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September 30, 2007
Netbank Shut Down, guess who I'm banking with now!
I was surprised to learn that my online bank Netbank was shutdown by the FDIC (Online Bank Fails, and Regulators Shut It) because of bad mortgage lending. I became a Netbank customer many years ago after my old online bank Compubank, was purchased by Netbank.. Although they did away with my favored feature of ATM fee reimbursement (which I get now through Commerce Bank), they kept low minimums, prepaid bank-by-mail mailers, high interest rates and no fees.
Over the years I grew dissatisfied with Netbank. Their website was stagnant and rendered ever more frustrating with security features. Their worst sin however was that their rates were trailing the highest available by a significant margin. So recently I closed one of my two accounts with Netbank and I moved most of the money I had with them to an ING Electric Orange account. The only thing that kept me tethered to Netbank was that ING doesn't allow check writing, you have to use a bill pay system or and ATM card to get money out. So wasn't I surprised when I learned that ING was taking over all Netbank accounts. So right now I have to wait the 60 days during which ING will tell me what happens to my account. I hope they have a new offering with check writing privileges and more bank by mail service, if not I'll have to open up a special account someplace else for that purpose, and link the two. But, since I said that I'd already moved most of my money out already, this is more of a hassle than a terrifying bank run. I should be able to transfer my remaining money out
when the bank reopens on Sunday evening.
Banks still fail. Take advantage of FDIC insurance and don't keep more than $100,000 at any one bank. As bank depositors, Netbank customers are the senior-most creditors and are likely to get their money back, but the wait will be longer, and that must at least partially depend on how their mortgage portfolio behaves. So sleep easier and just use a couple banks. Of course, if you have that much cash, talk to a financial planner because you probably could be using your money more efficiently.
I didn't realize what a crazy internet bubble stock Netbank was. It was floated at $12 a share in 1997 hit a high of $249/ share in April 1999 until settling to a price of $15 a share in mid 2004. The company was delisted from the NASDAQ on August 3 this year and last traded at $0.068 on the OTC board on Friday.
I was wrong above, the The Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) closed NetBank, not the FDIC
Slashdot has a discussion as well.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 2:01 AM | Comments (0)
September 28, 2007
Jerks all around me
Why can't atheists see sacred texts as sacred to them — to those believers over there -- and behave respectfully when not provoked? It is simply not true, in a normal, etiquette-infused vision of life, that we think truth must be stated at every time and in every context. We tell Grandma that she's looking well when she's looking terrible. We tell Grandpa that he's going to be fine when we haven't the faintest idea how things will turn out for him. We lie to people in small ways every day to make interactions gentler and less tense, and to be kind to others. Indeed, in a wonderful against-the-grain philosophical book some years ago titled The Varnished Truth (University of Chicago Press, 1993), philosopher David Nyberg argued that white lies are the "glue" that hold the civilized world together. Why shouldn't a similar gentleness and desire to avoid hurtful comments inform atheists when they write about books that many hold sacred?The most familiar rebuke to this rears its head regularly in the most scathing, sarcastic, and popular of the atheist wave, Hitchens' God Is Not Great. It is that believers in the God-given authority of sacred texts are "ultimately incapable" of leaving nonbelievers alone. Religion, writes Hitchens, "does not, and in the long run cannot, be content with its own marvelous claims and sublime assurances. It must seek to interfere with the lives of nonbelievers, or heretics, or adherents of other faiths. It may speak about the bliss of the next world, but it wants power in this one. This is only to be expected. It is, after all, wholly man-made."
The cosmopolitan atheist of today — the well-educated secularist steeped in the histories of various faiths, as well as the carnage they've produced back then and now — can't easily toss off Hitchens's point. Polite respect ends when believers insist on sacred texts as God's authorization of those believers to regulate, suppress, or punish the behavior of nonbelievers. In such situations, the atheist's politeness goes out the window because the believer has thrown his politeness out the window first. Is there anything as impolite -- a gentle word, to be sure -- as forcing one's moral rules on another because they supposedly come from a divine being whose existence the other doesn't accept?
As a result, we get the predominant tones in which atheists have assessed sacred texts over the centuries -- anger, disrespect, contempt, sarcasm, insult, dismissal, even pity. Consider three examples.
"The Bible," sighed Voltaire. "That is what fools have written, what imbeciles command, what rogues teach, and young children are made to learn by heart."
