De Todo un Poco

Paul Krugman: less controversial, or just less influential?

2005-11-11T17:25:00.000-05:00

This post on Paul Krugman and TimesSelect is more about influence than statistics, but this paragraph made it a winner in our book:

Alternative explanations? They exist. One never-forgotten lesson from stats class twenty years ago is that correlation ain’t causation. Perhaps Krugman just hasn’t written a controversial column since September (but … we can’t tell!). Also, absent statistical analysis, we could be seeing patterns where there really aren’t any (but we don’t think so).

True, true.

Not to get off topic, but having a renowned economist who seems to have lost touch with what it means to be a good economist [too many examples to link to] (and btw - how can there even be lefty economists? Of course, in a similar vein, not all lefties have lost touch with reality) lose a little influence isn't such a bad thing in my book. {Sorry for that nasty lump of parentheticals.}

Doesn't this look like an ASCII art representation of DNA?

2005-10-14T06:52:00.000-04:00

january
february
march
april
may
june
july
august
september
october
november
december
january
february
march
april
may
june
july
august
september
october
november
december
january
february
march
april
may
june
july
august
september
october
november
december

Well, sure, you have to squint and move your away from the screen - otherwise it wouldn't be ASCII art! But it's pretty good, yeah? Even has a little 3-D going on there.

I really get a kick out of these kinds of non-significant happenstances (my favorite time of day is also 12:34. Completely arbitrary, I know. Can't help it). Enjoy!

I wish I'd learned math, stat, and econ as a kid

2005-08-18T14:12:00.000-04:00

so I'd have some native fluency in these essential languages.

I love Marginal Revolution for the entertaining way it brings me up to speed on the basics. Today, Tyler posted the most straightforward explanation of why price controls simply don't work that I have ever seen.

The bottom line: when money can't be used to pay for the full value of a product, other currencies are brought into play (think time: all that waiting in line in communist paradises, for example). Money quote:

It's very important to notice that that the shop owner gets your money but does not get your time. Thus, money expenditures are a transfer but time expenditures are a waste. Money expenditures = controlled price times*controlled quantity. Time expenditures = time price*controlled quantity so the shaded area indicates the waste.

It's also important to notice that the total price is higher than the market price! A price control, therefore, doesn't even necessarily reduce prices!

Providing Aid and Immigration reform

2005-07-11T01:01:00.000-04:00

Reading these two stories, first on the building immigration reform impetus, then on the recovery of the last missing SEAL in Afghanistan, it occurred to me that the Afghanis who rescued the only surviving member of the four-person team should be given the opportunity, should they desire it, to immigrate to the U.S. It could become standard procedure to offer legal residency to any foreign national who provides substantial aid to US military personnel. By limiting the benefit to military personnel, perhaps even to only those in a combat zone, the policy can avoid the abuse that would occur if it included all US citizens.

At any rate, it would definitely alleviate the fears of those who wish to help but fear retribution from the local opposition. It would also create a powerful incentive to do the right thing.

Naturally, there will be concerns that certain desperate individuals might engineer a 'situation' so they could come to the aid of the soldiers involved, but this kind of risk exists in other areas (people who want to be seen as heroes, so they start fires they can put out, etc.) but it doesn't arise too often, and at any rate, the standard investigation following every incident would quickly reveal those attempted frauds and thereby serve as a counter incentive, as long as some negative consequence followed (local prosecution? I don't trust that in many of these corruption-laden areas. This needs some further thought, since if there is no negative consequence, there's no risk, and anyone with the means to engineer a fake accident would see a very real motivation to do so. Then again, those with the means to do so are usually in a pretty good position in their home country and rarely want to immigrate, so it may be a smaller problem than I initially thought).

There could also be concerns that terrorists or insurgents would come to the rescue for the strategic bonus of gaining legal entry to the United States, trading off their perceived immediate 'benefit' of harming a few servicemen for an eventual attack against a much greater number of civilians. Daunting as it seems, I would still prefer a system that gives us a record of their entry into the country to the alternative - they sneak into the country illegally and just hide out until they strike.

I don't think there would be much of a political barrier - the left seems to favor any kind of immigration on humanitarian grounds, and the right would favor rewarding people for good actions, especially on behalf of miliatary personnel.

The dismay at the decay of journalistic standards is understandable

2005-06-23T11:14:00.000-04:00

but it's been a long time coming. Think back to college - how many people did you know who chose liberal arts majors almost exclusively because they were easier than the sciences? I know I did. To be fair, the humanities aren't necessarily any less demanding as far as the amount of work goes, since you have to be able to write well in addition to slogging through a lot of reading, but as long as you made it convincing (more about sounding good than actually being right), that's about all there was to it. The most intellectually demanding part was determining your audience so you could craft your piece to their liking. Sure, there was argument development and research, and be careful not to plagiarize, but there was not a lot of focus on the reality of facts (which I think stems from the tendency to make everything so subjective that there can't really even be 'facts', just subjective perceptions of reality). It seemed that just because someone else said it was so made it so - cite your source (whoever that might be) and off you go.

