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July 31, 2006
Maybe we can learn from history
What the Good Soldier Schweik Knew Then by Norman Berdichevsky is one of those gem-like articles of history that paints current events within reoccuring themes of history. It points out interesting similarities between the Serbian nationalism of the pre-WWI era with the behavior of Fatah and the PLO. A good read.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 1:53 PM | Comments (0)
July 28, 2006
Balance of powers versus solid majorities
The controversial US elections of 2000 and 2004 have raised the possibility that our system of choosing a wielder of supreme executive authority may be fundamentally flawed. The reason comes down to Duverger's law and the median voter theorem.
Duverger's law, which isn't really so much a law as a maxim, states that if you have a form of election where the party or candidate that gets the plurality of the votes gets 100% of the spoils, that this will create a two party system. The median voter theorem states that if their is only one major matter on which to vote (say right or left which explains 90% of US voting) then if there are two parties they will move toward the preferences of the voter who sits in the middle (median) of that policy spectrum. Interesting the median voter theorem can't happen (there isn't a stable equilibrium) if there are more than 2 serious parties. That will be important later.
Where does that leave us? Well it makes for a rather uninteresting election situation for many voters. Two parties, one lead by a guy a bit left of center, the other led by a guy a bit right of center. Lots of people stay home and perhaps this is a source of cynicism. Many, but not everyone thinks low turnout and tied elections are a problem.
One suggestion is to abolish winner take all system. That means giving up the current method of choosing our executive for a more parliamentary system. For example, each state, instead of having one district for each congressman, would assign congressmen their seats based on that party's share of the statewide vote. Having eliminated a winner take all vote, and without a median voter to rush towards,
we'd see stronger third parties, and then these parties would create coalitions to then choose a executive. The advantage is that coalitions would likely form strong majorities and there would be many fewer wasted votes. The downside is that the president, with strong loyalty to the coalition upon whom he depends, would no longer serve as a strong check on the legislative branch. Is that worth it? I'm partial to our current system, but I'm not sure that there is an ironclad argument that those checks make for more stable government in the long run. Yes get the advantages of supermajoritarian decision making, but you also get its weaknesses, that you may be too slow in the face of a serious problem. Perhaps it is telling that of the 36 biggest democracies, 30 use PR for their most powerful legislature.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 11:13 AM | Comments (1)
July 27, 2006
Why be Belligerati?
I am a libertarian, so I am not normally inclined to spend blood and treasure marching around the world on foreign policy adventures. So why did I support the war in second Iraq? In these days of slow burring civil war, it can be hard to remember*. It is over three years ago, but a critical article from Reason, "Libertarianism in One State?" from January 2003 stands out as critical. Read the whole thing, as it is thoughtful and interesting. Starting with the critical facts that tyranny abroad creates tyranny (higher taxes, tighter boarders, less privacy, fewer legal rights) at home and that tyrannous governments seem to expire faster when democratic, capitalist governments actively oppose them, freedom at home requires active engagement in foreign affairs if we are serious about keeping freedom at home.
Consider the Golden Arches theory of conflict prevention.
Just think, in a world where we didn't have to spend a trillion bucks a year on defense because we were too busy eating burgers (or at least rich and free enough to have them), how much richer we would all be by freeing up that extra money for medicine, infrastructure and capital.
So my take away from all this is that if we are serious about dismantling the standing armies and petty tyrannies of the modern nanny-state, hadn't we better be serious about confronting the international conditions that necessitate them?
*Is it slow burning?
At the time of the US civil war the population was about the same as that of Iraq today.
At least 618,000 Americans died in the civil war, and it lasted from February 9, 1861 to April 9, 1865 or 1520 days. That's and average of at least 407 deaths per day in the US civil war. While good estimates of the total dead in Iraq are hard to come by, but I will use 44,187. The war in Iraq started March 20, 2003, making it 1,226 days long or on average 36 a day.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 10:55 AM | Comments (0)
So you want to launch your own board game...