"As to the book called the Bible," thundered Thomas Paine, "it is blasphemy to call it the word of God. It is a book of lies and contradictions, and a history of bad times and bad men. There are but a few good characters in the whole book."
And, as nasty wrapper, there is A.A. Milne's point. "The Old Testament," he claimed, "is responsible for more atheism, agnosticism, disbelief -- call it what you will — than any book ever written: It has emptied more churches than all the counter attractions of cinema, motor bicycle, and golf course."
Are Sacred Texts Sacred? the Challenge for Atheists
I'm not suggesting this is a law, but in my personal experience, as well as in my reading of the writings of public intellectuals, becoming a passionate advocate for atheiesm turns you into a jerk. I've had a few experiences with passionate religious advocates (Mormons, Lubavitch, religious leaders) and they are significantly nicer and more caring than the average person I meet. Religion has its problems. Further, I can see how if you you can't get over the feeling that all religion as nonsense, that it would be infuriating. All those people building their lives around it and through their wallets and ballots changing yours can get to you.
But I challenge my readers to consider the three most fervent believing and unbelieving people they know. Who is nicer? Who is kinder? Who is more helpful? More generous? Who interrupts more? Who mocks more? Who bullies more?
I make no apologies for horrors done in the name of deities. I'm just interested in a few things:
1) Does the sort of moderate religious expression in the West make the world a better place?
2) Does the presence of a large body of moderate religious followers engender and then enable the existence of religious extremists which produce the lion's share of negative religious externalities.
3) On a personal level, are the private benefits of being religious larger than the private costs?
4) If the answer to question three is yes, then if you can't believe, should you do it anyway?
Posted by OneEyedMan at 2:33 PM | Comments (0)
September 27, 2007
Wow fact of the day
I knew flying into NYC sucked, but I had no idea just how poorly it compared to the rest of the country:
In Bush Moves to Ease Flight Delays I learned:
"The focus is on New York because the region’s airports and airspace account for a third of the nation’s air traffic and about three-quarters of the chronic delays. The goal is to have improvements in place by the beginning of next summer."
I wonder if this is the problem? "The advisory group meets the fervent desires of some of the airlines, which are barred from meeting on their own to agree to flight limits, because of antitrust rules."
I doubt collusion is the answer. I'd bet that the only problem here is about incentives. The landing fees at NYC airports are too low to ensure efficient use, and since no one with a profit motive owns the airports, there are no direct advocates for enhanced capacity or increased hours.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 5:11 PM | Comments (0)
This is amazing
This is amazing, read this right now!
Every now and then, we ask authors whose work we admire to come to our offices to discuss their work and the craft of writing. Last week, we invited two writers who have just published new books: Alan Greenspan (“The Age of Turbulence”) and O. J. Simpson (“If I Did It”). Here is their conversation.
Greenspan and Simpson: On Writing
Thanks to Chronicle of the Conspiracy for the tip.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 5:01 PM | Comments (0)
Maybe it does make you smarter
Are you familiar with Cliff Clavens Buffalo Theory
"Well you see, Norm, it's like this... A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo and when the herd is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones
at the back that are killed first. This natural selection is good for the herd as a whole, because the general speed and health of the whole group keeps improving by the regular killing of the weakest members. In much the same way, the human brain can only operate as fast as the slowest brain cells. Now, as we know, excessive drinking of alcohol kills brain cells. But naturally, it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first. In this way, regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells, making the brain a faster and more efficient machine. And that, Norm, is why you always feel smarter after a few beers"Each drink of alcohol kills how many brain cells ??....1,000 or 10,000 or 100,000?It seems that while this model of brain strength isn't correct, it does come to the right conclusion. The Scientific American reports in Don't Forget: Drink a Beer—Or Two—Daily! that memory is enhanced by alcohol.
Kalev and Matthew During, a professor of molecular virology, immunology and medical genetics at The Ohio State University College of Medicine and a principal investigator of gene therapy at Auckland, initially set out to study the role of N-methyl-D-aspartic acid (NMDA) receptors in the neuronal processes of normal and diseased animals. (NMDA receptors are critical to memory, because they regulate the strength of synapses (spaces) between nerve cells through which the cells communicate.) But during their research, they discovered that memory was enhanced when one of its subunits, known as NR1, was strengthened in the hippocampus (a central brain region implicated in episodic memory). They then reviewed previous experiments, which had turned up a link between alcohol consumption and NR1 activity.
