Ken is a verb

12-03-09_1243.jpeg

2009-12-03T12:51:00.001-08:00

12-03-09_1243.jpeg
Originally uploaded by ken_is_a_verb

Burrito gigante for lunch

10-12-09_1919.jpeg

2009-10-12T19:22:00.001-07:00

10-12-09_1919.jpeg
Originally uploaded by ken_is_a_verb

The boil of the belgian

10-12-09_1838.jpeg

2009-10-12T18:42:00.001-07:00

10-12-09_1838.jpeg
Originally uploaded by ken_is_a_verb

Belgian in progress

Celebrating mediocrity

2009-10-05T10:47:00.000-07:00

I noted with some interest a few weeks ago that our first regatta of the fall was about to institute a team points trophy. These are usually awarded based on a points system that considers not only where one placed in the event, but the kind of event. They tend to favor teams with breadth, or at least scale. And I freely admit that as a large organization, we do well in these. We have many people who race many events, and we tend to do well. I figured we'd be a lock.

Seems the points system in place for this regatta failed to consider one other important element: How many people were in your event?

Now it may or may not be fair to award more points for winning the 8+ than winning the 1x. One can argue that a club needs just one great rower to win the 1x, but needs 8 to win the 8+, and the award is for overall excellence.

But I think it stands to reason that one also ought to consider how many other boats were in the event. Winning the 1x is impressive: You're often racing 20 other people, sometimes more. In the 8+, sometimes there are 12 crews, but for some of these smaller races it's only 7 or 8. Granted, it takes 8 folks to field a boat, so there are naturally fewer entries. But I think some kind of relative hierarchy where

8> (4+ = 4- = 4x)> (2x = 2-)> 1x (if number of entries are equal)
Winning over more entries > winning over fewer (if same event class)
Winning > placing

Seems one of the local high school programs showed up. And they were the only high school that showed up. So for about 4-5 events, they were the only competitor. They won by default. And when you take first and second out of 2 in all the high school 8+ events, you get a lot of points, because there's no discount for racing no one.

Meanwhile, my club won and often took many of the other top spots in almost all the other events. Where we actually raced other clubs and crews. i.e. there was a non-zero probability of not getting first place.

Yet we didn't get the points trophy. Wow.

Petty of me, but I like putting more hardware in the trophy case. And it's nice to give the other clubs a chance to go home with one, I suppose, as we're pretty dominant.

But I thought we were out to celebrate excellence, not entering the under-subscribed events. And when you create a perpetual trophy, you want it to be more than just a self esteem award. Oh well, rant over.

Real estate deals with talking fire trees

2009-08-27T12:42:00.000-07:00

Continue to cause trouble.

"Imaginary sky daddy said all your stuff belongs to us".

Unreal.

How to shower behind a water truck at Burning Man

2009-08-10T14:08:00.000-07:00

Getting clean on the playa is very difficult if you don't have access to a lot of water and a lot of infrastructure.

I've done the squirt bottle shower (always easiest if you have a friend to help you), the human carcass wash (if you don't mind a non-zero probability of being fondled by a stranger) and the wet-wipes (playa dust + near negative humidity renders these "dry-wipes" within seconds of their leaving their container. Also, they become MOOP).

The best free and easy way to get clean, in my opinion, is to get behind a water truck.

The water trucks travel the streets at irregular intervals spraying water in their wake to keep the road dust down. They move at a brisk walking pace. So one would think that all one has to do to get doused is to run up behind the truck, and stay in the stream. And while that's part of the solution, if one doesn't take care in how one does those things, one can get seriously maimed, or seriously messy. Why is it dangerous?

Because that water is turning the playa dust into a fine layer of playa mud which is atop a layer of playa dust which is atop a layer of hard as cement playa. It's making the functional equivalent of a vaseline-coated basketball court. And you think you can run on it. And you are wrong.

How to do it:

Listen for the trucks. They give a little warning "toot toot" of their truck horns to warn those in front of them that they're coming.
Get ready to get wet. You can be naked, or semi-clothed. Strip to what you intend to have on under the water. It's hard to run and strip at the same time, and if you do, you're likely tossing your clothes into fresh playa mud. This makes the net cleanliness gain negative. Strip first.
Shoes off. Despite what you're going to hear about not running on the mud, once under the water, you are on the mud. And it will clog your footwear into an unholy mess of recently rehydrated clay-like mud. Again, net clean of your person doesn't increase. Muddy bare feet are much easier to clean back at camp than muddy playa footware. Go barefoot. And don't try to run in flip flops. Seriously, what do they do for you? Barefoot.
Run for the truck, but not in the street. The very edge of the street, at the limit of the truck's spray radius will be very to semi-dry. It will therfore not be "as slippery as greased pig shit" (as my grandma says). So you can run on it. RUn for the truck on the dry part. Also, stop running on the dry part: many people slip and fall when they try to decelerate from a full sprint while cutting in behind the truck. They try to change speed rapidly on playa mud. They fall on the mud, hurt themselves, get filthy and fail to recover in time to get clean. Bad move. Instead, run a little past the truck, decelerate, then step behind it.
Don't bring soap. You're about to get doused in gallons of luxuirous water. Your soap, no matter how biodegradable, is not a natural part of the fragile playa habitat. Your need to increase your experience of clean by the infinitesimal amount that water truck + soap yields over water truck alone does not outweight the playa's need not to have soap dumped on it.
Be quick. There will be others wanting in. Share. Get your head while directly under the spray, then step aside to work the rest of yourself.
Walk home. Running is bad. Also, you can greet your fans who were cheering for you as you ran naked down the street for a shower.

More on the organic food revelations

2009-08-04T15:32:00.001-07:00

I'm happy to take environmentally friendly actions. As this author does, I often find the case for why something is good for the planet to be woefully lacking in fact-based argumentation.

Lagunitas Imperial Stout

2009-08-04T10:36:00.000-07:00

Is perfect. It's very much what I want my stout (that I make) to be: Toasty and dark, but balanced by chewy malty sweetness. Some sugar in your coffee. And like most good beers it unfolded as it warmed up. Much more malty sweet.

What would make it more awesome? Maybe cranking up the body a bit more, thinking lactose sugars here. Go cream stout. But that's just my personal preference. It's a very well put together beer. I endorse it.

But my carrots had high self esteem!

2009-07-29T13:25:00.001-07:00

Seems "organic" food has no significant nutritional benefit over conventionally farmed food.

DDT is an organic compund.

Of course, hippies mean "organic" not in the sense that chemists do, but then I struggle to know what is and is not "organic".

I think DDT is pretty

I fairness, this doesn't argue that keeping modern chemistry out of the food creation process isn't better for the environment. It just shows that buying your kids organic cheerios won't make them smarter from all the extra "nutrients" in the "organic" food. It also doesn't weigh in on the potential consequences of trace exposure to synthetic compounds used in conventional farming. Whatever they may be, I'm not worried. And it also doesn't weigh in on whether the organic food tastes any better. I do find that often it does.

Yay for science weighing in.

Well said, dude with sharpie

2009-07-10T10:11:00.000-07:00

Not saying I'll never buy jewelry for a woman ever again, but how many times have I seen women comparing/ showing off rings as proxy for showing off the earning power of their husbands? How often have I seen women more obsessed with the ring than the life commitment? Modern weddings seem a ritualized homage to female power. Handing over two months' earnings in the form of a shiny rock is a form of surrender.

It's the symbolic beginning of the time and asset transfer the man makes in marriage. And in return she grants him exclusive access to her coochie.

The ad itself shamelessly equates love with materialism. Small ring? Maybe he doesn't really love you.

For shallow whores everywhere, indeed.

My new nephew

2009-07-08T18:46:00.001-07:00

Rosa Parks of 2009

2009-07-01T11:34:00.001-07:00

Dan Choi:

Seems the military is now "just following orders" drumming you out, given the laws. Seems no one in the chain of command has the guts to declare the policy unjust, wrong, and stupid in a time when we need folks with your qualifications and willingness to serve. Shameful day, but you've done the right thing.

Once the law is reversed, we'll work to see these kinds of discharges reversed. Good for you for setting yourself up as an example of how wrong the policy is. Sorry you couldn't get a better result.

Skype: The final frontier

2009-06-30T12:52:00.000-07:00

My dad, on nearly the other side of the planet (10 hrs difference) has discovered Skype, and found me today.

He had it half working. I could see him, and he me; he could hear me, but I couldn't hear him. But wild gesticulation and a broken IM conversation let me know my info was getting through.

I'm impressed. As I've gotten older, come to know myself a bit better and found myself in a position to observe my dad with new eyes, I've recognized that I got some of the things I like best about myself from my dad. And I'm realizing my dad's got some things I'd still like to emulate.

Dad's not afraid of the new and different. He's genuinely curious. And he may not be the first kid on the block to try or do a new thing, but his trying it has nothing to do with how many have or have not come before. Dad's curious, excited, and willing to jump in with both feet, in earnest. He'd rather try and fail than not try. He's better at that than I am. I like to know my odds of success are higher than my odds of making a fool of myself. But we're both curious, and both not afraid to figure something out on our own. I think I get my scientist's curiosity and fair mindedness from him.

So there's dad, doing his first web video chat in the year 2009, and the sound's not working, but he's happy that it's 75% working, and thrilled to see me. I'm sure he'll sort it out. I'd have been frustrated it didn't work perfectly. He seemed happy it worked at all, which is a much better perspective.

The world gets even smaller. Fine with me.

Trying to have an opinion

2009-06-29T21:29:00.000-07:00

Seems we're going to solve health care in the US, now. Or at least the federal government is about to pass a whole bunch of laws (or at least wants to) that will impact how we collectively experience health care in this country.

And as a citizen, I'm trying to form an opinion on what, if anything, should be done.

Not easy.

The issue isn't simple. There's the market forces vs. public subsidy debate, which Nobel winning economists are fighting about. I'm normally on the side of market forces to sort things out, but recognize Krugman's point: If you leave market forces to sort this out, some people go uninsured.

In case the reasons for this aren't transparent, think of it from the insurer's point of view: Whom would you select for customers? Put another way, for whom would you volunteer to pick up the health care tab for the next year, assuming you like holding on to your money: 25 year old male triathletes, or 67 year old obese lifelong smoking women? Under what circumstances would you agree to cover the expenses of the fat smokers? If they have a 10% chance of needing $500,000 in lung cancer care, and you charge them enough to cover their expected costs, few will be able to afford $50,000 per year. And so they remain uninsured. You're not being a dick, you're just not being a chump.

So the insurance market, when left alone, is like the credit market: some people don't get any.

I'm not bothered by this in the credit market. I'm really not sure how I feel about it in the health insurance market.

Part of the current problem is the government picks up some of the worst segments of the market, the poor and the old, through Medicare and Medicaid. So if you're not poor, but you're not rich, and you're not well, you're screwed. Private firms, rightfully, do not want you as a customer at prices you can afford.

I suppose that, if we as a society decide everyone gets health care, then we all end up paying for it one way or another, either through public funding and higher taxes, or higher premiums on private insurance once government mandates all must be accepted and rates must be capped. If you can't charge Fatty McSmokerpants what she really costs, you charge Bobby O'Triathalon the difference.

Which doesn't seem to provide any market based financial incentive not to be a burden on the system. Yeah, jack the tobacco tax through the roof, and that'll start. But hard to tax couch sitting and TV watching and half-gallon-of-double-fudge-brownie-in-one-sitting eating. Hard to subsidize interval training. So I'm troubled by the lack of market-created incentives that seem to materialize once those truly burdensome to insure no longer feel the pain they create for everyone else. If you have all you can eat health care for "free" (you don't directly detect the incremental cost of your incremental consumption), why wouldn't you see the doctor every time you had a sniffle, unless you had to wait 8 weeks for an appointment?

