Would I be able to wear a T-Shirt saying "nigga"? The possibilities are endless...
The actor Damon Wayans has been engaged in a 14-month fight to trademark the term "Nigga" for a clothing line and retail store, a search of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's online database reveals."...
It was rejected as "immoral or scandalous."
Fun Fact: Ol' Dirty Bastard used the term 76 times in the 1999 album Nigga Please, not counting repetitions in a chorus."
Meanwhile, more fodder for the lawyers:
If Wayans succeeds in persuading the Trademark Office to permit the mark, he may have to deal with Keon Rhodan, a 29-year-old entrepreneur in Charleston, South Carolina, who has been using "Nigga" on a line of T-shirts, hoodies and other attire for six years in a part-time, trunk-of-his-car business."
2.23.2006
2.21.2006
Tax Auditor Found Dead in Office After Two Days
Nope, won't happen to me -- I never leave my apartment.
Nope, won't happen to me -- I never leave my apartment.
Man Kills Roommate Because of Toilet Paper
This reminds me of the time when my roommate came at me with a knife. Apparently I had left my toilet seat up one too many times...
This reminds me of the time when my roommate came at me with a knife. Apparently I had left my toilet seat up one too many times...
3 Years for Saying the Holocaust Didn't Occur
This man received 3 years in prison for saying the Holocaust didn't occur.
This man received 3 years in prison for saying the Holocaust didn't occur.
2.20.2006
One Man's Chance, is Another Man's Misfortune
Windfall profit taxes on oil companies have no efficiency problems if the money just transferred directly. However, there are serious incentive problems associated with an ex post taxes. Taxation in general reduces the initiative of these companies (or any company) towards any profitable project -- it reduces research and consumption -- and may increase the likelihood that they hide any profit they generate.
A very large part, however, occurred simply because ExxonMobil happened to be standing in the right place at the right time holding a bushel basket (or a huge oil drum) collecting surplus profits resulting from chance and other people's misfortune."
It's interesting to note that when people are standing at the right place at the right time, and make money, there is moral outrage, but when their in the wrong place at the wrong time, there is not.
On the topic of Ex-Poste taxation, think of the government and the oil company engaged in a game (or contract). The government can unilaterally tax - take - steal? -- from the oil company a windfall tax, but once that happens, that will change the company's behavior toward the government. They will report less profit or they will work less hard, decreasing the present value of future tax flows to the government. If they think it's worth it, they'll do it... One interesting thing is the discount rate that the government places on that present value, it can be subjective, or taken as the interest rate-- if they really need the money badly now, that future tax flow really becomes small.
Last fall, the Republican-controlled Senate approved a one-year tax increase of $5 billion for the nation's largest oil companies."
My prediction is that the accountants at the oil companies are already hard at work trying to change their profits into something... less profitable.
As to people who must drive to work: A 2005 CNN poll found 58 percent of drivers experiencing severe or moderate hardship when gasoline was at $2.22 a gallon. Now the government is predicting $2.41 a gallon for this year."
Two points of fact here: 1.) Those hardy brits once paid $6 a gallon and 2.) The government is already making a chunk of money here; in fact, they might be why gas prices are so high!:
Taxes - Taxes, including federal and local, account for about 31 percent of the total price of gas in the United States. Federal excise taxes are 18.4 cents per gallon, and state excise taxes average 20 cents per gallon. There may also be some additional state sales taxes, as well as local and city taxes. In Europe, gas prices are far higher than in America because taxes on gas are much higher. For example, gas prices in England have risen as high as $6 per gallon, with 78 percent of that going to taxes."
Windfall profit taxes on oil companies have no efficiency problems if the money just transferred directly. However, there are serious incentive problems associated with an ex post taxes. Taxation in general reduces the initiative of these companies (or any company) towards any profitable project -- it reduces research and consumption -- and may increase the likelihood that they hide any profit they generate.
A very large part, however, occurred simply because ExxonMobil happened to be standing in the right place at the right time holding a bushel basket (or a huge oil drum) collecting surplus profits resulting from chance and other people's misfortune."
It's interesting to note that when people are standing at the right place at the right time, and make money, there is moral outrage, but when their in the wrong place at the wrong time, there is not.