...
based on their blood alcohol levels, the 2.5 percent ethanol diet was equivalent to a level of consumption that does not exceed [the] legal driving limit. This may be approximately one to two drinks per day for some people or two to three for others, depending upon their size, metabolism or genetic background.
...
Among the normal rats, the animals that consumed moderate amounts of alcohol fared better on both tests compared with the teetotalers. Rats on a heavy alcohol diet did not do well on object recognition (and, in fact, showed signs of neurotoxicity), but they performed better than their normal brethren on the emotional memory task.
...
"People often drink to 'drown sorrows,'" Kalev says. "Our results suggest that this could actually paradoxically promote traumatic memories and lead to further drinking, contributing to the development of alcoholism."
Read the whole paper in all its splendor: Paradoxical Facilitatory Effect of Low-Dose Alcohol Consumption on Memory Mediated by NMDA ReceptorsPosted by OneEyedMan at 4:09 PM | Comments (0)
September 26, 2007
Skepticism
A great scientist must be able to must great skepticism. Learn from a master and check out this amazing investigation into the order in which two photographs of a moment in the Crimean War were taken. Which Came First, the Chicken or the Egg? (Part One). It is amazing the way psychology, history, and physics play together to explain the puzzle.
Thanks to Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science for the tip.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 8:46 AM | Comments (0)
How varied was your undergraduate experience?
We were eating Japanese style frozen yogurt yesterday. That means no fat, lots of yogurt flavor, and a huge topping bar you can pile as high as you like. As we stuffed ourselves, the topic came up of what departments you've taken classes in, as measured by distinct course codes in your course catalog.
Here is my list:
Physics (Physics I and 2)
Materials Science (intro to Materials Science)
Electrical Engineering (intro to Electrical Engineering)
Engineering and Public Policy (intro to Engineering and Public Policy, Engineering and Public Policy seminar)
Political Science (Policy Analysis among many)
Computer Science (Intro to Computer Science)
Mathematics (Differential Equations among many)
Statistics (Regression among many)
Economics (Intermediate Micro among many)
Gym (Weight Lifting)
English (Creative Writing)
Foreign Languages (The Faust Legend)
History (World History)
Philosophy (Conflict and Dispute Resolution)
Business (business law)
Military Science (Intro)
Computing Skills (CSW)18 is that a big number?
Posted by OneEyedMan at 7:54 AM | Comments (0)
September 25, 2007
Give prizes a try
We've had lots of experience with subsidizing, and far less with prizes (Longitude and Orteig Prize notwithstanding) as a method of encouraging research. In Like a Virgin, the national review speaks out for more prizes and less subsidy. Knowledge problem fairly questions in Adler: Government-Sponsored Prizes would be Better than Subsidies if there is any evidence to support this claim.
The way I see this, this could be a way to avoid some the ethical and taste pitfalls of research in things like stem cells or human spaceflight. It might be unsightly to have the federal government funding things like that. But not so unseemly that we want to ban it outright. So prizes let us determine, if it is as advocates say, that this is fruitful line of research. Venture capitalists could front the money, knowing that later they would be proven right. Those that morally objected would have the benefit of only funding research that was successful. Surely, the moral crime, if any, is moderated by only going to research that is proven to help people.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 6:33 PM | Comments (0)
Columbia, declare your independence!
Ahmadinejad, leader of Iran and an intolerant and rage-full tyrant, spoke at Columbia yesterday. I'm sympathetic to those that hold that "he's a thug and a terrorist. I objected to his speaking because he has American blood on his hands. I objected to his speaking because while he was standing at the podium at Columbia, Iranian EFPs and rockets were aimed at American soldiers in Iraq.". But if the US is going to be home to the UN then people like that must be allowed in NYC. And if while they are there, Columbia wants to ask them hard questions and allow her students to the humiliation of tyrants, then that does seem to serve a pedagogical need.
By all accounts those educators were not disappointed. He came off as an evil, lying, fool.
But now the fallout of inviting such a controversial speaker. There are some who are suggesting that state funding be pulled from Columbia (Legislatures May Act on Columbia). And the federals are in on that too in Hunter threatens to pull fed funds from Columbia.
