Month: July 2011

The Theory of Interstellar Trade

Posted on by in Economics

My coworker pointed me to a Paul Krugman paper written in 1978 titled “The Theory of Interstellar Trade.” Here’s the abstract: “This article extends interplanetary trade theory to an interstellar setting. It is chiefly concerned with the following question: how should interest charges on goods in transit be computed when the goods travel at close to the speed of light? This is a problem because the time taken in transit will appear less to an observer traveling with the goods than to a stationary observer. A solution is derived from economic theory, and two useless but true theorems are proved.” Hysterical. The whole thing is worth a skim. This figure just takes it home:  

James Fallows on Google+

Posted on by in Current Events, Technology

I’ve been a bit caught up with Google+ lately. Mostly because I know a number of people working at Google at the moment, and I’m curious to see where this goes. James Fallows has some thoughts: One of the immediate appeals is how quick, ergonomically easy, and aesthetically nice it is to set up “circles” that match the natural patterns of your real life. One for immediate family, one for “friends you actually know,” another for “professional acquaintances who are sort of friends,” etc. Or by interest. In my case: airplane people, beer people, China people, tech people, Atlantic people, NPR people, etc. This is technically possible with Facebook “lists” but more of a chore. And, just like in life,

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King of Limbs, Live

Posted on by in Music

Earlier this month, the BBC recorded Radiohead playing the entire album live. It’s great to be able to watch how the band makes many of the synthesized and ambient sounds. Here’s a track: Thom loves his dance. The rest of the videos are on Pitchfork here.