July 27, 2005
“Got a problem?... Tell it to my bot!”
United recently advertised $599 R-T flights from New York (among other cities) to Hong Kong (over a specified two month period). I found this out from the Travelzoo Top 20 special travel deal list, whose link to the offer I clicked on to reach the United site’s flight scheduler, which referenced $299 one-way, at least. One way or two, specific time or flexible, I was only able to find much more expensive flights on the United site (from $1500 to several thousand)! Screw this, I said as I grabbed the phone to dial United to complain about this BS and demand the special fare. Nope, it was me who was to be screwed. There was no escape from robot operators even on the phone, and the only thing the damned robots were willing to do was take me through exactly the same choices as on the website, with exactly the same results.
Among the new things I have noticed on this return to America is that we’ve passed some sort of threshold of allowing our businesses to fob off a dystopian robot hell as “customer service”. We want to scream about our problem, but instead we have to listen to recorded lists of guesses of what our problem might be, or other irrelevant options like promotions. Our anger boils as we wade through various lists skirting the edge of any error (ours or the bot’s) that will send us back to the beginning. Time?... the bot’s got all the time in the world! We scream at the bot, and it gives some blow off message before hanging up on us. We hit zero hoping to escape the inhumanity, and it sometimes works! Sometimes we finally zero in on our problem, or even get to a human. Other times the bot just extorts time, frustration, even money, from us.
Surely THIS is what the terrorists are so upset about!
Posted by Matt at 02:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (2)
July 25, 2005
Try a Private Club
Like a university club, or some other private city club, if you've had enough with heroine addicts coming into your Starbucks. It is a public venue after all. OTOH, I love the no smoking policy in China, where there are so few respites from smokers.
Posted by Matt at 06:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (2)
General Zhu Blows Bull
Maybe from Kim Il Song, or if an Islamist group seized Pakistan, I might buy it, but sorry, not modern China. This General Zhu's nuke threats against the US wash away quickly when he concedes that doing so would me an China would lose all major cities east of Xian. Could the US credibly claim a willingness to lose all major cities east of Chicago, plus California? It reminds me of Monty Python's Knight of Ni who insists his enemy keeps fighting even after he had had all his limbs chopped off. This is not a statement of China's strength, but rather a back-handed claim of weakness. (FYI, chui1 niu2, or "blowing bull", is the Chinese expression for bullsh-tting. Funny that both cultures invoke the bull to symbolize bluffing.)
Posted by Matt at 04:51 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (1)
Nine Queens
Last night I watched the Argentine film Nueve Reinas (Nine Queens). In the style of The Spanish Prisoner and Wild Things, it is a movie where everyone is conning everyone else, and you're never sure, at any given moment, who is conning and who is being conned (with layers of conning and clever plot twists piled on top of each other).
I enjoyed Nine Queens so much that I rented The Spanish Prisoner--one of my favorite movies--afterwards and, watching them back to back, a fundamental difference became clear:
In Nine Queens, everyone you meet, you feel and assume that they're trying to con everyone else in the film. And if you realize, at any given point, that a character is not trying to con someone (but is himself being conned), then you feel pleasantly surprised. But in The Spanish Prisoner, your reaction is the exact converse: you think, at every point in the movie, that each of the characters is a good guy -- and when you realize, at any particular point, that a particular character is actually a bad guy, you are then disappointed.
This difference, then, is not just the difference between two con man movies, but a summary of the difference between the American and Argentine cultures. In Argentina, it seems, everyone is always trying to screw everyone else -- and when you find someone who isn't, then you are pleasantly surprised. But in America, it seems, no one is trying to screw anyone -- and when you find someone who is, you are disappointed.
The percentages of people conning others may end up being the same with both countries--I don't know the numbers--but these difference in expectations give very different feelings to interacting with people and having relationships of all sorts in both countries.
As a side-note, is there a name of this genre of movies? And, other than the three I listed above, does anyone have any other movies of this sort to recommend? If you also enjoy these sorts of who-is-conning-whom? movies, then you'll love Nueve Reinas.
Posted by Morgan at 01:10 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (2)
Theodore Dalrymple Fired for being too old
On being sacked as a book reviewer for being too old
by Theodore Dalrymple
Posted by Morgan at 10:33 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
July 22, 2005
Karl Rove vs. the CIA
The whole flap involving Joe and Valerie Plame Wilson these days is centered on the question of whether anyone leaked Valerie Plames name to the press in the context of her being a CIA "operative." To me that issue is chaff.
The bigger issue here is what should an administration do if CIA personell are using their positions to mount an active operation against it.
In theory, the CIA works for the executive. In practice, it has a lot of autonomy. The CIA also has a unique capability to mount disinformation and destabilization campaigns. If it uses those capabilities against the administration, that is a serious problem.
It is an even more serious problem if the agents doing it are "covert."
It is clear that anti-administration people in the CIA sent anti-administration Joe Wilson on a sensitive "fact-finding" mission. It is also now clear that Joe Wilson lied about the facts he found and why he was sent.
The administration tried to defend itself from this CIA operation and is now faced with an independent counsel investigating it for outing a CIA agent. Pretty clever on the part of the CIA. The real question at this point is what should the administration have done about this CIA misbehavior and why is the press so ready to ignore the ELEPHANT in the room of an active disinformation campaign by CIA agents against the administration.
Posted by Alex at 10:47 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)
July 21, 2005
Starbucks vs Heroin
While waiting for my Starbucks coffee this morning, I noticed that there was this young tattooed white girl standing nearby drooling onto the mints at the register. She appears to be one of the variety of heroin users that populate the north end of union square and pass through this starbucks with some regularity.
I am in general pretty libertarian about alsmost everything but it feels like there is clearly a problem here. She's been in the store for about 20 minutes and has just walked out with a frappacino that she purchased. Its not like she isn't a customer. Its just that she makes the other customers nervous and disrupts the normal flow. Starbucks can't kick her out because she is in fact a customer. She is doing no harm other than drooling on the mints. She looks very young but is probably old enough to be making these sorts of decisions for herself.
That being said, everyone in the store recognized that there was something wrong with this girl They just had no idea what to do about it and perhaps the correct answer is in fact to do nothing and just wait for the girl eventually to figure out she needs a frapaccino and then leave.
Its just not sitting well with me....