I have a strategy for Columbia if this refuses to go away. Pull a Grove City College move and tell the Federals to stuff it. Grove City College gave up all federal funding in 1988 after losing two of their three points in their Supreme Court case. If they lose their funding, or the pedagogical costs of compromise for Columbia to keep that funding are too high, then Columbia should just try to replace that funding on its own. Grove City manages to do this with an endowment of $38,920 per student, where as Columbia has $261,535. Sure Columbia gets a lot more research dollars and is in a more expensive location, but Grove city has far fewer advantages and was able to do tremendous
fund raising on the back of their court case, and Columbia, enjoying more fame and many more Alumni, would surely being able to do even greater.
Want to know more?
Volokh had a good discussion
To see how our enemies benefit from our openness, see Propaganda Courtesy of Columbia University.
Check out some choice quotes about Ahmadinejad over at Respectful Insolence.
Finally, how to pronounce Ahmadinejad.
NY Times coverage.Posted by OneEyedMan at 7:16 AM | Comments (0)
September 24, 2007
Is that so?
Mankiw doesn’t seem to have paid attention to the global debate about climate equity. In the long run, there is no defensible argument against allotting each of the planet’s residents the same carbon “space”.NIM, PUB and Cognitive PaternalismThose in the business is creating an maintaining carbon sinks had better be entitled to more "carbon space" if we ever want to start equalizing emission and sequestration. I'd prefer we live in a world where your baseline entitlement of carbon emission was dictated by (total net sequestration by public sources in your country) / (Population of your country) and that the rest was dictated by the sinks you owned. If the world has sinks beyond what's available at the national level, then that amount should be split evenly. But you simply have to receive credits for the sinks you own or any serious solution is toast.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 12:00 PM | Comments (0)
September 23, 2007
Maybe brains isn't the problem
In regards to my posting on the Competitive valuation problem from a couple of days ago, I mentioned one reason we don't see the Nash Equilibrium is that there are "analytic difficulty of solving these recursive games". Nevertheless, it turns out that even letting people who are good at these games attempt them doesn't reduce the high observed equilibriums.
Game theorists have made a number of attempts to explain why a lot of players do not choose the Nash equilibrium in TD experiments. Some analysts have argued that many people are unable to do the necessary deductive reasoning and therefore make irrational choices unwittingly. This explanation must be true in some cases, but it does not account for all the results, such as those obtained in 2002 by Tilman Becker, Michael Carter and J¿rg Naeve, all then at the University of Hohenheim in Germany. In their experiment, 51 members of the Game Theory Society, virtually all of whom are professional game theorists, played the original 2-to-100 version of TD. They played against each of their 50 opponents by selecting a strategy and sending it to the researchers. The strategy could be a single number to use in every game or a selection of numbers and how often to use each of them. The game had a real-money reward system: the experimenters would select one player at random to win $20 multiplied by that player's average payoff in the game. As it turned out, the winner, who had an average payoff of $85, earned $1,700.Most dangerous game societyPosted by OneEyedMan at 11:15 AM | Comments (0)
September 22, 2007
Two from the times
In Free the Statue of Liberty, they rail against closing the crown for anti-terror or fire control reasons, instead suggesting a daily lottery of a limited number of access tickets. That's not a bad idea, but I have a fairer method of allocating that limited access. Do what other national parks do when they get full and charge an access fee. They even have a special program you can apply to for free access if you are too poor to afford regular admission. That strikes me as a fine compromise. If you'd like to see Lady Liberty's nooks and crannies, they you'll have to do some planning ahead and pay your $20. Like other parks fees, I'd expect this one to go into the general parks budget.
