There is new media available from our monthly series, the Seminars About Long-term Thinking. Stewart Brand’s summaries and audio downloads or podcasts of the talks are free to the public; Long Now members can view HD video of the Seminars and comment on them.

Listen to the Audio of Wade Davis’ “The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World” (downloads tab)

Native guidance

What does it mean to be human and alive?

The thousands of different cultures and languages on Earth have compellingly different answers to that question. “We are a wildly imaginative and creative species,” Davis declared, and then proved it with his accounts and photographs of humanity plumbing the soul of culture, of psyche, and of landscape.

He began with Polynesians, the wayfinders who mastered the Pacific ocean in the world’s largest diaspora. Without writing or chronometers they learned 220 stars by name…

Read the rest of Stewart Brand’s Summary

There is new media available from our monthly series, the Seminars About Long-term Thinking. Stewart Brand’s summaries and audio downloads or podcasts of the talks are free to the public; Long Now members can view HD video of the Seminars and comment on them.

Watch the video of Sander van der Leeuw’s “The Archaeology of Innovation”

Watch the video of Rick Prelinger’s “Lost Landscapes of San Francisco 4 “

The Long Now Foundation’s monthly Seminars About Long-term Thinking

presents Wade Davis on “The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World”

Wednesday January 13, 02010 at 7:30 pm at the Cowell Theater in San Francisco

Long Now Members can reserve 2 seats, join today!

or you can purchase tickets for $10 each.

About this Seminar:

Anthropologist Wade Davis is one of the world’s great story tellers, with personal adventures to match. An Explorer-in-Residence at National Geographic, he specializes in hanging out with traditional peoples and exploring their religious practices.

He first came to public notice with his discovery of the reality of zombies in Haitian voodoo and the substance used to poison them—chronicled in his 1985 book, The Serpent and the Rainbow. He is the author of 13 books, including One River and Shadows in the Suns, and has hosted, written, and starred in numerous television specials, including “Earthguide,” “Light at the Edge of the World,” “Spirit of the Mask,” and “Forests Forever.” This talk is based on the prestigious Massey Lectures that Davis gave in Canada in 2009.

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There is new media available from our monthly series, the Seminars About Long-term Thinking. Stewart Brand’s summaries and audio downloads or podcasts of the talks are free to the public; Long Now members can view HD video of the Seminars and comment on them.

Listen to the Audio of Rick Prelinger’s “Lost Landscape’s of San Francisco, 4 “ (downloads tab)

Gas Stations, Not Flowers

The fourth incarnation of Lost Landscapes of San Francisco played to a sold out house at the Herbst Theater with the chanteuse Suzanne Ramsey opening the evening with a selection of historical San Francisco songs including the 01926 gem Masculine Women Feminine Men.

Rick Prelinger prefaced the footage with a brief introduction to his archive, process, and most of all a request to go into your mother’s attic to pull out any films that feature San Francisco or the Bay Area. The archive needs your footage. Prelinger then queued up over seventy minutes…

Read the rest of Alexander Rose’s Summary

There is new media available from our monthly series, the Seminars About Long-term Thinking. Stewart Brand’s summaries and audio downloads or podcasts of the talks are free to the public; Long Now members can view HD video of the Seminars and comment on them.

Listen to the Audio of Sander van der Leeuw’s “The Archaeology of Innovation” (downloads tab)

History of Innovation

The development of human mental ability can be tracked through the
progressive crafting of stone tools, Van der Leeuw explained. First
we learned to shape an edge—a line—then the surface, then the
whole volume of the tool, then the sophisticated sequence required to
make a superb spear point. It took 2 million years. But by 300,000
years ago the human brain had developed a sufficiently complex
short-term working memory to keep 7 (plus-or-minus 2) considerations
in mind at once. We could handle problems of multi-dimensionality….

Read the rest of Stewart Brand’s Summary

It took a while to get all the numbers crunched, but the first year’s results from the Long Bet with the highest prize are in.  Over a year ago Warren Buffet challenged the managers of several funds-of-funds to outperform the S&P 500 over a 10 year period.  A one million dollar charitable donation is on the line and so far Buffet’s opponents, Protege Partners, are doing less bad.  Carol Loomis, author of the original story on the contest, gives us the details:

Remember “Buffett’s Big Bet” (see fortune.com), in which the noted
investor and Ceo of Berkshire Hathaway maintained that an S&P 500 index
fund would outperform five funds-of-hedge-funds over 10 years? Well, the
results for the first lap, the ago-nizing year of 2008, are finally in,
and the funds-of-funds soundly whipped the index. Vanguard’s S&P 500
Admiral shares, the index fund “bought” by Buffett, were down 37.02%. on
the average, and net of all fees, costs, and expenses, the five
funds-of-funds backed by Buffett’s opponent, Protégé Partners llC, a new
York money-management firm, delivered –23.9%.

Considering that hedge funds can and do sell short, and that they are
not limited to investing in stocks, Protégé’s victory in a bear market
year like 2008 was not surprising to anyone involved in the bet. Ted
Seides, the Protégé partner who engineered the bet with Buffett, says
that until September of that year the five funds-of-funds were in fact
doing well enough that they still anticipated achieving the up year that
hedge fund seek to deliver, even in difficult markets. “But when markets
failed in the aftermath of the Lehman bankruptcy,” says Seides, “the
funds couldn’t avoid the storm.”

Which funds are these, you ask? The bet stipulates that their identities
would not be disclosed. Buffett, however, knows their names and has seen
their audited results. About his trailing position, he says, “I just
hope that Aesop was right when he envisioned the tortoise overtaking the
hare.”

The reader will note that we said the results of the bet are “finally”
in, and therein lies a little story. originally, the thought was that an
update on the bet would be announced each year at Berkshire’s annual
meeting, held in late spring. But the five funds-of-funds did not have
audited financial statements at that time, which made Buffett unwilling
to announce results. only in late october, when the last of the five
funds finally delivered its audited figures to Protégé, were complete
results known. They were very close to what Protégé had earlier
estimated they would be, so it is likely that next year Buffett will
indeed announce 2009 “approximate” results at Berkshire’s meeting in the
spring.

The author of this article is both a friend of Buffett’s and the editor
of his chairman’s letter in the Berkshire Hathaway annual report.

There is new media available from our monthly series, the Seminars About Long-term Thinking. Stewart Brand’s summaries and audio downloads or podcasts of the talks are free to the public; Long Now members can view HD video of the Seminars and comment on them.

Read the summary of Sander van der Leeuw’s “The Archaeology of Innovation”