Posted by Alex at 11:43 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
July 15, 2005
The Left -- Geniuses and Criminals
I'm no leftist. But I am a lefty, as are many of my friends. Lefties are just like everyone else, except that they're usually insufferably smug about their leftieness. OK, so lefties are shorter than righties, don't live as long, and are more likely to die in horrible accidents while misusing big scary industrial machines designed for righties. You probably don't want to mention that to a lefty, though, because the one area where lefties really excel is in smacking righties around. That's why they're way overrepresented in sports, particuarly contact sports. (Interestingly, African tribes with a lot of internal fighting have more lefties than relatively peaceful ones). And of course, like any self-conscious minority, lefties love to meet other lefties, and get really excited when, for example, they discover that their newphew who's the cutest baby on earth is a lefty.
The most common reason lefties will give you when you ask them why they're so insufferably smug about their leftieness is that a hugely disproportionate number of big-time geniuses throughout the ages have been lefties. Then again, so have a disproportionate number of criminals. And that's where the interesting speculation begins. It turns out that there are 10% more male lefties than female lefties, which isn't too surprising, given that geniuses and criminals are also disproportionately men. Now, why would that be?
The various feminist views of why most criminals are men boil down to the feeling that men are just less socially aware, and criminal activity is at root anti-social. But even if that were true, it wouldn't account for the large amount of crime that's ultimately economic. Hence the explanation that most criminals are men for the same reason most CEOs are men: because most economic activity, legal and illegal, is conducted by men. If it is men who feel the most pressure to accumulate wealth, then it is they who will be most of the burglers, drug dealers, extortionists and muggers as well as most of the world's stockbrokers and truckers. Another explanation comes down to pure physics: part of why most rapists are men and most prostitutes are women is that men are better at raping and women are better at prostituting. Or, breeding: maybe something in the way women are raised makes them less susceptible to criminal behavior. Or, biology. There's the idea that criminal activity is caused by weird glandular disorders which are more commonly found in men, like hyperthyroidism, or by testosterone, which causes aggressive behavior. Economists probably argue that incentives play a large role as well. Men take greater risks because historically, they had more to gain. Women, no matter how successful, can only have a handful of children. Men, on the other hand, can have thousands. So from an evolutionary standpoint, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense for women to engage in risky behavior; for them, it's much less likely to translate into more children.
Now, what about those pesky geniuses? Much more controversial terrain (Under the rules of political correctness, you can say "women are better behaved" because women are a "good" group; you can't say "men are better drivers", because men are a "bad" group). The feminist view, again, is that all terrorists are men because men are sort of mean -- but all mathematicians are men because women are brought up differently, or discriminated against, or just have better things to do. Then there's the more common-sense idea, offensive beyond scope of scientific inquiry, that women can't compete in chess because they're just not as good at it. But, feminists argue, most chess players are men. OK, take a look at scrabble. Most players are women. Most tournament players are women. Most of the top rated tournament players are women. Most of the very top rated tournament players are women. Glance at the current rankings of the top 500 British scrabble players by rank. Scroll halfway down the page -- mostly women. Now look at the top 30. 29 men. Take away the politics and you just end up with a lot of male geniuses, in the same way that you end up with a lot of male criminals. It's not just almost all non-political nobel prize winners, it's everywhere.
And the explanations are similar. The feminist view -- women are just discriminated against. The biological view -- bigger heads, bigger brains, more smarts. The evolutionary view -- variance generally is simply a better strategy for men than women, and genius is simply one exmaple of variance. And so forth.
But hang on. Is it just possible that these things are related? Perhaps criminality is simply an under-rated strategy. In a society that's fairly lenient towards white-collar criminals, at least, if you're enough of a genius to get away with it, then maybe being a criminal is a smart way to go. Maybe following the letter of the law is for suckers! Or, maybe part of being a genius is that your mind is wired up differently from other people, and so you simply don't behave in the same way. In fact, much of what's criminial is simply following a different path from what most people do. Like taking drugs, or having sixteen wives. Which brings us back to question of lefties: criminals or geniuses? How about Bill Clinton, our most recent lefty president? Or Ronald Reagan, who was forced to become a righty as a child? Or George H.W. Bush, another lefty president, defeated by a lefty challenger? Or Gerald Ford, another lefty republican? You decide!
I'll leave you with a fun miscellaneous fact. Why do we drive on the right? Traditionally, you always passed people on the left so if there was trouble, you could get your weapon or fist out faster, and position it between you and your your adversary. This didn't change until the French revolution, and there are a number of conflicting explanations for this. One is that Napoleon, a famous lefty, ordered his armies to march on the right as he went around conquering Europe and forcing the evil metric system down everyone's throat. Another is that French aristocrats drove around in a panic forcing the peasantry over to the right. Americans, on the other hand, have been right-hand drivers since colonical times, according to Wikipedia.
Posted by Dan at 05:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)
July 14, 2005
Liberal Bias
The Washington Post reported today about a group of Massachusetts politicians protesting yesterday that Senator Rick Santorum wrote in an article about the child molestation scandal in the Catholic Church:
Priests, like all of us, are affected by culture. When the culture is sick, every element in it becomes infected. While it is no excuse for this scandal, it is no surprise that Boston, a seat of academic, political and cultural liberalism in America, lies at the center of the storm.
The Post further reported that a spokesman for Santorum, Robert Traynham, said yesterday that child molestation and abuse by priests was
particularly worse in Boston and the reason why, according to the senator, is because of some of the social institutions that call Boston home. When you take a look at Harvard University and some of the other universities in Boston, I think it's an open secret that there is a liberal bias, unfortunately.
More research may actually be needed before a causal link can be established between Harvard University and child molestation in the Catholic Church. Perhaps the Sociology Department should investigate. Or the Divinity School.
Posted by Lonne at 11:46 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
July 13, 2005
Racism to Stop Terrorism
Yesteray, the NYTimes (among others) reported that:
A companion of the black youth severely beaten last month in Howard Beach, Queens, in what the authorities called a hate-crime attack by whites, was arrested on Sunday night and charged with participating in a gunpoint robbery aboard a subway train in Brooklyn, the police said yesterday.
The context here is that there were multiple reports that the Howard Beach victims were wandering around in that area because they intended to steal a car, but by the time they were attacked, had decided no to do so.
All of this begs the question, if they had stolen a car what are the chances that they would have been caught. Would the car have been recovered? Who would restore the time and energy of the owner lost while the car was missing?