In 2008, Bush v. Gore Redux? is an article about a ballot proposal to split California's electoral votes based on who carries each congressional district. As a resident of California I would certainly support such a measure. California almost always goes to the Democrats in national elections and so rarely gets much campaign attention. With 5 or 6 of the 55 electoral votes in play suddenly it would be come a relevant state in which to campaign.I may have to file a policy like this in the same bucket as the line item veto, the nice idea but still unconstitutional category because many scholars think it is a Article II violation, which requires state legislatures (and not referendums) to decide how electors are chosen. It may come down to the legality of delegating such powers to the referendum process. Is the manner in which electors are chosen a non-delegable power? Herbert seems concerned that this could tie up another election in legal battles, but I'm not worried about that. If a rule is a good policy then the mere fact it will inconvenience one election hardly seems relevant. If I really thought it would bring down our government, then I'd entertain opposing the rule on that basis, but that's not what we are talking about here. If we really want people to feel their vote matters, then proportional voting systems like the one proposed for California will improve the quality of our civic life, even at a small cost in the short term.Posted by OneEyedMan at 8:40 AM | Comments (0)
September 21, 2007
Competitive valuation problem
Lucy and Pete, returning from a remote Pacific island, find that the airline has damaged the identical antiques that each had purchased. An airline manager says that he is happy to compensate them but is handicapped by being clueless about the value of these strange objects. Simply asking the travelers for the price is hopeless, he figures, for they will inflate it.Instead he devises a more complicated scheme. He asks each of them to write down the price of the antique as any dollar integer between 2 and 100 without conferring together. If both write the same number, he will take that to be the true price, and he will pay each of them that amount. But if they write different numbers, he will assume that the lower one is the actual price and that the person writing the higher number is cheating. In that case, he will pay both of them the lower number along with a bonus and a penalty--the person who wrote the lower number will get $2 more as a reward for honesty and the one who wrote the higher number will get $2 less as a punishment. For instance, if Lucy writes 46 and Pete writes 100, Lucy will get $48 and Pete will get $44.
What numbers will Lucy and Pete write? What number would you write?
The Scientific American examines this game with the tools of game theory and experimental economics in The Traveler's Dilemma. I enjoyed it, although from the sums involved, I question the implications of that result. When these games have minimum and maximum outcomes that are small relative to average income, the cooperative outcomes provide a kind of psychic benefit ("feel good") that is large relative to the size of the prizes. This has got to pollute the result. Combine this with the analytic difficulty of solving these recursive games, and these empirical results seem natural.However, imagine that the prizes are in millions (from $2,000,000 to $100,000,000) and participants with proper quantitative and analytic training. Do you think the results would be the same? I think not.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 8:12 AM | Comments (0)
September 20, 2007
Better than micromachines
The following is an advertisement for Federal Express starring John Moschitta. John Moschitta was the fast talking man from the Micro Machine commercials, but I think that this commercial is a lot more entertaining. That he can preserve his diction at such high speed is simply incredible.
Even more astounding acknowledging its awesome alliteration (albeit altogether annoying) is this sketch from Sesame Street.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 1:36 PM | Comments (0)
Is the surge working?
In Economic indicators of success in Iraq, James Hamilton of Econobrowser reviews the economic and statistical evidence to determine if the surge is working.
His conclusion is that evidence is that while the government may be more likely to fall apart (as measured by likelihood of defaulting on its debts), evidence of major oil investment suggests that complete social breakdown is unlikely. Given strong statistical evidence that the surge decreased civilian deaths, this might all be an indication that the markets have a growing skepticism that the US will stay in Iraq long enough to fix it, not a comment on the inherent tractability of straightening out Iraq.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 10:37 AM | Comments (0)
Is there a natural equalibirum?
Marginal revolution is talking about contractors and what strategies you can use to control costs in the posting Broken Buildings, Busted Budgets. This is all by way of a review of a new book, Broken Buildings, Busted Budgets: How to Fix America's Trillion-Dollar Construction Industry.
My thoughts, which are straight out of first year economics, is that if the both the owner and the builders do not know the true cost of building the project, which can happen if you are redoing a bathroom or if you are building a sky scraper, then it becomes a sensible matter of who should absorb the risk. If the contractors are more risk averse then the owners are, the amount of compensation they require to take on that risk is higher than the owner would pay them to take it. That would make no-overrun contracts undesirable even if you could fix the agency problem.
Whether you should have a no-overrun contract would seem to depend on the size of the differences in risk aversion and the variance of cost estimations. So what are the relative sizes of the the agency and the cost estimation problems? I don't know.In the case of a home project, the contractors are usually much poorer than their customers, so it would be reasonable to assume they are comparatively more risk averse. But most homeowners know next to nothing about what high quality construction looks like. And even if the visible stuff is well constructed, the hidden stuff might be junk that takes a while to reveal itself as such.
In a big project, the contractors have insurance, and are usually rich themselves. The customers are usually rich and experienced in the building process, so are well positioned to carefully evaluate the work they receive. Therefore, it might be better on the high end to have tighter contracts to ensure a highly focused mind in the cost estimation stage.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 7:33 AM | Comments (0)
September 19, 2007
Is your vote up for grabs?
This is a surprise:
Rudolph W. Giuliani, making an unusual campaign swing outside United Sates, said that he would like to see a broad expansion of NATO alliance, including extending an invitation to Israel.