On the topic of Ex-Poste taxation, think of the government and the oil company engaged in a game (or contract). The government can unilaterally tax - take - steal? -- from the oil company a windfall tax, but once that happens, that will change the company's behavior toward the government. They will report less profit or they will work less hard, decreasing the present value of future tax flows to the government. If they think it's worth it, they'll do it... One interesting thing is the discount rate that the government places on that present value, it can be subjective, or taken as the interest rate-- if they really need the money badly now, that future tax flow really becomes small.
Last fall, the Republican-controlled Senate approved a one-year tax increase of $5 billion for the nation's largest oil companies."
My prediction is that the accountants at the oil companies are already hard at work trying to change their profits into something... less profitable.
As to people who must drive to work: A 2005 CNN poll found 58 percent of drivers experiencing severe or moderate hardship when gasoline was at $2.22 a gallon. Now the government is predicting $2.41 a gallon for this year."
Two points of fact here: 1.) Those hardy brits once paid $6 a gallon and 2.) The government is already making a chunk of money here; in fact, they might be why gas prices are so high!:
Taxes - Taxes, including federal and local, account for about 31 percent of the total price of gas in the United States. Federal excise taxes are 18.4 cents per gallon, and state excise taxes average 20 cents per gallon. There may also be some additional state sales taxes, as well as local and city taxes. In Europe, gas prices are far higher than in America because taxes on gas are much higher. For example, gas prices in England have risen as high as $6 per gallon, with 78 percent of that going to taxes."
2.12.2006
LPU'S
It's so hard to do research... to come up with a good paper which meets the exacting standards of academia; in light of this, I've decided to harness probability by releasing my hundreds of trained monkey minions to typing at computers and maybe they'll produce an economic paper.
Oh wait -- it's already been done with grad students, and it's even worse than you think: not one publication among us.
Speaking on the subject of publishing, here's an exerpt from The Chronicle of Higher Education on the LPU -- the Least Publishable Unit --
"In order to appear to have more publications on their CVs, young scholars are often advised to break their research down into pieces and publish those pieces in multiple articles -- i.e., LPU's.
As we talked, my young colleague described the larger picture of her investigations in molecular biology, and how she believed they would lead to a major publication within the year. But she also acknowledged that she was working on a couple of smaller papers that could be submitted to second-tier journals and that were likely to appear quickly and with little revision.
In other words, she has taken the advice of her faculty mentors and produced LPU's while also pursuing the brass ring of a major publication in a leading journal....
Having a couple of LPU's will ensure that the bean counters cannot assail her record. We both know that there are those among us who would easily ignore her aggressive pursuit of grants and a single brilliant paper in Cell if her four years here did not include the magic two papers. She's a realist and so am I, and our meeting ended on a positive note. I was confident that she was exactly where she needed to be to achieve tenure this time next year, and she was confident that she was doing the right thing by generating some LPU's."
...we're just a bunch of monkeys, churning out those LPU cycles
It's so hard to do research... to come up with a good paper which meets the exacting standards of academia; in light of this, I've decided to harness probability by releasing my hundreds of trained monkey minions to typing at computers and maybe they'll produce an economic paper.
Oh wait -- it's already been done with grad students, and it's even worse than you think: not one publication among us.
Speaking on the subject of publishing, here's an exerpt from The Chronicle of Higher Education on the LPU -- the Least Publishable Unit --
"In order to appear to have more publications on their CVs, young scholars are often advised to break their research down into pieces and publish those pieces in multiple articles -- i.e., LPU's.
As we talked, my young colleague described the larger picture of her investigations in molecular biology, and how she believed they would lead to a major publication within the year. But she also acknowledged that she was working on a couple of smaller papers that could be submitted to second-tier journals and that were likely to appear quickly and with little revision.
In other words, she has taken the advice of her faculty mentors and produced LPU's while also pursuing the brass ring of a major publication in a leading journal....
Having a couple of LPU's will ensure that the bean counters cannot assail her record. We both know that there are those among us who would easily ignore her aggressive pursuit of grants and a single brilliant paper in Cell if her four years here did not include the magic two papers. She's a realist and so am I, and our meeting ended on a positive note. I was confident that she was exactly where she needed to be to achieve tenure this time next year, and she was confident that she was doing the right thing by generating some LPU's."
...we're just a bunch of monkeys, churning out those LPU cycles
1.12.2006
12.22.2005
In support of teaching evolution:
The recent ruling by Judge John E. Jones III in Pennsylvania that Intelligent Design cannot be taught is correct.
I've found this to be one of the better discourses on this subject.
