(8,200 words)
This online EDGE edition with streaming video is available at:
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge285.html
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THE THIRD CULTURE
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VIDEOS FROM THE ECONOMIC MANHATTAN PROJECT
In December, EDGE published "Can Science Help Solve the Economic Crisis?" by Mike Brown, Stuart Kauffman, Zoe-Vonna Palmrose, and Lee Smolin. The paper was prompted by a suggestion by Eric Weinstein for an "Economic Manhattan Project".
This led to the Perimeter Institute conference in Waterloo, Ontario: "The Economic Crisis and its Implications for The Science of Economics". According to the organizers, "Concerns over the current financial situation are giving rise to a need to evaluate the very mathematics that underpins economics as a predictive and descriptive science. A growing desire to examine economics through the lens of diverse scientific methodologies — including physics and complex systems — is making way to a meeting of leading economists and theorists of finance together with physicists, mathematicians, biologists and computer scientists in an effort to evaluate current theories of markets and identify key issues that can motivate new directions for research."
Jordan Mejias, arts correspondent for FRANKFURTER ALLGEMEINE ZEITUNG and frequent EDGE contributor, attended the conference and a wrote a article that ran on on the front page of the FAZ Feuilleton. His translation is presented below.
EDGE is pleased to present the videos of the talks during the first day and half of the conference...
A SCIENCE LESS DISMAL: WELCOME TO THE ECONOMIC MANHATTAN PROJECT
Eric R. Weinstein
INTERPRETING THE FAILURE TO PREDICT FINANCIAL CRISES AND RECESSION
Nouriel Roubini
UNTITLED
Nassim Taleb
PANEL DISCUSSION
Nouriel Roubini, Nassim Taleb , Richard Freeman, Eric R. Weinstein
SCIENTISTS, SCIENSTERS, ANTI-SCIENTISTS & ECONOMISTS
Emanuel Derman
THE ADAPTIVE MARKETS HYPOTHESIS AND FINANCIAL CRISIS
Andrew Lo
HUMAN EVOLUTION AND ECONOMICS
Richard Alexander
PANEL DISCUSSION
Emanuel Derman, Andrew Lo, Richard Alexander, Bill Janeway, Zoe-Vonna Palmrose
PHYSICISTS ATTEMPT TO SCALE THE IVORY TOWERS OF FINANCE (TEN YEARS LATER, LOOKING FORWARD)
Doyne Farmer
[MORE...]
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"The threat of deadly new viruses is on the rise due to population growth, climate change and increased contact between humans and animals. What the world needs to do to prepare."
THE AGE OF PANDEMICS
By Larry Brilliant
In 1967, the country's surgeon general, William Stewart, famously said, "The time has come to close the book on infectious diseases. We have basically wiped out infection in the United States." This premature victory declaration, perhaps based on early public health victories over 19th-century infectious diseases, has entered the lore of epidemiologists who know that, if anything, the time has come to open the book to a new and dangerous chapter on 21st-century communicable diseases.
Indeed, to the epidemiological community, the Influenza Pandemic of 2009 is one of the most widely anticipated diseases in history. Epidemiologists have been shouting from rooftops that a pandemic (or, a world-wide epidemic) of influenza is overdue, and that it is not a matter of "if" but "when." The current pathogen creating the threat is actually a mixture of viral genetic elements from all over the globe that have sorted, shifted, sorted, shifted, drifted and recombined to form this worrisome virus.
No one knows if the 2009 swine flu will behave like the 1918 Spanish flu that killed 50 million to 100 million world-wide, or like the 1957 Asian flu and 1968 Hong Kong flu that killed far fewer. This 2009 flu may weaken and lose its virulence, or strengthen and gain virulence—we just do not know. ...
LAWRENCE B. BRILLIANT, Executive Director of Google.org. is a medical doctor who was a professor of international health and epidemiology at the University of Michigan from 1976-1986 and prior to that he lived in India and worked as a medical officer for the United Nations World Health Organization helping lead the successful effort to eradicate smallpox. He is a founder and a director of the Seva Foundation, an international organization dedicated to fighting blindness. Brilliant will soon begin work as president of the Skoll Urgent Threats Fund.
[MORE...]
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FOLLOW EDGE ON TWITTER
http://twitter.com/edge
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ARTICLES OF NOTE
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TRUE/SLANT
May 7, 2009
MATT TIABBI
TAIBBLOG
Religion, agnostics, and the cure for baldness
...I'm always on the lookout for religion's latest counter-arguments, the new rhetorical approaches that God People are constantly fine-tuning for use in pimping the righteousness of faith (and for demonstrating the moral dissoluteness of agnostics like myself).
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NEW YORK TIMES
May 10, 2009
The American Press on Suicide Watch
By Frank Rich
The real question is for the public, not journalists: Does it want to pony up for news, whatever the media that prevail?
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THE BOSTON GLOBE
May 10, 2009
Perfectly Happy
By Drake Bennett
The new science of measuring happiness has transformed self-help. Now scholars suggest it could transform society.
[MORE...]
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PHARYNGULA
May 7, 2009
The Templeton conundrum
By PZ Myers
Money is essential to science, and at the same time it can be a dangerous corrupter.
[MORE...]
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PROSPECT
May, 2009
Dr. Pangloss
A living art reborn
Brian Eno
... live music scene is exploding, for, unable to make a living from records sales, more and more bands are playing live.
[MORE...]