Long a staunch supporter of the Jewish state, Mr. Giuliani said that while such a move might be viewed as provocative, he thought it only natural since they would be "willing to help us in the effort against terrorism."
Giuliani’s Day in LondonGiuliani may be a thug, but he has principles and is a very savy politician. This might not be a popular idea with all our allies, but it is a good a reasonable one. A few more good ideas like this one and I'd consider voting for him. Giuliani might be the one Republican (hell the one American) with the security credentials to make some real positive changes to our immigration and drug policy.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 5:11 PM | Comments (0)
How odd
The NY Times (now pay-wall free) has a piece of Op-Art entitled Mixed Emotions by Rutu Modan. It tells the story of her family's experience with a cross dressing small child. I can't find any statistics to back me up, but I recall learning once that the large majority of male transvestites were straight. If true it would have comforted the family to know that. The only prominent example I could recall was Eddie Izzard,
Posted by OneEyedMan at 7:14 AM | Comments (0)
September 18, 2007
The political economy of Star Trek
Check out Ilya Somin's must read article theorizing about how the Federation government of Star Trek works.
On the one hand, the Federation seems to have a socialistic economy with a massive welfare state and no currency, which would require a high degree of centralization and planning incompatible with meaningful federalism. In the absence of a currency and price system, central planning seems to be the only way to coordinate a complex economy to even a limited degree. On the other, member planets apparently have considerable autonomy. For example, Vulcan seems to have very different laws from Earth. And Vulcan's economy seems to have a large market sector dominated by family-owned enterprises. In Deep Space Nine, the planet of Bajor applies for Federation membership. Although Bajor is at least a partial theocracy with a government heavily influenced by religious leaders, anti-Federation Bajorans never argue that Federation membership would lead to the end of Bajor's quasi-theocratic political system (as it surely would if the highly secular Federation denied political autonomy to member planets).How to reconcile the evidence? I would suggest that it is only Earth that is socialistic, while the other member worlds have free market systems or mixed economies. The human-dominated Star Fleet military is the only Federation military force, and is tasked with collecting tribute from the nonhuman planets for redistribution to Earth. But as long as they pay their taxes, which subsidize Earth's welfare state and Star Fleet itself, they are largely left alone to govern their domestic affairs as they see fit. The Federation is essentially a big protection racket (in both senses of the word: providing external security, and also "protection" against its own depradations)....
...it is now clear why Star Fleet is so completely dominated by humans. I don't think we have ever seen a nonhuman Star Fleet admiral, and there are very few nonhumans serving even as lower-ranking officers. Except for a few collaborators like Mr. Spock (who is criticized by his fellow Vulcans for accepting too many "illogical" human ways), the nonhumans can't be trusted to force their own people to pay tribute. It also explains why the human-dominated Star Fleet military force seems to have near-total control over Federation foreign policy (e.g. - Star Fleet officers such as Capt. Picard make major policy decisions without any significant civilian oversight).
...How does the Prime Directive fit into this? On the surface, it seems incompatible with an imperialistic Federation. But remember that the Prime Directive only applies to planets which are at a much lower level of technological development than the Federation itself. That is, only to planets that are not wealthy enough to be worth the cost of occupying and taxing. Star Fleet Command wants to prevent glory-seeking captains like Kirk from taking over underdeveloped worlds that are likely to drain more revenue than they bring in. The Prime Directive serves this goal, while also cloaking Federation imperialism in a veneer of righteousness that has been all too successful in fooling generations of TV viewers.
