The new economic revolution

Not their fathers’ economics
Students seeking real-world answers are questioning long-held tenets.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-weiner-youth-revolt-economics-20120411,0,6994951.story

Finally, a breath of fresh air! Economics has been subject to way too many simplifying assumptions (see here for some thoughts) for way too long. It is refreshing to see that upcoming young economists are revolting (more refreshing still to see it start with a conservative political blowhard), the majority of the economic theories in place today are worse than useless: they provide intellectuals (left and right) with idiotic ammunition to experiment on the masses in ways guaranteed to fail, likely catastrophically. That these theories also seem to have a built-in bias that the rich should always be expected to get richer still is, I am sure, quite accidental.

Anyway, now that the price of supercomputers has dropped to the point nearly any post doc can afford one (I was looking at one the other day that had 128 cores with 256 GB of RAM for right around $25K) it is no longer a reasonable excuse to leave out the sorts of dirty and complex calculations needed to factor in the idiotic behaviour of the average consumer base. I favour the use of evolutionary algorithms to do this sort of thing, even with non-linear feedback adding variables only causes the run times to increase linearly, not geometrically like most other programming techniques. If I weren’t already a tired old man with too many projects already I might be interested in this new wave of economic thought, but I suspect I will relegate myself to an observer, at least until after I retire (13 years and counting…).

NOAA and police state

For Feds, ‘Lying’ Is a Handy Charge
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303299604577328102223038294.html

This is of course a much bigger issue than just NOAA, but I thought it interesting to emphasis that criminal laws are being uses pretty much willy nilly to prosecute people who haven’t been involved in any criminal activity. All, of course, hallmarks of the police state that we have evolved into.

I don’t have much more to add, just want to encourage my readers that still need reasons to understand how thoroughly we have slid down the toilet into a repressive, oligarchical society to take a look.

Can you choose how you look at things?

The power of perceptions: Imagining the reality you want
http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/11/health/enayati-power-perceptions-imagination/index.html?hpt=hp_bn12

My title isn’t meant as a rhetorical question, it _is_ possible to choose how you look at things. I am asking you directly: do you choose how you look at things consciously or do your ‘choices’ happen out of unconscious bias? Most people don’t even realise that they have a choice and think that their thoughts, reactions, biases, concerns, feelings, etc. are all determined by outside forces impinging on them rather than from within. I consider the ability to think about thinking to be very powerful and to provide insight not just to myself but to every other person. This is different from people who sit around and imagine themselves being wealthy, or the world’s best salesman, etc., this is about how you perceive the events that happen around you and the reactions (feelings, etc.) that manifest. Are you angry with someone? Why? Very few people will take that ‘why’ step, there be tygers! Asking ‘why’ you think something opens up a can of worms that has been sitting in the sun all day (if you don’t know what that phrase means, go get a can of worms and leave it in the sun all day, then open that sucker up! Be sure to hold on to the top of your head so you can try to staple it back on after the smell blows your brains out!). To even consider asking why you thought something is to admit the possibility that your thoughts might be ‘wrong’ and subject to alteration. To a lot of people changing their minds is a horrific idea, yet in many cases (likely the vast majority), they never even consciously made any the decisions they hold so tightly. Why is that?

I discuss my thoughts on human thoughts a bit here: Faith.

Sibling suns

Sun’s Sibling Stars Could Host Cousins of Earth Life
http://www.space.com/15192-sun-siblings-asteroids-earth-life.html

This is, of course, nothing more than Panspermia, but it is interesting in the idea that we might have sibling solar systems (relatively) nearby that could be seeded with very similar life. If we were to find this to be true it would be a great way to evaluate convergent evolution (presuming, naturally, we ever develop the ability to explore such systems in a meaningful amount of time).

See? Girls really are dumber!

Girls Have a Math Problem: Teacher Bias
http://www.livescience.com/19552-girls-math-teachers-bias.html

If the teacher says it is so, then without a doubt it must be true! We all know how absolutely reliable teachers are and how they never, ever, make any mistakes.

According to the lore I have heard, girls start out smarter than boys, then boys get smarter once the little girl’s hormones kick in. It seems to me, though, that girls recover while boys seem to be stricken with life-long idiocy once their hormones have kicked in, yet for some reason women remain put-upon and relegated to second class citizenship. (I discuss this a bit here.)

Unintended consequences

Study Questions Natural Gas’s Environmental Benefits .
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303815404577334013970875438.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Shockingly! it seems that converting from coal to natural gas has some unintended consequences. This, of course, is what happens when profit and politics (which are just two sides of the same coin) are put ahead of science and society: damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!

This reminds me of the earlier research I read that, after modelling the same sorts of losses during fuelling, accidents, etc., switching to hydrogen (which is a total boondoggle anyway, the only economical way to produce it currently is from natural gas, so it has no net reduction in carbon impact, plus because it is so much more difficult to compress (let alone liquefy), it uses even more energy than the original natural gas!) could lead to an ice age. The theory went something like this: because hydrogen is lighter than air any escaped gas will quickly rise to the stratosphere, there it will interact with ozone and form water which will lead to very stable ice crystals that will reflect solar radiation, thus leading to a tipping point that would accelerate the arrival of the next ice age (note that ice ages are the true ‘normal’ for our planet at present and our current interglacial period is due to end in the thousand years or so).

Of course, that didn’t dampen the enthusiasm for hydrogen, practical economic realities did that (or so I hope).

