The continuous update process of Google Docs is somewhat annoying, esp since the last release lost some major capabilities. Most importantly from my point of view, we can no longer:

• use block quote, my favorite markup for setting of long citations
• specify a cross-document default font that is not Arial
• fiddle with the CSS directly
• Use CTRL-nn to ( Read more... )

Reading through the pages of the report on the demise of Lehman Brothers, it becomes apparent that the problem was less the correct retraction of prior assumptions about the company's risk strategy, but the worry on the part of senior management that overly strong adherence to these assumptions would disadvantage the firm in competition with the ( Read more... )

In a recent post, I had discussed the stance of interactive communion with the Divine that the Pilgrims had and how that informed their stance on giving thanks. Sometimes these descriptions are very abstract and come across as over-generalizing. Historians usually counter this with going back to some source.

Since I am currently reading the ( Read more... )

This editorial by Nicholas Kristoff on keeping IQ scores high through summer reading in the NY Times, when recommended on facebook, led to some more research into the connection between reading and IQ on the one side and soul-searching about the restrained format of facebook to lead scientifically underpinned discussions on the other side ( Read more... )

As part and parcel of my studies in Feudal (mostly French) economy, I have been looking at the so-called polyptique, a kind of inventory of Feudal goods and services drafted for fiscal purposes, of the Abbey of Montier-en-Der in Haute-Marne, France. An abbé and professor of Ancient History, Charles Lalore, published the Latin document with a French ( Read more... )

While reading about the Early Medieval European economy, I run across the memoires of the Andalusian traveler Ibrahim ibn Yaqub. Trying to find out more about him, I check the stub Wikipedia article which however only explains why I cannot find any sources quickly. So I turn to Google, only to be served up the page of the book that started my ( Read more... )

An interesting article in today's NY Times discusses the way parents who are research scientists in the cognitive and medical disciplines involve their children in their studies as test subjects.

A couple of comments on my part:

• First, us research parents, as the article mentions in a side note, need to confess up that we do it anyway. Indeed, I ( Read more... )

The brown bag, as ubiquity had already observed, was a success. Most of the people that I cared about showed up, and some that I don't know that well yet also. I got good feedback from my superiors and some interesting suggestions from other people that will require some post-processing; once that has been achieved, I will post more details on my research ( Read more... )

I have long suspected that experience eventually becomes stiffling, ensuring that people as they become older become more and more reluctant to embarke upon novel endeavors, given their ever more precise knowledge of the costs involved. As much as experience is a short-cut for avoiding painful lessons, its influence can lead to immobility in the ( Read more... )

I was very much surprised to find out that Andrew Tridgell's rsync program started out as a PhD thesis at Australian National University.

Another one for the reading list.

PS: When your reading list length reaches zero, you know that you are clinically dead.