If I think about it another way, there will always be a private option. Those with means will always have access to a higher level of service. If I have a bajillion dollars and I want to hire an endocrinologist to adjust the iodine in my table salt every morning, after giving me a full body MRI, I can do that, if I'm willing to pay for it. The question becomes, what is the public option, how is it paid for, and who is likely to have that be their only option? And there are legit concerns that a subsidized public option will cause Bobby O'Triathalon to pull out of the private pool, into the lower cost public pool (tax payer wins, private firm loses) causing private firm to have to raise rates to cover the remaining folks, forcing more into the public system, etc.

And maybe that's not bad. Or maybe it is. I don't know.

Not simple.

Courage from the French

2009-06-22T10:08:00.001-07:00

Sarkozy has some big brass ones. Calling out Islam on its barbaric policies towards women, calling out the burka as a symbol of submission to patriarchy, not to "god". And he's holding the line on secularism rather well. If religion is "private" the burka is surely public, and if religion in public assaults secularism, then he's doing the right thing.

Of course the muslims will cry out "help help, we're being repressed". The truth is Islam isn't compatible, in many ways, with a pluralistic secular society. Any culture or religion that has failed to adapt since the time communities were culturally and philosophically homogeneous is incompatible. Can't be Amish and live in Manhattan. And you can't live in modern Europe if you hide your face in public, and can't interact with an entire gender unless they're in your family.

I wish secularism were so ardently defended here.

This seems pretty good to me

2009-05-17T16:26:00.000-07:00

I think it's a decent balance. Half the hostility that comes at us from the Arab world happens when our government is seen as knee-jerk Zionist.

Having now escaped the Christian brain washing of my youth, I can't understand why one wouldn't be sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. Not calling for the destruction of Israel, but non-Jew Israeli citizens ought to have the same rights as Jewish citizens, and Palestinians deserve their own state, at least. At this point, I think Jerusalem should belong to no one. Put it under the UN.

Marion Barry: This is your brain on drugs

2009-05-05T10:39:00.001-07:00

DC votes in marriage equality, except Marion Barry.

I really don't get black folk who aren't on board with gay folks' civil rights. It really bewilders me. I think it says something about human nature, but it's not good.

I love that this sets up congress to vote on the issue. Make the congress folks take a stand on the issue. Who's got the guts?

Traditional marriage

2009-04-29T09:58:00.001-07:00

I think I'd like some concubines.

Sums it up

2009-04-28T14:29:00.001-07:00

Though the Catholics don't think it's symbolic.

My new favorite anti-marriage equality ad

2009-04-19T13:01:00.000-07:00

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

The Colbert Coalition's Anti-Gay Marriage Ad

colbertnation.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes

Political Humor

NASA Name Contest

Did you see all that lightning?

I'm afraid, too. And fear leads to anger...

Steve Schmidt has giant brass balls

2009-04-19T12:31:00.000-07:00

He's deftly articulated what I and many other see as an inevitability: The GOP's rejection of evangelical Christianity in shaping their public policy positions. Right wing Christians are now an albatross, and until the Republicans collectively give them the finger, they're never going to get mainstream voters like me who believe in free markets and smaller government, and extend these freedoms to people's personal lives.

Good for him for speaking truth to power. Good for him for taking a step that might revitalize the forces of keeping government small and a non-interventionist foreign policy.

So if I were Steve, I'd be on the phone to Arnold, looking to transform the GOP with CA, and getting them behind marriage equality here. If there were some Republicans at the front of the marriage equality fight, in a headline bellweather state like CA, the national party would be instantly transformed. The brand perception would change. Yes, there'd be the inevitable struggle between the Mike I-don't-believe-in-evolution Huckabees and the small government types, but it would speed that process along.

Good job, Steve.

I [heart] NY

2009-04-16T11:57:00.000-07:00

The governor is great.

"This is a civil rights issue. Civil rights don't wait for the right time"

Couldn't agree more.

I wonder if Arnold has the sack to be the first Republican governor to say he'll sign a marriage equality bill, if it comes before him. Does he have the guts to stand up for what he believes, against the nutjobs in his party? Or is he hoping they'll change the constitution so he can run for pres? Even so, by the time he's running, will not having led on this issue be a hindrance?

So awesome

2009-04-15T10:48:00.000-07:00

Makes me wish I were an EE.

How to count in West Texan

2009-04-14T17:14:00.000-07:00

What I learned last weekend in Amarillo, TX:

wun
tew
thray
for
fahv
sex
sayvin
ayeet
nan
tin
levin
twaylve
thirtain
fortain
fiftain
sextain
sevintain
aytain
nantain
twinnay

Also, my name is pronounced "kin" as in "next of".

Also, in west Texas, the tiny ice ball weather phenomenon is a homophone for where bad Christians go when they die.

Vermont is awesome

2009-04-07T13:06:00.000-07:00

And extra points to the legislators who switched from no to yes on marriage equality, to override the governor's veto.

How can Iowa and Vermont beat us to it? Hoping our state supreme court does the right thing and tells the prop 8 fans that taking away equal protection under the law is a major revision to the constitution, and that the little initiative that barely passed was unconstitutional.

Can we do this in America?

2009-04-06T22:05:00.001-07:00

It'd be hilarious.

"So you can talk to the dead?"

"Can you talk to my Grandpa?"

"Can you ask him if he liked pineapple?"

"If it doesn't work like that, then how does it work?"

Spiritual healing. Sure.

I know too many hippies who believe in magic, so I'd love to have everyone making magical claims subject to consumer protection laws. First the psychics, then the churches.

Another chink in the free will armor

2009-03-31T15:23:00.000-07:00

Brain runs programs without us applying conscious effort to them. Clearly these are rather fated processes. Why aren't the other processes fated, then?

If I ran the atheist bus campaign

2009-03-30T20:12:00.001-07:00

I'd run this copy

Because real estate deals with flammable shrubbery aren't justification for segregation and apartheid.

People united for chaos and violence

2009-03-26T11:26:00.000-07:00

The citizens of Oakland now officially deserve their fate. They don't seem to understand which people are trying to help them, and who's really hurting their community.

Let's just be clear: When a black dude with a police record kills four cops in your city, this does not promote tourism. And if you want OAK to prosper, you may want the people who have a choice about where to go to spend their money to consider doing some business in Oakland, instead of just driving through on their way to the airport or A's game.

Let's also be clear: If a guy shoots and kills four cops, and the cops shoot him dead, the cops did not commit "genocide".

I hope that someone on the black community over there stands up and says the right thing. It sets us all back when it seems that folks are opposed to law, order and civility. No one's going to care to help a community that seems to celebrate people leading them further down the path to destruction.

The power of prayer

2009-03-25T12:19:00.000-07:00

Do you believe in an interventionist god? One who actually meddles in our universe, bending the laws of nature, like an invisible Superman? If not, then Jesus, Mohamed, Old Testament magic are all stories. Hard to have conventional religious faith without the interventionist god.

On the other hand, if you do believe in it all, and miracles, and the like, why not just pray your cancer away? If prayer can help cure your cancer, a little, why can't it go the whole way? If god can do some of it, he can do all of it, right?

Well, tragically there are some small minds out there suffering from the hobgoblin of foolish consistency: This pilot decided to pray instead of prepping the plane for crash landing. I'm amazed by his faith. But I suppose he believes in an interventionist god.

Religion: helping you die while the pilot asks his imaginary friend to take the controls.

Yay VT

2009-03-23T15:13:00.000-07:00

Wish we were doing the same here in CA, but we will, and soon.

I like Obama's idea of the states as individual test labs for government policies. If it works in a state, it could work on a national level. If a policy causes trouble in a state, it'll cause similar trouble nationally.

So it will be interesting to watch as the social fabric of the state of Vermont fails to collapse. I'd be thrilled to find an intellectually honest soul who's opposed to marriage equality on the grounds that it's harmful to society who's got the guts to predict VT will now devolve into the last days of Rome, and provide clear objective metrics for this prognosticated devolution.

I predict divorce rates (incidence per marriage) in VT will remain reasonably flat. There will be an initial spike in marriages per capita, as the pent-up demand among same sex couples is discharged, but that'll be it. Hard to say if number of marriages overall goes up, given that I think it's on decline overall as an institution. I'll say that VT's marriages per capita number should remain reasonably close to its historical ratio vs. marriages mper capita in the rest of the nation.

You go, France.

2009-03-18T08:09:00.000-07:00

Because the pope is a fascist bastard totally out of touch with reality.

End marriage

2009-03-16T14:32:00.000-07:00

Fine with me.

"If you're in the marriage business, do it equally. And if you're not going to do it equally, get out of the business."

What happens when your laws are based on religion

2009-03-16T09:35:00.000-07:00

You go to jail for "adultery".

Somehow, the bus ad I saw for Islam yesterday seems less appealing.

Guns don't kill people

2009-03-11T08:33:00.001-07:00

They just make it a lot easier to kill a whole bunch of people in a short amount of time.

Hard to imagine someone going on a stabbing spree where innocent bystanders get stabbed and killed, and you end up with double digit deaths all at the hand of one person. Yet today we have Alabama and Germany where folks have used guns to kill many people in a short amount of time.

Would these troubled people have acted out violently without guns? Sure. Would they have taken out so many people without guns? Doubtful.

Countdown until the NRA comes out with an announcement about how we shouldn't blame guns for this starts now...

MSNBC and Cardinal Levada are morons

2009-03-04T09:15:00.000-08:00

A straw man is a flimsy construction of your opposition's argument, that makes it easy for you to look like your argument is better. Age old rhetorical device, most effective when your opponent's not actually there to defend yourself. It doesn't prove anything,it's just rhetoric.

So when I read this post on MSNBC, where the journalists don't read the works they're reporting on, I was annoyed.

It is not the scientific community, but fundamentalist Christians who find evolution antithetical to their religious belief. Their problem is that if evolution is true, Genesis is false, and if Geneisis is false then some of the bible is false, which means not all of the bible is true, and they believe the bible's all true. They're the ones who find science wholly incompatible with faith. Thus, their mission to get faith into science classes, and thus our mission to get faith off the planet.

No one says evolution proves God's non-existence, especially not Dawkins, and especially not in The God Delusion. Evolution does prove that Genesis is a bunch of stories. And that has consequences for the credibility of the Bible, which may lead one to believe that the whole thing is a bunch of stories. Clearly the Cardinal, and the AP and MSNBC editorial staff haven't got the time to see if the book says what they say it does.

If you want to prove the non-existence of God, just use the problem of evil. God cannot be both all powerful and good and there be evil (suffering) in the world. It shows that our concept of God is incompatible with the observable evidence. And just like in Physics, if your theory is inconsistent with observations, your theory gets shit canned. Theory of god: file along with four elements of earth, air, fire and water.

Problem of evil is hard to escape. If one tries to argue that all suffering is human-casued, then Pompeii, Katrina, south Asian Christmas Tsunamis and every tornado in Oklahoma shows there's natural evil in the world. Anthrax, Hanta virus. Does an all powerful and benevolent being put that stuff in the world? I'm sure an all powerful being could find a way to make a world without Hanta virus. If the Hanta virus is necessary, then there's ome other set of laws in the universe that this being can't get around, and all powerful goes away. Or God is a prick, which, if we read the old testament, isn't hard to believe.

Evolution isn't incompatible with God, just Genesis. The miserable state of existence, however, is wholly incompatible with God as conceived in the Christian world.

Why house prices are going to get even more hammered

2009-02-26T12:49:00.000-08:00

Friend sent link to this post about house prices and price/ income ratios in the UK. I've a mildly professional interest in this issue.

