“Cleverness is a gift, kindness is a choice. Gifts are easy — they’re given after all. Choices can be hard. You can seduce yourself with your gifts if you’re not careful, and if you do, it’ll probably be to the…
Author: ruebeckc
IT and productivity US v. UK
After recent experiences with U.K. IT, this isn’t surprising. Americans Do IT Better: US Multinationals and the Productivity Miracle (Am. Economic Rev.)
Accounting’s beginnings
Yes, the Gutenberg press had to to with this one, too. A Mathematician, The Last Supper, and the Birth of Accounting The book was apparently difficult to read, and was of interest to DaVinci.
Thinking about welfare
Catching up on my Planet Money after returning from London—where there was less time, but more importantly less opportunity for wearing headphones to listen to podcasts. Their coverage of questions about welfare Is Welfare ‘A Rational Alternative To Work’? (listen to…
William Lowe, Lafayette Class of 1962
The IBM PC has always been such an interesting innovation. To find out recently that a Lafayette Leopard oversaw its development was exciting. Unsurprisingly, there are many obituaries for William Lowe. What a great observation that this innovation radically changed…
Gamber’s Lemma
It’s time for me to put this one out there, although it has been brewing for years. Guaranteed to get a laugh in class. Gamber’s Lemma to the Law of Unintended Consequences states that There are two possible worlds: The…
Walled gardens
While trying to transfer annotations from a book in the old B&N eReader iOS app (apparently it can’t be done), I came across this opinion from a couple of years ago. I’m Returning my Nook Tablet – Here’s Why (The Digital…
Greenspan’s new book
From the NYTimes ‘The Map and the Territory’ by Alan Greenspan (Binyamin Applebaum) “The marked increase in risk taking of a decade ago could have been guarded against wholly by increased capital,” he writes. “Regrettably, that did not occur, and…
Correlation and computation
For those of us who need ordinal measures in addition to the usual cardinal ones. Efficiently Computing Kendall’s Tau
Daylight saving time and Apple’s Calendar
It’s amazing. In a repeating event on my calendar, the time is 9am Eastern Time. I’ve set the calendar to display United Kingdom Time. Last week’s event is at 2pm, this week’s is at 1pm, and the following weeks are…