When I went back to school later on, I was surprised (pleasantly, since I had matured a bit since the undergrad experience) to see just how rigorous subjects like economics, accounting, and statistics were.

I'm not saying all journalists are equivalent to undergrad BS artists, but if you have a lot of people going a humanities route (i.e., journalism) to avoid the rigor, you don't have to be a statistician to realize what eventually, inevitably, is going to happen with the profession.

Did I write that?

2004-12-30T17:18:00.000-05:00

I just went back and looked at my posts after an extensive hiatus to posting (how much prior activity is required before simply slacking off can reasonably be termed a 'hiatus'?) and my first impression is, what a mess! Is it that I'm just sloppy, or is my thinking really that disjointed? Non sequitur is no problem, but I do expect reasonable transitions, as well as conclusions supported by tolerably acceptable assertions. Perhaps it's the whole first-draft nature of the activity. Maybe I should post locally, then review after two days, and then post for real.

Then again, if I keep doing it this way, with a bit more review prior to publishing, maybe my thinking itself will eventually improve! Hey, it's possible...

What's the price of sincerity?

2004-09-01T00:08:00.000-04:00

How old do you have to be before you can finally cut through the crap, look someone in the eye and say: "liar"; "confused but well-meaning"; "truthful and reliable", etc.? You read the Michael Moore vs Bill O'Really smackdown and you wonder, is the dude really that deluded? Did he do it to himself, or is there a shadowy underworld organization of mysteriously funded ideologues running around brainwashing people? Do they get you in your sleep, or just through the TV?

Then again, how relevant is it all to me? I really only ought to care about whether my mechanic, my doctor, or my boss is full of crap. Even then, what good would it do me? Sorry, sir, but this particular hose was forged by elves in the depths of Mount Fuji, and that's why it's so expensive. Oh, no problem, my boss says my late nights at the office are about to pan out *wink, wink*, and if not, my doctor says one of my kidney's will get me a bundle on the back-alley market, so no biggie.

'Jaded' doesn't begin to cover it. What do you have to do to trust someone around here, sell your soul to the Skull and Bones club? Forget it. I could never learn the secret handshake, anyway.

At least in Fantasy World, one of the guards always tells the truth, and the other always lies, whereas the person in front of you could, at any time, be shoveling any combination your way. As Gary Larson said in his depiction of two condemned souls in Hell's Kitchen: "You're new here, aincha, kid? Well on some days the sandwiches contain a dead scorpion. ...Not every day, but some days--that's why it's hell kid."

I was just reading about Greek mythology...

2004-07-03T01:20:00.000-04:00

...and specifically about Saturn, the father of Zeus, prompted by a posting at little green footballs.

One recoils at the human mind's ability to invent atrocious stories (Saturn routinely devoured his children, as depicted horrifically in a painting by Goya) and wonders if the legend was based on some actual event or was pure fiction. Modern storytellers have also dreamed up revolting nightmares for recounting, but perhaps to some degree or other they are grounded in these ancient myths. After all, how many basic storylines are there?

Inarguably, if such events occurred, they were engendered by the human mind, but something about reality, the living of life, allows for action with relatively little rational thought - as they say, truth is stranger than fiction.

While thus engaged, I had the sudden impulse to Google this question, to find out the back story upon which this myth was based. The urge died even before my fingers could twitch over the keyboard, but I was quite diverted at the automatic assumption that the answer, to any query, is out there, out there on the world wide web.

The answer is out there, of course; it's just not on Google. But the response time is notoriously variable, directly and inversely correlated to the importance of the answer to the purpose of one's existence. Then again, all things must one day be known, so I guess we shouldn't let perceived triviality get in the way of asking.

Update: Fixed the link to the Goya painting; now it just runs a Google image search.

道德經第一章

2004-07-02T10:55:00.000-04:00

道可道﹐非常道。名可名﹐非常名。無名天地之始﹔有名萬物之母。故常無﹐ 欲以觀其妙﹔常有﹐欲以觀其徼。此兩者﹐同出而異名﹐同謂之玄。玄之又玄﹐眾妙之門。

Dicen que de los libros que escribimos...

2004-07-02T09:49:00.000-04:00

...seremos juzgados. No se que tan literal o metaforico sea eso, pero he aqui, un esfuerzo para que el fallo final sea agradable.