I agree with the main thrust, that price to income ratios are out of whack and must revert to a lower number before house prices will stabilize.

But we get a little deeper understanding when we ask the question: How did this ratio get so far from norms in the first place?

The answer, as we all know now, is that lax lending practices did it. I'll speak in oversimplification, to make the point. Going to ignore taxes, speak of drastic shifts as examples, for illustrative purposes.

If the lender thinks home values will grow indefinitely, the lender will be more likely to lend at high loan to value ratios, where the owner has no equity interest in the home, save its future appreciation. So suddenly, because the lending criteria relax, consumers can afford as much house as they can afford a payment stream. This allows home buyers to enter the market not when they have saved enough for a down payment, but when they have an income stream that can afford the mortgage payment. So demand surges, as this lets more buyers in. One no longer has to wait and save, one can buy today! No money down! No credit? No problem!

And now the lenders have tightened. They want to see down payments as a hedge against their own risk of the property's value declining. The bank wants to own the 80% of value yet to be paid for, not the first 20% of value the consumer owns. Adding the downpayment requirements pushes the devaluation risk to the consumer, not the bank. Value declines, it's the owner's stake, not the bank's that gets hit.

So now someone who has the income to afford the payments, but no down payment can't get the loan. And they're forced to sit on the sidelines of the market until they've set aside enough cash to re-enter the market. So no matter how low the mortgage interest rates go, buyers still can't enter the market without saving up money.

I ran some numbers, to get a feel for this. I kept it simple, and rounded here and there.

Assuming a household income of 100K (high, no matter what the currency or location, save Zimbabwe) and a safe payment burden of 35% of monthly pre-tax income, a mortgage interest rate of 5%, term of 30 years, fixed rate, we can afford about 550K of loan.

In a 0 down payment world, we can buy 550K of house. (Value to income = 5.5)

In a 20% down world, to get the 550K of loan, we must put down 137K, but then we can buy 688K of house. (Value to income = 6.8!)

Trouble is, if we have no down payment, we can buy the 550K in the first scenario, but can't buy anything in the second. And if savings interest is 2% and we save half the mortgage payment by renting, it'll take 7 years to come up with the down payment for scenario 2. So the change in lending practice took today's buyer out of the market until 7 years from now. Way to kill demand, lending institutions!

And even if we set our sights on a 300K property (value to income = 3.0, historical norm), where we can well afford the 1272 monthly payment, we still must come up with 60K down, in a 20% world, which would take us 3 years to save, with the previous assumptions. So even when values get back in line with incomes, people without down payments are still out of the market until they've saved enough to enter. So the time to rebound isn't just a function of house prices and loan rates, (payment affordability) but also a function of time and savings rates (down payment affordability).

Now this is an oversimplification, but it makes the point: Yes, people can't afford these house prices, but also, they can no longer buy, even as prices decline, because they must first save (or at least have to save more now than they did a year or so ago) to enter the market.

So if government really wants to support house prices (which I think is a terrible idea) they need to get buyers in the market by helping with the down payment/ value decline risk part of the problem. Match a down payment, take an equity stake in the property, and take on the risk of decline. Stipulate that consumer's equity gets wiped out first if sold for loss or repossessed, then government, then bank. Government gets return on its portion of equity, consumer on his, when property is sold. Government can claim its portion through taxes due at time of sale.

Again, I don't think government should get involved in price targeting, unless we want massive inflation, which seems to be the only solution to our current mess. But if they want to attack the problem, they should go after the part that's holding back demand: Suddenly tightened (reverting to reasonable) lending standards, and the challenge of meeting these standards with the up front payments.

Hilarity

2009-02-25T09:33:00.001-08:00

From one of my co-workers in the UK. He and his mates made this, and it's superb.

Good things that happened in the 70's

2009-02-24T11:35:00.000-08:00

Home brewing becomes legal in the USA. I can't imagine life if I couldn't make my own beer. Or without my favorite brewpubs. I would cry.

More strengthening marriage

2009-02-23T14:49:00.000-08:00

Looks like I'm about number 15 on Google for "strengthening marriage".

We're working on it, dude, we're working on it.

Islam: Religion of tolerance. Or not.

2009-02-19T09:35:00.000-08:00

Again from the files of religion is evil: Beating up on the Baha'is.

On one hand it's a bit of "Angels have blue eyes!" "NO, they have green eyes" or "Superman would totally beat up Batman". On the other, it's further example of Islam's utter incompatibility with pluralistic secular integrated society.

Chicken Mole

2009-02-18T20:38:00.000-08:00

I love chicken mole.

One of the things I like most about California is authentic Mexican food. And mole sauces are as good as it gets. Chocolatey savory spicy sweet warm earthy perfection. With slow cooked meat. Proof that Homer Simpson was on to something when he said, "If God didn't want us to eat animals, why did he make them so tasty?"

In Denver, there is the Savory Spice Shop, and they have the most amazing flavor creating substances on earth. They have a mole seasoning package, and for about $5 for 4oz, it's a steal.

So I picked up two 4 oz packages for gifts, one for friends across the bay, one for a co-worker in London who professed her love of Mexican food, and her ignorance of mole. I shall take it to her in April when I go over next. Oh, and a full pound for myself. I'm not screwing around.

For K I picked up some amazing eastern, middle eastern and Indian things.

I sampled their powdered cheeses. Unreal.

We only had a few minutes on the meter, so I had to be surgical in my shopping, but next time I want to take an hour to try every taster in the place, save, perhaps, the habanero powder. I don't need to test the pulverized pain in a jar, thanks.

On the Atheist bus campaign

2009-02-17T10:36:00.000-08:00

My dad pointed out that one of the local pundits in Malta took issue with some aspects of the campaign. There were aspects of her criticism that need to be addressed.

Her points can be summarized, fairly, I think, as follows:

"Probably" means atheists aren't sure
People will have a hard time enjoying life if they don't believe in a god
Religion is a harmless eccentricity of the lower classes
Atheism is a religion, as it is organized and evangelizing

First off, she doesn't like the word "probably" in "There probably is no God."

"You would think that atheists, of all people, would be certain in their own minds about the non-existence of God, that they wouldn’t be blithering and blathering in the same way as those ‘believers’ who are not quite sure, who practise their religion just in case there is a God and they wake up after death to find this elusive being waiting for them with their name on the Naughty List."

She seems not very good at research, for googling "Atheist bus campaign", clicking on the first result for the official site, and looking at their FAQ page yields a clear explanation of why the word probably is there:

As with the famous Carlsberg ads (‘probably the best lager in the world’), ‘probably’ helps to ensure that our ads will not breach any advertising codes Committee of Advertising Practice advised the campaign that “the inclusion of the word ‘probably’ makes it less likely to cause offence, and therefore be in breach of the Advertising Code.”

Ariane Sherine has said, ‘There’s another reason I’m keen on the “probably”: it means the slogan is more accurate, as even though there’s no scientific evidence at all for God’s existence, it’s also impossible to prove that God doesn’t exist (or that anything doesn’t). As Richard Dawkins states in The God Delusion, saying “there’s no God” is taking a “faith” position. He writes: “Atheists do not have faith; and reason alone could not propel one to total conviction that anything definitely does not exist”. His choice of words in the book is “almost certainly”; but while this is closer to what most atheists believe, “probably” is shorter and catchier, which is helpful for advertising. I also think the word is more lighthearted, and somehow makes the message more positive.’

So her conjecture that we atheists are secretly scared of and believe in the imaginary sky daddy is a bit off. If we were scared he was real, we'd probably not have left an auditable paper trail of our heresy. If it weren't for the state protection of religious belief from unpleasant confrontations with truth ("Your facts might offend folks, please tone them down"), we could be more direct.

The second point is also important. We don't say "there is no" because we've a sufficiently sophisticated understanding of logic and reason to know you can't prove a negative, merely show it's highly, highly unlikely. Can't prove there are no WMD's in Iraq. So it's a great way to pick a war, if you threaten to invade unless the other side can do something that's not logically possible. One can persist in believing in the WMDs despite all the UN weapons inspections in the world, because they don't prove they're not in the country, just not in those specific locations at that time. I use this example to show how pernicious the belief in provable negatives is, and why it deserves eradication.

Her next criticism is interesting, but hardly a problem:

"...the atheists who came up with this less than brilliant marketing ploy for their cause don’t appear to realise that the prospect of no God is more disturbing to many people than the prospect of there being a God. It is the existence of a God in their moral universe which allows them to enjoy life in the reassurance that they will be rewarded for the good they do while others will be punished for the bad they do. Whip God out of the equation and they are left floundering in a sort of moral anarchy. How can they enjoy life when they know that the paedophile down the road, the heroin-trafficker round the corner and the wife-beater in the flat downstairs will not be toasted on Satan’s spit for all eternity?"

A few thoughts:

Yes, it's much more scary to confront the truth that death means poofing out of existence and not teleporting to magic happy land. But then it's much easier to enjoy this life (Jews: have some bacon! Catholics: use the pill, save money on babies! Muslims: wear a skirt!) without the insane superstitious practices dictated by world religions. Sleep in on Sunday, no one cares.
Who's the police force? We are. Ceding tasks to imaginary friends is a great way to be sure nothing is done. My guardian angel doesn't do the dishes, and God won't heal your cancer, stop global warming, protect the innocent or punish the wicked. It's all up to us.

So yes, some people's moral compass must find a new magnetic north, in the absence of a Father Christmas on steroids. But they'll find one, as a code of conduct is requisite for successful living within social groups. God's got punishments, and, if we were truly believers, we'd have none of our own. But we actually do have our own code of punishments, both formal and informal, since we need them to keep society working, and waiting for God to take care of it all doesn't seem to have worked so far. The pedophile, heroin trafficker and the wife beater all get punished both through our system of laws, and our system of social stigma. They're all screwed, and they lose out in this life, the only one they have. Life in jail is 100% of your remaining existence in punishment, not an infinitely small fraction of an infinite existence, which is the case when we believe that we have phase 1: earth, phase 2: purgatory, phase 3: be happy with Jesus forever. The infinite part of phase 3 makes the unpleasantries of phases 1 and 2 insignificant (so belief in god yields less punishment, not more when we consider percentage of existence in punishment). And if we hold that phase 2 and 3 become "roast on a spit forever" for the ultra-baddies, it's still somewhat temporally equivalent to "the rest of your life" for duration, but perhaps not intensity, as most of the civilized world has outlawed torture. Save those places fueled by religion. So no god doesn't mean no punishment for baddies.

Then there's her next point, which is the most dangerous, and where I disagree the most:

"What I am saying is that the process of belief is much the same: children believe in Father Christmas because that is the received wisdom in their world, and because authorities higher than they are have assured them that he exists and they have no reason to question that authority. Children also need to believe in Father Christmas because it makes their world more interesting and gives them something to look forward to when they petition him with their hopes and desires.
How would I react to a bus advertising campaign by the Anti-Father-Christmas League, informing under-10s that Father Christmas probably doesn’t exist? This is how: why ruin things for children? Let them have their fun. And that’s exactly how I reacted to the photographs of buses driving past with that wet and wimpy ‘There is probably no God’ slogan. It’s not a public information campaign alerting passers-by to the dangers of smoking, say, or to the benefits of eating more greens. No, it’s what I call a spoilsport campaign, designed by the sort of person who gets a perverse pleasure out of shaking others from their comfort zone.

I agree that disabusing kids of their Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, Tooth Fairy and Cookie Monster beliefs is cruel and unnecessary. And I also agree that it's fine to tell people to stop smoking and eating only food fried in pure lard, even though all of these things jostle people from their comfort zones.

