Specialization is for insects

Speaking of Shakespeare

I didn't know this:

In reference to the review of ''Guilty Conscience,'' (May 20) Leah D. Frank is inaccurate when she states that when Shakespeare had one of his characters state ''Let's kill all the lawyers,'' it was the corrupt, unethical lawyers he was referring to. Shakespeare's exact line ''The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers,'' was stated by Dick the Butcher in ''Henry VI,'' Part II, act IV, Scene II, Line 73. Dick the Butcher was a follower of the rebel Jack Cade, who thought that if he disturbed law and order, he could become king. Shakespeare meant it as a compliment to attorneys and judges who instill justice in society.

blogs.nytimes.com

The NY times has assembled some pretty frickin' awesome blogs: go to (morris, judson, warner, krugman).blogs.nytimes.com and learn something. 

While I really enjoy reading the material on these sites (Krugman is slowly winning back my respect), I don't think they're really "blogs."  Most of the authors write exactly one post per week, almost always exactly seven days after the previous post.  That sounds like a "column" to me.

Not that that's bad.  Olivia Judson *should* have a NY times column.  Her writings are always entertaining and educational.  Check out today's column (er, "blog post"):

Most of the time, if a mutation has a detectable effect it will be a bad one, leading to disruption of a process that’s working. This is because mutations are largely random. If you randomly changed some of the letters in this sentence, you’d bost likfly git rubbizh. Only once in a while would you produce a meaningful word — let alone an improvement.

...

For organisms such as humans, banana slugs or great white sharks, that regularly engage in sexual reproduction, Sturtevant is probably right: lower mutation rates are better. The reason is that for these organisms, mutations aren’t necessary as an immediate source of genetic novelty. Sex does the job instead, shuffling genes and generating children that are genetically different from their parents.

And today Oliver Sacks "blogs" about migraines.  This is way better than anything Dowd or Brooks has written all year.  To paraphrase Shakespeare, the first thing we do, we get rid of all the regular NY times columnists and replace them with the NY times bloggers.

Maybe it's the longer format?  Morris and Judson tend to write long, fact-heavy pieces.  I guess that takes up too much space in the print editions.  But it works just fine when your browser has a scrollbar.

High-school math lesson

The derivative of c^x with respect to x is not x*c^(x-1).  That's just plain wrong.  The correct derivative is log(c)*c^x.  My high-school math teacher would be ashamed.

Ms. Pac-Man: feminist hero

Very entertaining video.  The Go! Team also likes Ms. Pac-Man, as I've posted before.

Nader

Fallows: from "tragedy to farce".  Or Yglesias:

Ralph Nader to hop into the race. After all, there's not a dime's worth of a difference between a candidate promising tax cuts, pushing more health risk onto individuals, a re-invigoration of George Bush's campaign to dominate the world through military force, and an industry-friendly approach to environmental issues and his rival who's promising substantial socialization of medical risk, a 80 percent reduction in carbon emissions, and end to the war in Iraq (and to the mindset that led to war!), universal preschool, etc. Well, sure, there's judicial appointments -- abortion, gay rights, etc. -- and some small fry stuff about whether or not the NSA will have unrestrained surveillance powers. But basically it's just the same two corporate clones running on virtually identical platforms.

Oscars

For a good laugh, here is Jon Stewart's monologue from last night's Academy Awards show.  Good stuff.

Proof by contradiction

I like this quote:

“Reductio ad absurdum, which Euclid loved so much, is one of a mathematician's finest weapons. It is a far finer gambit than any chess gambit: a chess player may offer the sacrifice of a pawn or even a piece, but a mathematician offers the game”  (G.H. Hardy, 1877-1947)

Read this while skimming Terry Tao's slides on the "structure and randomness in prime numbers."  Not in the mood to read any more economics today.

centripetal and centrifugal forces

Funny comic.  The science is explained nicely on Wikipedia.

Nice paper title

Coming up with paper titles is not easy.  This one is not bad: "Too Cool for School?  Signalling and Countersignalling."  Good summary here; though a terrible last paragraph in The Economist write-up:

Countersignalling, say the authors, can explain why mediocre students are keen to answer a teacher's easy questions, while the best students are embarrassed even to bother raising their hands, and why minor, insecure managers are obsessed with displays of power.  The trouble now is that those of middle rank are sure to grasp the idea. What will high-flyers do next to distinguish themselves?  Expect soon the theory of counter-counter signalling.

Sigh.  The whole point is that the middle rank already "grasps the idea."  It's just that it's better for them in equilibrium to clearly distinguish themselves from the low rank rather than try to countersignal and risk being misinterpreted as a low rank rather than high rank.

My question (probably for Mike or Patrick) is whether this result generalizes to a continuum of types.  I am pretty confused.  I distinctly remember assuming that there was a lot of monotonicity used in the standard proof.  [to clarify: I distinctly remember that we assumed monotonicity in the continuum-of-types proof that used the Revelation Principle]

Cool music video post-of-the-day

Video makes no sense to me.  But I think it's a cool song that sounds like it belonged in one of the Matrix movies.  "The Horror" by RJD2.