It must be nice to have the legal system behind your pet idea. I wonder how one goes about achieving that.
The recent ruling by Judge John E. Jones III in Pennsylvania that Intelligent Design cannot be taught is correct.
In his ruling, Jones said that while intelligent design, or ID, arguments “may be true, a proposition on which the court takes no position, ID is not science.” Among other things, he said intelligent design “violates the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation”; it relies on “flawed and illogical” arguments; and its attacks on evolution “have been refuted by the scientific community.”
ID is not science, and if schools are to teach science, elucidating students in the Scientific Method, then they should not teach it. For reference, the scientific method is:
Intelligent Design fails under points four. The Flying Spaghetti Monster also fails. Incidently, so does evolution.1. Observation and description of a phenomenon or group of phenomena.
2. Formulation of an hypothesis to explain the phenomena. In physics, the hypothesis often takes the form of a causal mechanism or a mathematical relation.
3. Use of the hypothesis to predict the existence of other phenomena, or to predict quantitatively the results of new observations.
4. Performance of experimental tests of the predictions by several independent experimenters and properly performed experiments.
I've found this to be one of the better discourses on this subject.
It must be nice to have the legal system behind your pet idea. I wonder how one goes about achieving that.
12.19.2005
My friend said that writing about my life would make my site more interesting...
Here goes...
I woke up.
I graded 160 essay questions, in a harsh manner, repeated multiple times on multiple questions.
I stared at the lack of progress on my dissertation.
I posted this.
The rest of my day would be too interesting and risque to speak of. It would cause heart attacks in older men and induce fainting in women. I won't even begin with the story about the midgets.
Here goes...
I woke up.
I graded 160 essay questions, in a harsh manner, repeated multiple times on multiple questions.
I stared at the lack of progress on my dissertation.
I posted this.
The rest of my day would be too interesting and risque to speak of. It would cause heart attacks in older men and induce fainting in women. I won't even begin with the story about the midgets.
12.17.2005
12.16.2005
If you ever need to tell that special someone about a special something, and you live in Los Angeles... here's a good website.
"In Los Angeles, there's an easy way to tell your sex partners you have HIV or another STD. Send them a free inSPOTLA ecard, ANONYMOUSLY or from yourAs with all things involving email and anonymity, please use responsibly.
email address"!!!
11.07.2005
So why do families in poor underdeveloped countries have lots and lots of kids? Well, the customary answer is that kids provide for you in the future, and you need lots and lots of them because not many of them are going to live.
My friend suggested that utility was increasing in the number of kids you had. I counterproposed that children were a form of contractual enforcement; that the more kids you had, the greater the costs of either party ditching the other. However, if you think about this enough, it doesn't really make sense.
Someone suggested that utility was actually decreasing in kids over time. So, new kids equals higher utility. Maybe.
We had the brilliant idea that there was a increasing return to scale or some type of skilled labor complementarity at work here... it just gets easier to make 'em, darn it!
The discussion turned from production of kids to naturally... trading children... I'll give you little Tommy here for your Timmy plus three marbles and a cupcake...Why don't we see this? (Bsides all the ethical and moral dilemmas that brings up) The fact that we don't observe this happening says that there is some type of inefficiency screwing up the market mechanism.
After thinking awhile we finally think we got it. It's similar to another problem involving cars and dealerships and why cars depreciate instantly once they're off the lot. Drumroll please... the Lemon Problem. The kid might be a lemon, and you'd be stuck.
My friend suggested that utility was increasing in the number of kids you had. I counterproposed that children were a form of contractual enforcement; that the more kids you had, the greater the costs of either party ditching the other. However, if you think about this enough, it doesn't really make sense.
Someone suggested that utility was actually decreasing in kids over time. So, new kids equals higher utility. Maybe.
We had the brilliant idea that there was a increasing return to scale or some type of skilled labor complementarity at work here... it just gets easier to make 'em, darn it!
The discussion turned from production of kids to naturally... trading children... I'll give you little Tommy here for your Timmy plus three marbles and a cupcake...Why don't we see this? (Bsides all the ethical and moral dilemmas that brings up) The fact that we don't observe this happening says that there is some type of inefficiency screwing up the market mechanism.
After thinking awhile we finally think we got it. It's similar to another problem involving cars and dealerships and why cars depreciate instantly once they're off the lot. Drumroll please... the Lemon Problem. The kid might be a lemon, and you'd be stuck.
