I’m currently sitting in a lecture by Benoit Mandelbrot. The father of ?fractals? is at Microsoft ostensibly to promote his book, ?The Misbehavior of Markets?. He hasn’t actually touched on markets yet, though. He is reviewing his life work and explaining how it all fits together. He calls his overarching passion, ?the science of roughness?, [...]
The competition is going on right now; you can listen to several disabled musicians and vote for your favorite. The winner gets a cash prize. It’s not a recording contract, but it begs the question of why the larger ?Idol? style contests do not have more disabled representation. Is appears that the primary disability for [...]
Does ?bottling up? your feelings really make things worse? Is a pressure cooker really a good way to think about negative emotions? Grade school teachers, Reader’s Digest, news media ?experts?, and Oprah all told me that catharsis (letting off some steam) is necessary and healthy. However, I had never seen scientifically documentedevidence of this.
Interestingly, this [...]
Sometimes it seems that political ads are crude throwbacks to the days before modern advertising science. Hackish play on emotion and raw demagogeury are par for the course.
However, a new Kerry ad makes me think that the political campaignsare at the forefront in pushing the science of influence. The ?you will lose? ad is using [...]
Dave took some pictures at Scoble’s BBQin his honor. You know a party is a success when my daughter says, ?we should come back every day!?. I’m not sure if it was Maryam’s desserts or Jeff Sandquist’s dog that got her attention, but she was impressed.
I spent some time talking with Dave about uses [...]