the U.S. steadily less able to shape events.

-The Last Battle

Assorted Podcasts

Human rights in China

Fareed Zakaria

No more than one
Since its introduction in 1979 it has transformed Chinese society and Chinese families. We take a look at the 30-year history of China's one child policy.

Linguistic typology
The polyglot linguist Alexandra Aikhenvald describes the study of linguistic typology: classifying how languages are structured and comparing them to ascertain recurrent patterns and variations.

Me and other languages
Marking the United Nations-declared International Year of Languages, as well as its goal to preserve and promote linguistic diversity, the linguist Alexandra Aikhenvald tells the story of her own multilingualism, which reflects the story of a country that no longer exists.

Stoics at war
Recent philosophical debate on war has focused on the idea that you don't just have to fight by the rules; you also have to be fighting in a just cause. But does this ignore much of the moral context of a soldier's life. What binds comrades in arms together? What about stress and what about grief, and what does the ancient Roman philosophy of Stoicism have to tell us about it?

Literature, law and ethics - The case of Billy Budd
A visiting legal ethicist talks to us about why a novella by Herman Melville, involving mutiny and an execution at sea, has become required reading for those interested in the intersection of literature, law and ethics.

Is being gay in your biology?
What makes someone gay? The quest for the biological roots of sexual orientation remains rife with controversy. Is it in your genes, handedness, or the hormonal soup of the early foetus? Or, is the answer hidden deep inside the brain? Homo or hetero - the science of sexual attraction captures everyone's attention.

The Trials of the Templars
At dawn on 13 October 1307 all the Templars in France were arrested by royal order, on the charge that they had been involved in secret blasphemous rituals. This led to other arrests of Templars in Europe, and an investigation by Pope Clement V. The University of Sydney Rare Books and Special Collections Library recently obtained trial documents from the Vatican archives, which John Pryor discusses with Rachael Kohn.

Modelling the origin of time: science and religion at "the horizon of mystery"
Does science make belief in God obsolete? Cosmologist and mathematician Michal Heller's answer to this 'Big Question' this year won him the world's largest monetary prize given to an individual, the Templeton Prize. On Encounter Professor Heller explores 'creative tensions' between science and religion and talks about his research for a quantum gravity theory that might explain the Planck Epoch. And astronomer Guy Consolmagno SJ has things to say about meteorites, the Cassini-Huygens Mission to Saturn and Titan, and beauty.

Snoring kills

Sisters and babies
Why do humans, of all the primates, have so many babies? And what happens when sisters offer to carry babies for other members of their family? What happens to kinship? Professor Marilyn Strathern, a social anthropologist at Cambridge and head of Girton College, and Karen Kramer, another anthropologist at Harvard, have been tracking the complexities of motherhood and babies across many cultures, with surprising results.

New coral alga discovered in Sydney Harbour
Coral in Sydney Harbour has been found to contain a previously undiscovered alga. The coral encrusts rocks under the water. The alga lives in the coral and give it sugars. The family tree of algae based on sequencing DNA shows the alga is in a new position on the tree, and is related to the malaria parasite. The alga is seen as a missing link between another alga and a parasite. It was previously thought to be extinct.

The last environmental taboo
Today Richard Begbie from Canberra looks at the environmental cost of air travel. Airplanes add around 750 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year to the atmosphere and in the process burn 250 million tonnes of a non-renewable resource.

Harry Gordon: Living, breathing and writing the Olympics

The Role of NGOs in Achieving the Millennium Development Goals

What Does It Take to Achieve High, Sustainable, and Inclusive Growth in Developing Countries?

The Pentagon`s New Map

Zimbabwe: Beyond the Endgame

How Inflation Robs Zimbabwe


George Will's America
How Fannie and Freddie Got Big

Escaping Poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa

India: The Emerging Giant

Globalization and the World's Rising Living Standards
G8 and Aid for Africa,

Author Wallace Says Gates Surrounds Himself With Smart People

Global Democracy

“Fungal footbaths” could save the honey bee
Globally, the honey bee population is in decline. This has serious implications for the cross pollination of commercial crops and wild plants. One of the major causes of this decline is the “Varroa Destructor” mite. However, researchers at Warwick University may have found a natural solution to this problem. Dr Dave Chandler from Warwick HRI explains how.