4.13.2005
Porn With a Purpose
Two European eco-crusaders are taking their love of nature to the extreme by running a porn site to raise money for the cause. "Everyone must try to create something good using what they have," said Tommy Hol Ellingsen, half of the provocative pair. "We had nothing, just our bodies." The site features hard-core videos of the eco-hippies (and their crunchy companions) getting nasty in a Norwegian clear-cut and other locales. But it also dishes out raw facts about environmental destruction. And talk about going green -- the couple has raised almost $100,000 by selling site memberships. Now the problem is finding nonprofit groups who aren't spooked by the money's illicit provenance. "What is morality when people are destroying the world?" asks Ellingsen, who calls some green groups "too boring."-- Lewis Wallace
I am wondering what they mean by "crunchy."
Courtesy of Wired News
Two European eco-crusaders are taking their love of nature to the extreme by running a porn site to raise money for the cause. "Everyone must try to create something good using what they have," said Tommy Hol Ellingsen, half of the provocative pair. "We had nothing, just our bodies." The site features hard-core videos of the eco-hippies (and their crunchy companions) getting nasty in a Norwegian clear-cut and other locales. But it also dishes out raw facts about environmental destruction. And talk about going green -- the couple has raised almost $100,000 by selling site memberships. Now the problem is finding nonprofit groups who aren't spooked by the money's illicit provenance. "What is morality when people are destroying the world?" asks Ellingsen, who calls some green groups "too boring."-- Lewis Wallace
I am wondering what they mean by "crunchy."
Courtesy of Wired News
12.08.2004
Games with Funny Names
Shall We Play A Game? How about this one?
Up Against the Wall Motherfucker: This game took as its subject the student riots at Columbia University and was originally published in the 11 March 1969 number of the Connection, a supplement to the Columbia Daily Spectator, near the date of the first anniversary of the riots. Jim Dunnigan, then aged 25 and described in the game's "designer's notes" as a history major in the School of General Studies, had already designed 1914 and Confrontation and was at the time working on Origins of World War II, but was asked to take time out to work on this design.The game is for two players, Radicals and Administration. The map features eleven tracks for each of the political subgroups in the game (e.g. Black Students, Moderate Strikers, Alumni, Harlem Community). The objective for the players is to have the most influence, determined by the positions of markers on these tracks, for their side by the end of the twelfth turn. During a turn, players deploy abstracted units representing their political leverage onto the tracks to 'attack' the other player's units (as tokens, Dunnigan suggests small pieces of paper coloured red or marijuana seeds for the Radicals, and blue bits of paper or capsules of Seconal for the Administration) and so move the markers towards their 'end' of the tracks. The 24 Contingency Cards add some randomness by taking or giving units of wherewithal to one player or another.
Or the ever so pleasant nuclear war?
Nuclear War: A comical cataclysmic card game for 2-6 players of all ages. A humorous confrontation between touchy world powers as each player attempts to sway his opponents' populations with diplomacy, propaganda, and finally nuclear weaponry. Little old ladies defect in electric cars and the dread SUPERGERM spreads devastation! Takes about 10 minutes to learn and about 30 minutes to play. Invented by Doug Malewicki in 1965, this game has remained popular for over 20 years. Anyone who ever had to participate in a "civil defense drill" by hiding under his or her desk in grade school, or ever had a bomb shelter in the back yard should play this game. One of the few games where it is possible to have no winners (often everybody loses!). You have to play it to believe it. This game's a blast!
And this post wouldn't be complete without the token crazy economist game: Fuck Your Buddy:
Shall We Play A Game? How about this one?
Up Against the Wall Motherfucker: This game took as its subject the student riots at Columbia University and was originally published in the 11 March 1969 number of the Connection, a supplement to the Columbia Daily Spectator, near the date of the first anniversary of the riots. Jim Dunnigan, then aged 25 and described in the game's "designer's notes" as a history major in the School of General Studies, had already designed 1914 and Confrontation and was at the time working on Origins of World War II, but was asked to take time out to work on this design.The game is for two players, Radicals and Administration. The map features eleven tracks for each of the political subgroups in the game (e.g. Black Students, Moderate Strikers, Alumni, Harlem Community). The objective for the players is to have the most influence, determined by the positions of markers on these tracks, for their side by the end of the twelfth turn. During a turn, players deploy abstracted units representing their political leverage onto the tracks to 'attack' the other player's units (as tokens, Dunnigan suggests small pieces of paper coloured red or marijuana seeds for the Radicals, and blue bits of paper or capsules of Seconal for the Administration) and so move the markers towards their 'end' of the tracks. The 24 Contingency Cards add some randomness by taking or giving units of wherewithal to one player or another.
