Category: blog

I have spent a day battling a problem that actually turns out to be kind of interesting. In my book there was supposed to be…

Man on Columbus Circle handing out flyers. Everyone sidesteps him. Closer look: his polo has a large Tinactin logo.

The NYR of Books has a bit of an exchange, here, in an argument between a neuroscientist and a philosopher. Personally, I’m on the philosopher’s…

I have finally finished reading “How The Hippies Saved Physics” by David Kaiser. It made me admire again people who have a passion for something…

I have been spending a fair amount of time reading the first pass proofs of my forthcoming book. One paragraph I came across reminded me…

Who gets the software?

Although people lump them together, there is a difference between Anthony Weiner and DSK. Assuming that what you read about them is true, this is…

I used to skeptical, but I could be convinced that there is something to be said for self-publishing. If you are good at word processing,…

I’m sure I’m saying nothing new, but having FB’d and Twittered for a few weeks, I can see that it can easily drive you into…

What we call progress is often linked to portability and the autonomy it appears to bring: spears to daggers to guns, pendulum clocks to watches,…

Once upon a time when I first came to work on Wall Street a young colleague of mine liked to flirt, no more, with the…

My editor had a narrower view of my book than I did, maybe (hopefully) a more commercial one. I’m not sure if she was right.…

And palmers to go seeking out strange strands, To distant shrines well known in sundry lands In particular the starre davide lynes that suddenly appeereth…

The Holy Tortilla of Liguria. Well, almost, only better ? Mexico and Texas have their tortillas and pizzas with images of the Virgin Mother. Turin…

In Italy they are called nespole, in Cape Town loquats. You could not buy loquats in Cape Town, you could only steal them. They grew…

is the title of a quite good song by Ute Lemperer in her album Punishing Kiss, which came to mind now as I decided to…

I read an article somewhere today about how BNY Mellon had to pay several hundred million dollars for unfairly overdrafting customers, and it struck me…

I am stuck in this endless cycle of trying to get permission to quote. The poems I want permission to quote, as well as the…

In my forthcoming book Models.Behaving.Badly I want to quote more than a sentence or two from exactly three people: Yehuda Amichai, John Maynard Keynes and…

I have been looking at this NYR of Books article about consciousness. I am inclined to think it’s too early in the history of humanity…

Until he hit the news, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you who Dominique Strauss Kahn was. Right now, devoted seducer though he may…

I got an email announcing the following position, which sounds interesting: The Congressional Budget Office (CBO), a small nonpartisan agency that provides nonpartisan economic and…

Suburbanite that you are, you would think these beautiful trays of organically grown fruit displayed at the entrance to the store, next to the Arabica…

About a week ago I received an email from someone I don’t know asking a detailed question about a table in a 1995 paper I…

If you are an atheist and disbelieve in the power of redemption, you should visit the Duane Reade on 63rd and Broadway. If you know…

I was revising a subsection of my book about the way in which theories of electromagnetism were discovered. Static electricity was known for ages. The…

On Columbus Circle, in the Laboratorio behind the register white-coated Dotoressas of science and physiology mix extracts of fruits and spices harvested from their Sicilian…

Last night I saw Werner Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams. 3-D makes everyone look small and doll-like, like the Indians/Native Americans they used to have…

MODELS THAT FAILED I: ECONOMICS ? The great financial crisis has been marked by the failure of models both qualitative and quantitative. During the past…

The night they killed Bin Laden I was watching the 1986 movie Something Wild, starring Melanie Griffith and Jeff Daniels, made by Jonathan Demme, soundtrack…