Just one more reason to be grateful for the internet.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 11:34 PM | Comments (0)
I'd bet on the markets
In a day where Greenspan predicts double-digit rates in coming years and Fed Cuts Rate Half Point, and Stock Markets Soar, one has to wonder what this all this financial turmoil means for US economy. The long bond moved up in yield by 20 basis points on this announcement, which isn't consistent with expectations of huge inflation. With due respect to the maestro, if I have to pick between trusting markets or Greenspan, I'd choose the markets.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 11:22 PM | Comments (0)
September 17, 2007
A reason why American Airlines is better than US Air
Look what I almost deleted as spam today:
September 17, 2007
Dear Mr. OneEyedMan:
The delay of your flight to San Diego was an inconvenience on September
9 and we wanted to take this opportunity to apologize. On-time flight
departures are as important to us as they are to you and we will continue our efforts to
keep flight delays to a minimum.We realize that your travel plans were disrupted by the delay and we'd
like to make amends by extending an AAdvantage mileage bonus. We've deposited
3,000 miles into your account -- you can use AAdvantage mileage for a variety of
services. See http://www.aa.com/aadvantage for all the details. It will take a
couple of days for the bonus miles to appear in your account.Again, we are sorry for the flight delay. The next time you fly with
us, we'll do our very best to get you to your destination as planned.Sincerely,
B. J. Russell
Customer Relations
American AirlinesPosted by OneEyedMan at 4:23 PM | Comments (0)
Frustrating benefits
We have an affiliated continuing education program at our school, and we can get vouchers to take classes there for free as long as they are less than $270. I went to look at the course offering (photography, accounting, and data mining) and of course they are nearly all more than $450. Ah well, nice in theory but totally worthless.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 2:48 PM | Comments (0)
September 16, 2007
What a cool product
Quiltsryche takes your band t-shirts and transforms them into an amazing hard-rock styled bedspread.
For example, the instrumental model:
Posted by OneEyedMan at 3:22 PM | Comments (0)
Tips for graduate students
Peter Boettke has great tips on being an economics graduate student on his blog The Austrian Economists. It essentially comes down to work your ass off, and on the margin, write more and read less.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 8:16 AM | Comments (0)
September 15, 2007
Islamic banking
I enjoyed reading the introduction to HSBC's Islamic banking products. I was surprised how advanced the Shariah was in eliminating obvious ways of hiding interest. To me the obvious ways to hide interest would be with a forward contract or by using a late fee structure to simulate interest. Both of these are prohibited. Yet Shariah is also flexible in this area. One can use prevailing interest rates as a method to price Shariah compatible financial assets. Modern issues like independence of supervisors and differences of interpretation across countries are all examined.
Read it and learn about a new force in modern finance.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 8:57 AM | Comments (0)
Economics and cognative science of dating.
Peter M. Todd is a cognitive scientist at Indiana University. He has a new study (albeit small sample) on comparative dating habits of men and women. His paper Different cognitive processes underlie human mate choices and mate preferences, was mentioned on CNN.com.
Then Simplicitas Blog reported the following quote and then commented:
"Women made offers to men who had overall qualities that were on a par with the women's self-rated attractiveness. They didn't greatly overshoot their attractiveness," Todd said, "because part of the goal for women is to choose men who would stay with them." But, he added, "they didn't go lower. They knew what they could get and aimed for that level." That's actually very interesting. Women have a much better sense of their own value in the dating market, it seems.This is not proof of what Simplicitas claims. Women have more incentive in dating to go for men of their approximate dating quality. Men have a much larger payout for going for women who are "out of their league" because on the outside chance that they succeed, then they payout for them is huge, even if the mate eventually leaves them, because their investment is much smaller. It isn't that women have better sense of their value, or at least they need not do so to explain this difference. Instead, women have incentives to bid for men of aproximately their quality, while men do not.
In game theory I'd say that the women are playing a separating direct revelation game (true type of quality dictates strategy) while the men are playing a pooling strategy (always try to get with the most desirable women possible regardless of fitness).
Posted by OneEyedMan at 8:21 AM | Comments (0)
September 14, 2007
More money doesn't make you healthier
So I want to say loudly and clearly what has yet to be said loudly and clearly enough: In the aggregate, variations in medical spending usually show no statistically significant medical effect on health. (At least they do not in studies with enough good controls.) It has long been nearly a consensus among those who have reviewed the relevant studies that differences in aggregate medical spending show little relation to differences in health, compared to other factors like exercise or diet. I not only want to make this point clearly; I want to dare other health policy experts to either publicly agree or disagree with this claim and its apparent policy implications. ... How much could we cut? For the U.S. it seems reasonable to project the 30% cut in the RAND results to a 50% cut, since the U.S. spends so much more than other nations without obvious extra health gains. I thus claim: we could cut U.S. medical spending in half without substantial net health costs. This would give us the equivalent of an 8% pay raise.Cut Medicine in HalfHow should we cut medical spending? There are many possibilities, and I may prefer some possibilities to others. But I do not want such preferences to distract from the main point: most any way to implement such a cut would likely give big gains. The obvious first place to cut would be our government and corporate subsidies for medicine, including direct payments, tax exemptions, and regulatory requirements. Socially, we should also try to give medicine far less prestige than we now do. After these one could consider taxing medicine, limiting it by law, or nationalizing the industry and using agency budgets to limit spending.
