A most beautiful illustration of how numbers work in nature. It’s gorgeous in HD.

• The Politically Incorrect Guide to Ending Poverty
  "In the 1990s, Paul Romer revolutionized economics. In the aughts, he became rich as a software entrepreneur. Now he’s trying to help the poorest countries grow rich – by convincing them to establish foreign-run 'charter cities' within their borders."
• The Blame Game: Will Maths Apologize to Finance?
  French mathematicians defend themselves: “The models worked perfectly well, even during the heart of the 2008 crisis. Each morning they predicted the amount that we would be losing during the day with great accuracy."
• Why We're So Bad at Managing Risk
  " the oil industry would do well to take two lessons from the aeronautics community. First: anything mechanical can and will break — and that includes back-up systems. Count on it. Second: expect the unexpected. And plan accordingly."
• Twitter in 1935
• Recession 2.0 – Why Canada Won't Escape This Time
  Government debt-to-GDP is at 82.5% and we have "the most overextended households among the top 20 developed nations"
• The Problem with Derivatives, Quants, and Risk Management Today
  An interesting interview with the man who trains more quants than anyone else on the planet, Paul Wilmott

• The Regulation Crisis
  Surowiecki: "…acceptance of a law’s legitimacy is the key factor in getting people to obey it. So reforming the system isn’t about writing a host of new rules; it’s about elevating the status of regulation and regulators."
• Your Brain on Computers: Attached to Technology and Paying a Price
  "These play to a primitive impulse to respond to immediate opportunities and threats. The stimulation provokes excitement – a dopamine squirt – that researchers say can be addictive…Mr. Nass at Stanford thinks the ultimate risk of heavy technology use is that it diminishes empathy by limiting how much people engage with one another, even in the same room."
• Internet Trends 2010 by Morgan Stanley Research
  The always brilliant Mary Meeker's most recent presentation – June 7th, 2010.
• In most forms a waste of time
  "14 compulsory forms demand 270 separate pieces of information. Each of those items of information has to be supplied, on average, 2.7 times. For each PhD student, academics lose 580 minutes of precious time on form-filling…for just one faculty, the value of this time would have funded about 11 full-time PhD students to completion, or paid for a professor for two years."
• Riding the Dragon
  Former Morgan Stanley analyst: "Powerful interest groups have paralyzed China’s macro-economic policy, with ominous long-term consequences. Local governments consider high land prices their lifeline…China’s macro policies have been reduced to psychotherapy, relying on sound bites and small technical moves to scare speculators. In the meantime, inflation continues to pick up momentum."
• Transistor merges man and machine
  "…embedded devices could relay information about the inner workings of disease-related proteins inside the cell membrane, and eventually lead to new ways to read, and even influence, brain or nerve cells."