The bigger version of this question is how do we deal with people who are not deterred by the criminal justince system or crime that the system cannot prevent. The solution of the Howard Beach attackers was to look at these folks, GUESS that they were there to commit a crime (why were they wandering in a very white residential neighborhood at 3AM?), and respond by preemptively attacking the potential criminals.
Absent a truly pervasive big brother style police state, there will always be such crime. The damage of this sort of crime can be extensive if it is e.g. terrorists intent on doing harm.
One could argue that the Howard Beach attackers were "racist" but they were correct in their assesment of these individuals. As a society we actually want more people to act preemptively to stop crime. The problem we face is that such action will also result in innocent people being misidentified as criminals.
Perhaps the solution is to reward correct assesment [see update below]. Make sentencing much more lenient if the behavior to thwart a crime was reasonable or if the defense can present ex-post-facto "preponderance of the evidence" that there was a reasonable likelihood/risk that the victim intended to commit a crime.
Note: I think there was a Tom Cruise/Spielberg movie about this but I can't remember the name.
Update: Lonne reports that the movie I was trying to recall is Minority Report. Also, clarification: When I said we should reward correct assesments, I did not mean in an absolute sense. I just meant that we should have a reduced sentencing category for assaults on prospective criminals in the same way we have reduced sentences for murder in self-defense. Alternatively, we can rely on jury nullification to get the same result, but I am intuitively less comfortable with that model.
Posted by Alex at 06:11 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
Japanese extending worklife passed retirement
From becker-postner:
In our last posting, I argued that many mentally and physically healthy older persons in developed nations retire earlier than is socially efficient. Since retirement benefits are not sensitive to the accumulated social security taxes that a person pays on his or her earnings, workers who become eligible to retire often find the improvement in retirement benefits from working longer too small to provide enough incentive to continue working.We come back to the retirement issue this week because I discovered during a just concluded trip to Japan that this country has taken the lead in encouraging much later effective retirement than other developed nations. The system in Japan is a bit complicated, but has several important features that could be implemented in the United States and other nations. The Japanese approach also has implications for many comments on our discussion last week- I respond to these separately.
Posted by Alex at 06:04 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
Does Demography Trump Democracy?
The premise of Morgan's post about the EU is that unintegrated Muslim immigrants will vote in religious governments that will roll back human rights, impose hardships on non-muslims and women, and perhaps end democracy.
At the same time, he and I supported the war in Iraq partially on the theory that it can be made into a Western-style democracy despite having very predominantly Muslim population.
So on the one hand we might have some concern about the preservation of France as a French (Catholic) country. On the other we might have concern about the survival of French democracy.
One of the truisms of history is that democracies don't go to war with one another (or that countries with McDonald's don't go to war with one another). Should we care if ethnic France dissappears? Does this truism only apply to non-muslim democracies? What sort of threat would a MUSLIM democratic nuclear armed France actually pose to us or the world?
Many paleo-conservatives and leftists have argued that democracy is available only to cultures that can support it. Would a Muslim France really end rights and democracy?
Update: The Sunday Times of London does a great review of the dissaffected Muslim youth that may have planted the bombs.
Posted by Alex at 03:58 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
You Can't Control The Environment
From James Q Wilson's review of Freakonomics
After wrongly minimizing the role of IQ, Freakonomics returns to the issue of parental influence on educational achievement. Here, Levitt and Dubner make some excellent points. Whether a mother works, whether the neighborhood is depressing, whether the child watches a lot of television, whether he or she attends a Head Start program—all of these factors have next to no educational effect. The fact is that parental behavior has a limited impact—which means that many of the villains allegedly responsible for our children’s low school achievement are not villains at all.
Posted by Alex at 03:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
In Defense of the EU
A long conversation that Alex & I had with a very smart French libertarian last night resulted in me changing my mind on the EU: I didn't think I could be optimistic about the EU's meta-national semi-socialist government, but now I am--or, more specifically, I think it's the lesser of all evils. THis is a fundamental shift in viewing the EU and its future for me.
The French libertarian wouldn't agree with the following analysis--he made different points, but hinting at these--and what follows below are the logical conclusions of his insights, framed strongly.
There are two key insights that I've been overlooking in analyzing the EU. First, the EU is undemocratic and, for all its socialism, is fundamentally committed to maintaining some form of the basic rights of liberty, like the freedom of speech. (Not in an ideal, perfect form; but in some form at least.)
The second point is that, it is inevitable that various European countries, such as France, will have a Muslim majority (that is largely extremist and unintegrated into French society) within the next 50 years. It is somewhat likely that, once they are a majority, that--through democratically electing men with such ideologies--they will try to impose various undemocratic and profoundly anti-libertarian ideas, perhaps even modified forms of the Sharia. And, when this happens, the EU--if it is still around and still powerful--would never let this happen in one of its states and would use force to make sure it doesn't happen; the EU is powerful enough to prevent such problems in any individual countries.
Therefore: Europe is now faced with a choice between two evils. One evil is a meta-national semi-socialist undemocratic government, whose petty regulations on every aspect of economic life will result in the increasing impovershment of the European people. But this government will prevent a civil war from erupting when majorities of extremist Muslims in European nations try to use democratic methods to impose Sharia on the populations. The other alternative is, no EU or a very weak EU, which--when this happens in one of his member states--is unable to adequately do anything, and the result of this is civil war in Europe.
And the powerful, socialist EU is the lesser of these two evils. The EU is the only force capable of preventing France from becoming Saudi Arabia.
Posted by Morgan at 11:57 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
July 11, 2005
Google Earth
As Dan points out, Google Earth is really an incredible piece of software. People are impressed when they use it, but I've noticed that many people miss some of the more impressive features. Some suggestions:
1. Turn on the "terrain" check box and go to the Grand Canyon or any other area where there is topographic data. You can fly around at ground level in 3D.
2. Go to the downtown of the major US cities, and turn on the "buildings" checkmark. In New York, for example, you can fly around the Empire State Building in 3D.
3. Try driving directions. Not only can you see the route overlaid on the satellite image as you can with the Google Satellite functionality of Google Maps, each direction shows up on the Google Earth map where the direction is located.
I'm looking forward to seeing how Google will use the technology to make money.
