Armchair Musings
j7uy5 | January 12, 2009Two things happened to the New York Times recently. For one, they announced that they will place advertisements on their front page. Two, they are publishing Opinion columns written by Bono.
I suspect the two are not unrelated. Which is another way of saying that I suspect the two are related, in this case, by economic necessity.
This brings to mind a minor memory, the telling of which may illustrate a point. I distinctly recall standing in line at a supermarket, while a random glance fell upon a copy of a new magazine: People. Within an instant, I had the thought, "how dumb, no one is…
j7uy5 | January 2, 2009Some things never change. These are words from the remarkable Bertrand Russell, from 1932:
One of the commonest things to do with savings is to lend
them to some Government. In view of the fact that the bulk of the
public expenditure of most civilized Governments consists in payment
for past wars or preparation for future wars, the man who lends his
money to a Government is in the same position as the bad men in
Shakespeare who hire murderers. The net result of the man's economical
habits is to increase the armed forces of the State to which he lends
his savings. Obviously it would be better…
j7uy5 | December 28, 2008The impetus for this post came from a confluence of stimuli, as is usually the case. Recently I received a book, a biography
of J. Robert Oppenheimer (American Prometheus, by Kai Bird and Martin
J. Sherwin). The book describes the persecution of Oppenheimer
during the Red Scare in postwar USA. The current global and
perpetual war on terrorism shows us that such persecution still simmers.
I also read a post about matronizing, on the blog Mad Melancholic Feminista. The post reminded me that the war between the sexes also simmers.
At this point in time, were are a few years into an economic…
j7uy5 | December 25, 2008Let us all
savor the season and be appreciative of our good fortune. I
really mean that, although what I am about to say will lead some to
think otherwise.Earlier this year, it was
href="http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE4B28CB20081203">reported
that thirty million Americans were receiving food stamps.
That is one out of every ten persons. Last
month, the USDA said 36.2 million Americans or 11 percent of households
struggle to get enough food to eat, and one-third of them had to
sometimes skip or cut back on meals.
Alsothis:The
last government statistics said 11.9…
j7uy5 | December 9, 2008This is a photo of the controls in the cabin of the Mallard, a steam
locomotive built in 1938. The Mallard was capable of
traveling 202.7kph (126 mph), a
href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A14609333">record-high
speed at the time..
The picture is from a series by
href="http://spectrum.ieee.org/nov08/6928">David Mindell,
posted at IEEE Spectrum Online. Below is a photo of the
Mallard, photographer unknown, from the Artehouse at trains.com.
One of the stations served by the Mallard was Paddington Station
(London), which
opened in 1854 (
href="http://www.designmuseum.org/__entry/…
j7uy5 | December 1, 2008This post ties together a number of themes that I have been harping upon
for the past few years. First, from Greg Mankiw's blog:
href="http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2008/11/whats-wrong-with-efficient-scale.html">What's
wrong with the efficient scale?
Reuters reports:
President-elect
Barack Obama vowed on Tuesday to cut billions of dollars from wasteful
government programs....An obvious example, Obama said, were reports of
crop subsidies to farmers who make more than $2.5 million per year.
Like President-elect Obama (but unlike candidate Obama), I am all for
getting rid of farm…
j7uy5 | November 21, 2008There was a time when I was vacationing, near the Bosque del Apache
wildlife preserve. There were literally thousands of birds.
Most were snow geese or sandhill cranes. There were
a lot of people, too.
But off a ways, there was a trail. It went, among other
places, to a spot called Solitude Canyon. Sounded good.
Even better, there was an overlook. On a hill, high
above the bosque, it was possible to see the preserve. The
thousands of birds appeared as white and gray pixels, rendered on a
pointillistic expanse.
On the way back, I came to a point in the trail. There was a
post with a…
j7uy5 | November 3, 2008
This is an image of a human brain. It is constructed using an
imaging method known as diffusion spectrum imaging.
The technique has been discussed at
href="http://scienceblogs.com/neurophilosophy/2008/07/hi_res_brain_topology_map.php">Neurophilosophy
and
href="http://anthropology.net/2008/07/01/diffusion-spectrum-imaging-used-to-map-the-structural-core-of-human-cerebral-cortex/">Anthropology.net;
both posts were based upon a paper in
href="http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0060159">PLOS
Biology.
The image above is…
j7uy5 | October 26, 2008This little (19-second) gem is from
href="http://calculatedrisk.blogspot.com/2008/10/greenspan-and-simpsons.html">Calculated
Risk (the other video there, Greenspan and The
Simpsons, is good too):
That says it all. It is the short version.
The longer armchair version is this:
All economic activity is composed of four basic elements, or "atoms" is
the Lucretian sense. Granted, this is not the most modern of
theories, being based upon
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucretius" rel="tag">Lucretius'De
Rerum Natura (On the nature of things;
href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/785…
j7uy5 | October 20, 2008Carborexia is not a word. Any
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_%28computer_science%29">string
that garners only six hits on Google is not a word.
But the string appears in the New York Times, so maybe it will be a
word soon. Perhaps even by the time you read this.Carborexia is a cute play in the neologism game.
It refers to a
condition in which a person strives ardently to reduce his or her
carbon footprint, much as a person with anorexia strives to reduce her
or his body mass.