The reason it's okay to jostle folks about smoking and fried food (and religion) is that they all cause social harm. Your smoking harms me through second hand smoke and larger health care costs for us all, which I absorb through my insurance premiums of socialized risk. Your lard-ass lifestyle also costs me when you have a heart attack at age 45 and remain on diabetes and cholesterol drugs for the rest of your life, while I absorb those costs through socialized cost and risk redistribution. Drunk driving, speeding, not wearing seat belts, dumping household cleaners down the sewer all have costs to those who aren't the ones performing the action. Your rights end where my rights begin.

Religion causes harm. Look at the Taliban, Israel-Palestine, birth rates in the Catholic third world, Suni-Shia, Northern Ireland and the fundamentalist Christians in the US who want to sabotage science and thought W was a great guy. And these are harms caused to the larger society, not just those affected with the eccentricity of belief in faries, jewish zombies, or real estate deals with flamable shrubbery. I'm assering my right to live in a smoke free environment, both of the "tobacco-" and "-and mirrors" varieties.

Does religion do good in the world? Sure. Feeding the hungry, healing the sick, etc. But all of those humanitarian functions are also performed by secular organizations too, that do them not to curry favor with imaginary friends, but out of a genuine desire to help others. So on one hand we have religion, with war, violence, invasion and contempt and hatred for those "not in our tribe", but also some good works. And on the other, we have secular humanism, which tries to do good, and doesn't organize societies into bands ready to do violence to other bands. Given the choice, I prefer the one without all the evil.

So it does make a difference to me whether people believe in God or not. Believers keep fucking up my world, and I'm pretty tired of it.

Her parting shots:

"When atheism organises itself and seeks to convert others, what it has effectively become is a religion in itself, like the new religion of environmentalism. Atheists appear not to be content to get on with life in the absence of a god. Like obsessive believers in God, they seek to ram their belief down the throat of everyone else. They are as bad, and for the very same reasons, as those born-again Christians who pin you to the wall at parties and try to persuade you to come along to the next prayer group meeting despite your insistence that you have never been, are not, and never will be interested in religious involvement.

So by this reasoning, any time a group of people unite under a common idea and attempt to spread that idea, they are a religion. So we'd have the religion of the civil rights movement, the green movement, the gay rights movement, the Apple movement, and the Copernican revolutionaries. Given that Ms. Galiza's definition of religion tends to include things we'd not consider to be religions, I think it's a bad definition.

I'll borrow wikipedia's definition of religion: "A religion usually encompasses a set of stories, symbols, beliefs and practices, often with a supernatural quality, that give meaning to the practitioner's experiences of life through reference to an ultimate power or reality.

Atheism is a religion like bald is a hair color. Want to see our story about non-god?

Here it is:

Did you like it?

How about our list of non-beliefs?

Long, eh?

We have no ritual, no dogma, no hierarchy, no meeting places, and, most importantly, no supernaturalism, no magic ideas, no ultimate power, Higgs boson aside. We're trying to delete malicious programming from the minds of the masses, just as every enlightenment thinker that's come before us has tried to do.

So it was a well crafted and crafty essay, but the reasoning does fall short on several fronts.

Religion: Still evil

2009-02-17T10:22:00.001-08:00

From our favorite monotheistic (all gods are fairy tales, except ours) religion, Islam.

Religion of peace. And beheadings and treating women like cattle.

Sheeple

2009-02-16T16:31:00.001-08:00

I'm not a fan of most humans. There's a pretty narrow range of folks on this planet I get along with. I think this is because most folks just seem to stumble around without thinking, and it drives me nuts.

I am reminded of my general contempt for humanity whenever I fly. Humans at their irrational, self-interested worst.

Take the boarding process. People tend to forget that the plane isn't taking off until we're all on board. And while they rightly think that boarding the plane quickly might speed up the departure, they tend to ignore clear instructions on how to actually make the boarding process happen more quickly, and instead follow their own lizard-brain scarce resource competitive programming.

Example: My trip home from London

The counter staff announce to folks very clearly that they should only approach the gate when their section has been called, because failure to do so slows down the process. So what do the sheeple do when they ask the first group to board? They mob the gateway, so that everyone approaching the gate must slowly wade through a sea of bleating idiots, trying to determine whether the person they're about to step past is genuinely in the queue to board, or just mobbing the area because they can't think and follow directions. And so a stroll that should take 10 seconds takes 60.

So the sheeple, all trying to get in front of their tiny boarding group, and thus get on the plane more quickly, actually slow the process for everyone ahead of them in line.

Now on some levels, this actually makes sense: The only people they can beat on the plane are people in their own boarding group. Slowing the process for the groups ahead doesn't change the sequence of the boarding in their group, just the time that their boarding begins. So if people only care about being the first in their group, mobbing makes sense, if they're willing to screw folks boarding ahead of them and slow the entire process, just to have a better shot at the overhead space in row 42.

I actually approve of Southwest's cattle corral batching process, which does seem to speed entrance onto the plane. If humas are going to act like sheep, treat them that way.

Strengthening marriage

2009-02-06T18:04:00.000-08:00

Let people who love each other get and stay married.

"Fidelity": Don't Divorce... from Courage Campaign on Vimeo.

Because kids are able to critically evaluate ideas so well

2009-02-02T12:57:00.000-08:00

To slag

2009-01-30T07:12:00.000-08:00

Had a good laugh at lunch today when I attempted to use UK slang, and did it wrong.

I knew I'd probably screw up the syntax, so before saying it, acknowledged that I wasn't sure of proper way to say it.

I spoke of the chat boards where moronic masses were "slagging on" our webstie. Thinking of "ripping on" in American slang. I was wrong.

slag (v): British slang. To criticize or tear down harshly.

But it seems I didn't get the adverb right. Proper usage is "slag off". As in "They were slagging off our site."

Probably as funny as flipping similar adverbs in colloquial English for jerk- get- put- brush- etc.

Upon returning to the office:

Ken: Miyagi: Slag on; slag off.

My chat lingo dates me

2009-01-28T10:58:00.000-08:00

I was informed today by my young apprentice here in the London office, who is about 24, than my use of "tyvm" in chat flags me as a long time internet user. The tone she used to inform me of this was tinged with tragedy and astonishment. The tone said, "Wow, you're really old."

My IM style dates me. I didn't know this was possible, of course I also just started to use Facebook in the last 2 months, so I know I'm behind the curve.

And this bitch is PISSED

2009-01-20T11:42:00.000-08:00

I think she's got some ass kicking to do. Gonna do some work with that sword.

A New Hope

2009-01-19T16:55:00.000-08:00

I'm so thrilled to be ringing in Obama tomorrow. We're going out to celebrate at our favorite brew pub in our favorite Marin hippy town.

Just re-watched MLK jr's "I Have a Dream" speech, and took away his encouragement not to become bitter and angry towards the opposition in the civil rights struggle. A good reminder to me that I need to remember there are some "people of faith" who were against prop 8 here in CA, and that not all are opponents. One must leave the door open for people to change their minds. Polarization is anithetical to persusaion.

So nice to be proud of the country again.

Time to roll up our selves and do some work.

This is awesome

2009-01-13T19:27:00.000-08:00

I so wish this existed on my campus. Article is from a few years ago, but still awesome.

Well worth it

2009-01-09T18:22:00.001-08:00

I helped sponsor this. And this:

"I am sure that Stephen Green really does think there is a great deal of evidence for a God (though presumably only the one that he believes in) but I pity the ASA if they are going to be expected to rule on the probability of god’s existence."

Makes it all worth while. The advertising standards body forced to apply the truth in advertising standard to an articulation of rational skepticism. That'd be awesome.

Oregon remains economically retarded

2009-01-06T12:41:00.001-08:00

Not only are they socialists about gasoline dispensation, but it seems Oregonians are similarly dumb about gasoline taxation.

I can appreciate the problem that Oregonians have: Folks are driving less, and driving more fuel efficient vehicles, so they consume less gasoline, which means gas tax revenues decline. And gas tax revenues are used to keep the roads up. So the roads are getting similar wear, but the state lacks the similar funds to care for them. And while taxing the road usage seems reasonable, in that heavy users ought to be heavy payers, does it not make more sense to just, you know, raise gas taxes?

Yes, electric vehicles won't use gas, but will use roads. So the state will have an expense without offsetting revenue. But kicking in a mileage tax just gives people less motive to drive anything fuel efficient. High gas taxes provide heavy commuters incentive not to be heavy polluters. But if it's the mileage that gets taxed, then one might as well ride in style and comfort in a giant inefficient vehicle.

If Oregon is really worried about high mileage, low fuel tax revenue vehicles, they should adopt a tax scheme that considers the weight of the vehicle. Driving a Hummer 50,000 miles does more damage to roads than driving a Prius 50,000 miles. If one assumes a car's lifetime is a fixed number of miles (maybe 100,000?), one need not even track the mileage, since each vehicle will do its (weight x mileage) damage over its lifetime, where weight is the primary determinant of damage.

So just do a vehicle weight-based tax when a new vehicle is registered in OR, where new = less than 10,000 miles on it. Of course, this will drive people to try to register vehicles out of state, and provide a disincentive to buy newer (possibly more fuel efficient) cars at a time when the auto industry is dying for customers. Which is why simply raising the gas tax makes infinitely more sense. And why Oregonians are terrible economists.

*UPDATE*

Seems Mankiw agrees.

Kevin Hassett has the critical reasoning skills of a moldy raisin

2008-12-23T16:33:00.000-08:00

The footer makes no bones about the fact that he's a Republican hack. The piece of his "Bush wasn't that bad" argument I find most obviously fallacious is this:

"The argument for his eventual vindication is stronger than many might expect.
On foreign policy, Bush emphasizes that he pursued a “freedom agenda” and spread freedom to Iraq. While the Iraqi future is far from clear, it is possible that the country becomes a democracy and a reliable ally of the U.S. If that transformation is completed, then it could well be viewed as a turning point in the war on terror.

On the home front, to virtually everyone’s surprise, we’ve avoided a terrorist attack since Sept. 11."

Dude, what kind of drugs are you on?

Freedom: Secular Iraq (granted, under a repressive dictatorship) allowed women a great deal of equality and freedom, given a largely Muslim country. Now the theocratic repression that was supplied as ancillary justification for invading Afghanistan is blossoming in "free" Iraq. Maybe we should re-invade? Of course there's also that issue of whether Iraqis are "free" to live where they want, instead of fearing for their lives for being a Sunni in a Shia neighborhood, and vice versa. Not so easy to be "free" when there's religious and ethnic civil war going on around you and death squads are making folks "disappear". Or maybe death squads are part of the Bush notion of freedom? Kevin, you call Iraq free? Taking your wife to Somalia for your next vacation, since it's a safe place?
It's possible that the Iraqis will decide we're totally awesome, and if that happens, Iran will think we're not so bad, and then maybe they'll all friend Israel on facebook, which could totally lead to peace and rainbows and unicorns. Seriously, Kevin? "Maybe it's not the giant fuck up it seems to be, and it will all be okay" is your argument?
You know what else we haven't had in the US since 9-11, besides giant terrorist attacks? Giant meteors. We've also avoided massive outbreaks of Hanta virus, a failure of the Iowa corn crop, and hurricanes hitting Boston. Are the Bush policies behind these "successes", too? And how many (few) attacks is success? If we had experienced three subsequent attacks, Kevin could argue "Hey, at least we didn't have four attacks. I mean, with three, you can see the terrorists were really working hard, so we have to give credit to W for holding them down to just 3."

There's no parallel world in which W's policies weren't put in place to serve as a control group for this world in which they were. So there's no way to prove that things would have been specifically different without W. One can't take credit for causing non-events. Or not causing non-events. It's made that much clearer by asking who "prevented" the non events: Maybe it was a vigilant populace, a decentralized effort of the citizenry, and not the government that kept us safe.

