Best of 2015

Aneurysm ‹ Literary Hub https://t.co/XInlz50sKo
How Failed JC Penney CEO Ron Johnson Is Redeeming Himself With Enjoy https://t.co/96Ced5f4T2
Incredible: Switched @ Birth - Transcript | This American Life https://t.co/SdWgFdCBDM
Three Thrown Over the Cuckoo's Nest • Damn Interesting https://t.co/l3ZzTRSsYm
Epic Icahn Interview https://t.co/FeukyPGcV3
A Chunky History of Peanut Butter - The New Yorker https://t.co/fMfQHaESmH
DealBook Conference 2015 - Activist Investing https://t.co/Qw8H4uRGGy via @YouTube
Kenneth Griffin Looks Back on Citadel’s 25 Years - The New York Times https://t.co/tNx8fm9FWL
adele interview: world exclusive first interview in three years | read | i-D https://t.co/gNuoGV5ke5
Lunch With T. Boone Pickens https://t.co/MBHhUBwtSJ
Back to business: Michael Bloomberg - http://t.co/9wP2fKLyE3 http://t.co/Edy0FjSJgt
Reid Hoffman’s Big Dreams for LinkedIn - The New Yorker http://t.co/1I6mI6QbX3
'How the Bloomberg Terminal Made History--And Stays Ever Relevant' http://t.co/WIoDDVuijJ via @readability
Lunch with the FT: Novak Djokovic - http://t.co/9wP2fL39vB http://t.co/Dcm6AMpGxe
Should You Ever Use a Pie Chart? http://t.co/EWiCIXtI83
Sir Alex Ferguson Full Length Interview (w/Subtitles) - Fergie Time, Van Gaal & Developing Players - YouTube https://t.co/oT4nm28Op2
A Brief History of the Salem Witch Trials | History | Smithsonian https://t.co/hahp8aysny
The Man Who Built Silicon Valley: A Tribute to Andy Grove | Andreessen Horowitz http://t.co/ZPt617ahjR
The Great Dictator (1940) - Charlie Chaplin - Final Speech - Music - Hans Zimmer - Time - Subtitles - YouTube https://t.co/xHT8FwwPsK
Lessons Learned from A History of Oil | Base Hit Investing http://t.co/iiDjvLHaD5
'The siege of Herbalife' http://t.co/1pMfR4aRiq via @readability
Rose George: Let's talk crap. Seriously. | TED Talk | http://t.co/RAwLlGZOAP http://t.co/ksafbcXQnz
Inside the Brain of an Investing Genius — http://t.co/GU3e5x5s5f https://t.co/L0A0NOGMCp
In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed https://t.co/QeocJNfagC
Too Much Reading, Not Enough Thinking? - http://t.co/q65H7n5rKs http://t.co/BglOCNa7Ay
Polygraph Expert Shows How to Beat a Lie Detector Test - Bloomberg Business http://t.co/gcDiC4FSBk
Larry Page: The Untold Story - Business Insider http://t.co/QJ838ppgIk
Noma: Fantasies of a Happier Kitchen http://t.co/mCirbwXw8f
Up in the Air: Meet the Man Who Flies Around the World for Free — http://t.co/TtM1sHLv7U https://t.co/0SEk3ZvaV9
Everything I Know About Journalism in 395 Words - http://t.co/mxw60W1cPO http://t.co/u5Ugblw2kx