Here, in amazing detail, is the story and process of building and play-testing a homemade game into a commercial board game product.
It certainly scared me away from ever doing anything like that. Beyond the huge amounts of time involved and enormous minutia, the money the guy lays out is enormous. He buys boxes of custom made plastic parts and even a machine that applies glue to a sheet of paper!
Posted by OneEyedMan at 8:33 AM | Comments (0)
July 26, 2006
Neat software
The BlueEyedGirl and I didn't have much trouble making our wedding tables. Not everyone is blessed with family and friends so happily mixed. For those that are not, Perfect Table Plan can come to the rescue. Heuristics and genetic algorithms combine for near optimal solutions for keeping aunt Gretchen away from uncle Marty without sitting them with your friends.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 7:57 PM | Comments (0)
Persuading with numbers
Statistical Modeling has a discussion on what books and articles are helpful in communicating effectively with numbers.
I'll toss a few in the pot.
How to Lie with Maps
The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint for what not to do.
My perspective is that there is no better method of learning to communicate effectively than being exposed to great communication. So effective communication of quantitative information requires a familiarity with the broadest variety of presentation techniques. So check out pie charts (did you know they were invented by Florence Nightingale?), sparklines, stem and leaf, histogram, box plots, and anything else you can think of. But in addition to that, one should review great examples, both accurate and misleading of quantitative communication to understand what works.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 6:30 PM | Comments (0)
July 25, 2006
Economics and life expectancy
It seems that back in June, a study of Harvard alumni found that "each hour spent exercising (up to 30 hours a week) adds about two hours to a person's life expectancy". On Mankiw's blog there is a neat analysis of the economics of this decision, as well as problems in the experiment's design. Most notably, he points out that if you are young, the cost benefits of exercise (if you do not enjoy it) are such that it nets less than a 3% real return on that investment, which you could be using to earn more and then consume.
One issue with this sort of analysis, is that it neglects quality adjusted life years. People who exercise not only live longer, they also live better while they do. Another problem is that additional life expectancy cannot be purchased in the open market. So discount rates may be artificially shorter because life expectancies cannot be lengthened to take advantage of them. Sure money helps buy a better diet and more and better medical care, but that doesn't do much. The big gains of sanitation, dentistry, vaccinations, and pain killers are widely available and inexpensive. So even though the rate of return on the investment is low, it may be the cheapest way of increasing life expectancy is exercise, or that it belongs in a portfolio of life-span increasing strategies. A third problem is risk aversion. He points out in his piece that he buys life insurance, despite the fact that he won't benefit from the proceeds and that by their very nature they must pay less out less in expectation than they cost to buy. That's because he wants to protect people he cares about under a variety of possible outcomes. If a consumer can increase his expected life expectancy, he can provide love, companionship, advice, and other financial and non-financial benefits to those he cares about that he cannot provide if he is dead. So he may be happier knowing that they are taken care under more situations.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 11:09 AM | Comments (1)
July 24, 2006
Can you trust an online survey?
The short answer is no. Statisticians widely agree that for a survey to have generalizable results it must either be conducted on a random sample of the relevant population or be carefully designed so that a non-random sample precisely mimics the demographics of the population at large.
Of course, such surveys are hard to conduct and expensive. So often we just get a convenience sample taken online, like this one on Israel that my mother in law sent me this morning.
Take note of the over 1.2 million votes in this poll. I am suspicious. This poll on what to do with $30k got about 1/20th as many total votes. A few years ago a poll on Slashdot, readers were asked to select the best graduate school in computer science. MIT and CMU came very close in the running, winning about 99% of the vote between them, despite there being several other choices. It was eventually discovered that the new user authentication process had been hacked, resulting in fake accounts being used to vote. It became a hacking test instead of a vote. Now this sort of thing is unusual because of CAPTCHA technology. CAPTCHA stands for a completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart, and you probably know it as those little images on web pages where you have read distorted letters and type the resulting letters and numbers into a form to make sure that you are not a computer program to make accounts, perhaps for spam creation.