'Art Gives One Complexity'
Novelist and academic Eva Hoffman has been awarded an honorary degree at Warwick. Here, she talks about her life experiences and the inspirations behind her best selling memoir ‘Lost in Translation’ and her new novel ‘Illuminations’.

‘Troubles in Zimbabwe must be resolved peacefully’
Dr George Kanyeihamba, one of this year’s honorary graduates, helped establish democracy and the independent judicial system in Uganda, and is considered the ‘Founding Father’ of human rights in Africa. Here, he talks about his experiences, and the need for peaceful resolution of events in Zimbabwe.

Americans worried about Old Beijing

The Last Days of Old Beijing: Life in the Vanishing Backstreets of a City Transformed
by Michael Meyer

Related;
A review from NYT

Another American living in China

Is the World Bank a Bank?

The World Bank's early reflections on development : a development institution or a bank?

Summary: Until the late 1960s, the World Bank presented itself as an institution devoted to making sound and directly productive project loans. Yet, during its very early years, some discussions developed inside the Bank regarding the possibility of issuing different types of loans, namely (i) loans aimed at tackling social issues ("social loans"), and (ii) loans aimed at providing foreign currency to address disequilibria in the balance of payments ("impact loans"). This paper brings together historical analysis and theories of organization development to study the housing issue as a case in point. The analysis reveals that the Bank was unwilling to lend for housing programs not because these were not sound - in fact, they were - but because they were geared toward achieving social welfare objectives and were not directly linked to productive investment projects, such as dams, power stations, and railroads. This early decision had a significant impact on the subsequent development of the Bank's view of policy-making: it locked the institution into a particular lending pattern, and deprived it of important intellectual resources. It was not until the late 1960s that the Bank began to take social issues into consideration, rather late compared with other multilateral institutions.

Assorted

When the going gets tough, central banks hope for a miracle

Fed Chief Bernanke Has How Many Friends On Facebook?

Sacking Mugabe

Deterring Suicide Bombers

Can Art Be Rated From 1 to 1,000?

Why Children Are Not ‘Little Adults’

Older Americans May Be Happier Than Younger Ones

Ohne Muslime kein Europa

Toynbee to Huntington: Globalization Gone Too Far?

Ellis on the American Creation

He said the founding had two tragedies and five triumphs. The tragedies were slavery and the plight of the native Americans. The first he called a Shakespearean tragedy, meaning it could have been avoided by human agency. The second he called a Greek tragedy, meaning it couldn't.

His best insights into slavery were that none of the founders tried to justify slavery as being consistent with the ideals of the founding and that everyone expected the slavery phenomenon to die a natural death to be followed by the expulsion of the Negro. No one foresaw a multiracial coexistence. Ellis argued that the the unforeseen invention of the cotton gin ignited the Southern economy and increased the demand for slaves.

History podcast- Tacitus

Tacitus;

“The story I now commence is rich in vicissitudes, grim with warfare, torn by civil strife, a tale of horror even during times of peace”. So reads page one of The Histories by the Roman historian Tacitus and it doesn’t disappoint.

Tacitus’ Rome is a hotbed of sex and violence, of excessive wealth and senatorial corruption. His work is a pungent study in tyranny and decline that has influenced depictions of Rome, from Gibbon’s Decline and Fall to Robert Graves’ I, Claudius.

But is it a true picture of the age or does Tacitus’ work present the tyranny and decadence of Rome at the expense of its virtues? And to what extent, when we look at the Roman Empire today, do we still see it through his eyes?

Debate of the Day

A Historian, a Lawyer, and the Heller Decision

Podcast of the Day- Metaphysical Poets

Mourning the death of a good friend in 1631, the poet Thomas Carew declared:

“The Muses' garden, with pedantic weeds
O'erspread, was purg'd by thee; the lazy seeds
Of servile imitation thrown away,
And fresh invention planted.”

The gardener in question was a poet, John Donne, and from his fresh invention blossomed a group of 17th century writers called the metaphysical poets. Concerned with sex and death, with science and empire, the metaphysical poets challenged the conventions of Elizabethan poetry with drama and with wit. And they showed that English, like Italian and French, was capable of true poetry.