Posted by Lonne at 02:32 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
July 09, 2005
Jobby
While we were having a conversation today about the polo match/fundraiser we had just attended, a friend today used the word "Jobby." He posted a suggested definition of the word to his blog, Not Funny:
Job·by, (jb) n. pl. job·bies --An activity that is performed, either in exchange for payment or on a non-profit capacity, in lieu of a regular occupation and approached vicariously, without serious consideration of profit or success. [Conjunction of job and hobby] Commonly held by members of upper-class families, jobbies are activities that have all the trappings of a real job including a stated objective (making profit, fundraising, lobbying, etc.), a certain routine and schedule, and responsibilities towards others, without the emotional stake that a real job involves. In opposition to real employment, jobby-holders truly care neither for the money they make nor their level of success. They know they need to be employed, in order to be accepted amongst their peers and in order to hold on to that trust fund, but they either haven't really found what they really want to do, don't want to risk it all doing it, are too lazy to try or have tried and failed. So they take on a jobby -- a real job that they approach as if it were a hobby. Getting fired is either not a concern or not an option (Dad owns the company?). Jobby-holders frequently chide others in the organization for their anal adherence to deadlines, their constant anxiety over the organization's success, their concern when the paycheck comes in a few days late and their lack of ability to relax. When they have subordinates, they frequently prefer to engage them as their friend rather than their boss. They put most of their efforts into creating a fun, stress-free work environment for their peers and employees. They like being liked. Jobby-holders measure their success by how many smiles they put on people's faces every day. Jobby-holders are fun people to know.
Posted by Lonne at 10:55 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (6)
Video Tape
In BaitCar: Only in Canada, Morgan says:(Language note: I just realized that the phrase "video tape" will probably soon vanish, since "video tape" is now in the process of vanishing.)
It may actually take some time for "Video Tape" or "Tape" to leave the vernacular as a verb, since it is so widely used and there is not an ideal substitute. We still universally call mobile phones "cell phones" even though they stopped using cellular technology years ago and there was even an attempt by the industry to differentiate "cellular" from "digital" (TDMA) technology. I know many people who, when recording a show on their DVR, say that they are "taping" it, even though there is no tape involved. This will likley last for a while.
Posted by Lonne at 10:33 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (2)
BaitCar: Only in Canada
Click on, and watch, the video found by clicking on the gray image of the guy in the car that says "Impact." It is a video, filmed inside the car, of a hoodlum hijacking a car and driving it around.
Context: Baitcar is an initiative of the Vancouver (actually Surrey), BC police dept in which the police set up, well, bait cars--cars that are meant to be stolen--and secretly video tape clearly the perpetrator, track where the goes and is left and other information--and then they post (at least some of) these videos on the Internet. It has helped them find the perps, although I didn't find any statistics on the program.
(Language note: I just realized that the phrase "video tape" will probably soon vanish, since "video tape" is now in the process of vanishing.)
Also, while he's driving around, he's listening to the (Canadian band) Barenaked Ladies' If I had a million dollars.
Posted by Morgan at 04:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
July 08, 2005
China's Does Indeed Produce Pop Culture
While many pop melodies come from Japanese, HK, or Taiwan pop songs, the Mainland pop music industry is quite big. With such hits as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and House of Flying Daggers (whose plot fell apart as badly as War of the Worlds'), Mainland movies are already big in America. Mainland art and fashion are booming. China has a pop culture. True, humor is deficient (I've often felt that better humor is what China needs most) and the TV shows are dull. But the fact that they read a lot of US books doesn't mean they are not culture producers; it means they are hard-working and serious about catching up, and they respect US achievements.
You think you can't silence political expression (and impose a one-child policy) without silencing (technological and artistic) creativity, but Chinese people are allowed to be, and are increasingly, creative.
Posted by Matt at 04:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)
Price Tags
One of the best markers of a First Worldom to me is the consistent use of price tags in an economy. With the capitalist attitude, there is a price for everything, and if you can pay it, great, and if you can't, then we'll offer you something else more within your range. Everything is transparent and allows the client to make the best decisions for himself. With the third world or socialist attitude, let's negotiate and haggle about everything. I will size you up and charge the highest price I can that I will guess you're willing to pay. Everyone expends significant amount of energy negotiating--even for the most trivial items--and he who masters this skill best wins.
This analysis--if correct--can be used to judge how an economy is doing, and how it will do, by comparing the frequency of price tag use across different economies. Although this barometer probably won't be useful: in Argentina (always my marker of a third-world country), at least, the correlation between chain stores and stores that use price tags (and local/non-chain stores and not using price tags but haggling over everything) is just about a perfect 100% correlation. That's an exaggeration--but only a slight one.
This led me to speculate as to the origin of the price tag. I thought of this while in an Au Bon Pain with a friend yesterday, and I speculated that it was born with the department store (it sounds like something the old Sears would have done). My friend thought that it came with the rise of the old mains street General Store, where the proprietor and employees weren't able to keep track of everything being sold and their cost.
If anyone has any leads on this, let me know!
Posted by Morgan at 02:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Beijing 2008 Olympics: Meet "Market China"
What the 2008 Beijing Olympics offers China is:
1) National pride and purpose; government legitimization.
2) Massive development to make Beijing even bigger.
3) The world's spotlight, to imprint on the world the image of an orderly, but still booming, dynamic, modern Market China and erase Mao's Red China (except to the extent red brings more medals!).
4) Tourism, trade, FDI.
Corruption? Sure. Bubble? Probably. There are small costs.
Posted by Matt at 02:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
July 07, 2005
Nature vs Nurture: IQ vs Will
Check out this interview with U Chicago Economist James Henkman:
Enriched early intervention programs targeted to disadvantaged children have had their biggest effect on noncognitive skills: motivation, self-control and time preference. We know that there's a scientific basis for this finding. The prefrontal cortex, which is a center of these noncognitive skills, matures late. The executive function, the very definition of ourselves as people, the way we motivate ourselves, these things are malleable until quite late stages—into the 20s, according to research by neuroscientists. This means that in principle we can modify these behaviors. Noncognitive skills are powerfully predictive of a number of socioeconomic measures (crime, teenage pregnancy, education and the like) as I show in a recent paper with Jora Stixrud and Sergio Urzua.Kids in the Perry Preschool Program, an early childhood intervention, are much more successful than similar kids without intervention even though their IQs are no higher. And the same is true of many such interventions. There is a lot of research on such programs. I'm trying to integrate studies of early childhood into a common economic framework for policy analysis. This is the goal of my recent Handbook of the Economics of Education chapter coauthored with Flavio Cunha, Lance Lochner and Dimitriy Masterov.
So know lots of smart people. There is a decent amount of data showing that IQ is substantially hereditary. But now we have this other data showing that environment affects other aspects of behavior that are just as important to success. We can breed for high IQ but we need culture for general success.