But this CNN pole doesn't have anything like tha, so this survey doesn't have much value, for all we know it is just a computerized front in the war between Hezbollah and the IDF.
I guess this is just more proof of the maxim that you shouldn't believe everything you read.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 2:38 PM | Comments (0)
I'm back!
I'm back from Vermont. I have a few cases of Vermont microbrews to share, so keep an eye out for a forthcoming party and the OneEyedMan residence. A week of horseback ridding, biking, hiking, sight seeing, shopping, and eating has left me sore disappointed to return to work today. Oh well, just 2 weeks left!
I'd like to give a hearty thanks to Giblfiz for his stewardship in my absence. I enjoyed his articles thoroughly. Come back any time for
a post. As for the silent majority, if you'd ever like to cover for me on vacation, let me know.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 2:25 PM | Comments (0)
July 21, 2006
Now that’s what I call Telecommuting!
A Japanese robotics professor has built a robotic clone of himself. He can put on a motion capture suit, (well from the photo’s it looks more like they are just doing motion capture for the face) and the robotic clone will mimic the operators actions.
The article claims that the robots creator, Dr. Ishiguro, built it in order to get around his commute. The idea reminds me a bit of that silly bit in the movies where kids put a manikin under there blankets while sneaking out at night. In this case however, I think it would work out, as I’m sure that the students would love it, at least until the novelty wore off.
Ishiguro says that he is trying to capture his presence over the remote link, which I imagine is quite hard to do. It sounds as if he has done an impressively good job of it from the wired reporter’s description though. Looking at the few available pictures it appears that only the face on this robot moves (though the article says that the body appears to breath as well)
I wish I could find video of this robot in action. I know that there was an interview on the Japanese news, but I haven’t been able to find a good source for it. What I have found is an older video of what I assume is one of his previous projects (I would advise skipping to the end where you actually get to see his android in action). With his older android he was pretty clearly suffering from the uncanny valley effect, which causes people to be deeply disturbed by things that are almost human, but not quite.
Posted by giblfiz at 2:15 PM | Comments (0)
July 19, 2006
Rural Electrification and Social Entrepreneurship
Social Entrepreneurship is a bit of a new buzzword. Like Web 2.0 it is less a specific type of business than a tone of business. The best explanation I have heard of social entrepreneurship is that it is the creation of businesses with two bottom lines, one is profit and the other is positive social impact. At there best they act as charities that can grow explosively, and touch the lives of millions with only a tiny seed investment, which they actually manage to pay back to the investor at better than market rates. At there worst not that much happens and unlike more traditional charities they don’t sink massive amounts of capital that could be better spent.
One of the most interesting projects I have encountered is the sun shines for all. The project is a rural electrification company that rents solar panels and batteries to the rural poor rather than selling them. By using the rental system, he can recoup the cost of a setup in 4 years, when each system will on average last about 25 years. Even better, the rental price is set to be about the same per month as what would be spent on candles, lamp oil and other things which are made unnecessary.
I particularly like the way that the sun shines for all chose to deal with customers tendency to break open the batteries and run them down, effectively damaging there system. Now across each battery they put a seal in the form of a saint that is respected in the area. Apparently it is an amazingly effective tactic where the boxes are deployed, though I can only imagine how poorly it would work here on the east coast
Posted by giblfiz at 6:39 PM | Comments (0)
July 17, 2006
People Who Have Virtually No Brains Are Living Among Us.
No, I am not referring to politicians, even the ones who you hate, and I’m also not speaking metaphorically. Neurologist John Lorber, who was a specialist in the treatment of the condition hydrocephalus, found that often despite having only a small fraction of the mass of a normal brain, hydrocephalus sufferers were not cognitively impaired. Quite disturbingly he found several individuals who had only %5 of the brain mass that they should have who seemed to have no cognitive symptoms at all. He actually sites 4 individuals who fit this description, one of whom has a honors degree in mathematics.