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/19/fashion/19greenorexia.html?partner=rssuserland&emc=…
j7uy5 | October 16, 2008NASCAR, for the non-TV-watching geeks out there, is an auto racing
organization. It operates the second-most popular televised
sport
in the USA.
In May, they were troubled, just a bit, by rising fuel costs.
One team, Hendrick Motorsports,
href="http://www.foxbusiness.com/story/personal-finance/on-topic/sports/racing-fuel-costs-soar-nascar-weekend-warriors/">said
that the higher prices would cost them an extra $760,000 this year.
Perhaps this is, in part, due to the belated
href="http://www.nascar.com/2006/news/headlines/cup/01/20/nascar.fuel/index.html">decision
to use unleaded…
j7uy5 | September 26, 2008Quote of the day, attributed
to President Bush:
“If money isn’t loosened up, this
sucker could go down.”
--President Bush, 25 Sept 2008
He's an idiot. Liquidity is not the problem. If it
were, the whole mess would have been solved by now.
href="http://www.rgemonitor.com/blog/roubini/241162">The
problem is insolvency,
href="http://market-ticker.denninger.net/archives/2008/09/17.html">not
illiquidity.
So here's the question of the day:
Is the US Government too big to fail?
What's the answer, folks? You're all bright people.
j7uy5 | August 21, 2008In
the late '60's - early '70's, is was commonplace for bands to write
songs that were utterly meaningless, then pass them off as great works
of art. The products of pure genius.
I
head one such song on the way home from work:
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Horse_with_No_Name">A
Horse With No Name, by America, released in 1972.
Here's
a review on a site that has song lyrics:
bad
lyrics | Reviewer: george | 4/15/2008
This
song has a pretty good melody. It sounds good, IF YOU IGNORE THE
LYRICS. For example,
"in the desert, you can't remember your
name
'cause there ain't no one for…
j7uy5 | August 10, 2008We've already seen photoshopped images that have been used in
political
campaigns. Sometimes they are used to discredit opponents.
href="http://www.snopes.com/photos/politics/kerry2.asp">
However,
still images never will have the emotional impact that videos
have. Already, there is technology that allows for some
fairly realistic rendering of emotional expressions, on video
characters that are entirely fabricated.
rel="tag">Pendulum Studios has released a
href="http://www.techeblog.com/index.php/tech-gadget/feature-incredible-3d-tech-demo-shows-realistic-facial-animations"…
j7uy5 | July 28, 2008Sustainability is a modern-day buzzword. It is used so much
that it is at risk of suffering from a dilution of meaning.
But is still is an important concept.
In August 2004, President Bush
href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/08/20040809-9.html">boasted
that home ownership in the USA was at an all-time high (69.2 percent).
It was important for him to point this out, just before the
election. The reason is that he was advocating trickle-down
economics. He needed to show that concentrating wealth in the
hands of a few could lead to improved standards of living for…
j7uy5 | July 21, 2008Many years ago, I was browsing thought the Borders bookstore, one of
the earliers ones, on State Street in Ann Arbor, and encountered a book
about psychotherapy. It claimed to be a sort of encyclopedia
of named styles of psychotherapy. I can't recall the number
of them, but I think it was between 300 and 400. That was 20
years ago. I'm sure it is in the thousenads by now.
Of course most of these are merely variations of just a few themes.
And most have not been validated systematically.
One of these is called
href="http://www.corebeliefs.com/index.html">Core
Belief Engineering…
j7uy5 | July 14, 2008I got twenty dollars out of the bank today. What should I get: two shares of Fannie Mae stock, or four Happy Meals?
j7uy5 | July 7, 2008There is an interesting and thought-provoking essay at The Oil Drum.
It was written by
href="http://www.uvm.edu/giee/?Page=about/students/Nathan_Hagens.html&SM=about/about_menu.html">Nathan
Hagens, a student at the Gund Institute, University of
Vermont.
He makes some errors in the science, and engages in some armchair
hypothesizing (see graph above), but the overall conclusions are not
affected.
He romps through evolutionary psychology, sociobiology, and behavioral
neuroscience on his way to explaining why we have an addiction to oil.
It clearly is not intended to be a…
j7uy5 | July 1, 2008Leave it to the scientifically-minded among us to solve the world's
economic crisis. All it takes is an understanding of the
elements.
At this point, there is little doubt that a serious economic crisis
awaits the people of planet Earth.
The Bank
for International Settlements (BIS) released their
href="http://www.bis.org/publ/arpdf/ar2008e.htm">Annual
Report on 30 June 2008. The BIS, based in
Switzerland, is an organization of 55 central banks. It
href="http://www.bis.org/publ/arpdf/ar2008e8.htm">concludes:
In the aftermath of a long credit-driven boom, it
would not be…
j7uy5 | April 28, 2008The Ubuntu craze is sweeping SciencBlogs:
href="http://scienceblogs.com/aardvarchaeology/2008/04/tech_note_ubuntu_linux_804_har.php">Aardvarchaeology,
href="http://scienceblogs.com/thescian/2006/11/ubuntu_for_your_parents_uncles.php">Scientific
Indian,
href="http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2008/02/ubuntu_804_the_hardy_heron_is.php">Greg
Laden,
href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2008/03/yet_another_gentoo_defector.php">Corpus
Callosum, even
href="http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/10/the_ways_children_let_you_down.php">PZ's
kid.
At SB, we strive for…