The Singular Mind of Terry Tao - The New York Times http://t.co/pgGfIJRkAs
Re-Re-Re-Reintroducing Hillary Clinton - The New York Times http://t.co/lDuYd9Vqyd
“How to Write a Memoir” (@theamscho) http://t.co/jBCOjxQlmE
The Innocent Man, Part Two | Texas Monthly http://t.co/so6Rn92Da6
The Innocent Man, Part One | Texas Monthly http://t.co/TyI4j8nGMR
Inside the sony hack - Fortune http://t.co/aTU5W3kM6m
Welcome to Dog World! https://t.co/IP27mlka0R
Dear commencement speakers of 2015: You look fabulous! - The Washington Post http://t.co/mS0RUChnwN
A history of the world in funny puns - Telegraph http://t.co/oQG208JUrW
Business Insider CEO Henry Blodget: Masters in Business (Audio) by Bloomberg View via #soundcloud https://t.co/4aYZE3cihJ
â–¶ John Heins & Whitney Tilson: 'The Art of Value Investing' - YouTube https://t.co/cQI69rLWo2
â–¶ U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara on Leading Ethical Organizations - YouTube https://t.co/6gDLle1Op9
Atul Gawande on the Secrets of a Puzzle-Filled Career: 'Shocking' Healthcare Costs http://t.co/hGktb8iUqG
Learning from Michael Burry | Street Capitalist: Event Driven Value Investments http://t.co/U4pfY0IVpZ
How to Disagree - paul graham http://t.co/CHylzOkDbc
How to Use a Squat Toilet - Features - World Hum http://t.co/KQVKc0vY3x
An Interview With Michael Lewis http://t.co/kjBtsozyx7
On coffee - Java Man - gladwell - newyorker http://t.co/2msYHpRMTj
The Order of Things - The New Yorker http://t.co/1iLLCsV6Gf
Twelve Rude Revelations About Sex http://t.co/gplzn50A16 via @Instapaper
The Answer Is Never : Longreads Blog http://t.co/7lMpUeHemd
â–¶ Paul Tudor Jones - TED Talk PTJ - YouTube https://t.co/BXTNdINAzv
Michael lewis - Charlie Rose | http://t.co/Mc3K2o2WdM http://t.co/3W6a7KBdNL
How to Be a Better Spouse - Scientific American http://t.co/jYXUmtUHNf
Daniel Kahneman: The Riddle Of Experience Vs. Memory http://t.co/cTapvIAP98
The Twisted History of Your Favorite Board Game : Longreads Blog http://t.co/pPommrJ24l
Must-see video: Sex, luxury and the $10,000 Apple Watch - Fortune http://t.co/DTYoiF1FzP
Annotating the Oracle: Experts Weigh In on Berkshire’s Annual Letter - MoneyBeat - WSJ http://t.co/fDrIf6gOzk
After nearly 7 years as CFO, I will be retiring from Google to spend more time… https://t.co/XxS8EcRnwZ
Jonathan Ive and the Future of Apple - The New Yorker http://t.co/ZyESV0dlvF
Hi Reddit, I’m Bill Gates and I’m back for my third AMA. Ask me anything. : IAmA http://t.co/5vzm5nK8W7
Lunch with the FT: Marc Andreessen - http://t.co/9wP2fLCm2f http://t.co/PeCvuSiU7k
A candid conversation with Pixar's philosopher-king, Ed Catmull http://t.co/ttuzs8aJBD