Further, there were subsequent attacks. In London and in Madrid. They weren't in the US, but they were the same people with the same agenda and the same strategy. W hasn't cooled the anger and appeal of the radical Islamic agenda, he's encouraged it.

Dude, try again. This time, assume your reader can think.

Protecting marriage by forcing divorces

2008-12-22T17:50:00.000-08:00

There's a legal brief filed in CA to nullify the same sex marriages performed in the window between the state court decision declaring equal protection applied to marriage, and the passage of prop 8, which enshrined discrimination in the constitution by attempting to illegally change a fundamental right via ballot inititative.

A grassroots effort to put a human face on the state-imposed divorces that'll happen if the Ken Starr wins his case.

Meanwhile, the Pope has come out emphasizing how the gayness is going to destroy the world. Yes, mein Pope, this is really a big problem for the world. Screw hunger and poverty and ignorance, it's fabulousness that's really killing the planet.

It pisses me off that my mother, usually a thinking woman, hasn't gotten up the guts to abandon the Church. Her conditioning runs too deep. Just sad to see that she continues to support an institution that actively works to deny the civil rights of her friends and children. If she's going to try to change it from the inside, I'm going to want to see some real agitation from her. Either dynamite the status quo, or you're part of the problem.

Religitards

2008-12-21T21:50:00.000-08:00

A good example of religitards.

There's too much wrongness in the thinking for me to take it all apart right now, and most of it is so obviously false that it's not needed, but the distorted thinking and thinly veiled bigotry seems exemplary of their cause.

My favorite line:

Robbie slapped a Proposition 8 sticker on her desk at the bank where she works as a loan processor, and two on her Mercedes.

"Take that, religitards!"

2008-12-19T18:35:00.000-08:00

I quote one of the commenters.

This is very good. Nice Job, Jerry.

One of the coolest things I've read in a while

2008-12-19T16:32:00.000-08:00

I love it when a simple piece of math (or not so simple) makes something previously mysterious become totally understandable. Well worth reading through.

This is a national shame

2008-12-19T10:16:00.000-08:00

(link is in the title)

And with Rick Warren being given a national platform by the Obama administration at the inauguration, it's rather a dark day. When will someone get the guts to stand up for equal protection under the law?

I suppose I'll just keep working on fixing CA first.

Praise the Lord and pass the shoes

2008-12-15T14:14:00.000-08:00

I wish someone had the sense to put together an impromptu bucket brigade of shoes for Muntadar al-Zaidi. Alas, that he had only two shoes to throw for his country.

I admit that the act is somewhere on the wrong side of the line between assault and protest. But given all the other lines than have been crossed brazenly and remorselessly, crossing that line is forgivable. I hope he is released soon. I wish our Congress had demonstrated the same guts that he did.

The John McCain I liked

2008-12-15T14:12:00.000-08:00

Seems to be back. I wish we'd elected him in 2000.

Why our civilization deserves to perish

2008-12-10T13:07:00.000-08:00

This
People Magazine
Hummers
Jerry Springer

Americans are truly idiots.

Chevron: Greenwashing by betting hippies can't do math

2008-12-06T19:00:00.000-08:00

I hear Chevron touting in their self-greenwashing ads that they've "Improved energy efficiency 27% since 1992". I think they hope people will hear that and think "27% seems like a lot. Maybe they're not evil incarnate."

I hear it and think "1992 was a long time ago. What's the 16th root of 1.27?" I can't take 16th roots in my head. I am dumb.

But this is why God made scientific calculators, or, in my case, Excel. Seems Chevron's been growing efficiency at a whopping 1.5% per year since 1992.

Granted, I'm psyched that they care and are tracking this number, and I'm glad it's positive.

But I wonder:

How do they measure efficiency? Energy input for unit of production? Is production measured in dollars or product volume? If I use the same energy to make the same number of units, but sell them for twice as much, I get a lot of energy efficiency gain per dollar of output, but none per unit.
How much have other oil companies grown efficiency in the same time frame? Are you better than your industry?
How have other industries grown efficiency since 1992? Airlines are psyched for new planes that'll be more efficient. The new 747 gets 3% better economy. The dreamliner is 20% more efficient. Granted all of that doesn't drop to the total economy of the whole operation, and airlines aren't swapping out the whole fleet right away, but I have to bet it makes a hefty dent. And these kinds of gains are a lot bigger than Chevron's 1.5%

If your careful greening efforts dropped your electricity bills 1.5% in a year, would you feel you'd been successful? Would you consider yourself a leader in energy efficient living? Would you brag about it? Granted, doing that every year for 16 years might start to get tough. But I expect advances in technology shouldnt make it that hard to do.

Chevron's pathetic progress tells me they really don't care, and they're numeric misdirection says they think ecologically concerned consumers are morons. I am insulted and saddened by the 27%, not impressed. Go buy a solar start up and try to cannibalize your core business. Then I'll be impressed.

Why I don't buy the bankruptcy argument

2008-12-04T10:34:00.001-08:00

Those arguing for the auto industry bailout dismiss the bankruptcy option with an argument along the following lines:

Auto makers' declaring bankruptcy will make consumers fear auto makers will go out of business.
If consumers fear they'll go out of business, consumers will fear that in buying a car from a bankrupt firm, they'll end up with a need for that car and no company to service that need.
Therefore, consumers won't buy from bankrupt auto makers.

They argue that the precedent of airlines declaring bankruptcy and keeping customers doesn't hold because air travel is short term, and cars are long term, and have different prices, etc.

I'm willing to grant parts 2 and 3 of the argument above, and even the airline point (though I disagree). I take issue with point 1. When you have to go to congress on your knees begging for billions to survive just the next few months, there's already ample reason to fear you'll go out of business. I argue bankruptcy doesn't change that perception at all. In fact, it may reverse that perception, as it gives the company a chance to genuinely transform instead of narrowly escape.

So the consumer confidence damage has largely been done. Granted, a blanket guarantee from Uncle Sam that they'll never be allowed to go under would surely boost confidence, and while that may be what the auto industry seeks implicitly, that's the fast track to socialist inefficiency.

The only concern with bankruptcy would be the impact on trade credit with supplier firms. If GM gets to delay payment for parts under bankruptcy, then it may spark a wave of bankruptcies in the supplier firms, now strapped for cash, that freezes up capital flow further down the chain. It could bull whip. I don't know enough of bankruptcy law to know how that'd work out, exactly.

So maybe the big 3 ought to argue that they should be allowed to die from bad products and stupid labor contracts, but not from a capital markets-created cash flow problem. "Let us die as shitty car companies, not as shitty financial engineers. Give us enough money so that we may have a respectable death." That's an argument I might buy.

Pick and choose

2008-12-03T14:31:00.000-08:00

From Funny or Die

Holy shit, I agree with Mitt Romney

2008-11-19T15:24:00.001-08:00

Of course, my free market tendencies are why I'm not registered as a Democrat.

The point about the $2000 less car per car is a good one.

Impressive

2008-11-19T10:08:00.001-08:00

My Myers-Briggs type is INTJ. I consistently test as INTJ, though I'm low J and low to moderate I. Huge on NT.

So I ran my blog through this site that purports to tell you your type from your blog.

It yielded:

INTJ - The Scientists

The long-range thinking and individualistic type. They are especially good at looking at almost anything and figuring out a way of improving it - often with a highly creative and imaginative touch. They are intellectually curious and daring, but might be physically hesitant to try new things.

The Scientists enjoy theoretical work that allows them to use their strong minds and bold creativity. Since they tend to be so abstract and theoretical in their communication they often have a problem communicating their visions to other people and need to learn patience and use concrete examples. Since they are extremely good at concentrating they often have no trouble working alone.

I wonder how it works? I'm guessing words to pictures ratio, words per post and the kinds of words and topics used are good predictors. Probably easy to get a count of my use of "think" vs. count of my use of "feel". But the I? I have few comments = has few friends? I'd love to see how it does with other sites... Heather, you're getting tested. :)

Evidence that unions are crushing Detroit

2008-11-18T14:00:00.000-08:00

Nice to get the data to show what we all know to be true: Unions are crushing the US auto makers with high labor costs.

This is apples to apples, folks: All plants are in the USA.

And in the thread, folks are arguing that both sides agreed to the contracts, so they're fair. Two points on this:

It may have been a fair deal, but it may also have been a bad decision. And companies that make bad decisions deserve to go under. Agreeing to supplier contracts that give you a higher cost basis than your competition is a bad decision. It also shows you may be a poor negotiator, as others seemed able to get a better deal than you did for the same input to production.
Unions are labor monopolies. They become the sole provider of labor in a geography, usually after you've invested millions in building a plant in that geography, and you can't easily move your plant, so you have to negotiate with a monopoly. Think cable broadband in the US: Only one provider in your geography, you're not going to move house, so you accept the cable company's terms. Doesn't mean it was equitable, just the best you could do under the thumb of a monopoly.

So I still think we should offer the firms no bailout.

Fourteen words

2008-11-17T16:04:00.000-08:00

From the LA times:

"Liberty Counsel, which has fought same-sex marriage, also filed papers with the California Supreme Court today and urged the court to reject the lawsuits. The Christian legal group said the court should protect the democratic process.

"The people of California have spoken by affirming traditional marriage, " said Mathew D. Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel. "It is time to move on. Fourteen words that reaffirm the historic and common sense definition of marriage are not a radical revision to the Constitution."

So, if you only use a few words, it's not a major revision to the Constitution? I wonder how many "minor" revisions I can make with just 14 words?

Citizens are free to drive at any speed on any road at any time. (14 words)

All property within California is now owned by the state. Private ownership is abolished. (14 words)

Non-white people are not fully human and have no more rights than animals. (14 words)

California is a free and independent nation no longer part of the United States. (14 words)

Seems there's a lot we can accomplish with "minor" amendments, like like creating a free for all on the roadways, abolishing property rights, secession form the Union, and clearing the way for slavery. All very minor changes to the Constitution, really. Affirmations of traditional values. Common sense.

For 15 words, you can say this:

The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.

Minor, really.

Why I've given my Catholicism the finger

2008-11-14T11:26:00.000-08:00

And why we need to revoke churches' tax exempt status, which is predicated on the condition that they stay the fuck out of politics.

My to-do list is getting long:

1) Overturn prop 8 in CA
2) Abolish the electoral college for presidential elections
3) Revoke tax exempt status for all churches in the U.S.

Retirment savings wiped out? No sympathy from me

2008-11-13T18:31:00.000-08:00

Had a quick chat with a teammate this morning at the boat house. He was talking about pulling all his investments out of stocks, into more conservative vehicles, like CDs. I didn't tell him directly that I thought this was closing the barn door after the cows had gotten out, but I did tell him I had just put some cash into stocks.

My thinking is that things can't get much worse, and that even if they do, by the time I'm retiring, things will have gotten a lot better. Look at every crash in the last 30 years. 1980, 1987, 1990, 1998, 2001, 2002. Generally, things got about as bad as they were going to get right away, then recovered, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. I could be wrong, but I can't imagine the DJIA dropping far below 8000. Granted, it may take a while for things to start moving up, but I'm happy to get the chance to buy in at 1997 levels. It's like I get to take my mid career earning power, and invest at prices only available after I first graduated. Score.

Of course, I'm hedging a bit, and will wait another 6 months before moving any more into the market. Just prudent dollar cost averaging. I think this is a buying opportunity, not a time to run and hide.

