Nassim Taleb, Black Swans, Econtalk, 2007/04/30 June 23, 2008
Posted by daviding in Talk Audio Download.Tags: black swans, nassim taleb
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People think that phenomena happen with frequencies in normal distributions too often.
Nassim Taleb talks about the challenges of coping with uncertainty, predicting events, and understanding history. This wide-ranging conversation looks at investment, health, history and other areas where data play a key role. Taleb, the author of Fooled By Randomness and The Black Swan, imagines two countries, Mediocristan and Extremistan where the ability to understand the past and predict the future is radically different. In Mediocristan, events are generated by a underlying random process that is normally distributed. These events are often physical and observable and they tend to cluster around the middle. Most people are near the average height and no adult is more than nine feet tall. But in Extremistan, the right-hand tail of events is thick and long and the outlier, the seemingly wildly unlikely event is more common than our experience with Mediocristan would indicate. Bill Gates is more than a little wealthier than the average. The civil war in Lebabon or the events of 9/11 were more worse than just a typical bad day in the Beirut or New York City. Taleb’s contention is that we often bring our intuition from Mediocristan for the events of Extremistan, leading us to error. The result is a tendency to be blind-sided by the unexpected.
Taleb on Black Swans, EconTalk Permanent Podcast Link: Library of Economics and Liberty
Gregg Easterbrook, “The American Standard of Living”, Econtalk, 2007/03/05 June 23, 2008
Posted by daviding in Uncategorized.Tags: gregg easterbrook, progress paradox
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Although we in the first world are privileged, we often don’t feel as though we’re as well off as we could be.
Author Gregg Easterbrook talks about the ideas in his latest book, The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse. How has life changed in America over the last century? Is the average person getting ahead or are the rich taking all the gains? Easterbrook argues that life is better for the average American in almost every dimension. The paradox is that despite those gains, we don’t seem much happier.
Manuel Castells, “Identity and Change in the Network Society”, U. C. Berkeley, 2002/12/06 June 23, 2008
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Manuel Castells is well known for the publication of the three volume work related to the Network Economy.
A social theorist, Professor Castells has won the C. Wright Mills Award, and he has received the Robert and Helen Lynd Award from the American Sociological Association for his lifelong contribution to the field of community and urban sociology. Professor Castells has published twenty books and over one hundred articles in academic journals, and co-authored or edited fifteen books. His works are international, comparative, and have been translated into many languages.
His publications include a three-volume trilogy on the Information Age: Volume I: The Rise of the Network Society; Volume II: The Power of Identity, and Volume III: End of Millennium. His new book is The Internet Galaxy: Reflections on the Internet, Business, and Society
Grady Booch, Lee Nackman, and Walker Royce, “IBM Rational at Five Years”, 2008/02/19 June 18, 2008
Posted by daviding in Talk Audio Download.Tags: grady booch, lee nackman, rational software, walker royce
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The acquisition of Rational Software by IBM has been significant in the changing the tools and methods in software development across the industry.
Grady Booch, Lee Nackman, and Walker Royce join developerWorks’ Scott Laningham and Michael O’Connell on this fifth anniversary of the IBM acquisition of Rational to talk about what it has meant for each company and for the software profession in general. Refinement of Rational’s focus, the expansion of IBM’s software paradigm, the further embracing of open source and open standards, the investment in growing technical talent, and the Jazz platform are all discussed.
developerWorks Interviews: Booch, Nackman, and Royce on IBM Rational at five years
Scott Ambler, “Agile Development”, IBM Developerworks, 2007/04/10 June 18, 2008
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Many IT shops claim to want agile development, but they may not know precisely what that means.
Scott Ambler, IBM Rational® Agile Development practice lead, explains Agile development this way: “An iterative and incremental (evolutionary) approach performed in a highly collaborative manner with ‘just enough’ ceremony that produces high quality software in a cost effective and timely manner which meets the changing needs of its stakeholders.” In this 20-minute podcast, Ambler explains what Agile development means, and look at why it is increasingly relevant and experiencing rapid adoption. He contrasts it with more traditional software development methods and dispels a number of common myths.
developerWorks Interviews: Scott Ambler on Agile development
Wes Jackson, “Can Grains Keep Replenishing Themselves?”, Voice of America News Landphair, 2006/04/17 June 18, 2008
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Can agriculture operate like the natural vegetation originally indigenous to the region?
Thirty-three years ago, as a California genetics professor, Wes Jackson got to thinking about the annual planting, harvesting and re-planting cycle of the American farm — AND about erosion, insects, drought, and chemical runoff’s terrible toll. Remembering the hardy prairie of his native Kansas, Mr. Jackson wondered whether food grains could be grown perennially — just like the prairie’s sturdy grasses. And he set off to find out.
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So in 1976 this brilliant and widely published geneticist returned to his roots, literally, and founded a combination farm and think tank called the Land Institute, outside the central Kansas city of Salina. Mr. Jackson still runs the operation from a tiny cabin next to what he calls the Sunshine farm, a 60-hectare labyrinth of test fields. In bluejeans and workshirt, he reclines in a squeaky chair with his feet propped up on his desk next to disheveled piles of papers — a pot-bellied stove keeping the flatland chill at bay. In ways befitting an intellectual luminary — for Mr. Jackson was awarded the prestigious, $250,000 MacArthur genius grant — he takes the conversation in a hundred directions, not all of which the uninitiated listener can follow. For instance he’s been known to say, “What we will be doing is developing elegant solutions predicated on the uniqueness of place.”
