The story about Mark Andreessen, venture capital, and Silicon Valley. Tomorrow’s Advance Man Herbert Allen III (of the investment bank Allen & Company) mentions the American myth by which we presume he means to shed some light on the reality…
Gödel’s Proof
A revised edition of the classic Ernest Nagel and James Newman explanation of Gödel’s insights, and the book that inspired Douglas Hofstadter’s immensely popular Gödel Escher Bach. From Hofstader’s Forward: We now understand that the human mind is fundamentally not…
Marvel-ous stories
Intellectual property is at the root of many of today’s stories. Maybe this explains why the second season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is looking so mutant-like. But killing off Wolverine?! Brinksmanship, perhaps. Interesting comparisons to EMI and the Beatles (and…
Short-selling, tried & reported
The good, the bad, and the dangerous … of short selling. First is a piece that sounds like it was inspired by Planet Money’s two-part series. In Praise of Short Sellers (Surowiecki, TheNew Yorker) First, though: In another universe, a…
NECCO stands for …
New England Confectionary Co. Here are two stories about the storied little valentine candy. The first is audio, from Marketplace. On Valentine’s, saying “#LOVE” with candy hearts The second is a nice little stop-action video, from OZY. Don’t mess with…
YouTube gems
From last week’s NYTimes WordPlay blog, two fascinating performances. One live. One semi-live, semi-manufactured. The Beatles in-studio, All You Need Is Love James Brown, It’s a Man’s World