The dead hand of Adam Smith

There Is No Invisible Hand
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/04/there_is_no_invisible_hand.html

I have read a great deal about the ‘invisible hand’ of the marketplace pushing the market toward an equilibrium and the only time I can recall believing that it had any association with reality was for a few minutes during an economics lecture way back. To me the _only_ society where there is any chance of the ‘invisible hand’ having any influence is in a market with extremely high levels of competition, very low barriers to entry and, most crucially, a consumer base that acts to keep itself highly knowledgeable. That _might_ be true in occasional market segments (fast food comes to mind), but in essentially all other markets there are one, or a very few, organisations that have an outsized impact on the market and thus skew any influence of the ‘invisible hand’ to the point of uselessness. Why it is such a cherished idea of economists is a bit of a conundrum to me, though I know that many (if not most) models posit consumers that are not idiots and just a brief look around will show that that assumption is totally flawed. I suppose that without making some of these basic (but wrong) assumptions economists would find themselves unable to complete their dissertation, thus be unable to make any meaningful contribution, so be reduced to living under bridges asking for handouts at intersections, so I guess these ‘simplifying’ assumptions are here to stay.

I happened across this article after getting an email stating that my little blog was being added to http://econacademics.org/ and checking out their main page (there were several other quite interesting articles that I might make time to read and comment on here). Whether this is nonsense or not I can’t tell; supposedly it is operated by the St. Louis FED which would imply that being one of the nearly 600 blogs they monitor might actually be flattering. I suppose if they actually link to one of my posts and all the sudden my readership sky rockets then I will be flattered, but until then I figure it is just a curiosity.

BTW, my blog rate has been curtailed because the computer I am operating from has lost access to my user profile and is no longer doing spell check for me. Since I can’t spell worth a damn and don’t want to look like an (barely literate) 7 year old, I am reluctant to post until I have the chance to get software to check my spelling.

More boring police state crap…

U.S. filmmaker repeatedly detained at border
http://www.salon.com/2012/04/08/u_s_filmmaker_repeatedly_detained_at_border/singleton/

I continue in my seemingly pointless effort to make as many people aware of the loss of Constitutional rights our government (GOP as well as Democrat) has ‘gifted’ its population. It frustrates me that there is almost no hue and cry is essentially absent. Way too much of this attitude:

As is true for all states that expand and abuse their own powers, that’s what the U.S. Government counts on: that it is sending the message that none of this will affect you as long as you avoid posing any meaningful challenges to what they do. In other words: you can avoid being targeted if you passively acquiesce to what they do and refrain from interfering in it. That’s precisely what makes it so pernicious, and why it’s so imperative to find a way to rein it in.

What does it take to get people to give a damn?

I’m baaack!

Well, the good news is we were able to finally pour the footers for the pool. The bad news is (shockingly) it was way more work than I had expected and we didn’t get the concrete poured until yesterday. In fact, we weren’t done until nearly 5 PM yesterday, nothing like leaving things to the last minute!

Other than the expected chore of cleaning out all the holes with their winter accumulated plethora of dirt and crap it turned out that probably 2/3 of the holes we had tediously created (almost all in bedrock!) last year were off by enough to require extensive jack hammering and even some chemical assisted rock removal.

Things started out a bit slow as my wife’s parents arrived from the Philippines the Thursday before we took off and naturally there were parties, etc. to attend. In addition to only having a few hours of daylight to work before heading off to the get-togethers, we wound up staying well past my normal bed time. Friday night we didn’t get home until after 2 AM on Saturday, Saturday night we didn’t get to bed until after 4 AM Sunday! Sunday night we managed to beg off and got to bed around 12:30 AM on Monday, so were finally able to start regular work on Monday.

The parties were the usual ‘small family get-together’ of 30-40 people. It took me a while to get used to the noise and action, but now when I get to a party with ‘only’ 20 people it feels strange. We played a lot of poker (due in large part to some of the family not really understanding poker, we stick with Texas Holdem) and because my brother-in-law insisted on playing no-limit we were able to change our normal routine and have some more fun. Well, I didn’t really have any fun until Sunday evening because I got thoroughly shellacked on Friday and Saturday and had to play conservative because I kept winding up with the losing hand on my all-in efforts. I almost made up for the earlier losses on Sunday and was finally able to play the game I prefer.

My wife took a video of the concrete pour, I aim to stick it on YouTube soon and will provide a link for those who might be interested. I am glad this milestone is finally achieved, after ‘only’ a year. Hopefully the pace of progress will pick up a bit now that we are in the more familiar area of construction.

Thank you all for your patience!

I object to the word ‘the’!

New York city schools want to ban ‘loaded words’ from tests
http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/03/28/new-york-city-schools-ban-loaded-words-from-tests/?hpt=hp_bn13

In yet another instance of PC gone amok, New York city wants to ban these words from any standardized tests:

Divorce. Dinosaurs, Birthdays. Religion. Halloween. Christmas. Television.

Pretty amazing stuff! Lets be extra careful sure to keep our children from learning anything that could possibly expand their minds. Just because school itself is an incredible bore and teachers diligently work to ensure zero learning occurs as they stuff unrelated and irrelevant knowledge into our children’s heads doesn’t mean the students are safe from the standardized exams! Wouldn’t want little Johnny or wee Jane to learn about anything accidentally during the tests!