Does this mean that some people's and countries cannot be as competitive? After all it has to be the case that culture substantially affects motivation, self-control and time preference.
Liberals and libertarians tend to think the big issue is institutions. Conservatives believe the big issue is culture. It looks like the paleos have a point. How depressing.
Posted by Alex at 02:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Stop Foreign Aid to Africa
Der Spiegel interviews Kenyan economics expert James Shikwati:
Shikwati: Such intentions have been damaging our continent for the past 40 years. If the industrial nations really want to help the Africans, they should finally terminate this awful aid. The countries that have collected the most development aid are also the ones that are in the worst shape. Despite the billions that have poured in to Africa, the continent remains poor.SPIEGEL: Do you have an explanation for this paradox?
Shikwati: Huge bureaucracies are financed (with the aid money), corruption and complacency are promoted, Africans are taught to be beggars and not to be independent. In addition, development aid weakens the local markets everywhere and dampens the spirit of entrepreneurship that we so desperately need. As absurd as it may sound: Development aid is one of the reasons for Africa's problems. If the West were to cancel these payments, normal Africans wouldn't even notice. Only the functionaries would be hard hit. Which is why they maintain that the world would stop turning without this development aid.
[...]
Shikwati: Of course. Hunger should not be a problem in most of the countries south of the Sahara. In addition, there are vast natural resources: oil, gold, diamonds. Africa is always only portrayed as a continent of suffering, but most figures are vastly exaggerated. In the industrial nations, there's a sense that Africa would go under without development aid. But believe me, Africa existed before you Europeans came along. And we didn't do all that poorly either.SPIEGEL: But AIDS didn't exist at that time.
NEWSLETTER>
Sign up for Spiegel Online's daily newsletter and get the best of Der Spiegel's and Spiegel Online's international coverage in your In-Box everyday.Shikwati: If one were to believe all the horrorifying reports, then all Kenyans should actually be dead by now. But now, tests are being carried out everywhere, and it turns out that the figures were vastly exaggerated. It's not three million Kenyans that are infected. All of the sudden, it's only about one million. Malaria is just as much of a problem, but people rarely talk about that.
[...]
SPIEGEL: In the West, there are many compassionate citizens wanting to help Africa. Each year, they donate money and pack their old clothes into collection bags ...Shikwati: ... and they flood our markets with that stuff. We can buy these donated clothes cheaply at our so-called Mitumba markets. There are Germans who spend a few dollars to get used Bayern Munich or Werder Bremen jerseys, in other words, clothes that that some German kids sent to Africa for a good cause. After buying these jerseys, they auction them off at Ebay and send them back to Germany -- for three times the price. That's insanity ...
Posted by Alex at 12:18 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (2)
Warning! Time Suck!
If you thought Google Maps was cool, Google Earth is the logical next step. This is pretty much the coolest piece of software I've ever seen.
Posted by Dan at 10:18 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
July 06, 2005
Olympics: Losers and Winners
So the Olympics weren't given to NY--surprise, surprise.
Do the Olympics do more good than harm to a city? Let's compare:
Benefits wrought by the Olympics coming to your hometown:
1.) Tourists (and the spending that they bring)
2.) Momentary fame (and the sexiness that it brings)
3.) Permanent structures (and the utility that they bring; plus, these cool new builds are sexy, too)
4.) Real Estate owners make more money (who can make more money with higher rents & higher sales prices; especially small property owners in areas likely to be redeveloped)
5.) Temporary Jobs (always a good thing, everything else being equal)
Let's compare this with the negatives wrought by the Olympics coming to your hometown:
1.) Tourists (and the crowds that they bring)
2.) Momentary fame (and the problems that heightened attention brings, especially upon certain people)
3.) Permanent structures (massive new structures and complexes that most likely aren't needed, since the market hasn't caused them to be built thus far)
4.) Real estate owners lose more money (with higher taxes to pay; and, small property owners in areas likely to be redeveloped: in this post-Kelo era, their property is more likely to be taken through eminent domain)
5.) Higher rents (historically, rents zoom up tremendously during the Olympics and only go down slightly afterwards)
6.) Higher taxes (to pay for it all of the new construction & the costs of the Olympics that always run over)
7.) Heightened terrorism fears (Especially in NY)
The positives fall into two categories: money (for certain select groups) and sexiness (for everyone).
And the negatives fall into two categories: everyone paying out more money for all of this, in various forms (and, more generally, suffering inconveniences for it) and, secondly, select groups of people being hurt in particular by the Olympics.
The Olympics--in other words--take money from everyone, inconvenience everyone, and hurt certain groups in particular; in order to redistribute the money to certain other select groups--all while being really sexy and cool. Okay. That's it. This pattern sounds familiar...
Desperately seeking the Olympics, to me, is the sign of a second-rate city -- the way desperately seeking anything is the sign of a second-rate anything. I always think of the Olympics going to Sarajevo in 1984, and upon hearing that NY was a finalist competing to be the chosen city, I kept on thinking, "When did NY start competing with Sarajevo?".
But - interestingly - the finalists this year were all first-class world cities: Paris, London, Moscow, and Madrid. The summer Olymics always goes to a great city, but this year it was between the best of the best. This suggests that something has changed in the Olympics, or that this year is an aberration. I think it's a deeper change, because this is consistent with the ideology of the Olympics suggested above, if the above analysis is accurate. The inevitable consequence of that ideology in practice is turning the group into an exclusive club of elites--the best turns into the best of the best--and the only way of joining it is for the elders to declare their approval of you. As always in that world, life is great if you're chosen to be in the party, but that's it.
Separately - but still on the Olympics (and since I haven't yet launched my site to hold people to their predictions) - I'll admit here that I made a prediction in 2001 that came false. Shortly after 9/11, I predicted that in the first possible summer Olympics that were to be chosen after 9/11, NY would be chosen as the host city, as a 9/11 sympathy vote. I even almost invested in some NY real estate near the neighborhood in Greenpoint that would've been developed for the stadium, expecting to cash out then. (Instead, I started a company and invested my money in myself!). My analysis proved wrong and the reason is, after 9/11, NY briefly had the sympathy of the world. But what I didn't expect was for Bush to go into Iraq and for the world media opinion to turn against the US. I didn't know Bush well enough in 2001. Once it was clear that the US was going to go into Iraq and that the European media wouldn't stand for it, then it became clear that we wouldn't win this Olympics bid.
