Start The Week (Radio 4): Big Data Here’s a link to this morning’s Start The Week, discussing “big data” and mathematical modelling of data. Well worth a listen. Contributions are from James Owen Weatherall on physicists in finance, Marcus du Sautoy, Kenneth Cukier and sociologist Tiffany Jenkins. While there is an unstoppable logic to gatheringContinue reading “Start The Week: on “big data””
Category Archives: All Over The World
Kahneman in conversation with Evan Davies and Prof Paul Dolan
Kahneman discusses Thinking Fast And Slow at LSE with Evan Davies and Paul Dolan For those interested in psychology and behavioural economics, here is a quick link via Prof Paul Dolan’s site to an hour’s discussion between Evan Davies, Dolan and Kahneman about Thinking Fast and Slow, which took place a while back when theContinue reading “Kahneman in conversation with Evan Davies and Prof Paul Dolan”
Speaking Up For “Introverts”
As one who ends up more on the introvert side than extravert when I do a Myers-Briggs test, this TED talk by Susan Cain resonated with me. At last, one of us has managed to survive the glare of attention long enough to mount a defence of the introvert take on life – or asContinue reading “Speaking Up For “Introverts””
Proust Wasn’t A Neuroscientist: Another Icarus Falls
Another young journalistic Turk bites the dust: LA Times: Jonah Lehrer resigns, book recalled over invented quotes. Having read and enjoyed some of his stuff, I feel more than a little betrayed. But it’s a reminder of the pressure on writers to keep producing. Perhaps Lehrer just needed to do some inner crop rotation andContinue reading “Proust Wasn’t A Neuroscientist: Another Icarus Falls”
Driving Our Man Machines Towards Distraction: Nicholas Carr’s “The Shallows”
The Sunday Times described it as a “bold reactionary book” – and so it is. I’ve just finished reading Nicholas Carr‘s The Shallows (subtitle: How the internet is changing the way we read, think and remember). Its main point is a simple one: the Internet is a medium that revolves around distraction and our usageContinue reading “Driving Our Man Machines Towards Distraction: Nicholas Carr’s “The Shallows””
More Brooks – TED talk on reasons to be cheerful about the revolution
Brooks TED talk on The Social Animal This entertaining, brief talk gives a flavour of the book. Must read his book about our feted but ludicrous social elites, with a great title: Bobos in Paradise. I think he writes mainly about America so let’s pretend it isn’t the same here. For now, carrying on withContinue reading “More Brooks – TED talk on reasons to be cheerful about the revolution”
An Insight on Qual Analysis: from David Brooks’s “The Social Animal”
On my recent visit to the US I finally got around to buying The Social Animal (Random House, 2011) – subtitled The Hidden Sources of Love, Character and Achievement – by New York Times writer David Brooks. I’m reading it at the moment. It’s full of interesting stuff about what makes us who we areContinue reading “An Insight on Qual Analysis: from David Brooks’s “The Social Animal””
A Nice Throw-Back: Ads That Are Actually Funny
I had a week in the USA this month and caught this series of ads in between my son’s Lego Ninjago cartoons. There are several in the campaign and nearly all are laugh-out-loud funny. Great job by Grey New York. The acting is spot on. What also makes it is the director having an acuteContinue reading “A Nice Throw-Back: Ads That Are Actually Funny”
Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film goes to … The Shore
Don’t worry, I’m not claiming credit for it. But great that a short film called The Shore, set and made in my native Northern Ireland, won an Oscar last night. I haven’t seen it yet, but I’m of course heavily into shore metaphors and a sucker for anything Ulster-ish, so I expect at the veryContinue reading “Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film goes to … The Shore”
Motivating performance: Dan Pink and some thoughts on “bonus culture”
The debate about earnings, bonuses and fairness rumbles on and isn’t going to end soon. With the financial squeeze most of us are feeling, it is inevitable we look at the City in particular and wonder why they are still paying themselves so much, after all we now know about their endemic failures. Yet thereContinue reading “Motivating performance: Dan Pink and some thoughts on “bonus culture””
Strangers on the Shore 