Keynotes, Rational Software Developers Conference, 2008/06/06 June 18, 2008
Posted by daviding in Talk Audio Download.Tags: colleen arnold, danny sabbah, grady booch, rational software, steve mills
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To get some insight into what’s happening deep down in computer programming, it’s helpful to listen to the keynote talks from the Rational Software Developer’s Conference 2008.
Danny Sabbah, GM IBM Rational, MP3 audio, slides as PDF
Colleen Arnold, leader of IBM consulting services, MP3 audio, slides as PDF
Steve Mills, Senior VP and Group Executive, IBM Software Group, MP3 audio, slides as PDF
Grady Booch, IBM Fellow and Chief Scientist of Software Engineering for IBM Research, MP3 audio, slides as PDF
IBM developerWorks : Blogs : Blogging the Rational Software Development Conference (RSDC)
Scott Davis and Ted Neward, “Java – still hot or losing its flavor?”, IBM Developerworks, 2008/05/06 June 18, 2008
Posted by daviding in Talk Audio Download.Tags: groovy, java, programming, scala
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Java — the programming language and real-time interpreter — has been around for a long time. How does it fare in the face of new programming languages and advances in technology?
Scott Laningham for developerWorks … [talks] about the Java programming language with a couple of cool dudes who have a lot to say on the subject. Scott Davis is editor-in-chief of AboutGroovy.com and author of Groovy Recipes: Greasing the Wheels of Java. Scott is also author of the developerWorks series “Mastering Grails.” We also have Ted Neward, author of Effective Enterprise Java and Server-Based Java Programming, as well as co-author of C# in a Nutshell. Ted’s contributions on developerWorks include the series “The Busy Java Developer’s Guide to Scala.” Both are featured speakers on the No Fluff Just Stuff Software Symposium series.
Henry Jenkins, “Video Games and Education”, Tech Nation, 2005/03/15 June 12, 2008
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Moira Gunn interviews for Tech Nation.
Henry Jenkins … thinks video games will revolutionize education. Dr. Jenkins is the director of the Comparative Media Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the co-editor of Rethinking Media Change: The Aesthetics of Transition (Media in Transition).
Michael Shuman, “Community Stock Exchange”, E. F. Schumacher Society, 2007/10 June 12, 2008
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How would financial markets work under a premise of localization rather than globalization?
Our communities have made great steps in again becoming local, but one element is still missing. When investing the money we work so hard to spend locally is moved almost entirely out of the community. Shuman argues for a local investment tool that will allow us to keep all our money in the community and benefit the businesses which we patronize.
Internet Archive: Details: Michael Shuman, Community Stock Exchange. October 2007
Wes Jackson and Wendell Berry, “When the Tree of Knowledge Becomes a Vine”, Convocation & Pastors’ School, 2007 June 12, 2008
Posted by daviding in Talk Audio Download.Tags: sustainable, wendell berry, wes jackson
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Wes Jackson and Wendell Berry are well-known figures in the agricultural thinking in the United States.
[At the] Convocation & Pastors’ School, … we explore the idea and practice of sustainable living with author Wendell Berry, environmentalist Wes Jackson, and theologian Norman Wirzba.
Our Daily Bread 2007 by Norman Wirzba on MP3 Digital Download
Ellen David, “Introduction”, MP3 audio
Wes Jackson, “When the Tree of Knowledge Becomes a Vine”, MP3 audio
Janice Virtue, “Introduction: On Membership and Belonging: A Conversation”, MP3 audio
Wendell Berry & L. Gregory Jones, “On Membership and Belonging, A Conversation”, MP3 audio
Stanley Hauerwas, “Introduction: The Land, Our Food, and Our Responsibility”, MP3 audio
Wendell Berry and Wes Jackson, “The Land, Our Food and Our Responsibility”, MP3 audio
Wes Jackson, “Becoming Native to this Place”, E. F. Schumacher Society, 1993/10 June 1, 2008
Posted by daviding in Talk Audio Download.Tags: agriculture, schumacher, sustainable, wes jackson
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In North America, so much of agricultural follows an industrial paradigm. Is there another way to understand agricultural systems?
Wes Jackson, co-founder of The Land Institute in Salina, Kansas, and pioneer in sustainable agriculture, is once again a pioneer-for sustainable communities. Years of seeing the harm done to his beloved prairies through the implementation of corporate agricultural practices determined his dramatic move to the small, almost abandoned town of Matfield Green in the Flint Hills of Kansas. Instructed by the history and traditions of the people there before him, Wes has undertaken to renew the town on an ecological and sustainable basis. It is a large undertaking, even as Wes is large, and it may not be successful; however, he has only one choice and we with him-to try. His lecture is a powerful affirmation of this spirit of renewal. The full edited text of this lecture may be viewed or purchased in pamphlet form at http://www.smallisbeautiful.org/publications.html
Internet Archive: Details: Wes Jackson, “Becoming Native to this Place.” October 1993
E. F. Schumacher, “Decentralist Economics”, Lindisfarne Summer Conference, 1974 June 1, 2008
Posted by daviding in Talk Audio Download.Tags: economics, schumacher
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Is it possible to have a system of economics not based on industrial scale?
The author of Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered and A Guide for the Perplexed cultivates the metaphysical and theological roots of decentralist economics and right livelihood. His lecture is part of the Lindisfarne 1974 Summer Conference entitled Planetary Culure and the New Image of Humanity.
Internet Archive: Details: E. F. Schumacher, Decentralist Economics. Summer 1974
