We saw two plays last week, both of them rather non-traditional. The Odyssey was an aleatoric reworking of The Odyssey, while The Story of the Four Minute Mile was told as the audience walked around the racetrack where Roger Bannister ran the first four minute mile in 1954. more
"Drive-by regression" is my phrase - I think an original coinage - for describing what some economists (or statisticians or physicists) do when they pick some field, grab some convenient data, take it out of its context and perform some statistical analysis on it, preferably finding some kind of counter-intuitive result, and then depart, leaving the locals to deal with the resulting mess. more
I had a brief conversation the other day with an investment advisor from my bank here in the UK. As soon as he found out that I knew what an index fund was and owned shares directly, he told me bluntly he didn't think he could help me. more
For a long time, possibly over a decade, I have had a disclaimer at the
bottom of the "medieval history" category of my book reviews which says:
"I realise the inclusion of works on areas outside Europe and
West Asia in a 'medieval history' category is problematic."
For me, one of the big benefits of working at a university was access to
its library and in particular to its online journal subscriptions. I had
hoped that by the time I retired everything I might want would be open
access. But then we moved to the UK and I gave up my job... more
Further adventures with the Bodleian Library system have gone well. more
On Friday Camilla and I went to see the "Oxford Greek Play" Clytemnestra (actually Aeschylus' The Libation-bearers, or Choephoroi). more
Some friends have been debating what Keynes thought of Marx and wanted to get hold of a letter he wrote to Bernard Shaw about this. more