Or the ever so pleasant nuclear war?
Nuclear War: A comical cataclysmic card game for 2-6 players of all ages. A humorous confrontation between touchy world powers as each player attempts to sway his opponents' populations with diplomacy, propaganda, and finally nuclear weaponry. Little old ladies defect in electric cars and the dread SUPERGERM spreads devastation! Takes about 10 minutes to learn and about 30 minutes to play. Invented by Doug Malewicki in 1965, this game has remained popular for over 20 years. Anyone who ever had to participate in a "civil defense drill" by hiding under his or her desk in grade school, or ever had a bomb shelter in the back yard should play this game. One of the few games where it is possible to have no winners (often everybody loses!). You have to play it to believe it. This game's a blast!
And this post wouldn't be complete without the token crazy economist game: Fuck Your Buddy:
Here's a description from another site:
One interesting tidbit from the book by Sylvia Nasar, A Beautiful Mind, is from when Nash was a graduate student at Princeton in 1950. Students Nash, Shapely, Shubik, and McCarthy, along with another student named Mel Hauser, invented a game involving coalitions and double-crosses. Nash called the game-which was later published under the name ["So Long, Sucker"]-Fuck Your Buddy. The game is played with a pile of different-colored poker chips. Nash and the others crafted a complicated set of rules designed to force players to join forces with one another to advance, but ultimately to double-cross one another in order to win. The point of the game was to produce psychological mayhem, and apparently it often did. McCarthy remembers losing his temper after Nash cold-bloodedly dumped him on the second-to-last round, and Nash was absolutely astonished that McCarthy could get so emotional. "But I didn't need you anymore," Nash kept saying, over and over.
And finally, if you REALLY want to be popular, try the Dollar Auction (by Shubik, one of the guys mentioned above) Also has information on Fuck your Buddy
One interesting tidbit from the book by Sylvia Nasar, A Beautiful Mind, is from when Nash was a graduate student at Princeton in 1950. Students Nash, Shapely, Shubik, and McCarthy, along with another student named Mel Hauser, invented a game involving coalitions and double-crosses. Nash called the game-which was later published under the name ["So Long, Sucker"]-Fuck Your Buddy. The game is played with a pile of different-colored poker chips. Nash and the others crafted a complicated set of rules designed to force players to join forces with one another to advance, but ultimately to double-cross one another in order to win. The point of the game was to produce psychological mayhem, and apparently it often did. McCarthy remembers losing his temper after Nash cold-bloodedly dumped him on the second-to-last round, and Nash was absolutely astonished that McCarthy could get so emotional. "But I didn't need you anymore," Nash kept saying, over and over.
And finally, if you REALLY want to be popular, try the Dollar Auction (by Shubik, one of the guys mentioned above) Also has information on Fuck your Buddy
A Little Knowledge is a Dangerous Thing
Wired News Again:
In 1933, Herbert Hoover vacated the White House and took up permanent residence in the annals of cluelessness. During his one term, the stock market crashed and the United States slid into the Great Depression. But, as history has it, Hoover looked on blithely and did little. Some scholars have argued that this portrait of the president is unfair - that if he was indeed clueless, it wasn't entirely his fault. Back then, the US didn't track many of the vital signs it now uses to monitor our economic health. For example, the federal government didn't begin trying to measure unemployment until 1930. As Stanford University's David Kennedy puts it, Hoover didn't realize he was flying into an economic storm because "he was flying by the wrong instruments."
The main point of this article is that President Hoover din't know what the heck he was doing, because at that time, the study economics was truly in the boonies. He didn't realize he he was flying into an economic storm because he didn't have the right instruments, indicators, or smart economists telling him what to do.
Consequently, the Great Depression happened, where everything sucked for a long time until the first world war. Everyone was depressed, and prozac hadn't been invented yet.