Notes from 'Men of Mathematics' (1)

A few notes from - Men of Mathematics (Touchstone Book) (E. T. Bell): 

It must not be imagined that the sole function of mathematics—“the handmaiden of the sciences”—is to serve science. Mathematics has also been called “the Queen of the Sciences.”

Mathematics has a light and wisdom of its own, above any possible application to science, and it will richly reward any intelligent human being to catch a glimpse of what mathematics means to itself.

Lagrange (whom we shall meet later) believed that a mathematician has not thoroughly understood his own work till he has made it so clear that he can go out and explain it effectively to the first man he meets on the street.

But it may be recalled that only a few years before Lagrange said this the Newtonian “law” of gravitation was an incomprehensible mystery to even highly educated persons.

Students of mathematics are familiar with the phenomenon of “slow development,” or subconscious assimilation: the first time something new is studied the details seem too numerous and hopelessly confused, and no coherent impression of the whole is left on the mind.

Skipping is not a vice, as some of us were told by our puritan teachers, but a virtue of common sense.

In saying that Descartes was responsible for the creation of analytic geometry we do not mean to imply that the new method sprang fullarmed from his mind alone.

Relativity, for example, is sometimes said to have been the great invention reserved by time for the genius of Minkowski.

Archimedes had the fundamental notion of limiting sums from which the integral calculus springs, and he not only had the notion but showed that he could apply it. Archimedes also used the method of the differential calculus in one of his problems. As we approach Newton and Leibniz in the seventeenth century the history of the calculus becomes extremely involved. The new method was more than merely “in the air” before Newton and Leibniz brought it down to earth; Fermat actually had documented significant parts of it ...

Only by seeing in detail what manner of men some of the great mathematicians were and what kind of lives they lived, can we recognize the ludicrous untruth of the traditional portrait of a mathematician.

Returning for a moment to the movie ideal of a mathematician, we note that sloppy clothes have not been the invariable attire of great mathematicians.

Men who should have been above such brawls seem to have gone out of their way to court battles over priority in discovery and to accuse their competitors of plagiarism. 

Both inventors and perfectors are necessary to the progress of any science. Every explorer must have, in addition to his scouts, his followers to inform the world as to what he has discovered.

Things that now seem as simple as common sense—our way of writing numbers, for instance, with its “place system” of value and the introduction of a symbol for zero, which put the essential finishing touch to the place system—cost incredible labor to invent. Even simpler things, containing the very essence of mathematical thought —abstractness and generality

The mystical “not-being” of the seventeenth century Leibniz is seen to have a “being” as simple as ABC.

On the life of Gauss: 

Nevertheless Gauss crowned the higher arithmetic, in his day the least practical of mathematical studies, the Queen of all.

As a child he was respectful and obedient, and although he never criticized his poor father in later life, he made it plain that he had never felt any real affection for him. Gerhard died in 1806. By that time the son he had done his best to discourage had accomplished immortal work.

Dorothea Gauss took her boy’s part and defeated her obstinate husband in his campaign to keep his son as ignorant as himself.

Gauss himself cared little if anything for fame; his triumphs were his mother’s life.

Before this the boy had teased the pronunciations of the letters of the alphabet out of his parents and their friends and had taught himself to read.

Shortly after his seventh birthday Gauss entered his first school, a squalid relic of the Middle Ages run by a virile brute, one Büttner, whose idea of teaching the hundred or so boys in his charge was to thrash them into such a state of terrified stupidity that they forgot their own names.

Büttner was so astonished at what the boy of ten had done without instruction that he promptly redeemed himself and to at least one of his pupils became a humane teacher. Out of his own pocket he paid for the best textbook on arithmetic obtainable and presented it to Gauss. The boy flashed through the book. “He is beyond me,” Büttner said; “I can teach him nothing more.”

Before entering the Caroline College at the age of fifteen, Gauss had made great headway in the classical languages by private study and help from older friends, thus precipitating a crisis in his career. To his crassly practical father the study of ancient languages was the height of folly.

When Gauss left the Caroline College in October, 1795 at the age of eighteen to enter the University of Göttingen he was still undecided whether to follow mathematics or philology as his life work. He had already invented (when he was eighteen) the method of “least squares,”

Gauss shares this honor with Legendre who published the method independently in 1806. This work was the beginning of Gauss’ interest in the theory of errors of observation.

A cathedral is not a cathedral, he said, till the last scaffolding is down and out of sight. Working with this ideal before him, Gauss preferred to polish one masterpiece several times rather than to publish the broad outlines of many as he might easily have done.

His own contemporaries begged him to relax his frigid perfection so that mathematics might actually digest some of it...

Consequently some of his works had to wait for highly gifted interpreters before mathematicians in general could understand them, see their significance for unsolved problems, and go ahead. His own contemporaries begged him to relax his frigid perfection so that mathematics might advance more rapidly, but Gauss never relaxed.

the Duke came to his rescue, paid for the printing of his doctoral dissertation (University of Helmstedt, 1799), and granted him a modest pension which would enable him to continue his scientific work unhampered by poverty. “Your kindness,” Gauss says in his dedication, “freed me from all other responsibilities and enabled me to assume this exclusively.”

