{"id":703,"date":"2013-09-23T15:45:04","date_gmt":"2013-09-23T19:45:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jsylvest.com\/blog\/?p=703"},"modified":"2013-10-01T01:11:57","modified_gmt":"2013-10-01T05:11:57","slug":"reading-list-for-23-september-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jsylvest.com\/blog\/2013\/09\/reading-list-for-23-september-2013\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading List for 23 September 2013"},"content":{"rendered":"

Arnold Kling :: Big Gods<\/a><\/p>\n

Here is a question to think about. If religions help to create social capital by allowing people to signal conscientiousness, conformity, and trustworthiness [as Norenzayan claims<\/a>], how does this relate to Bryan Caplan\u2019s view that obtaining a college degree performs that function?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That might explain why the credentialist societies of Han China were relatively irreligious. Kling likes to use the Vickies\/Thetes metaphor from Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age<\/em>, and I think this dichotomy could play well with that. Wouldn't the tests required by the Reformed Distributed Republic fill this role, for instance?<\/p>\n

Ariel Procaccia :: Alien journals<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Steve Landsburg :: RIP, Ronald Coase<\/a><\/p>\n

This is by far the best, simplest explanation of Coase's insights that I have read. Having read plenty of Landsburg, that should not — indeed does not — surprise me.<\/p>\n

His final 'graph is a digression, but a good point:<\/p>\n

Coase\u2019s Nobel Prize winning paper is surely one of the landmark papers of 20th century economics. It\u2019s also entirely non-technical (which is fine), and (in my opinion) ridiculously verbose (which is annoying). It\u2019s littered with numerical examples intended to illustrate several different but related points, but the points and the examples are so jumbled together that it\u2019s often difficult to tell what point is being illustrated... Pioneering work is rarely presented cleanly, and Coase was a true pioneer.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And this is why I put little stock in \"primary sources\" when it comes to STEM. The intersection between people\/publications who originate profound ideas<\/i> and people\/publications which explain profound ideas well<\/i> is a narrow one. If what you want is the latter, don't automatically mistake it for the former. The best researchers are not the best teachers, and this is true as much for papers as it is for people.<\/p>\n

That said, sometimes the originals are very good. Here are two other opinions on this, from Federico Pereiro<\/a> and John Cook<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Prosthetic Knowledge :: Prototypo.io<\/a><\/p>\n

Start a font by tweaking all glyphs at once. With more than twenty parameters, design custom classical or experimental shapes. Once prototyping of the font is done, each point and curve of a glyph can be easily modified. Explore, modify, compare, export with infinite variations.<\/p>\n