However, this horrible horrible situation might just happen again:
Since the time of Adam Smith, we've used the wealth of nations as a proxy for the well-being of nations. We measure whether life is getting better by checking whether the good numbers (GDP, personal incomes, and so on) are going up and the bad numbers (unemployment, inflation, and so on) are going down. However, over the past half century, something strange has happened. The US's per capita GDP - the value of all the goods and services a nation produces divided by its population - has nearly tripled, but American well-being hasn't budged. We've grown almost three times richer but not one jot happier. There's ample evidence that in all postindustrial societies, material wealth and broader happiness are no longer closely in sync...That's why two prominent social scientists, Ed Diener of the University of Illinois and Martin E. P. Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania, have proposed creating a national index of well-being.
All we need to do is collect the data. For instance, we can now tabulate how much cell phone sales add to GDP. But have these phones made us more stressed out because we can no longer elude our evil boss or annoying brother-in-law? Or have they made us feel more secure because we know we can call for help if we're stranded? Let's ask. Some people wring their hands over how much the US spends on health care. But what if we measured to what extent new drugs and medical technologies improved the quality of people's lives? Maybe the expense would look like a bargain. Assemble measures like these into a national well-being index and, in tandem with revamped economic indicators, it could generate a higher-res picture of the national condition.
The first question i have is: you may not be happy if you get what you want, but will you be happy if you don't get what you want?
The second question i have is: i think an indicator for happiness is silly, not to mention impossible to implement. I can just imaging reporting to the president, "Mr. President, people's happiness levels are down from a month ago. More people were unable to elude their evil boss, although less people reported being stressed out by phones. If we leave out the eluding the evil boss sector, happiness levels are up." This isn't a question is it?
The main gist is, economics is a study of relative happiness. If you get more stuff, you will be relatively happier. If you get less, you will become more unhappy. It does not guarantee absolute happiness. Our national indicators are there to study the aggregate ability of the people to get more stuff. They are relatively more happy. Imagine if God just dumped everyone here onto the moon, where there's no stuff (or air). They would be relatively unhappy. Simple.
The article concludes with an ominous warning to the president:
Wired News Again:
In 1933, Herbert Hoover vacated the White House and took up permanent residence in the annals of cluelessness. During his one term, the stock market crashed and the United States slid into the Great Depression. But, as history has it, Hoover looked on blithely and did little. Some scholars have argued that this portrait of the president is unfair - that if he was indeed clueless, it wasn't entirely his fault. Back then, the US didn't track many of the vital signs it now uses to monitor our economic health. For example, the federal government didn't begin trying to measure unemployment until 1930. As Stanford University's David Kennedy puts it, Hoover didn't realize he was flying into an economic storm because "he was flying by the wrong instruments."
The main point of this article is that President Hoover din't know what the heck he was doing, because at that time, the study economics was truly in the boonies. He didn't realize he he was flying into an economic storm because he didn't have the right instruments, indicators, or smart economists telling him what to do.
Consequently, the Great Depression happened, where everything sucked for a long time until the first world war. Everyone was depressed, and prozac hadn't been invented yet.
However, this horrible horrible situation might just happen again:
Since the time of Adam Smith, we've used the wealth of nations as a proxy for the well-being of nations. We measure whether life is getting better by checking whether the good numbers (GDP, personal incomes, and so on) are going up and the bad numbers (unemployment, inflation, and so on) are going down. However, over the past half century, something strange has happened. The US's per capita GDP - the value of all the goods and services a nation produces divided by its population - has nearly tripled, but American well-being hasn't budged. We've grown almost three times richer but not one jot happier. There's ample evidence that in all postindustrial societies, material wealth and broader happiness are no longer closely in sync...That's why two prominent social scientists, Ed Diener of the University of Illinois and Martin E. P. Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania, have proposed creating a national index of well-being.
All we need to do is collect the data. For instance, we can now tabulate how much cell phone sales add to GDP. But have these phones made us more stressed out because we can no longer elude our evil boss or annoying brother-in-law? Or have they made us feel more secure because we know we can call for help if we're stranded? Let's ask. Some people wring their hands over how much the US spends on health care. But what if we measured to what extent new drugs and medical technologies improved the quality of people's lives? Maybe the expense would look like a bargain. Assemble measures like these into a national well-being index and, in tandem with revamped economic indicators, it could generate a higher-res picture of the national condition.
The first question i have is: you may not be happy if you get what you want, but will you be happy if you don't get what you want?
The second question i have is: i think an indicator for happiness is silly, not to mention impossible to implement. I can just imaging reporting to the president, "Mr. President, people's happiness levels are down from a month ago. More people were unable to elude their evil boss, although less people reported being stressed out by phones. If we leave out the eluding the evil boss sector, happiness levels are up." This isn't a question is it?