This friend said something about his concern for 50 and 60 somethings who'd seen their retirement savings get crushed in this market downturn. My response was that if people a few years from retirement had most of their money in risky instruments, they deserve what they got. The most basic personal finance texts on Earth all tell you that risk is fine for long term investments, and short term things belong in safe vehicles. As you get close to retirement, you're supposed to move from risky stocks to safer stocks to bonds and CDs. You can choose not to do this, of course, and try to get a higher return. You just risk the losses. And call me a heartless capitalist, but I think you have to accept the losses with the gains when you take a financial risk.

Second, this is why God made limit orders. If you're going to own equities outright, put some limit orders to sell if the values slide. You don't have to watch it every day, and if the market melts, you get out. If you're a big enough grown up to buy stocks, you're big enough to manage them. Or buy a damn mutual fund and shut up.

Third, if you're 50, you're fine. You just have to wait to 60 to retire. Again, if you were planning on retiring this year, why the hell were you in stocks? If you were planning to retire at 60, don't worry. 10 years is a long time. Things will come back.

My friend, being of European heritage, thought that the government ultimately bears responsibility for assuring folks financial stability in old age. I agree in a limited scope: We have Social Security, which is effectively welfare for old people. You can retire and live on it, but not thrive. Old people who can't work and didn't save won't starve. That's the safety net. If you want a high standard of living in retirement, you have to earn that yourself. If you don't save, or invest foolishly, and have nothing, you don't get to cry to the government to buy you a condo in Boca. And if you took on more risk than you ought to have, and lost, don't look to the government for a bailout. That goes for business and citizens alike.

I'm getting a bit fed up, frankly. I don't expect Social Security will exist for me, since the Boomers are going to bankrupt it. So I'm planning to handle my own retirement. I still have not bought a house, because prices were insane. I didn't get a loan I couldn't afford, because I knew I couldn't afford it. I don't have credit card debt, because it's smarter to hit yourself in the face with a shovel than to pay 17% interest on eating out. I really don't like seeing my tax money go to subsidize other people's poor financial decisions. I'll pay for roads and schools and bridges and police and science research and the Space Shuttle. I'm not paying to reward the lemmings who all ran off the cliff together.

Granted, some limited government intervention to keep the economic shift from moving too fast is fine. But folks are going to have to reap what they sow. The free money from Uncle Sam needs to be bundled with enough pain so that only those truly in dire straits will take it. Uncle Sam needs to get his loan shark on.

GM wants money? Uncle Sam becomes the number one debt holder, the equity gets wiped out, the contracts are nullified, the management and directors replaced, and we start over. Same for the financial firms.

You want Uncle Sam to cover your mortgage? For every percentage of your purchase price he covers, he gets twice that in equity. So if you ask for a loan worth 25% of what you paid, Uncle Sam owns 50% of the equity. When you sell, 50% of the appreciation goes to him. Don't like it? Don't take it.

This nation of whiners pisses me off.

GM makes their case

2008-11-12T16:57:00.001-08:00

While they argue the benefit to the government in taxes is more than worth the expenditure, I think they assume that no one gets a new job. It also assumes that the taxes from money spent through GM wouldn't materialize as taxes when that same money is spent elsewhere in the economy. Although they don't get specific on how they calculate their tax benefit.

They also seem to argue that if the government helps them through this one tight spot, they'll be great. They're on the comeback trail.

I still don't buy that. Yeah, sometimes an entity in a weakened state would make it, except for that unforeseen thing that hits it at just the wrong time. But the unforeseen thing is hitting everyone, and if it thins the herd a bit, the herd's overall fitness goes up. Gene pool = improved. If famine breaks out just as you're getting over the flu, sorry, you're toast, and probably deserved to die because your immune system sucked.

And while one in 10 jobs may be connected to the automotive industry, it's not true that 1 in 10 Americans becomes jobless without GM. Dealers can sell other cars. Parts makers can make parts for other firms. Advertising companies can make commercials for other car companies. No big deal. I'm not saying it wouldn't, in the short run, cause some economic pain. But in the long run, it's a good thing.

But here's their case, in case anyone wants to hear it.

I wrote my Congress woman on the auto bailout

2008-11-12T11:18:00.000-08:00

Dear Representative Woolsey,

I'm writing to urge you to continue your opposition to federal bailouts of private firms, this time in the case of the US auto industry.

While I recognize the desire to keep people employed, free money from the government can only postpone the inevitable, not promote the transformation required to make these firms truly globally competitive.

Yes, the tightening of the credit market has raised the cost of servicing their operating debt. But if the US auto makers were creating products people wanted at prices people were willing to pay, they wouldn't be in tough shape. If this were truly about only the global economy and global economic crisis, all global car manufacturers would be suffering. They're all capitalized similarly, they all compete in the major world markets. The US firms are faring worst because of their own incompetence.

Instead of innovating and adapting to shifts in global demand, they've continued to rely on cheap gas and sales of more profitable, massive vehicles in the US in order to turn a profit, all while fighting increases in federal fuel efficiency standards that would have compromised this approach. The smaller, fuel efficient cars they produce for European and Asian markets aren't sold here. The UAW has extorted above fair value wages, making the companies' products unable to profitably compete on price with those from companies whose employees' wages are more commensurate with their skill and economic value creation levels.

This institutionalized selfishness and refusal to adapt to a changing world and changing demand deserves to go under, or be dramatically reforged into something appropriate for the 21st century.

Our Bankruptcy laws and processes are adequate to this task.

Let's not subsidize failure and weakness. Please oppose all efforts to put these dinosaurs on life support.

I'm sure you'll consider both the desires of your constituency as well as the best interests of the nation when choosing a course of action on this issue.

Thank you for your service.

Sincerely,

Ken is a verb
Your district, CA

"I don't believe in your religion, but also, I do"

2008-11-11T09:20:00.000-08:00

This is just darn weird. The Jews are upset that the Mormons are posthumously baptizing dead Jews as Mormons, to save them.

So if they're Jews, and don't believe in the divinity of Jebus, and don't think the Mormons have it right, then what power do they think the Mormons' ritual has?

Jews: Hey, your religion, silly words and splashing about of water are meaningless, since their supposed power arises from ideas that are totally wrong.... What are you doing? No! Don't dump that water on that guy! Stop.... Oh, Great! Now Moishe's a Mormon.

Mormons: Jebus only likes you if you're Mormon. He's all about exclusivity.

I suppose there's a level of intellectual consistency here, though, that I should respect. If you're going to believe in the supernatural, why discriminate? Seems you have to believe in all of it or none of it. I've long had a hard time with folks who believe Jesus rose from the dead and cured the sick, that prophets foretold things to come, and that we have souls, yet think faith healing, clairvoyance and hauntings are bullshit. Or those who think the magic words uttered by their priest imbue wafers with magical properties, yet the magic words uttered by other priests don't imbue other things with magic properties. As has been said before, if you don't believe in Zeus, Thor, Shiva, Aphrodite, or Odin, why not put Yahweh/ Jehova/ Allah on the list? What's the difference? Why not go all the way? Just one more god not to believe in, and you're free.

I'm surprised the Jews in question aren't also worried about Voodoo curses, bad Karma and unbalanced Chi. Believing in everything gives you a lot to worry about. Especially meddlesome Mormons.

My imaginary friend says I should deny your civil rights

2008-10-28T07:34:00.000-07:00

I regret not having gotten more deeply involved in this sooner, but it looks like the Band of Anachronist Religious Kooks for Ignorance, Not God, and Malicious Aggressive Defamation (B.A.R.K.I.N.G. M.A.D) have gotten well organized to try to amend CA's constitution to specifically take away a civil right from a specific group of people. Specifically, they want to prevent folks who'd like to marry someone of the same sex from doing so.

Seems the usual suspects (Catholics, Evangelical Christians) and particularly Mormons have gotten involved. In the article, the Mormons feel particularly singled out, but they must be bad at marketing math: If a group makes up 2% of the population and 40%-70% of the financial power, you go after them.

So I sent the No on 8 folks some money. I hope it's not too little too late. Because of where I live, and the scant mainstream media I consume, I hadn't heard enough of the Yes on 8 ads to realize they had a meaningful presence.

Then when I was in Sacramento this weekend, I saw them. The usual Children of the Corn looking blonde well groomed white people with Yes on 8 signs on a busy road. As I drove by, I gave them the finger. 30 years from now, they'll be the white people with the racist signs opposing racially integrated schools in the 1960's.

I've been so focused on the national election, I hadn't focused enough on this.

I don't really know anyone who's going to vote Yes on 8, so I'm not sure how far my own personal outreach will work, but I'm happy to do what I can to shoot down this attempt to legalize bigotry. Consider sending them one day's worth of personal luxury (Starbucks? Wine? Driving instead of public transit) to shut this down.

Why I'm not a research scientist

2008-10-15T12:56:00.000-07:00

I, like many dorky boys, while growing up envisioned myself a brilliant scientist, discovering things that changed the world. In high school, I thought I'd be a genetic engineer. Because the world needs more glow in the dark fish.

And then I got to college. Summer term, molecular biology. The entire summer's worth of lab sessions was one long experiment. Using enzymes to put a key piece of DNA into a plasmid, getting the plasmid into the bacteria, growing the bacteria on anti-biotic laced media that would kill all but those who had the desired gene. Harvesting the bacteria, lysing the cells, putting them in a centrifuge to condense the DNA down to a pinhead sized granule.

And then losing that granule on my lab bench some place, because I'm not so skillful with a pipette.

Fuck science.

I have great appreciation for those with the patience to do it. I am not one of them.

I read this today, and it reminded me of much of my undergrad lab experience.

CS is the right choice.

Which one of your children would you save first?

2008-10-08T13:32:00.000-07:00

"There's a fire in your house, and you have three children. You probably don't have time to save them all. Please tell us the order in which you'd rescue your children, and why."

Rather ass-tastic question, yes?

And maybe the debate questions last night weren't Brokaw's choices, but if they were, he's got a lot to answer for. I found this one not too dissimilar from the one above:

"There are new economic realities out there that everyone in this hall and across this country understands that there are going to have to be some choices made. Health policies, energy policies, and entitlement reform, what are going to be your priorities in what order? Which of those will be your highest priority your first year in office and which will follow in sequence?"

The artificial prioritization task makes this sound like it's written by psychology Ph. D. for a matchmaking personality test on eHarmony. "You said energy matters most. Therefore you're compatible with meek Asian women. Here are 5 of them, very eager to hear form you!"

The real limiting factor, which the question half alludes to, is spending. One can't spend unlimited amounts on everything. Yet even asking about spending priorities doesn't get at the issue: Some things are more expensive than others. One can spend more on a college education for one's children than one spends on food, but it doesn't mean you think it's more important for the kids to be educated than fed.

I think the more instructive question is not what the priorities would be, but how the candidates would prioritize. Process, not outcomes. Have the candidates talk through the thinking behind their decisions.

There were plenty of these shallow, simplistic artificial choice questions last night. Is Russia bad or good? Should green energy investment be centralized or decentralized? This may be how idiot America sees the world, through the Hollywood lens of archetypal protagonist and antagonist. So maybe most of America was at home saying "Good question, Tom!" Not me.

Those activist judges

2008-10-02T10:16:00.000-07:00

With all their pesky, activist decisions, which I hate so much. And the decisions that really annoy me are...

Right.

Allow me to name a few decisions I dislike, Sarah, without any research? How about Bush v. Gore? How about the famous U. Michigan Law case that allowed consideration of race as a factor in admissions (I'm fine with socio-economic affirmative action, not race-based). How about the DC hand gun ban getting over turned?

Now allow me to answer for you, Sarah. You should probably be upset that the court said the Guantanamo detainees actually have rights. You should probably also oppose the U.Mich law decision, too.

Then there were all those cases where flag burning is legal, and sodomy is legal, and school prayer is not. I figured you'd get those, too. Guess not.

