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Worth Reading

Personal Research Program

McKinsey asks Conde Nast for an across-the-board 25% cut to its expenditure budgets.

US M&A deal flow is on the rise, such as the Xerox-ACS deal (CNBC video).

The New Yorker‘s John Cassidy on the ‘rational irrationality’ of financial markets.

How private equity targets the vulnerabilities of integrated supply chains in America’s automobile manufacturing industry.

Australian strategist Paul Monk on the rise of the market state.

Tweet Memes

New York Times and Slate obituaries on speechwriter and columnist William Safire.

TNR‘s Daniel Pauly poses a dystopian scenario: the ‘aquacalypse’ or end of fish.

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Worth Reading

Personal Research Program

The Analysis of Breathtaking Risk research note and applied summary.

George Packer reads the McChrystal Report on Afghanistan, after The Washington Post‘s editors delayed its public release.

Michael O’Hanlon’s Foreign Affairs article on the retreat of US missile defence in Europe.

Scenes from the Violent Twilight of Oil.

Entertainment Economy

Slate‘s Louis P. Masur on the making of Bruce Springsteen’s Born To Run.

Tweet Memes

Why Richard Posner Became A Keynesian.

Newly Declassified Files Detail Massive FBI Data-Mining Project.

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Worth Reading

What I’m Reading

Edwin Elton, Martin Gruber and Christopher Blake‘s The Investment Portfolio User’s Manual and Software (2nd ed, John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken NJ, 2007).

Personal Research Program

Slate’s Jack Schafer on US ‘save the newspapers’ legislation.

Wired on the Apocalyptic Soviet Doomsday Machine and New York Times review and excerpt.

University Commercialisation and Research

Big Universities Report Steep Investment Losses: Is this the end of the Swensen model?

The Netflix Prize research dividend as reported by Wired, Slate and The New York Times.

Are you coming to UniGateway’s launch in October for university commercialisation activities?

Tweet Memes

New Yorker video ‘Pecking Order‘ on backyard chickens.

Matt Jones’ presentation on trends in architecture and city anthropology (with thanks to Barry Saunders).

The return of chess grandmasters Anatoly Karpov and Garry Kasparov.

Dr Ken Henry’s GFC talk to the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

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Worth Reading

Robert Fripp‘s soundscapes for Microsoft’s Vista and Worldwide Telescope software.

Stephen Kinsella‘s Economics for Business lectures.

Carl Jung’s Red Book and The New York Times coverage of the behind-the-scenes battle to get the memoirs published.

Joshua Gans take note: how inventors are using auction theory to protect their patents, via firms including Pluritas, Intellectual Ventures, Allied Security Trust and Rational Patent Exchange.

Christopher Hitchens and The New York Times obituaries of neoconservative ‘godfather’ Irving Kristol.

Foreign affairs maven Robert D. Kaplan on the Al Jazeera network.

Australian Treasury press release and consultation discussion paper on R&D tax incentives.

The merger battle between University of Melbourne and Melbourne Business School.

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Worth Reading

John Boyd‘s essay Destruction & Creation (1976) and compendium.

John Boyd’s presentation Organic Design for Command and Control (PowerPoint and original).

Background on the Nifty Nugget (1978) and Proud Spirit (1980) war mobilisation exercises, which Boyd mentions.

LTC Steven W. Peterson’s interesting essay Central But Inadequate (2004) about Boyd’s influence and the role of classical military theorists on the US military’s 2003 campaign in Baghdad, Iraq.

The two recent academic studies on Boyd, Grant T. Hammond’s The Mind of War (Smithsonian, Washington DC, 2001) and Frans Osinga’s Science, Strategy and War (Routledge, New York, 2007), are on my PhD ‘draft zero’ reading list.