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SUEDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG
May 7, 2009
Besuch bei Google
"Seid nicht böse!"
Von Alex Rühle
[MORE...]
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DER SPIEGEL
May 8, 2009
HEUTE IN DEN FEUILLETONS
[MORE...]
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BUSINESS DAY (South Africa)
May 8, 2009
OPINION & EDITORIAL
There is no question more important to us than our mortality
By Michel Pireu
APPLETON professor of natural philosophy at Dartmouth College Marcelo Gleiser says that in the future we may be able to master death.
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NOW ON PBS
Week of 5.9.09
Predicting Pandemics
How do we fight both the swine flu pandemic and our fear of it?
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THE REASON PROJECT
May 7, 2009
Truckling to the Faithful: A Spoonful of Jesus Helps Darwin Go Down
By Jerry Coyne
... Here I argue that the accommodationist position of the National Academy of Sciences, and especially that of the National Center for Science Education, is a self-defeating tactic, compromising the very science they aspire to defend.
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NEW YORKER
May 11, 2009
Profiles
BRAIN GAMES: The Marco Polo of neuroscience
By John Colapinto
... "Ramachandran is a latter-day Marco Polo, journeying the silk road of science to strange and exotic Cathays of the mind," Richard Dawkins once wrote.
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PHARYNGULA
May 5, 2009
The Eagleton Delusion
By PZ Myers
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NEW YORK TIMES
May 4, 2009
OPINION
GOD TALK
By Stanley Fish
... [Eagleton] is angry, I think, at having to expend so much mental and emotional energy refuting the shallow arguments of school-yard atheists like Hitchens and Dawkins.
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NATURE
April 29, 2009
The worst-case scenario
By STEPHEN SCHNEIDER
Stephen Schneider explores what a world with 1,000 parts per million of CO2 in its atmosphere might look like.
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NATURE
April 29, 2009
Climate change: Too much of a bad thing
By Gavin Schmidt & David Archer
There are various — and confusing — targets to limit global warming due to emissions of greenhouse gases. Estimates based on the total slug of carbon emitted are possibly the most robust, and are worrisome.
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NATURE
April 29, 2009
Obama says more money
President promises rise in research and development funds.
By Jeff Tollefson
Obama called clean energy the current generation's "great project" and said that investment levels must be increased despite ongoing economic woes.
[MORE...]
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THE BOSTON GLOBE
April 26, 2009
Beyond Belief: Research on religion goes after a new target: the secular
By Nathan Schneider
As sociologists, psychologists, and physicians turn their attention to measuring the effects of religion, often fueled by grant money from private foundations, the results have percolated swiftly through weekend sermons and the popular media. Being nonreligious, one might conclude, looks more and more like a danger to your health.
[MORE...]
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BOOKS FROM EDGE
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WHAT HAVE YOU CHANGED YOUR MIND ABOUT
Edited by John Brockman
With An Introduction By BRIAN ENO
The world's finest minds have responded with some of the most insightful, humbling, fascinating confessions and anecdotes, an intellectual treasure trove. ... Best three or four hours of intense, enlightening reading you can do for the new year. Read it now."
San Francisco Chronicle
"A great event in the Anglo-Saxon culture."
El Mundo
Harper Perennial
http://www.amazon.com/What-Have-Changed-Your-About/dp/0061686549
Praise for WHAT HAVE YOU CHANGED YOUR MIND ABOUT?
"The splendidly enlightened Edge website (www.edge.org) has rounded off each year of inter-disciplinary debate by asking its heavy-hitting contributors to answer one question. I strongly recommend a visit." THE INDEPENDENT
"A great event in the Anglo-Saxon culture." EL MUNDS
"As fascinating and weighty as one would imagine." THE INDEPENDENT
"They are the intellectual elite, the brains the rest of us rely on to make sense of the universe and answer the big questions. But in a refreshing show of new year humility, the world's best thinkers have admitted that from time to time even they are forced to change their minds." THE GUARDIAN
"Even the world's best brains have to admit to being wrong sometimes: here, leading scientists respond to a new year challenge." THE TIMES
"Provocative ideas put forward today by leading figures." THE TELEGRAPH
The world's finest minds have responded with some of the most insightful, humbling, fascinating confessions and anecdotes, an intellectual treasure trove. ... Best three or four hours of intense, enlightening reading you can do for the new year. Read it now." SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
"As in the past, these world-class thinkers have responded to impossibly open-ended questions with erudition, imagination and clarity." THE NEWS & OBSERVER
"A jolt of fresh thinking...The answers address a fabulous array of issues. This is the intellectual equivalent of a New Year's dip in the lake - bracing, possibly shriek-inducing, and bound to wake you up." THE GLOBE & MAIL
"Answers ring like scientific odes to uncertainty, humility and doubt; passionate pleas for critical thought in a world threatened by blind convictions." THE TORONTO STAR
"For an exceptionally high quotient of interesting ideas to words, this is hard to beat. ...What a feast of egg-head opinionating!" NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE
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This online EDGE edition with streaming video is available at:
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge285.html
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Edge Foundation, Inc. is a nonprofit private operating foundation under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.
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EDGE
John Brockman, Editor and Publisher
Russell Weinberger, Associate Publisher
Karla Taylor, Editorial Assistant
Copyright (c) 2008 by EDGE Foundation, Inc.
All Rights Reserved.
Published by EDGE Foundation, Inc.,
5 East 59th Street, New York, NY 10022
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