If this analysis is correct, then the natural question is, "How come it went to Blair, Bush's staunchest ally?". Blair's sin of following the strong man (as opposed by being the strong man) is forgiveable and he is, after all, fundamentally a good European who strongly supports the EU and, formerly, the EU Constitution.
Posted by Morgan at 06:09 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (1)
Red
An economist just brought to my attention the remarkable discovery just published in Nature that wearing red makes humans better at sports. From the abstract:
. . .across a range of sports, we find that wearing red is consistently associated with a higher probability of winning. These results indicate not only that sexual selection may have influenced the evolution of human response to colours, but also that the colour of sportswear needs to be taken into account to ensure a level playing field in sport.Unfortunately, no correlation was found between wearing polka dots and competitive polka ability.
Posted by Lonne at 04:49 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
Andrew Rasiej is campaigning to make NYC wireless and needs your help
All donations recieved by July 11 will be matched 4 to 1 by the city. Note that means that if you are a NYC taxpayer and you don't donate, your money will be used to fund a candidate you DON'T want. If yuo are reading this blog, you probably want NYC to be wireless. Donating to his campaign can help us get there. Here is the donate link.
Posted by Alex at 01:41 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
Number of Podcast users to reach 60 million by 2010
InternetWeek reports that podcasting will experience 15x growth in the next 5 years.
That makes sense. The hardware for podcasts is sufficiently cheap (and getting cheaper) and sufficiently good that there is no reason why your cellphone or other device won't have podcasting capabilities.
One bet here is that podcasting becomes a server side rather than client side activity. The handheld devices are things that stream from the pool of content located on the internet wirelessly. Another bet is that it can all be pre-cached client side. For example all the music sold in the Virgin Megastore down the street probably fits in 1TB (~$1000 today and probably $250 in 5 years).
The best shot the content companies have of protecting themselves from file sharing is to build the practice of interacting with their services into new user listening habits. The best way for them to do that is to support better wireless connections everywhere. They could start with New York City
(Disclosure: I am an investor in Podcast.com)
Posted by Alex at 10:56 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Life choices are not so categorical
Quick thoughts on Lonne's How To Live Your Life post:
#1 could also involve living according to some well defined set of principles. A lot of sources argue that if you stabilize on some core principles, the rest of your decision follows straightforwardly from them and you end up living a better life with less stress. Many versions of these rule sets also take care of #2. For example, Judaism has Tzedakah and Tikkun Olam.
#3 and #4 as articulated seem like the same thing on different timescales. I would articulate #4 has live life so YOU have interesting stories to tell vs living life so other people have interesting stories to tell about you. I think #4 is partially about optimizing around how you relate to new and old friends.
#5 Is failure. Why not become a Lotos Eater/Heroin addict? It is the only one of these deeply in conflict with the rest. 1-4 directly conflict with an excess of #5.
PS Yes this was a comment earlier, but we've decided that our comments on each other's posts should appear as posts.
Posted by Alex at 02:44 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
July 05, 2005
My New Favorite Word: Pilpul
Pilpul: The Yiddish word describing Rabbis debating a fine point the Bible and Talmud, going back and forth and changing their minds and splitting hairs over the meaning of every single word, with the ultimate goal of discovering the truth of the issue in question.
Every Jew knows the stereotype of the Rabbis arguing like this, and of our secular Jewish habit of applying it to the world outside of the Yeshiva. But now I know the word for it.
A good link on the word & method: Pilpul. An excerpt:
A method of Talmudic study. The word is derived from the verb "pilpel" (lit. "to spice," "to season," and in a metaphorical sense, "to dispute violently" [Tosef., B. B. vii. 5] or "cleverly" [Shab. 31a; B. M. 85b]). Since by such disputation the subject is in a way spiced and seasoned, the word has come to mean penetrating investigation, disputation, and drawing of conclusions, and is used especially to designate a method of studying the Law (Ab. vi. 5; Baraita; B. B. 145b; Tem. 16a; Ket. 103b; Yer. Ter. iv. 42d). For another explanation of the word, as derived from the Hebrew "pillel," see J. B. Lewinsohn, "Bet Yehudah," ii. 47, Warsaw. 1878.Description of Method.
The essential characteristic of pilpul is that it leads to a clear comprehension of the subject under discussion by penetrating into its essence and by adopting clear distinctions and a strict differentiation of the concepts. By this method a sentence or maxim is carefully studied, the various concepts which it includes are exactly determined, and all the possible consequences to be deduced from it are carefully investigated. The sentence is then examined in its relation to some other sentence harmonizing with it, the investigation being directed toward determining whether the agreement appearing on a superficial contemplation of them continues to be manifest when all the possible consequences and deductions are drawn from each one of them; for if contradictory deductions follow from the two apparently agreeing sentences, then this apparent agreement is not an agreement in fact. Again, if two sentences apparently contradict each other, the pilpulistic method seeks to ascertain whether this seeming contradiction may not be removed by a more careful definition and a more exact limitation of the concepts connected with the respective sentences. If two contiguous sentences or maxims apparently imply the same thing, this method endeavors to decide whether the second sentence is really a repetition of the first and could have been omitted, or whether by a more subtle differentiation of the concepts a different shade of meaning may be discovered between them. Similarly if a regulation is mentioned in connection with two parallel cases, this methoddetermines whether it might not have been concluded from the similarity of the cases itself that the regulation applying to the one applied to the other also, and why it was necessary to repeat explicitly the same regulation.
The pilpulistic method, however, is not satisfied with merely attaining the object of its investigation. After having reached the desired result in one way, it inquires whether the same result might not have been attained in another, so that, if the first method of procedure should be eventually refuted, another method and another proof for the result attained may be forthcoming. This method is followed in most of the Talmudic discussions on regulations referring to the Law, and in the explanations of sentences of the Mishnah, of which an example may be given here.
Posted by Morgan at 07:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
How to Live Your Life
There seem to be a reasonably limited number of fundamental ways that people live their lives. A partial list might include the following, with of course some overlap:
1. Focus on Religion-- following the rules your religion lays out. This often earns a ticket to a pleasant afterlife, the right to be reincarnated as something nice, etc.
2. Do Good -- where "good" generally involves working towards making other people less unhappy.
3. Leave a Legacy -- making a long-term impact can involve anything from having children to writing an epic poem that people will still read thousands of years later or building something that will last beyond the Big Crunch or the heat death of the Universe.
