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…
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About a month ago I watched the final episode of The Bachelor, 2011, because it was set in Cape Town and I was curious to…
Comments closedHow Often? @EmanuelDerman
Comments closedThis letter to the NYTimes on Friday points out one of them. To the Editor: If there is an original sin in the Obama administration,…
Comments closedI spent today at the University of Chicago’s James Franck Institute, first giving a talk on finance and then listening to many people tell me…
Comments closedIn my day quants on Wall Street perenially complained about their bonuses, believing that analytical skills should be positively correlated with pay; this was a…
Comments closedI don’t know what to say about Bob Dylan’s submitting to the fearful Chinese government’s censorship of his play list at his concert, but I…
Comments closedI always thought peppermint was a flavor, and have just discovered that it’s also a tactile sensation. To confirm this surprising fact, try taking a…
Comments closedNot having to teach this Monday, I spent a large part of the weekend belatedly reading Peter Woit’s Not Even Wrong, many years after it…
Comments closedBlack-Scholes or Bust There are two ways to look at the derivation of Black-Scholes: (i) the way Black and Scholes derived it originally, which was…
Comments closedYou may have hoid I dumped my droid into a garbage can I found (using Google Voice Search) on the corner of Voice Search: Cue…
Comments closedDiagrammatically
Comments closedIn investing, the crowds get beta, the smart money gets alpha. It’s kind of undemocratic. The SEC, who aim* to level the playing field by…
Comments closedGoogle’s Eric Schmidt, now in the news at Google, is one of the few people I can think of who went from theoretical researcher to…
Comments closedThanks to Dave Edwards for a link too good to keep to myself: John Cleese on There’s a Gene for That: www.youtube.com…
Comments closedI am tempted to say that anything that lessens the power imbalance between individuals and governments/corporations can’t be all bad.
Comments closedTheories deal with the world on its own terms, absolutely. Models are metaphors, relative descriptions of the object of their attention that compare it to…
Comments closedI was sad to read the Harry Mulisch obituary in this morning’s Times. I read two of his books, The Assault, made into a best…
Comments closedIf you want another reason to fly Porter Air to Toronto from Newark and back, in addition to their downtown Toronto airport, could it be…
Comments closedAt work this morning I found myself thinking about calibration. Lately, some people have tried to debunk the idea of calibrating financial models, but I…
Comments closedI noticed: If you are running in your sneakers and you become aware of a rhythmic flapping on the top of your right shoe, you…
Comments closedThe financial crisis of 2007-2008 was caused by the global savings glut. What caused that? According to Krugman, it was The Asian currency crisis of…
Comments closedOne of the most useful things a person can know about himself is where he or she begins and where other people end. If you…
Comments closedDespite globalization, New York’s denizens still fondly remember the countries they came from. After the fall of North Korea, in 2015, many upper-class North Koreans…
Comments closedKoestler on Newton “What he achieved was rather like an explosion in reverse. When a projectile blows up, its shiny smooth symmetrical body is shattered…
Comments closedI was thinking about the futility of low interest rates and easy credit as the cure for everything and a Yiddish proverb my parents used…
Comments closedMy investigations into Die Antwoord led me once again to the topic of vulgarity. Die Antwoord claim to sing Zef, which turns out to be…
Comments closedAbout six months ago my nephew in South Africa sent me a link to what he warned me was a rude video. I took a…
Comments closed__________ I have carried around in my electronic filofax for years a quote that apparently comes from Hegel that says “The history of the world…
Comments closedI recently entered a competition to create “a pithy ad” for the New York Review of Books Classifieds, and won a half-bottle of distinguished wine…
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