This is not crank science or some random person posting things to the internet without knowing what he is talking about. Lorber’s research has been published in several respectable journals, most notably "Science" (Issue 210, page 1232). Sadly though I have been able to read the article that appears in Science, I have no way of providing a public link to it, but I have found a very good summery of the article online.
Even though there are only a few cases of this happening, it completely destroys any notion that I had that we understand the brain. While it is generally understood that the brain is massively redundant, and that many people are able to function quite normally after having half of there brains removed in a hemispherectomy. But someone functioning normally despite not having 95% of there brain goes beyond any reasonable concept of redundancy.
If you can get away with having only 5% of the brain mass normally needed, then why have we evolved with so much to spare? A pound or two of brain is quite expensive in a calorie consumption model of an animal; someone with only 5% of a brain would probably be much better able to survive a lean year.
What is even more disturbing is that these findings are not new. I have been assured in several articles that there are recorded cases in medical literature that go back hundreds of years. (I must admit that I haven’t been able to find them, but I have the distinct sensation that this is a failing in my own library use skills). The science article I sited is from late 1980. As far as I can tell no one is even studying this condition, or at least if they are not much is getting published. I would think that a phenomenon that its so deeply at odds with the current models of the brain would attract more attention.
Above all though, I find the idea deeply disturbing. There are people walking among us who have no brains. There head is simply full of water, but they walk, talk, and apparently think just like everyone else. It’s almost enough to make you believe in a soul that exists outside of the body.
Posted by giblfiz at 3:19 PM | Comments (1)
July 14, 2006
Vacation without interruption
Next week I'll be on vacation in Vermont. I'll be taking a cooking class, hiking, biking, and horseback ridding. I might even practice some driving. It should be great. So will Belligerati be on hiatus? Nope.
Giblfiz, programmer, system administrator, sleep experimenter, long-haul road-tripper, long time contributor to Belligerati, and an all around interesting and nice guy will be publishing while I'm away. He discussed a few of his ideas, and I think that your are going to like them.
See you on the 24th!
Posted by OneEyedMan at 1:54 PM | Comments (0)
Not a bad start for getting beyond mean median and mode.
I am just about done reading The Lady Tasting Tea, a introduction to modern statistics through the mini-biographies of its inventors.
Think of it as a Capital Ideas for statistics. The book moves quickly, and I have enjoyed the content, even if it sometimes tends towards hagiography at times. It suffers from a similar flaw as freakonomics did, that there isn't much for the more serious student of the subject. You end up curious, with lots of questions written in the margins, but no answers by the time you put your copy away on the shelf. But, if you want to get beyond mean, median, and mode in statistics, this is a good introduction. You learn all about the practical techniques (not how to use them but what they are) of modern statistics as well as dabble in the philosophical debates (mostly what is probability and is reality the parameters of model or the data you use to calculate them) of modern statistics.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 11:51 AM | Comments (0)
July 13, 2006
Another cool project
By now Post Secret, a website where the public can submit their secrets in postcard form, is pretty famous. Wikipedia is probablly the biggest joint editing project ever. On a cool but trivial scale, Slow Wave is a website where users can submit their deams and a cartoonist will draw them into a humorous stip. Sort of like Overheard in NY, but crossbred with with the comic Red Meat.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 12:41 PM | Comments (1)
July 12, 2006
Should I consult?
As long time readers may recall, I'm leaving work and starting school in a month. My work asked me to do consulting for them, mostly data manipulation in excel and perhaps some specification writing for an hourly rate that is may annual pay / 2050. Basically it is an attempt to recreate my hourly rate now. All work would be irregular, perhaps 5 here, 10 there, and sometimes weeks with nothing. Also, the structure is a bit odd. Because of rules that remain unexplained, but I imagine having to do with the labor laws, they can't actually directly hire me as a consultant. They have to hire me as an intern. This may influence my ability to deduct business expenses, but perhaps not. I need to learn about that too.