But what do we mean by metaphysical poetry, how did it reflect an age of drama and discovery and do poets as different as John Donne, Andrew Marvell and George Herbert really belong together in the canon of English literature?

Download the podcast from BBC- The Metaphysical Poets

Carnival of Podcasts

Arnold Kling Calls Advanced Placement Economics `Horrible'

High Wire: The Precarious Financial Lives of American Families

Hassett Says Media's Economic Coverage Favors Democrats

Phelps Says Rising Oil Prices May Discourage Production

Wieting Sees U.S. Corporate Profits Rising 5% Next Year


Private spooks
The use of private military companies is now widespread, but now there are also private intelligence organisations working closely with government. Business is booming and the worlds biggest private equity company, Carlyle, has just bought part of the big intelligence company, Booz Allen Hamilton

Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History

Banking on gas
Australia's sitting on some of the biggest natural gas fields in the world - and other energy-starved, ravenous nations are starting to bid for it. Australia will have to do some soul searching about how much we keep for ourselves and who to sell it to.

Slavery in Australia

The Economic and Strategic Rise of China and India: Asian Realignments after the 1997 Financial Crisis

Bill of Rights in Australia
Supporters of a Bill of Rights say all that is being proposed is a list of neutral rights to be interpreted by an impartial judiciary. However constitutional laywer Greg Craven argues that proponents of a Bill of Rights seek major social changes without consulting voters.

Understanding the Correlation between Oil Prices and the Falling Dollar- Brad Setser

Educating Talented Scientists for Africa

John Micklethwait: The Economist and globalisation
Globalisation has its many critics but John Micklethwait isn't one of them. He's the current editor of The Economist, the sixteenth since it was first published in 1843, and is one of the leading proponents on globalisation's positive impact and potential.

The story of Morgan Tsvangirai and the Movement for Democratic Change

Alcohol in Australia: a history of drinking


The Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt

Carrots and sticks
These days the carrot and stick approach can be applied to parenting or prison inmates or even employees, but its origins are, of course, in trying to get a horse or donkey to comply with human commands.
How sensible is that approach in the field of animal training today, given what we now know about the language, intelligence and social skills across various species? And does it depend on whether your training is intended to teach them to perform for humans, or to simply not urinate on the lounge?

Starved of science? Agriculture in Africa

The father of radio astronomy

Courage: Guts, grit, spine, heart, and verve.

Health controversies surrounding milk
A1 and A2 are names used to identify different proteins found in milk. the idea that A1 milk may be detrimental to health has been around for a while. Some suggest that there is a link between A1 milk consumption and Type 1 diabetes and some other illnesses. Professor Boyd Swinburn from the School of Health Sciences at Deakin University in Melbourne discusses his review into A1/A2 milk claims for the New Zealand Food Safety Authority.

'Good American Speech' comes from Melbourne
How an Australian invented 'Good American Speech' in the golden age of Hollywood. The historian Desley Deacon tells Jill Kitson about Australia's own Henry Higgins.

Who's a lesbian?
On the case heard last week, in a court in Athens, about the word 'lesbian', in which the plaintiffs are claiming that the prerogative to the term belongs to the inhabitants of the island of Lesbos. They are seeking for a ban to be placed on its use by the gay organisation, the Homosexual and Lesbian Community of Greece.

Burning books

Dan Ariely: Confronting Irrationality

Glenn Loury: The Missing Voice of Jeremiah

Queer Science
Simon LeVay, neuroscientist at the epicenter of the biological basis of homosexuality debate

Ice Sheets and Sea Level Rise: How Should IPCC Handle Deep Uncertainty?


The scientific basis for projections of climate change (in a nutshell)

Global Financial Regulation: The Essential Guide

Pop Finance

Why Civilisations Can't Climb Hills: a political history of statelessness in Southeast Asia

Fixing Failed States

Financial Market Stability

Skills, Rights and Resources in the East Asian Path to Development

Gene Epstein on Gold, the Fed, and Money

Don Boudreaux on Energy Prices