4. Live Your Life as if Someone Will Write a Biography -- this doesn't really require the expectation that someone will actually write a biography, but does involve doing things that other people would find interesting. These things don't have to be pleasant or fun, just interesting.
5. Enjoy It -- the "you only live once" mentality can manifest itself anywhere from blatant hedonism to focusing on more "mundane" pleasures such as settling down with a loved one and having a stable family.
Some people appear to be able lock on to one of these approaches and focus on it, some people are able to combine approaches, and others fluctuate between different approaches or don't know which they should use. Some daily activities let you hedge nicely between approaches, others only make sense as part of one approach. Since many of life's other basic decisions ("What job should I do?" "Where should I live?" "Who should I be with?", etc.) can be seen to cascade from this fundamental decision about which approach to take to life, switching between fundamental approaches can lead to cognitive dissonance and frustration.
Posted by Lonne at 05:06 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
Black Holes, Advanced Civilizations, and SETI
At one of the Accelerating Change Conferences a while back, I heard John Smart argue that Moore's law has been advancing computational/energy density since prehistoric times. The computational/energy mixture is because every bit operation generates heat. We are now actually reaching the point where modern cpus have an energy density near that of our Sun. If Moore's law continues at the 18 month rate its been operating, we should reach the point of building CPUs that are defacto black holes in the next 50 years.
Since black holes are probably not the most pleasant places actually to live, another idea is to use black holes as a big heat sink. In this post, Wei Dai argues that all advanced civilations probably live near black holes for exactly this reason. A side effect of this sort of lifestyle is that it probably makes things like SETI less useful as these cvilizations would produce little to no meaningful radiation to detect. And if the timeframe to go from basic to advanced civilization is on the order of hundreds of years (as it may be in our case), we may just miss them when they happen.
Posted by Alex at 12:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Good Angel Investing Summary
From DrakeView
I particularly liked:
I am working on an idea that fits these criteria now. Although I question how much angel money companies that visibly match all of these up front really require once they get to prototype. And, until there is a prototype, this stuff is all very speculative.
Ten Measures of Idea Value:
- Large market category
- Company or concept that could be #1 in the space
- Simple, intuitive and easy to explain product or business
- Leverages the internet for communication or service delivery
- Can be widely adapted today
- Can be addictive
- Viral
- Indispensable
- High Margin (with recurring revenue)
- Profitable in less than 18 months or with a single round of financing
That being said, I also do some angel investing and I like the overall discpline outlined in the post.
Posted by Alex at 11:58 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
How to measure national wealth creation: Pop Culture
A few weeks ago, Matt asked me in conversation why I was bearish on China. A central point I made was that China has no political freedom and this results in a failure to account for the small scale wealth creation on individuals. I asked Matt about book stores and he said that most of the books sold in China are AMERICAN. To me this was a big indicator of a problem. You can recognize real wealth creation when there is a local culture that produces cultural products. US culture is EVERYWHERE. But, India has Bollywood and via Marginal Revolution it turns out that South Korea has started becoming a major cultural exporter. The export of South Korean culture is also leading to demand for other Korean products.
Cultural production happens when countries are free enough to allow their citizens to express ideas freely. China doesn't have it. Korea does and despite being much smaller is beginning to outcompete China in this field.
The one child policy is another major reason to be bearish on China but that would be another post.
Posted by Alex at 11:49 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
July 04, 2005
Fatiguing the Opposition into Defeat
The Declaration of Independence, like any great piece of writing, provides new insight upon re-reading it--even after the 1,000th time re-reading it. Reading it again last night, a few sentences stood out to me that I had not particularly noticed before, including the following:
"He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures."
Two points on this sentence. First, one of the complaints about the King is that he calls the legislature in a distant place? Look at how much our international standards have sunk, with the world barely complaining when the tyrants of most countries around the world don't even call legislatures at all!
Secondly, the King was "fatiguing [the representatives] into compliance" - that's a great point: a common strategy used to win a battle is merely to wear out their energy until they can't go on anymore.
Posted by Morgan at 10:37 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
July 03, 2005
Career Patterns
Some noteworthy points from James Citrin & Richard Smith's The 5 Patterns of Extraordinary Careers. I found the book on a table in the Grand Cafe, picked it up and read it, and was surprised at how much I enjoyed it.
Note that these phrases, numbers, and interesting points he makes are pretty self-explanatory so I'm not going to explain (ie, he has a great phrase, "The Diminishing Returns of Overdelivering" that is a great point, and from his phrase it is so self-evident that I'm not going to bother explaining what he means). This, too, is what the book is like overall--and my general recommendation regarding this book: reading the chapter & section & subsection titles, you get all the data and analysis you need; but the points there are pretty good.
Also, compared to the history of self-help books: the quality of these books are getting higher and higher!
Now, here are some notes from the book:
In this book It's Not about the Bike, [Lance] Armstrong said, "As an American, I was a gate-crasher in a revered and time-honored sport, and I had little concept of its rules, written and unwritten, or its etiquette." [p 15]
A chart on how successful executives & professionals define success (% are estimated based on the bar graphs):
HOW SUCCESS IS DEFINED
[Motivator: % of respondents for whom that Motivator is a significant factor]
Freedom in the job: 73%
Well regarded by company/industry: 71%
Family happiuness: 68%
Learning: 61%
Health: 56%
Help Others: 43%
Net worth: 41%
Choice of home/community: 45%
Annual Compensation: 45%
Time with family/friends: 37% [p. 55]
The Leadership Matrix:
X-axis: Alignment (Goals for the team aligned with individual)
Y-axis: Trust (open, honest communication, broad delegation of responsibiity).
Quadrant 1: Benevolent Leader (Focused on the success of others)
Quadrant 2: Good Citizen (Honest, ye tnot always inspiring)
Quadrant 3: Mercenary (Self-motivated free-agent)
Quadrant 4: Pirate (Assembles team around a common bounty) [p 57]
The Permission Paradox: "Many people are confident in their abilities if given the chance to perform. But the hard part is getting permission to demonstrat these skills and to gain new experiences. This is the permission paradox." [p. 73]
Two forms of permission: Direct Permission & Implied Permission [p 76]
Permission Strategies: Demonstrated Competency; Direct Approach; Clean the Slate; Get Credentials; Barter; Masquerade as the Leader; Strategic Mentoring; Playing Politics [p 83]
"The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook" - William James [p 108]
The Diminishing Returns of Overdelivering [p 115]
Triage your Predefined Objectives [p 122]
The language of risk taking: for example, the word, experiment is much safer than business plan [p 131]
Find the right fit: Strengths, Passion, and People
"When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece" -- John Ruskin [p 148]
Extraordinarily successful executives lead careers that fully leverage both their strengths and their passions more than six times as often as the average employee [p 149]
Any good businessplan has four cornerstones:
1. The market plan
2. The financial plan
3. The product plan
4. The people plan
[didn't record page number]
GE synthesizes these different dimensions into two categories: numbers and values. It then separates its managers into four types and evanulates them and takes action accordingly.