But good job.

"Treating all employees the same = Discrimination" - Islam

2008-09-27T18:14:00.001-07:00

Next installment in the "religion is retarded" camp: A Muslim is suing because his company made him do his job moving things in their warehouse, including occasions on which those things were alcoholic beverages.

Many things strike me about this:

What kind of supreme being really gives a shit if you move some booze with a forklift? "I am the great and powerful Oz! I can do anything! I will use my supreme powers to watch over you, and keep track of whether you keep all my arbitrary commands, and will punish you if you do not! Behold my commands: Thou shalt not wear plaid! Thou shalt not come into contact with any object reflecting light of a wavelength of 461.23 nm! If thou dost, thou can get a do-over by standing on your head and whistling the happy birthday song backwards. Also, do not touch booze either directly or indirectly. Here, indirectly is taken to be second order indirection. So if you're touching a thing that's touching a thing that's touching booze, that's second order, and you are naughty for touching the booze. FYI, when gangsters in east LA pour booze on the earth to honor their dead homies, and you're wearing shoes which are touching the earth, you're touching booze, so you're naughty. Better get on your head and start whistling."
If a line of work involves doing something you don't agree with, don't take the job. I don't work for tobacco companies. I'm not in the military. If this dude had gotten a job at a sausage factory and then refused to do anything because of the pork, we'd tell him he took the wrong job. No different with the warehouse job. The dude took the job knowing he'd be in contact with Tesco's full inventory. Which makes me wonder: Tesco sells pork. Did he refuse to transport bacon on his ~~porklift~~ forklift?

Some important analysis

2008-09-24T11:21:00.000-07:00

Having done this kind of work professionally for years, I'd been wondering about this particular problem. Good to know the Pew folks are paying attention to it. The article does a great job of owning up to the vulnerabilities of this kind of research, and once more proves that just having facts based on a large sample doesn't guarantee their accuracy unless the sample is truly representative of the population you wish to model.

And in the age of folks who no longer use landlines, or barely use landlines, phone surveys are starting to miss key groups:

As implied by these results, in each of the three polls, the cell-only respondents were significantly more supportive of Obama (by 10-to-15 percentage points) than respondents in the landline sample. For example, in the September survey Obama led McCain by a 55%-to-36% margin among cell only voters, but the candidates were tied at 45% in the landline sample.

In large part, this reflects the fact that a substantial minority of the cell-only sample is younger than 30 - a demographic group that has consistently backed Obama this year. Traditional landline surveys are typically weighted to compensate for age and other demographic differences, but the process depends on the assumption that the people reached over landlines are similar politically to their cell-only counterparts. These surveys suggest that this assumption is increasingly questionable, particularly among younger people.

So a critical question for any survey these days is: How'd you deal with the problem of young people who are cell only? Younger folks are hard enough to get on the phone, let alone when they don't use land lines. Merely counting the land line folks more heavily doesn't make up for it. If the dimension of bias in your sample is correlated with the outcome you wish to measure, you're pretty screwed. Can't do a land-line survey to ask people about why they gave up land lines. Can't do a web survey asking why people aren't online. Would be similarly bad to do web survey about anything having to do with old people. Or users of Video Professor. "I'm not answerin' yer questions! You'll steal my identity! I just want to see pictures of my grandkids on the email."

What's the solution? Probably working to build a panel of younger people. Probably start by doing random intercepts on the street, in various locations (places of work, common commerce, schools) and do a survey about communication habits preferences. Be sure these results have the right demo balance. Then figure out what proportion of the population is cell only/ etc. Then do some follow up work to figure out differential response rates for the various groups. Contact them in their preferred mode: Text them? Web-survey? Call on cell/ land? Finally, do studies weighting not only for demographics but preferred mode of communication, to be sure you've got the right proportion of folks.

It's my impression that most of the political polling being done and publicized is largely based on old RDD methods with some demo weighting on the back end. These are going to miss the Obama vote in an important way.

Spineless bastards

2008-09-23T17:14:00.000-07:00

So much for leadership. The Democratic Congress is failing to grow a pair, and tell the misguided American public that expanding drilling in the US will do nothing to oil and gas prices for years. Instead, they choose to pander to popular and wrong opinion.

It's environmentally crappy, economically dumb both tactically and strategically. If the goal is to get us off oil, the strategy of expanding supply does nothing to move us there. If the goal is to alleviate short term price spikes so the transition is more gradual, again, this move won't affect supply for many, many years, so it doesn't impact the short term goal either.

What's worse is the Democrats keep blinking. They won't pull any of the strings they have in order to win. They won't shut of spending, because the Republicans will whine that the Democrats are "stranding our troops" or "shutting down the government". And as long as the Democrats are unwilling to use Congress's power to control money, they have no leverage, and get walked on. The executive has a veto. Congress has the budget. But if Congress won't use it's power to shut off the flow of money, then it has no power.

Wimps.

One of the many reasons I'm not voting for McCain

2008-09-20T18:51:00.000-07:00

Do you like science? Do you like it when people discover things that make you life better? Do you like new drugs for illnesses? Do you like new materials that are better/ cheaper/ stronger/ greener? Did you think it was worth it when we put people on the moon, and the whole planet stopped and united in hope and elation for those few brief, precious moments? Then you like science research.

And the good Senator from AZ thinks that we can do without.

Total Iraq war spend = $580B. Estimated cost of manned mission to Mars = $80B. Annual Federal spend on Cancer research = $1.2B.

I'd trade the whole war for 2 trips to Mars and 4 centuries of cancer research.

I'm perhaps unfair, as the same article mentions McCain at least has sense enough to support some research, but I think it's totally fair to point out the R&D opportunity cost of the Iraq war, and use that to question the Senator's priorities. Looking to save money? End the giant, expensive, useless war. Don't go through the science research budget with a fine toothed comb. Penny wise, pound foolish.

Why hippies shouldn't make economic policy

2008-09-19T08:55:00.000-07:00

After my men's group meeting last night, I was chatting with a few of the guys. The recent market turmoil came up.

I really haven't got a fully formed decisive opinion on courses of action. I'm rather torn. I'm generally for free markets, and minimal regulation and interference. I think financial industry forrest fires are good, and clean out that which needs burning. But I recognize that the momentum in such events can take out companies that don't really deserve to go under, and that massive failures trigger more fear which triggers behavior that triggers more failures. The vicious cycle of human irrationality needs to be stopped. I accept some government intervention, even though I wish it wouldn't happen: Let firms fold, let credit tighten, let interest rates rocket, let purchasing power drop, let prices drop. Eventually, the prudent people who patiently saved on the sidelines, refusing to participate in the orgy of greed and madness, will step in and buy and fare well. But that'd suck for all the boomers looking to retire who see their home's value cut in half right when they were about to sell and buy a condo in Florida. Of course, that's their fault for not hedging their home's value.

So, yeah, I've not got a firm opinion yet on right action in the crisis. But we were chatting. I said we'd end up with some new rules coming out of all of this.

One of the guys asked "Are you familiar with the 'derivatives' market?"

He said 'derivatives' as if it were a word from an exotic foreign language, and that merely knowing this word implied a special knowledge.

He continued "I feel this is all because of the 'derivatives' and we should get rid of them."

I was rather stunned. This is like someone saying "This forrest fire is all because of 'oxygen', and we should get rid of it." While there's some truth in it, yes, fires do need oxygen, and with no oxygen, there'd be no fires, it'd also be catastrophically harmful, and earnestly voicing the idea requires a profound ignorance of the vitality of oxygen for the functioning of all life on Earth.

I shouldn't have been too surprised, though. This is the guy who (and I'm not making any of this up) is making a go at a career as an 'energy worker' and thinks he has special powers that let him 'manipulate energy' and is trying to sell this new age voodoo bullshit at various hippie conventions full of others who've never had one skeptical, empirical thought in their lives. He also does "breath work" and literally wants to charge money for breathing lessons.

I'm all good on the breathing, thanks. I seem to be doing okay there, as evidenced by the fact that I am not dead.

So Mr. breathing lessons wants to ban all derivatives. Awesome. So no more locking in costs/ revenues through futures. Instead, we all pays our money, and we all spins the wheel, and we all takes our chances. Good times!

Airlines now get exposed to even more fuel price risk and must specialize not only in moving planes around, but buying and selling fuel. Farmers just get what they can for their crops on market day, no agreeing to a price before the date of sale. That'll help those family farms! Banks that lend you money for a home have to wait 30 years to get paid back, which means their limited supply of money gets spread over the same demand for it, so it'll cost more, so interest rates will go up. Good luck buying a home without mortgage-backed securities. But don't worry, tightening of credit will kill purchasing power, crushing home prices, so you'll still be able to afford it, it'll just be worth a lot less.

Have fun when oranges prices are 30 cents a pound, then $10 a pound, then $4 a pound. Or the prices of any food product made from corn, or wheat, for that matter show similar levels of stability. Yes, let's have everyone who owns anything with any risk attached to it have to own and manage all that risk themselves. That way, we get to pay for not only the product, but all the price risks that go along with the product. Because it's fun to pay more, and to take on more risks at the same time. Plus, shopping becomes an adventure. I wonder what bread will cost this week?

Goddam hippies.

What if they used the Iron Maiden to kill Jesus?

2008-09-17T12:20:00.001-07:00

I liked this

2008-09-12T18:22:00.000-07:00

I'm an ex-theater dork.

Full Marks for McCain

2008-08-22T15:23:00.000-07:00

For speaking truth to power, in this case, the labor ~~monopolies~~ unions.

If someone with little formal education and limited English language skills can replace you at your job, and will do it for less, then that person should replace you. Doing so would mean lower cost of production which will ultimately lead to lower cost goods, creating more value for everyone. The labor market is, after all, a market. No one is exempt from competition.

Anti-immigration rhetoric from the union rank and file is classic lower class white racism: Poor whites want to believe they're better than someone else, that somehow they deserve their relatively higher economic and social position than still poorer non-whites, and when that illusion is popped, they get pissed.

Though if people get paid $50/ hour for picking lettuce, that's a pretty great job. At that rate, if you could pick even 40 weeks/ year for 40 hour weeks, you'd gross 80K/ year pre-tax. I don't think migrant laborers pull down 80K.

Things that make me hang my head in shame

2008-08-22T14:36:00.000-07:00

as an American.

I don't think this is a hoax.

Fractions of seconds

2008-08-22T12:30:00.000-07:00

All in all masters Nationals was successful. We won the team points trophy, which was a goal I'd had for us as a club, though not a goal we actively pursued. To pursue it, you need to win a lot of races (obvious). To win a lot of races, you have to enter events that are least heavily contested. In some cases, if you're the only entry, you get the win, and the points.

In our case, we went after the most heavily contested events, and still did well.

I was in our A (Age 27+) 8+ that won. It was our first gold medal in an open (non-club restricted) national event. I also came away with two silvers and a bronze, and my other two finishes were the wood, or 4th place. I can't complain.

Trouble is, I'm not pleased. We finished just 2 points out of winning the men's points trophy. Had we finished any better in any event, we'd have won it. And most frustrating for me is that several of my finishes we were down only by tiny fractions of a second. Witness the photo finishes:

That's my boat, lane 2, 0.07 seconds out of 3rd in the club B (age 36+) 4+.

Here we are 0.75 seconds out of 3rd in the open B 4+.

Here we are, lane 4, 0.15 seconds from gold in the open B 8+:

And here we are 0.6 seconds out of first in the club C 8+. (Age 42+)

And last year at Head of the Charles, we missed 3rd by 0.32 seconds. In a race 16 minutes long.

So I find myself asking what I can do to find another second of speed. I just need to get one second faster, and all of these results change.

