Notes from Tavel – Summer, 2018

by R. Passov We are on the train from Lisbon to Cascais. They, riding with their backs in the direction of the train, sit across from me. I am next to a middle-aged woman, smiling, well-coiffed, dressed in white. I fail to speculate on why she heads toward the wealthiest enclave in Portugal where, it has…
Excerpts from a travel diary, names have been changed
Thoughts on Disney
A small story about how porn found computers

by R. Passov After Steve Jobs hit his VP of development on the forehead, called him a stupid fuck, then stormed out of a meeting that had been set up to see George’s invention, everything changed. The invention, George said, was on the motherboard. Dell and HP were buying 40 million so that no matter…
Critique of IBM Apollo Study Report – 1 Oct 1963 – Eldon Hall

by R. Passov Eldon Hall spent the first seven years of his life climbing hills alongside Oregon’s Snake River, trailed by a faithful Shepard dog. He and his father “…went fishing in the mountains…” and “… slept outdoors while his mother, safely residing at home, worried about the poisonous snakes that might bite [them.]” In…
About Math Teachers

by R. Passov When I was in the fourth grade I was held in a class through recess, most likely because letting me on the black top usually resulted in a fight. I was particularly thin-skinned and couldn’t cope with being in perhaps the only place in late-1960’s Los Angeles where children had a sense…
A Car Story
Thoughts on the passing of Terry Donahue
Rope Memory

by R. Passov Over the course of the Apollo missions, two criteria governed the role of the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC): 1) A program built into the AGC had to be absolutely necessary to the mission and; 2) it had to be without doubt that the computer bested humans in performing the task. One person…
Jack Garman
To Arecibo
Drug Development and the Cost of Failure

by R. Passov This will be one of the most important compounds of our generation. —Jeff Kindler, former CEO, Pfizer, commenting on Torcetrapib Failure of a drug in development, especially in a late stage clinical trial, is shocking. Torcetrapib, for example, failed at the very end of its phase III trial. So many resources had been…
Forecasting Futures

by R. Passov “In … economics we are faced with … a need for accurate forecasts, yet our ability to predict the future has been found wanting” —Systems Economics: D. Orrell and P. McSharry, International Journal of Forecasting, Vol 25 (2009) * * * * The Stanford Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Economics (2018) stabs…
The Super Fight
Note to Steve
When The Market Comes to the Model

by R. Passov Modeling in finance is done through the lens of mathematics. To put something into a model where you are not guided by observable constants, such as the speed of light, requires assumptions. With so many models off the shelf a common understanding of assumptions is slipping by. If you go far enough…
What We Can Do

by R. Passov Recently, I watched a YouTube of a talk given by Jennifer Doudna. This past May, in front of some her UC Berkeley colleagues, Doudna shared, “a story … about some research … that led in an unexpected direction … ” producing “ … some science that has profound implications going forward…but also…
On Healthcare and Insurance

by R. Passov The economics of health insurance is of particular importance today. Health insurance has become a major issue of public policy. Some form of national health insurance is very likely to be enacted within the next few years. —Martin Feldstein 1 Fifty years ago, when healthcare expenditures were a mere 6% of US GDP,…
Ali at his Greatest

by R. Passov The British Boxing Board of Control (BBBofC) provides a short history of boxing. It’s an ancient sport. The Romans fought each other wearing cestus, sometimes to the death. Before them so the Greeks. In the fourth century AD, tired of the violence, the Romans outlaw the sport. According to the BBBofC, fourteen…