The main gist is, economics is a study of relative happiness. If you get more stuff, you will be relatively happier. If you get less, you will become more unhappy. It does not guarantee absolute happiness. Our national indicators are there to study the aggregate ability of the people to get more stuff. They are relatively more happy. Imagine if God just dumped everyone here onto the moon, where there's no stuff (or air). They would be relatively unhappy. Simple.
The article concludes with an ominous warning to the president:
Without some new measurements - of both the modern economy and the modern predicament - you may find yourself drifting, Hoover-like, into unexpected airspace and onto the least flattering pages of history.
At least the president wouldn't have to worry about drifting hoover-like through unexpected airspace when he's in space. har har har.
By the way, for happiness, here is a helpful link
12.07.2004
Borrowing Constraints
Hard times have hit Ephraim, Utah, thanks to the collapse of the local bank, destroyed after a cashier embezzled $5 million and a polygamist Mormon sect defaulted on a pile of loans. For years, the Bank of Ephraim profited by providing the sect high-interest loans on a series of dicey operations, such as a watermelon farm with no melon plants. Unbeknown to bank managers, members of the fundamentalist sect had vowed to borrow as much money as possible to prepare for the end of the world. The sect's reclusive leader, Warren Jeffs, takes a share of members' business profits. He is buying ranches in Colorado and Texas; authorities believe he may be planning a getaway. Wired.com
Polygamy, fugitive and watermelons. What's there not to like... Interestingly enough, this little reflects a little thorn in the side of economists known as the final period problem. Specifically, before The-Final-Period, when you're going to DIE, you will paa-rty-like-craa-zy. In order to party-like-crazy, you will borrow-like-crazy. Well, since everyone is doing this, and everyone knows everyone's doing this, no one will lend to you. This also has side-effect that no one will trade with you, and also, that you CANNOT party-like-crazy.
So how do we fix it? We put in borrowing constraints, which have the unintuitive result that they only bind on rich people... why? cuz when you're rich, you can run away with everything you've borrowed cuz you never ever have to borrow again.
There are other fixes that can be done, but it's always hanging ominously in the background.
And so that's why we use assumptions! "What problem? There is no problem. PARTY TIME"
Hard times have hit Ephraim, Utah, thanks to the collapse of the local bank, destroyed after a cashier embezzled $5 million and a polygamist Mormon sect defaulted on a pile of loans. For years, the Bank of Ephraim profited by providing the sect high-interest loans on a series of dicey operations, such as a watermelon farm with no melon plants. Unbeknown to bank managers, members of the fundamentalist sect had vowed to borrow as much money as possible to prepare for the end of the world. The sect's reclusive leader, Warren Jeffs, takes a share of members' business profits. He is buying ranches in Colorado and Texas; authorities believe he may be planning a getaway. Wired.com
Polygamy, fugitive and watermelons. What's there not to like... Interestingly enough, this little reflects a little thorn in the side of economists known as the final period problem. Specifically, before The-Final-Period, when you're going to DIE, you will paa-rty-like-craa-zy. In order to party-like-crazy, you will borrow-like-crazy. Well, since everyone is doing this, and everyone knows everyone's doing this, no one will lend to you. This also has side-effect that no one will trade with you, and also, that you CANNOT party-like-crazy.
So how do we fix it? We put in borrowing constraints, which have the unintuitive result that they only bind on rich people... why? cuz when you're rich, you can run away with everything you've borrowed cuz you never ever have to borrow again.
There are other fixes that can be done, but it's always hanging ominously in the background.
And so that's why we use assumptions! "What problem? There is no problem. PARTY TIME"
12.06.2004
10.22.2002
Fun with numbers
So this happened in class...
Professor: Substituting in these historical values into the model will predict a risk free real return of 5% a year. Unfortunately, in the real world the risk free return has historically been 1%.
Student (raising hand): Philosophically speaking, if this had been physics and they had predicted a gravitational constant 5 times larger than reality, they would have trashed their model. Why are we learning this?
Professor: Well it needs tweaking.
9.25.2002
Piled Higher and Deeper
My roommate is in the Masters of Education program here at UCLA, and from what he tells me, it's not really worth much. Two days ago, they played a game where they had to chose one of four animals by going to a corner of the room. Then they had to say how they were like the animal, and how they could interact with all the other animals. Today they made a poster of their feelings. Imagine teaching a group of inner city gangsters how to paint by numbers.
