At PR’s request, here are a couple videos of Australia’s new Prime Minister speaking Chinese. This first one is a CCTV interview (part 1 of 3), in which we get to hear him speak at length in Chinese.

This second video is bit harder to make any sense of. It’s a comedian making fun [...]

This, from the BBC:

Mr Rudd will focus on education, environment and the economy
Australia’s Prime Minister-elect, Kevin Rudd, has announced the make-up of his new Labor government.
He appointed Julia Gillard as deputy PM and education minister, and a former rock star, Midnight Oil singer Peter Garrett, as environment minister.
Penny Wong becomes the country’s first Asian-born minister, [...]

Wayne sprung this question on me yesterday. I swear he should have been a CS major.

The Hundred Hatted Prisoners
There are a hundred prisoners in a dungeon, sentenced to be executed the next morning. Fortunately for them, the king of the land is eccentric and offers them a chance to survive. He tells [...]

The votes from Friday’s Simple Probability Puzzle are in. Here was the question:
Imagine there’s a completely random event with two outcomes, say flipping a coin. Each flip has an equal probability of landing heads or tails. Now imagine that we’re interested in seeing how long it takes to get a certain sequence of outcomes.
Pattern [...]

This is the second part of The Enemies of Reason, in which Professor Dawkins interviewed various practitioners of pseudo-science. In this video, Dawkins focuses on the booming alternative health business:
It’s the hottest alternative health fad. It boasts and impressively vast and well-stocked medical cabinet; it’s endorsed by royalty and the stars, and is [...]

In all honesty one of the factors that has led me to invest so much in Chinese companies is the undervaluation of the RMB. The explosive growth of the middle class and the economy as a whole is the main reason, but currency concerns definitely factor in. Yesterday, I stumbled on the most [...]

Ever wonder why so many expert witnesses lead juries astray due to mathematical errors? Or why so many gamblers and investors are so bad at assessing relatively simple probability questions? First imagine that you consider yourself an expert (at something other than math), and then you encounter a question like this…
Imagine there’s a [...]

Yesterday, Morris Chang, the CEO of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp., spoke to the American Chamber of Commerce on Taiwan’s international competitiveness. For the most part he had good things to say, ranging from education to work ethic to democracy:
“Taiwan benefits from a highly educated population, a healthy ecosystem and industrious, diligent workers,” said [...]

As I said a week and a half ago, Loop.net has been on a roll, and its stockprice hasn’t. At that time, I decided to buy more if the price went under 16. Today, I noticed it at under 15, so I did a quick check to verify that it isn’t due to [...]

I recently received this email from a high school teacher in Florida:
I came across your textbook reviews online and they all seem to focus on college level chinese and traditional characters.
I just started teaching high school Chinese and I’m looking for a textbook that will allow me to focus on tones, simplified characters, and pinyin. [...]