The word “imaginary” is the great algebraical calamity, but it is too well established for mathematicians to eradicate. It should never have been used.

But arithmetic was his first love, and he regretted in later life that he had never found the time to write the second volume he had planned as a young man.

Notes from Lords of Strategy by Walter Kiechel(1)

Some of my highlights..

Consultancies—start-ups and established outfits, including the strategy firms—stood willing to help clients figure out how to make sense of it all. By the end of the decade, some BCG offices derived nearly half their business from projects related to new technology.

In this emerging world, according to Evans, “the key way to think about competitive advantage is to think about how to design ecology in such a way to achieve goals you’re trying to pursue.

The role that strategy consultants play in the business hasn’t received much attention, but represents a remarkable convergence of mind-sets, analytical inclinations, and shared profit motivations.

The PE business, is in part the opportunity to actually run something. What consultants bring to jobs in private equity, at least to hear them tell it, is experience in improving the performance of companies—experience based on years of analyzing and advising.

by Bain & Company’s calculations in 2007, 75 percent of PE firms fail to earn more than their risk-adjusted cost of capital, a figure undoubtedly made worse by the recent disruptions—will be the ability to ratchet up the performance of their portfolio companies and, with it, their eventual sales price.

on “results” and its preeminent skills at Greater Taylorism. “Quite frankly, it’s the purest type of Bain work there is,” says Dan Haas, one of the founders of the practice, “because it’s all about creating value, you’ve got a motivated management team, and the stakes are incredibly high for everyone. For a firm of impact junkies, it doesn’t get any better than that.”

Bain’s help to its PE clients comes in two forms. Before the decision to buy a particular business, it will perform what it calls “strategic due diligence,” surveying the industry and players across the potential property’s value chain, from its suppliers to its customers....including what parts of it we will want to sell off. After the purchase has been consummated, Bain then works with its client to develop a performance improvement plan, particularly for the first one or two years: targets to be achieved, including financial goals, often plotted down to the month, with the steps to be taken to get there.

“Every day you don’t sell a portfolio company, you’ve made an implicit buy decision.”

The issue of what happens to overall employment at businesses acquired by PE firms was controversial even before the recent economic crisis. Private equity buckos are inclined to the view that certain functions, like human resources, can often be outsourced.

The CEO of the mortgage lender, Angelo Mozilo, and his team were convinced that the stock market wasn’t setting a high enough value on their enterprise. In strategic planning sessions in 2002, their consultant advised them that if Countrywide’s market share was higher, so would be their stock price. The consultant, Eric Flamholtz, a professor at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, told how most industries evolved such that one competitor had more than a 40 percent share, the next more than 20 percent, a third competitor 10 percent, and the rest mere boutique status. (One can almost see Bruce Henderson nodding from the great beyond.) This, at a point when Countrywide’s share was about 10 percent and the market share leader’s was no more than 13 percent. [And we all know what happened to countrywide]

For students of strategy surveying the wreckage of the financial system, examples of strategic precepts leading the players astray won’t necessarily come as a surprise. (Think back to all those companies that claimed to have been ruined trying to apply the growth-share matrix to themselves.) What may be more of a shock is how seldom strategy or the consultants who pushed it creep up in accounts of the misadventures that led to the crisis. This is not just because of the consultants’ traditional determination to keep their work confidential

So what were the bulge-bracket consultants doing for their banking clients? As the Bear Stearns example suggests, much of their effort went to helping with Greater Taylorism in its most reductive, cost-cutting form. Often this work came under the rubric “sourcing.” In the 1980s, the consultants had demonstrated that what was pulling the banking industry’s profitability down was not the expense of the interest it paid out on deposits but rather the cost of new branches and technology...

Asked to name sins of omission or commission they may have committed in connection with the global financial crisis, most consultants will allow that in their advice they failed to make sufficient provision for risk, particularly systemic risk