Ideas

Photo cred: my dad I’ve worked with a lot of research assistants over the years, and at some point we inevitably have The Talk: should they get a PhD? I was recently having The Talk with one particularly distraught student, … Read more

A subtle change has been made to the comments links, so they no longer pop up. Does this in any way help with the problem about comments not appearing on permalinked posts, readers?  Update, September 2008. Hullo there Paul Krugman … Read more

Fifty years ago, productivity growth in advanced economies began to slow down. Productivity growth — the component of GDP growth that is not due to increases in labor and capital — is the primary driver of rising incomes. When it … Read more

Globally, sea levels have risen by somewhere between 21cm and 24cm since 1880. Most of this rise is a consequence of water physically expanding as it warms, but in recent decades meltwater flowing off Greenland and Antarctica has significantly contributed … Read more

Developing ideas is the central aspect of many professions, including—but certainly not limited to—academic research and software development. It is my impression that we often consider ideas, or creativity in general, to be some magical binary property: you either have … Read more

What are we saving? Recently, I came across this article titled ”Rust Won’t Save Us: An Analysis of 2023’s Known Exploited Vulnerabilities“. Being the clickbait it is, I clicked. Quick background on me: I’ve worked in cybersecurity for almost 10 … Read more

January 2023 (Someone fed my essays into GPT to make something that could answer questions based on them, then asked it where good ideas come from. The answer was ok, but not what I would have said. So I asked: … Read more

Great ideas are hard to find. Drawing makes it a lot easier. And fun. How? In a creative process drawing can play four different roles. Let’s say, we want to come up with ideas for a new flower pot. 1. … Read more