The REALLY BIG THEME of UCLA is this idea of social justice. When asked to define it, the faculty immediately refer you to antiracism and multiculturalism.
One sad thing, due to the number of very angry individuals in his class, he couldn't empirically point out that 1) The class is ethnically composed of approximately 50% caucasian and 50% asian and 2) The class is approximately 15% male.
A militia is good and all but...
An article proposing that, in the new world of terrorism, a democratic militia would prove much more useful than old central-government-type armed forces. It's a patriotic little piece, which I like (patriotic), but then it goes further to question whether such armed forces are even necessary in such a world (after all, they didn't stop the terrorist attacks)... and that's when the my ears perked up. .
My thesis, in response to this article, would be that this "democratic militia," which Ms. Scarry refers to in such positive tones, has only, and can only work under the circumstances that such terrorist attacks entail. It would be suicide for a nation to believe that these circumstances apply generally, and it wouldn't be cost effective to align our national forces towards these circumstances.
It is true, that "to date, this egalitarian model of defense is the only one that has worked against aerial terrorism on American soil," for Sept. 11 and Dec. 22, 2001, but Ms. Scarry herself limits the scenario of these terrorists attacks to an "aerial" situation using as justification two examples. It is ludicrious to use, as justification for the disbandment of a centralized defense, two constrained examples that occur in the span of one year. Terrorists do not only attack using airplanes. They can also attack using suicide bombers as well as other methods. The results of a citizenry in stopping suicide bombers would be approximately equal to soldiers stopping a suicide bomber: a lot of dead people. Except well trained soldiers have a better chance of stopping a bomber at a distance, than citizenry.
In addition to this, there is an entire section of the article devoted to Flight 93, and the collective actions that they took, which is used to justify how the current strategic thinking of "speed" in any conflict today is unimportant. On the contrary, I would argue that it is still entirely relevant. How many airplanes crashed into the world trade center before the citizenry reacted? While the citizenry did realize the gravity of the situation, and appropriately responded -- the pentagon had responded as well. They had sent jets up with orders to shoot down passenger planes. The emphasis on the timing which the citizenry reacted is inappropriate; it seems that the ulterior motive of Ms. Scarry is to criticize the the centralization of power by pointing out to their results: The pentagon would have sent a passenger plane down in flames, while the reaction of the citizenry had at least the possiblity that the plane might be saved. It seems that both types of armed response, centralized and democratic, occurred within a reasonable time frame. The novelty of the attack also probably contributed to the slowness of the Pentagon in formulating a response; if those had been nuclear missiles from Russia, our response would have been swift and assured.
I will focus now on what I believe is the main weakness of a democratic response. Consider for now, what would have happened, if those passengers had taken a vote, and decided on majority rule to not rush the terrorists?
The constitution is an excellent document, because it not only allows for the decentralization of power, but also because it requires it where it is most needed. The majority vote issue, that underlies what occured on flight 93, but doesn't appear in Ms. Scarry's article, is precisely the reason for a strong federal government in charge of the armed forces. The constitution was written because the Articles of Confederation were too loose: each state retained too much individual power; consequently, against an intelligent aggressor with a strategy of attacking individual states, the other states would not be required, nor would they have the incentives to support the individual. Once the individual fell, the aggressor could then embark on his next victim. In short, the centralization of the armed forces contractually forces collective defense for all states, instead of leaving states to individually fend for themselves.
This model is weak when applied to terrorist groups, because they are small and have no definite "nation," but history has a precedent. Terrorists actually resemble vikings during the feudal period. During that time, it was actually easier for individual nobles to defend his own fief from random raids, than a king with an army. But, as the technology changed, vikings became obsolete, fiefs consolidated into nations, and national standing armies were created. Vikings lacked the infrastructure to do any real damage, and it quickly became apparent that only nation states, with their armies, were dangerous.
What this means is that centralized forces evolved as an evolutionarily superior method to defeat and protect against nations and non-nations, i.e unorganized barbarians.
The existence of terrorist groups does not mean that the strategic climate of the world has changed. Nations still exist, and until they become the minority, and terrorist groups the majority (doubtful because in order to be effective, terroristst require infrastructure, making them easy targets for a standing army) the only appropriate way to deter these types of aggressors would be a centralized defense. Making national defense a democratic process carries with it a danger that your fellow citizen can chose to not defend you.
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