Type I: Shares the values, makes the numbers. Sky's the limit!
Type II: Doesn't share the values, doesn't make the numbers. Gone.
Type III: Shares the values, misses the numbers. Typically gets another chance or two.
Type IV: Doesn't share the values, delivers the numbers. This is the toughest call of all, but at GE, this manager is a goner, too, demonstrating how committed the company is to precision promotion and managing for talent. [p 208]
Posted by Morgan at 12:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
July 02, 2005
yousendit.com
This is a cool service to send large files without going thru email.
Posted by Matt at 01:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
How to detect a Lie
How to detect a lie: Different than although related to the Bullshit Detection mechanisms.
Posted by Morgan at 04:21 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
July 01, 2005
I Wish
I wish I had a display panel somewhere on my body which told me how charged up I was on sleep, on food, on water, whether I was running out of vitamins or proteins, whether I needed to add or reduce weight, whether I needed repairs or servicing, and how much life I had left.
Posted by Dan at 09:28 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
She's fun.
check this out
Posted by Dan at 03:28 PM | TrackBack (0)
Hookups
There was an article, "Casual Relationships, Yes. Casual Sex, Not Really," which, while you now need to pay to read, you can get for free in the Taipai Times' article "To 'Sex and the City' and beyond."
The article attempts to define the word "hookup" as "anything from making out to doing the nasty, generally with no commitment or plans for said commitment." Another person claims that it matters less what actually happens than that "the meeting is unplanned and even unexpected."
The word clearly has different meanings in different circumstances. Hookup can mean:
1. To meet up at a certain point in time ("Let's hookup later and see a movie")
2. To kiss, but not to do anything else
3. To be more intimate than kissing but specifically to not have sex
4. To have sex
Usage varies by age, context, culture, and geography. Sometimes the word is used because a person is trying to articulate exactly what happened and to differentiate what happened from other possible meanings of hookup. For example, someone might use hookup in the sentence, "we hooked up last night" with the intent to articulate that #2 happened but not #3 or #4. Someone else in a different context could easily use the word to mean that #3 happened but not #2 or #4. Other times it is used to be intentionally ambiguous about what happened, as a way of not giving out too much information.
However, regardless of which of the above meanings is used, it would seem that it can apply equally to an encounter that is planned in advance as one that is impromptu, and can apply as much to an encounter involving commitment as one that does not.
Posted by Lonne at 02:51 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)
Really Cool Web Image
Posted by Alex at 01:42 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
Bullshit Detection
I am compiling a list of ways in which you can detect if someone is bullshitting you.
Here are some items I've thought of:
- If someone doesn't say something negative but instead hints at it
- If someone is unwilling to put his money where his mouth is (with a bet, for example)
- If someone calls you his "friend" when you aren't
- If someone uses excuses
More to come. Let me know if you think of any others (use the comments!)
Posted by Morgan at 11:54 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
Ouch
This week, Craig Biggio set the modern record with his 268th career beaning by a pitch. Ouch. A phenomal blog, Punk Biggo, has been detailing Biggio's unintentional journey for several months now, and its anonymous author has revealed himself to be a true pioneer of applied statistics. Not content simply to tally up the number of times Biggio has been hit by a pitch, he's worked out the correlation between plunkings and elevation, whether bigger players are plunked more often (actually, less), the day (Saturday), month (May), what place a team plunking Biggio is likely to finish in (4th), the stadium, whether pitchers who hit Biggio are more likely to make the all-star team (they aren't), the most plunkadelic teams, the least plunked batters, the records for longest streaks without getting hit by pitches, and thousands of other wonderful pieces of trivia. Check out the archives if you have a few spare minutes.
Posted by Dan at 09:35 AM | TrackBack (0)
News
News is interesting, but News very quickly gets Old. Old, however, stays old forever, until someone comes along and makes it new again. I love bloggers who do that -- the ones who take the time to introduce and reintroduce readers to the events and ideas that have come and gone without losing the power to excite the intellect, the passions, to remind us what is eternal about humanity, and what truly is new. There's a lot of information out there, but the point of a blogger is more to curate than produce. I would love to read a blog that every day brought some wonderful historical episode to my attention. Just a thought..
Posted by Dan at 06:22 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Bicycle Wheels
Does a bicycle hang from the top of the hub, or does it sit on the bottom? My boss at work is a fairly serious biker, and was wondering this the other day. The spokes on a bicycle wheel are tension elements, and the hub is a compression element. Thus, the spokes don't have to have any compression properties at all; you can replace the spokes on a bicycle wheel with string, and it would still work fine. But that makes for a paradoxical situation. A bicycle hanging from the top of the wheel sounds like pulling yourself up by the bootstraps, but a bicycle sitting on taut string sounds even weirder. Food for thought.
By the way, he also put me out of my miserably poor understanding of what keeps a bicycle from falling down. Somehow the fifth grade science class experiment of feeling the gyroscopic effects of a spinning bicycle wheel (hold the wheel by handles in the middle, spin it, try to turn it around, and feel the torque) managed to convince me that it keeps the bicycle from falling down. Well, it doesn't. What keeps the bicycle from falling down is the fact that you're constantly turning the wheel in the same direction that you're falling, and when you're going at a decent speed, you don't have to turn the wheel a whole lot in order to straighten out the bicycle.
Understanding what keeps a bicycle from falling down leads to a much better understanding of how to teach someone how to ride a bicycle. The problem most people have with learning how to ride a bike is that when the bicycle starts falling down, they instinctively turn the wheel in the opposite direction that they're falling. This only makes it fall faster. However, if you learn to turn the wheel in the same direction, you can straighten out the bike. So learning how to ride a bicycle is all about reversing your intuition of what direction to turn the wheel when you start falling.
We still have one open question of disagreement, though. Is an airplane propeller a spinning wing which produces backwards thrust, or does it push air back like a boat propeller? I'd be curious to know.
Posted by Dan at 05:16 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)