Without we should be able to live within our budget, but the money sure would be nice. If it were regular, I think it would be a great deal, a concentration of the better parts of this current job and providing me with the means for a fancier lifestyle. But as it is now, I'm worried that it will be stressful, I'm not sure I'm getting a fair rate, and I'm concerned about the structure.
I'm interested in your thoughts and advice.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 5:16 PM | Comments (6)
Bumps on a road to gay marriage
Posted by OneEyedMan at 5:14 PM | Comments (0)
July 11, 2006
Reality, it does a body good
Youssef M. Ibrahim. over at the NY Sun has an amazing open letter to the Palestinian people.
Check out these quotes
The war with Israel is over.You have lost. Surrender and negotiate to secure a future for your children.
We, your Arab brothers, may say until we are blue in the face that we stand by you, but the wise among you and most of us know that we are moving on, away from the tired old idea of the Palestinian Arab cause and the "eternal struggle" with Israel.
You hold keys, which you drag out for television interviews, to houses that do not exist or are inhabited by Israelis who have no intention of leaving Jaffa, Haifa, Tel Aviv, or West Jerusalem. You shoot old guns at modern Israeli tanks and American-made fighter jets, doing virtually no harm to Israel while bringing the wrath of its mighty army down upon you. You fire ridiculously inept Kassam rockets that cause little destruction and delude yourselves into thinking this is a war of liberation. Your government, your social institutions, your schools, and your economy are all in ruins.Only Syria continues to feed your fantasies that someday it will join you in liberating Palestine, even though a huge chunk of its territory, the entire Golan Heights, was taken by Israel in 1967 and annexed. The Syrians, my friends, will gladly fight down to the last Palestinian Arab.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 11:11 AM | Comments (0)
July 10, 2006
Crazy English spelling
I thought this was an awsome find in wikipedia from th English orthography article:
Furthermore, in most recent loanwords, English makes no attempt to Anglicize the spellings of these words, and preserves the foreign spellings, even when they employ exotic conventions, like the Polish "cz" in "Czech" or the Old Norse "fj" in "fjord" (Although New Zealand English exclusively spells it "fiord"). In fact, instead of loans being respelled to conform to English spelling standards, sometimes the pronunciation changes as a result of pressure from the spelling. One example of this is the word "ski", which was adopted from Norwegian in the mid-18th century, although it didn't become common until 1900. It used to be pronounced "shee", which is similar to the Norwegian pronunciation, but the increasing popularity of the sport after the middle of the 20th century helped the "sk" pronunciation replace it.
I liked this too:
As examples of the idiosyncratic nature of English spelling, the combination "ou" can be pronounced in at least eleven different ways: "famous", "journey", "cough", "dough", "bought", "loud", "tough", "should", "you", "flour", "tour"; and the vowel sound in "me" can be spelt in at least eleven different ways: "paediatric", "me", "seat", "seem", "ceiling", "people", "chimney", "machine", "siege", "phoenix", "lazy".
Posted by OneEyedMan at 3:13 PM | Comments (0)
Here fishy fishy
I'm a believer in individual transferable quota (ITC) programs
as a way to prevent overfishing and protect our maritime commons. ITC essentially works like this. First the government (or on the behalf) performs an audit of the fishery's sustainable fishing catch. That catch is broken up into shares and those shares are sold at auction. The shares represent a not only a current quota, but also a right to a percentage of the total allowable quota. If conditions improve allowing a larger catch, they get more, if they get worse, they get fewer. Often these share rights include the right to exclusive or semi-exclusive use of certain portions of the fishing grounds. This creates the incentive to fish in a way that controls costs, maintains fishing stocks, and even encourages their development. They haven't been a roaring success but ITC have been used in New Zealand and Iceland.
