Brian Kernighan: Millions, Billions, Zillions -- (In)numeracy Still Matters PDF - February 3, 2010
Lunch 'n Learn presentation: As calculators and computers have become steadily more powerful, they have buried us in an avalanche of numbers and graphs and charts, many of which claim to present the truth about important issues. But at the same time, our personal facility with numbers has diminished, often leaving us at the mercy of quantitative reasoning and presentation that is sometimes wrong and often not disinterested.
For the past ten years, Dr. Kernighan has been teaching a course that s
APW2010: Divergent Dictators: Legacies of Leadership in Three Asian Authoritarian Regimes
"Finding the right place for individuals is an old problem for political analysis," explains Richard Samuels in his comparative analysis of leadership in Japan and Italy. "Do individuals make history, or does history make individuals who make history?" This paper examines the highly divergent legacies that came forth from the leadership of three Asian dictators: South Korea's Park Chung Hee (1961-1979), Indonesia's Suharto (1965-1998), and the Philippines' Ferdinand Marcos (1965-1986). Through t
Frontiers of knowledge: Thailand's border patrol police in the age of Internet research
Over the past decade, Thailand has experienced rapid growth in the number of Internet users and today about one third of the Thai population is regularly online. These Internet users have readily become producers of content, and the proliferation of local language material sees Thai ranked in the top 20 global Internet languages. Thai security agencies have embraced these trends and now maintain a wide range of official websites. In this paper I sketch out a tentative methodology for studying Th
The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola: Rediscovery and Renewal Part One
Jesuit pioneers in the 20th-century renewal of the Spiritual Exercises relate their personal experiences in their introduction to the guided retreat.
Satisfying Victims and Healing Societies: The Promises of Justice after Extreme Violence - Vision Se
Susan Hirsch, Director of the undergraduate Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution program Justice meted out in domestic courts is assumed to promote social healing and quell the desire for revenge felt by victims of violence. Mass atrocity, genocide, terrorism and other types of extreme violence have spawned new approaches to justice, such as extrajudicial proceedings and international tribunals. Drawing from personal experience as a survivor of a terror attack and anthropological resea
McArdle on Debt and Self-Restraint
Megan McArdle, who writes the blog Asymmetrical Information at The Atlantic, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about debt and the challenge of self-restraint. She discusses her recent Atlantic article on her experience at a Dave Ramsey personal finance seminar, how it affected her life, and the psychology of self-restraint. The conversation concludes with a discussion of debt and savings during the Great Depression and the current national debt of the United States.
Colonial Journalism
Political pressure and personal bias have hounded American journalists since the first newspapers were printed. Interpreter Dennis Watson talks about the Virginia Gazette.Author(s):
A Look at Me
Students will develop a personal lifeline which will include events from the past and present. Students will also be asked to think or dream about events in the future. Advise students that for this activity they can plan to live to be one hundred years old. They must include a minimum of five events from their past and seven events they see in their future.
This curriculum contains suggested activities to gradually move students toward a more futuristic and empathetic mind set. Students may dis
Panel: "The Present and Future of Investigative Reporting"
2010 Goldsmith Awards winners and finalists gather to share personal stories of journalistic commitment and determination in the face of skepticism, obstruction and even intimidation.
From Personal Computers to Personal Information Environments (November 10, 2006)
devices, multiple, collaborate, display, desktop, mobile, personal, space, user, innovation, interfaces, information, synchronize, network, share, access, security, connection, opportunity, experience, efficient, transfer, communication, SEREFE, message,
4.1 The cart before the horse? At this point you may be wondering whether you blinked and missed something, or whether I have omitted a crucial step. So far, I have been pressing you to agree that the term ‘religion’ is crying out for more careful, critical definition. Now I am asking why you should wish to study something that has boundaries you can, apparently, no longer take for granted. Surely, we need to know what the thing is before we can say why we might wish to study it? Yet, when we decide to study somet
24 - Making It Work for Real People: The Democratization of Finance
Professor Shiller, in his final lecture, reviews some of the most important tools for individual risk management. Significant inequality in domestic and international communities has created a need for social insurance programs, such as those created in Germany in the late 1800s. The tax system, bankruptcy laws, and government insurance programs are used to manage risk of personal wealth. However, each of these inventions must take account of psychological factors, such as moral hazard, in order
18 - Professional Money Managers and Their Influence
Most people are not very good at dealing in financial markets. Professional money managers, such as financial advisors and financial planners, assist individuals in matters of personal finance. FINRA and the SEC monitor the activities of these managers in order to protect individual investors. Mutual funds, exchange traded funds also exist to assist individual investments, and pension funds provide further services. These investment institutions help people to put money in diversified portfolios
08 - Human Foibles, Fraud, Manipulation, and Regulation
Regulation of financial and securities markets is intended to protect investors while still enabling them to make personal investment decisions. Psychological phenomena, such as magical thinking, overconfidence, and representativeness heuristic can cause deviations from rational behavior and distort financial decision-making. However, regulation and regulatory bodies, such as the SEC, FDIC, and SIPC, most of which were created just after the Great Depression, are intended to help prevent the man
11 - Personal identity, Part II: The body theory and the personality theory
Two more views regarding the metaphysical key to personal identity are discussed: the body view and the personality view. According to the body view, an individual is identified in terms of his or her physical body. According to the personality view, an individual is identified by his or her unique set of beliefs, desires, memories, goals, and so on.
18 - Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning
As a result of World War I, Europe had a different understanding of war in the twentieth century than the United States. One of the most important ways in which the First World War was experienced on the continent and in Britain was through commemoration. By means of both mass-media technologies and older memorial forms, sites of memory offered opportunities for personal as well as political reconciliation with the unprecedented consequences of the war. The influence of these sites is still felt
06 - Maximilien Robespierre and the French Revolution
Robespierre's ascetic personal life and severe philosophy of political engagement are attributed by some to his difficult childhood. As a revolutionary, one of his most significant insights was that the Revolution was threatened not only by France's military adversaries abroad, but also by domestic counter-revolutionaries. Under this latter heading were gathered two major groups, urban mercantilists and rural peasants. Relative strength of religious commitment is the major factor in explaining w
04 - Peter the Great
Peter the Great's historical significance stems not only from his military ambitions and the great expansion of the Russian Empire under his supervision, but also from his efforts to introduce secular, Western customs and ideas into Russian culture. Despite his notorious personal brutality, Peter's enthusiasm for science and modern intellectual concerns made an indelible mark both on Russia's relationship to the West and on its internal politics. The struggle under Peter's reign between Westerni
15.369 Corporate Entrepreneurship: Strategies for Technology-Based New Business Development (MIT)
This course is about "corporate entrepreneurship", my label for the alternative approaches that existing firms use to generate new technology-based products and businesses. It emphasizes various kinds of internal ventures and multiple "external" collaborative approaches that include corporate venture capital investments, licensing and different types of alliances and formal joint ventures. Basis for the new knowledge presented in this course is a combination of academic research and my personal
Why the Spanish Inquisition was good for Photography - Jonathan Worth, New Photographics
"History is never antiquated, because humanity is always fundamentally the same." ~Walter Rauschenbusch
...it seems hard to believe to us today that the thought of a personal relationship with God (or as Plato described it, being without a Greek word for religion, Love,Knowledge and Truth), through direct prayer, was as alien for them as, lets say for instance, it would be today for us to ask a person depicted within a photograph, for their own version of (news) events...
These podcasts are no