I'd be curious what percentage of income is spent on average by people who pay for their own care. I bet it is much lower than a 1/6th.Posted by OneEyedMan at 10:27 PM | Comments (0)
Throwing more money at science?
Many scientist friends of mine seem to operate under the impression that science in the US is starved for cash. I don't know if that is in fact so, but I was surprised to learn that when the NIH doubled its funding it didn't see a significant increase in its publications.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 9:52 PM | Comments (0)
"Fair Redistricting" at your peril
Check out this interesting conversation about the political issues surrounding and automated and neutral redistricting system:
Fair RedistrictingPosted by OneEyedMan at 9:48 PM | Comments (0)
September 13, 2007
Cheap software
Through Microsoft's Ultimate Steal program, if you are a part-time or greater student you can purchase a copy of Office Ultimate for just $59. It might work even if you are not a student if you have an alumni email address, so it might be worth checking out even if you aren't a student any longer.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 6:19 PM | Comments (0)
Happy New Year
Welcome to 5768!
Posted by OneEyedMan at 9:02 AM | Comments (0)
September 12, 2007
Social capital isn't always good
I once saw Robert D. Putnam, author of Bowling Alone discuss his book. He mentioned that social capital is not always good. He pointed out that that suicide bombing is another example of social capital. That seemed novel at the time, and it seems especially relevant with the revelation that in the brutal torture and kidnapping of last week, that several of the participants were family members.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 8:41 PM | Comments (0)
The suburbs are 77% less cheap than you think
Lagging housing supply may be due, in part, to constraints on new construction that prevent housing markets from clearing. As Ed Glaeser and others have noted, municipal land-use regulations (things like minimum lot sizes, aesthetic rules in subdivisions, or NIMBY-oriented opposition to new projects) often restrict new development. These rules tend to grow more restrictive with density, meaning that high-value urban areas often enjoy very high housing prices and very low levels of new growth (quite contrary to economic expectations). Over the past two decades, this dynamic has led to a great outward shift in new housing supply, as ex-urban areas generally have far fewer restrictions on new growth.In part, this has allowed ex-urban housing to remain cheaper than more centralised housing options (leading some to champion sprawl as a boon for the middle-class). But the drive-until-you-qualify ideal is not a free lunch. In fact, there is a direct trade-off between housing costs and transport costs--the farther away one lives from the central business district, the more one pays to get to work. Data from the Center for Housing Policy suggest that for every dollar a family saves on housing by moving out, its transportation costs increase by 77 cents.
From A cost of living increasePosted by OneEyedMan at 7:42 PM | Comments (0)
September 11, 2007
Go see it while you can
My mother and I went to see the Summer of Love exhibit at the Whitney. It was an amazing combination of art furniture, paintings and prints, and film installation. .What really made it over the top and worth the outrageous $15 admission price was the audio tour. Unlike any other audio tour I'd been on, this one didn't describe the works. Instead, it featured music related to the featured works. My favorite was Quicksilver Messenger Service's song Mona, which the system played to accompany a poster from 1967 advertising one of their upcoming shows.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 8:39 AM | Comments (0)
Go see it while you can
My mother and I went to see the Summer of Love exhibit at the Whitney. It was an amazing combination of art furniture, paintings and prints, and film installation. .What really made it over the top and worth the outrageous $15 admission price was the audio tour. Unlike any other audio tour I'd been on, this one didn't describe the works. Instead, it featured music related to the featured works. My favorite was Quicksilver Messenger Service's song Mona, which the system played to accompany a poster from 1967 advertising one of their upcoming shows.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 8:39 AM | Comments (0)
September 10, 2007
An article for Klidre and t he BlueEyedGirl
Posted by OneEyedMan at 4:16 PM | Comments (0)
September 8, 2007
Who knew?
I was surprised to learn from Ankrel that there are substantial differences in performance between terminal emulators. Both gnome-terminal and konsole get high marks. This technology has got to be at least 15 years old, probably more like 20, so I'm surprised there is this much variation in common implantations.
Posted by OneEyedMan at 7:47 AM | Comments (0)
Math is cool
Check out this amazing rock music video about fractals:
P.S.
Sorry for the ultra-light posting of late, but I'm been busy visiting friends and family over my trip to the east coast.Posted by OneEyedMan at 7:46 AM | Comments (0)