California has a transferable permits (similar but worse) system in several varieties of fish., and it has been used in an interesting manner for marine wildlife protection. The Nature Conservancy has been buying up these permits, then leasing them back to fishermen. The trick
is that they have covenants in their leases that prohibit the very most damaging fishing techniques. While not as good as ITC systems, I salute The Wildlife Conservatory for their use of free markets and voluntary association to archive their goals.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 10:26 AM | Comments (0)
July 8, 2006
The great leisure myth
Joe Robinson, self described "Vacation Advocate" is interviewed in this month's Smithsonian Magazine. His economics do not elucidate , so I thought I'd spend a minute to critique his arguments.
"The Dutch, the French, the Norwegians, the Belgians and the Irish are more productive per hour than we are, even with their four- and five-week vacations."
Many of these countries have much higher unemployment than the US.
Netherlands 5.8% unemployment / 62.4% Employment as a percent of the working-age population
French 9.3% / 51.3%
Norway 3.7% / 61.6
Belgium 12% / NA EU-15 is 52.1%
Ireland 4.4 / 57.3%
US 4.6 / 62.3%
As discussed in my article from a couple of weeks ago, The vacation / income trade off, these as general matter have a greater percent of people not working than the US does. Since the most productive people get employed first, little wonder that their average productivity appears higher. Let's see a real comparison of average productivity where were look at productivity per hour worked but count the unemployed as zero. Then we'll see who really comes out ahead.
"Wouldn't a minimum paid leave law suppress wages and make things more expensive?
No, if anything, it would raise the bar on the treatment of employees. You would have healthier employees who would lower costs for employers. People made the same argument in the 1930s about Social Security and the minimum wage. "
Which is it? I thought we were demons in pursuit of higher profits. If you could make lots of money by unleashing your worker's productivity by gilling them lots of vacation, wouldn't we be doing so? Mandatory vacation is like a high minimum wage, it just substitutes the opinion of law makers for that of individuals.
,
Posted by OneEyedMan at 8:30 AM | Comments (0)
July 7, 2006
Interesting, but not for the reason stated.
The WSJ Op-Ed page has an article about the removal of the federal speed limit of 55. Alas, it is so busy scoring points on the inane liberals that opposed the repeal that it misses the really interesting reason why deaths have declined even as speed has increased. The interstate system and intrastates modeled after them have a minimum speed of safe travel design speed of 70 on flat terrain. This is accomplished through safety features like wide lanes, gentle grades, banked turns and long lines of sight. Local roads, which lack these safety features and operate much closer to pedestrian populations have far lower speed limits, probably much closer to their practical maximums. When the speed limits were lower, the highways moved fewer people, so on the margin more people would take the slower secondary roads to avoid traffic. Now that the roads have higher limits, the roads can carry more people and fewer people need take the less safe roads over long distances. That means that on average, road travel gets safer even as the highways might get slightly more dangerous per mile traveled on them.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 4:18 PM | Comments (0)
How we know what isn't so
Ever wonder why Spain is so much hotter than NY despite being on just about the same latitude? Conventional wisdom, and even the opinions of serious climate scientists suggest that the climate of Europe owes much to the Gulf Stream. Hell, I even thought as much in an article from two years ago. It turns out that this is not the case. All we need to explain the warmth of Europe is the went Atlantic air that that blows over the Atlantic and onto Europe. The gulf stream isn't a relevant part of that process.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 2:38 PM | Comments (0)
July 6, 2006
Why live in hell? Clean air and cheap AC
Treehugger has a neat chart of major American cities and their population change since the 1950, the beginning of the air conditioning age. It does a nice job of showing how certain cities are only widly inhabitable because of cheap AC. however, as an economatrician, I'd have rather seen these changes in the context of the change in population of the US since 1950 (an almost doubling of the population)
Posted by OneEyedMan at 5:21 PM | Comments (0)
July 5, 2006
When in Rome do as the Romans do
When in New York, be polite.
New York Magazine has a very funny but useful guide to NYC ettiquite.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 3:12 PM | Comments (0)