Robert Frost, on Scientific American

Dennis Flanagan, for almost 40 years editor of Scientific American, died recently. I liked the following quote from his obituary in the latest issue. Scientific American is one of the few magazines I read (on paper) regularly.

"There are only two really great literary magazines in the United States. First is the New Yorker. The more brilliant of the two is Scientific American. It's come up with a great editorship. I'd rather read the advertisements in Scientific American than most of the literature written elsewhere."

The quote is attributed to poet Robert Frost.

Posted by BradRubenstein at 05:16 PM | TrackBack

Google Logos

A little known fact: Dennis Hwang, the Korean artist responsible for Google's ongoing stream of fanciful logos, was born in Knoxville, TN, home of the instapundit.

There. I'll hear no more complaints about Knoxville. I'll be there in April.

Posted by BradRubenstein at 12:58 AM | TrackBack

Today in History

On this day, in the year I was born, 1961 - The Beatles made their debut in an appearance at Liverpool's Cavern Club.

Chapeau to Siggy.

Posted by BradRubenstein at 11:44 PM | TrackBack

Reading by Numbers

I was inspired by this idea from the Scientific American Book Club (from an ad in the latest SciAm). A reading list where each book focuses on a number. Short list, you think? The book club suggests these:

• The Joy of Pi, by David Blatner
• e: The Story of a Number, by Eli Maor
• The Golden Ratio : The Story of PHI, the World's Most Astonishing Number, by Mario Livio
• An Imaginary Tale: The Story of Sqrt(-1), by Paul Nahin
• Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea, by Charles Seife

But those choices all seem so, well, irrational. How about the integers series:

• One, by Richard Bach
• Betty Crocker's Cooking for Two, by Betty Crocker
• Three Nights in August, by Buzz Bissinger
• The Rule of Four, by Ian Caldwell
• The Five People You Meet in Heaven, by Mitch Albom

Note: although these are all on my nightstand, I haven't read them all yet. Fortunately, I have plenty of spare time.

Not.

Posted by BradRubenstein at 11:56 AM | TrackBack

Postings Few and Far

Who would have thunk it. Four jobs sort of fell in my lap simultaneously, and blogging has become the fifth job. So I'm afraid things will be a bit sparse over here at Odd Quanta for the moment. the Movies Stars Blog or the Music Blog over at Blog Carnival.

If you'd rather support one of my most fabulous music non-profits, consider coming to our tribute to Hal Prince at NYFOS's next gala, entitled A Prince of a Fella. At least you'll see what we've been up to.

(P.S. It's not deep).

Posted by BradRubenstein at 11:30 AM | TrackBack

Martha Stewart and the Prison Focus Groups

From Yahoo Business, Martha Stewart Back at Work, Thanks Staff:

Stewart, 63, said she had had "the tremendous privilege" of meeting a cross-section of people in prison and "learned a great deal about our country."

This in marked contrast to the quotes over at SaveMarthaStewart.com,

Jail: It's not a Good Thing!

In other news, shares of Omnimedia fell 9.4% monday afternoon. They have fallen 19% since her release, reducing its Market Cap by $300 million.

Posted by BradRubenstein at 04:19 PM | TrackBack

Love on Craig's List

Alex pointed me to this ad on Craig's List - Queer Guy for my Straight Wife - mw4m:

Many of my wife's friends have moved out of the city, or have become busy with their own lives and their own things. She needs a new girlfriend. The kind that knows about fashion, shoes, men, et cetera. She likes to look good, but doesn't always know how to achieve that. (I tell her that she always looks good, and I mean it, but she doesn't believe me.)

I love her very much and I want to provide everything her heart desires. Unfortunately, I don't know anything about fashion. And there's only so much energy I have to be dragged through clothing stores.

I want to find my wonderful wife a new girlfriend. But not an ordinary girlfriend. I want to find her a gay man girlfriend.

If you'd like to spend time with my wife, going shopping, drinking coffee, planning our sham wedding (you'll have to get the details from her when you meet her), then please write. She's 30, very well-educated, very smart, very funny.

