http://www.metlin.org Would you like fries with that? Wed, 10 Mar 2010 16:59:40 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Today, I attended a rather excellent talk by Noam Chomsky and Amy Goodman on the Obama Administration & The U.S. Foreign Policy hosted by the HEIRC. The event was recorded by PBS, and the video is supposed to be made available to the public. As Chomsky's talks go, it was ... http://www.metlin.org/2010/03/06/noam-chomsky-on-the-obama-administration-the-u-s-foreign-policy/ Microfinance and the Human Condition: A Bottom-Up Approach towards Promoting Freedom and Development -- A paper of mine published on the World Poverty & Human Rights Online website as part of my WPHR class this Spring. The published HTML version can be found on the site and a PDF version is ... http://www.metlin.org/2010/03/06/microfinance-and-the-human-condition/ I rarely recommend textbooks as good reads. Not that they aren't, of course, but they often tend to be academic in nature and therefore of little interest to anyone other than academics (and unfortunate students). However, I'm taking a class by Professor Stephen P. Marks on World Poverty & Human Rights ... http://www.metlin.org/2010/01/22/development-as-freedom/ The topic and abstract for my IPE term paper that I had originally planned turned out to be a little too broad in its scope. As a result, my final paper had a much tighter focus. Fluctuation & Flexibility: A Case Study of Exchange Rate Regimes from the 1997-1998 East Asian ... http://www.metlin.org/2010/01/14/ipe-research-paper-asian-financial-crisis-exchange-rate-regimes/ On the same note as the previous post, here are some Scilab renderings of the slightly more interesting Plücker’s conoid. And of course, here's the code. Substitute N with the number of folds in the surface, where (quite obviously) the period of oscillation around the Z axis is given by 2π/n. //Plücker’s ... http://www.metlin.org/2010/01/12/pluckers-conoid/ It's been a while since I did something interesting with math on my blog, so I figured I'd go back to some old favorites. I've done the Cross Cap before, so here's a variation -- the Pseudo Cross Cap. And of course, as always, here's the code code to render them ... http://www.metlin.org/2010/01/12/pseudo-cross-cap/ I was rather intrigued and quite delighted to read about Minnesota introducing the world's first Carbon tariff. The target of this (much maligned, if I might add) tariff is North Dakota, which exports electricity produced primarily through the use of coal power plants. This is in stark contrast with Minnesota, which ... http://www.metlin.org/2010/01/07/minnesota-introduces-worlds-first-carbon-tariff/ Excellent and fascinating video by National Geographic on Dean S. Potter - climber, rope-walker and BASE jumper. http://www.metlin.org/2009/12/29/adventures-in-sky-flying/ Fascinating visualization of US bank failures by the folks at Computational Legal Studies. The interesting thing to note, of course, are the three key takeaways: Acceleration: There were four failures in the first six months of 2008, followed by another 22 failures in the next six months. By January of ... http://www.metlin.org/2009/12/22/visualizing-bank-failures/ Following Berkshire Hathaway's SEC filing last Friday, I received the ballot to vote on the splitting of Berkshire Hathaway Class B stock. To me, it is an unfortunate sign because this would effectively invite every option trader to speculate on Berkshire Hathaway -- and BRK will move away from being one ... http://www.metlin.org/2009/12/16/berkshire-hathaway-class-b-split/