In light of Castro’s impending death, there are quite a few communities, especially the Cuban-Americans, which are ecstatic of the recent turn of events. The death of Fidel Castro may unfortunately turn him into another popular icon -such as that of the late Ernesto “Che” Guevara- to be reproduced in silhouette on T-shirts for college […]
Archive for December, 2006
Although we at AU need no convincing, Julian Dibbell argues that virtual currencies are no less real than the dollars we use every day. What interested me was one particular piece of evidence he brought up….
e-gold is a private electronic currency. This currency is backed by real gold and issued by a private corporation (founded […]
Taxation of Virtual Economies
Published by December 28th, 2006 in Economics, Policy, Entertainment & Culture and Virtual Worlds. 10 CommentsI am considering writing a paper on this topic. There is a lot of material out there. I have just started accumulating it all and if any of you have interesting thoughts, perspectives, or links, I would love to hear from you.
Here’s an article about the “inevitable” taxation of virtual economies:
“Given growth rates of 10 […]
Stop Working So That I May Be Happy!
Published by December 23rd, 2006 in Economics and Policy. 0 CommentsBob sent me this recent article from The Economist. The article has three somewhat disjoint parts.
Part one discusses research in psychological economics on measuring happiness, particularly that of 2002 Nobel prize winner Daniel Kahneman. They compare how happy people say they are to how much activity is going on in their brains’ happiness areas and […]
If you’re looking for a way to spruce up your X-Mas with some art, but don’t have the money to buy four $70 frames (my current predicament), or you can’t afford that special jewelry for unsecured, uninsured display in your apartment (all of our predicaments), here are some books that could bring color to the […]
From MR, Harvard welcomes its 2006 graduate economics admits. Your decision can be modeled as a trivial model of compensating differentials.
Citizen Kane2-D2
Published by December 20th, 2006 in Technology & Innovation, Policy and Fluff. 3 CommentsIt seems that at least one organ of Her Britannic Majesty’s Government took Robin Williams’ movie Bicentennial Man at little too seriously. Reports the AP: “Robots might one day be smart enough to demand emancipation from their human owners, raising the prospects they’ll have to be treated as citizens, according to a speculative paper released […]
And God Said, “Let there be Nonprincipal Ultrafilters”
Published by December 20th, 2006 in Mathematics. 0 CommentsApologies to all at AU for the title, but given one of Bob’s previous comments I couldn’t resist. Perhaps later we’ll discuss creation versus discovery in mathematics, but not now. So moving on….
Although we know some desired properties of largeness, we still don’t know exactly which sets are large and which aren’t. To determine this […]
Pinochet & Thatcher
Published by December 20th, 2006 in History, Personalities, Margaret Thatcher and Americas. 1 CommentAlthough there are several interesting posts on AU that I have yet to properly comment on, I state it is my intention to do so now that my exams are over. I also don’t mean to break momentum on respectable topics, but wanted to share some excerpts of an interesting essay in The Telegraph about […]
In a recent posting at the always excellent Coming Anarchy, Lord Chirol discusses the possibility of private corporations’ developing their own militaries (think “Old Navy Seals” or the Wal-Mart SS). Although subsequent discussion discounted this possibility, reasonably when one considers the benefits to specialization, the rise of private military corporations (PMCs) as seen in Iraq […]
If you chose number 4, you are correct. To construct the hyperreals, we will create equivalence classes of real sequences.
In standard analysis, we can think of infinitesimals as sequences of real numbers that converge to zero and infinite numbers as divergent sequences. So the sequences
[tex] \small 1,\ \frac{1}{2},\ \frac{1}{3},\ \frac{1}{4},..[/tex] and [tex] \small \frac{1}{2},\ […]
The Next Costa Rica? Part II: William Walker
Published by December 17th, 2006 in History, Personalities and Americas. 2 CommentsMy favorite part of the article, however, has to do with the evil universe (or perhaps just 1850s) version of our American Emperor– no, I do not mean Douglas MacArthur, who was Caesar– but the beloved Norton I. Enter, William Walker. From the article:
Nicaragua is no stranger to American visitors with grandiose plans. That perfect […]
Excited that one of my most favorite topics (Dedekind cuts) had been brought up, I did something wild: I checked my email. And in it, I found the latest edition of NYTimes Travel Dispatches. This one caught my eye: The Rediscovery of Nicaragua. It catches me eye for two reasons:
It’s an article about Nicaragua whose […]
To see how we should construct the hyperreals, let’s consider how we can construct the reals. So what is a real number? Four common answers are….
1. A real number is an infinite decimal expansion. This isn’t a very interesting definition and it’s a bit unwieldy because you have to worry about things like non-unique decimal […]
Modern analysis, the subfield of mathematics concerned with calculus, took an interesting turn at the end of the 19th century. By considering things like infinitely small quantities, Newton and Leibniz made the great insights that put calculus at forefront of mathematics. But worries over what exactly these infinitely small quantities were began to spread. And […]