Craig's List totally rocks.

Posted by BradRubenstein at 02:15 PM | TrackBack

Efficient Markets, Efficient Conversations

We talk about the benefits of "efficient markets", let's talk about the benefits of "efficient conversations".

Off the beaten path, marketer Evelyn Rodrguez turns The Cluetrain Manifesto, by Christopher Locke, et al upside down in The Conversations We Aren't Having stirs up a tempest, and in parentheses yet.

If "markets are conversations" as The Cluetrain Manifesto asserts, there are an awful lot of intensely important conversations that aren't even being whispered about in the presence of business. (Have you really listened to what your customers' stories reveal? For innovation's sake, I'd turn Cluetrain on its head: Conversations are Markets. And thus there are plenty of markets being entirely ignored.)

Over at Celerity Consulting Group, they (we) spend a lot of time working with clients on (a) figuring out who their customers are, and what they care about, and (b) projects just run more effectively if their contributors actually converse (Some of my clients find it next to impossible just to get team members into one conversation, let alone into one meeting).

When we talk about efficient markets, we discuss level playing fields, optimizing governmental regulation, improving information flow, rational pricing.

What are the corresponding factors in conversation?

Posted by BradRubenstein at 01:37 PM | TrackBack

Philosophers' Parlor Games

In that same philosophical vein, here's a philospher's parlor game by Bob McGrew. Bold Predication or Counterexample:

• It's sometimes right to frame an innocent man for a crime he did not commit. Bold prediction or counterexample for utilitarianism?
• Murderers should be executed even if it is clear that they can do no more harm to society. Bold prediction or counterexample for Kantian ethics?
• The complete destruction of all humanity would not result in a moral loss. Bold prediction or counterexample for utilitarianism?

Now add your own examples.

Posted by BradRubenstein at 11:57 AM | TrackBack

Symbolic Utility

Following up on a conversation with my friend Margaret, I am suddenly interested in the applications and misapplications of Symbolic Utility in public policy.

In Uncertainty And Controversy In The Science And Ethics Of Environmental Policy Making, by Alario and Brün, I see:

The geographers Harman, Harrington, and Cerveny (1998) critique a common ethical approach based on cost-benefit calculation - which economists like to call "maximizing the social welfare function" - because of uncertainty in scientific results needed for the calculations, and disquiet about modifying hypothesis testing procedures to reflect relative risks of the two types of statistical error. They find an interesting alternative in Robert Nozick's (1993) concept of symbolic utility. Briefly the idea is that actions communicate. They tell about the actor and the actor's image of the surrounding environment. That is why people act differently in public and in solitude. They weigh not only the "technical" consequences of their public actions, but also the communicative effect. Harman et al propose to consciously make use of this communicative aspect to judge actions. They focus on issues and uncertainties pertaining to global warming, and then suggest that since these preclude deciding anything yet on a scientific basis, the question to ask is what course of action would set the better example: "We maintain that publicly deferring to concerns about public health and safety in the face of uncertain but potentially grave environmental threats carries the potential to contribute to the ethical fabric of society." (1998: 279).

I like this basic idea. In a world where the science is uncertain, and the statistics all lie, the question should properly be "What kind of example would we like to set?"

This takes me directly back to my early socialinguistic studies (at Berkeley, where the lakovian pragmatists bravely battled the neochomskian generative semanticists, or something like that). The book that opened my eyes was small, and remarkably simple: How to Do Things With Words, by J.L. Austin.

Posted by BradRubenstein at 11:38 AM | TrackBack

Access to Health

This is rich, The Morning Retort forwards this AP wire item:

VATICAN CITY (AP) -- Vatican officials on Thursday held out Pope John Paul II's stoic suffering with Parkinson's disease as an antidote to the mentality that modern medicine must cure all, calling this a ``religion of health'' that is taking hold in affluent countries.

This from a pope who just had a lifesaving tracheotomy. Apparently he is not ready to go gentle into that good night.

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