I'm sick of being down one second. I'm going to let my whole team know that they can just start screaming "one second" at me when I'm training to get me to drop the hammer.

Religion can't be stopped?

2008-08-12T13:06:00.000-07:00

W in Beijing:

Well first of all, if you are a religious person you understand that once religion takes hold in a society it can't be stopped.

Yet here we once more get very good reason religion should be stopped. I love how the article marginalizes this behavior calling them a "cult" and not a "religion". Crazy cult members, thinking God would raise someone from the dead. No real religion would teach something so silly...

Can it be stopped? I think teaching rational skepticism and empiricism will certainly help. I think less clever people will remain prone to supernaturalism, but I think a society can be transformed with truth.

Thank God this is almost over

2008-08-08T11:56:00.001-07:00

Next week I'm racing at US Masters National championships, in Long Beach. It's been held on the East coast more often than the West. Last time it was here (Sacramento) was 2003, and I came away with a gold and a silver.

Those medals came in the club races: All members of the crew must be from the same club. The "lettered" races have only an age restriction, but no affiliation restriction. So people are free to assemble any crew they want. And people will: ex-elites from around the country will come together and enter the races.

The big question this year for my team was: Go after the club events, or go after the lettered events? We've got no real ringers. Everyone here is a legit member of the club. And we have some crews that would be nearly unstoppable in the club events. But our goals are to be damn fast, period. So our fastest boats are going after the lettered events.

I'm in a few of them. The guys on the team look at the line ups for a few of my boats and shake their head at the obscene level of boat moving ability assembled. I love rowing in these boats: Everyone knows what they're doing, and the high grace/ high power balance makes for a tremendously gratifying experience.

I'm also torn. I'd really like to win something. And while our odds are decent in the lettered races, they're much better in the club events, which we could legitimately race, as well. I suppose it's better to go up against the best.

I'm also getting burnt out. I've been training non-stop since I got back from England, and my body is very very ready for a taper. Training for sprints racing is just painful, and the cumulative burn from day after day of full power, full speed work is beginning to make me crack a bit. I know this is exactly where I wanted to be right now, and I know that, once I taper down, I'll feel great and will feel fresh and unnaturally powerful on race day. But after this, I'll be so glad to get into head race season. Not to have to sprint again until March 2009 is just fine with me.

The morning routine with K's cat

2008-08-06T15:05:00.000-07:00

The alarm goes off, Mystery lets out a "mmreep!" and saunters up the bed from wherever he was hiding to stand on my chest, purr like mad, and put his nose under my chin. Like those progressive alarm clocks, his "meep!" gets louder and louder until I show signs of life. "Meep." "Meep!" "MEEP!" If I seem likely to roll over, he'll jump from me onto K. Then back.

As soon as I'm vertical, he leaps off the bed and scampers down the hall, to wait for me outside the bathroom. I head in to take care of my needs. He waits outside the door. If he begins to wonder whether I've fallen in, he'll nose or paw the door open, and wait for me. When he hears a flush, he runs into the kitchen.

There, we check his bowl, and, if it's empty, he gets a fresh can of Fancy Feast, his one and only favorite food.

The clever cat has been conditioned that alarm = awake humans = bathroom = next stop: FANCY FEAST.

This is pretty accurate: Only difference is, no bat, and he's usually triggered by the alarm clock, though some times, just sunlight will do.

How we'll get off of oil

2008-08-01T10:06:00.000-07:00

This isn't the first time I've heard the idea: Use solar to create electric, and, if there's no immediate demand for the electric, use the electricity to hydrolyze water, store the hydrogen for later fuel-cell conversion to electricity. Distribute excess hydrogen through natural gas infrastructure. Problem solved.

What's cool is yet another step towards greater efficiency in the process.

Way to go, science nerds.

When nerds save the planet, will we get some respect then?

Alienation

2008-07-31T18:05:00.000-07:00

I fear I've had a sufficient dose of economics and philosophy to have become completely socially incompatible with the world around me.

I'm reminded more and more frequently that my peers are all successfully on the mainstream happily ever after track, and I am not. My college class newsletter arrives, and it's gone from lots of engagements and weddings to a few weddings and a lot of babies. Many are on baby 2.0. My good friend here has a 3 month old now. Another teammate is about to get married. A classmate, whom I knew casually, but not well, found me on linked in. I thanked her for tracking me down. Her response was (and I exaggerate not): "I'm married and have a baby: look at the baby." Which reminds me how far where I am in life is from where I thought I'd be, and why I'm afraid of having kids: Your baby's mama stops being your lover and starts being a mommy, and you can kiss sex and attention goodbye.

I intellectually understand that people feel some massive emotional reward from children which they then tend to find more than adequate compensation for the financial, emotional, and individual self-actualization cost of having those same kids. They seem not to mind going without sleep, sex, free time, or hobbies. They seem not to mind high levels of poop, crying, financial worry, or clutter. And I don't despise children. Some are quite cute and well behaved and fun. But I feel no overwhelming desire to own one.

And once upon a time, I really wanted to be happily married. I wanted to be in love and have romance and all that crap. But I learned how much doing all that puts my emotional eggs in someone else's basket. I really don't care to give another human being that kind of power over me. The stress and pain during my divorce was the greatest I've ever felt in my life, and I'd forgo all chance at happily ever after, which I think is an impossible illusion anyway, to avoid ending up back in that place. I've come to see marriage as a formal exclusive supplier contract. Males offer resources and receive access to a fertile female who offers to bear him children. Her genes, which get a free pass to the next round because she's female, get a head start in the next round from his resources, his genes actually get to go on to the next round. Fair trade.

And I've moved around so much in life, have had to say goodbye so many times, have watched so many friendships evaporate in the dessicating oven of time and distance, that I carry a constant awareness that all human relationships are temporary. And the same characteristics that let me take a long term view and delay gratification also let me take a long term view and forgo attachment. Which is not a good thing if you want to feel belonging and social connection. When your human parts would like to feel cozily connected, but your rational parts recognize that attachment leads to suffering, there is conflict. And when I watch humans around me getting attached to people and things, I become aware not only of my own lack of attachment, but how I'm in such a different place from everyone around me. I feel like some kind of alien anthropologist pretending to be human. Even if I fool them on the outside, I'm not one of them on the inside.

The TV doesn't help. I can't identify with most of the people I see on the screen, either real or fictional. I had the misfortune to catch "Wheel of Fortune" while brewing beer at my friend's place, and was genuinely stunned at how moronic the contestants were. A dude twice missed puzzles requiring him to basically be able to read. Twice. I do not empathize with him. I can't pretend to fathom his stupidity.

The commercials don't help, either. I don't want anything. The emotional manipulation in the ads is as transparent to me as if the subliminal messages were just subtitles on the screen. I don't believe your man perfumes will get me laid. I don't believe that your shave/ beer/ car/ truck/ liquor will confer alpha male status upon me, at home or at work or in a bar. Hell, I don't even go to bars, and I don't work in an office, and I have no one I'm trying to impress. I don't want to see the latest hollywood explosion fest. That's for products of Bokanovsky's process. I don't want a couch, a flat screen TV, an iPhone, a Wii or a new credit card.

I'd like to learn Perl, R, and Linux.

And given the risks and opportunity costs, I just don't want a baby. I don't want a woman. I still seem to want sex, but as I've started to realize how much time and energy and hassle goes into getting it, it comes up short. The time spent working for it/ time spent enjoying it ratio is huge. Rowing has a high work/ fun ratio, too, but I think it's actually lower than that of sex, over the long run, and is less risky with less downside. Maybe that's why I do so much with it. Rowing will never leave with half my stuff. Rowing won' t nag me to make more money, dress differently, or have a baby.

I do want success in my rowing life. Yet I'm a freak in all but my rowing social circles because I train 6 days a week, get up at 5 am and go to bed by 9:30. I'm the notorious non partier, non drinker, non drugger, non smoker. People are then shocked to discover I love donuts & In-n-Out burger. Which I enjoy, but don't eat 24-7. But the non-elite athlete world doesn't get my life, and thinks I'm insane. I probably am.

I only intellectually understand, yet do not empathize with why people have kids, get married, or buy things. I do not identify with "the American dream". It doesn't appeal to me. It makes me sad, and scares me.

Yet I'm stuck in a society and in a peer set where, if you aren't actively working towards acquiring or maintaining those things, you don't have much in common with anyone. Conversations get very awkward when people realize that their assumption about the universality of these human desires crashes into the bizarre realm of my dispassionate detachment.

Thus, the alienation.

I probably need medication. Then I'll love big brother, like everyone else. And they're happy.

Mystery freaks out

2008-07-29T12:04:00.000-07:00

Video of K's cat and the toy I made for him: Cotton string connecting two elastic hair bands. I've meant to post many things for a while, finally uploaded the contents of my camera.

United Airlines: No longer their bitch

2008-07-25T01:19:00.000-07:00

On my trip over to London, during the online check-in process, I was disappointed to discover that I didn't have an assigned seat yet, and that there were only terrible options left. When I booked, I knew I had chosen a seat.

I checked my travelocity confirmation. "37A? Yeah, that was your 'preferred' seat. We noted your preference and told the airline. They crumpled your preference in a tiny ball, tossed it in the trash, and said 'You'll sit where we tell you, bitch.'"

Good to know.

But I also knew that, somewhere over northern Canada, I was about to have accrued enough miles on United in the last year for them to begin to give a shit about me. I was to become "Premier". I wondered if I'd be treated any differently on the return trip.

This morning I got my invitation to do online check-in for my return trip tomorrow. I logged in. I had assigned seats! In economy plus! For free! Without asking! For both segments! (I'm connecting through Chicago. Repeat after me: "Oh here inner-nay-shin-ul ear port".)

United generally has the best deals for SF to London, so I may come to enjoy my trips to the UK a bit more.

I hope the momentum continues

2008-07-08T15:22:00.000-07:00

Seems MA might can the electoral college system, too.

A popular vote means every vote counts. It'll boost voter turnout. When Indiana's going to go Republican, why vote if you support another candidate? If it's a national vote, it doesn't matter if you're locally a political minority.

I'm wondering what I can do to get CA to agree.

Looks good

2008-07-01T15:14:00.000-07:00

Love shining a bright light on things.

"Cleanse"

2008-06-30T15:06:00.000-07:00

K has a friend who's a big fan of faddish, pseudo-sciencey "cleanse" diets. Something like "I drink only grapefruit juice mixed with honey mixed with chili powder for a week. On day 4 of the cleanse, midichloreans scour out your colon and you gain x-ray vision."

I usually refrain from comment. If you wanna eat only arugula, whey and turnip green smoothies for a week, go for it.

We were with her on Sunday, and seems she's resumed smoking, ostensibly justified or excusable because she's about to do another of her crazy diets.

And this is the core of my problem with the "cleanse" idea in so much new age bullshit: It sells the gullible the possibility of truly reversing the damage they've done to their bodies.

It's like the myth of negative calories: "I can have a piece of cheesecake and 4 beers with my deep fried dinner, as long as I wash it all down with Diet Coke." Or, "Snackwells are fat free, so I can eat a whole box and lose weight."

Total bullshit, yet many people live as if it's true, even though they know otherwise. And it's the same with this "cleanse" crap. There may be antiquarks, but there is no anti-nicotine. The DNA in your lung cells, previously subjected to the mutative effects of carcinogens, will not, in the presence of carrot juice and curry powder, re-write itself to its original sequence. Drinking fruit juice for a week will not undo drinking gin for a year.

It's amazing what people will believe, when they want it to be true.

Religion scores more "inspired violence" points

2008-06-30T15:04:00.000-07:00

This time it's the fringe Jews. Good job, guys.