Within five minutes without any effort on the part of my friends, purely by experiencing the reality of the device I had been utterly convinced not only that I must acquire one with all haste, but that this was a clear turning point, a clear arrival of something I had completely lacked the foresight to anticipate but now seemed inevitable in retrospect. I hurried down to the shop, burst through the door and started waving liabilities of the US government, and a card capable of converting liabilities of the European Central Bank into liabilities of the US government, at the various men of industry present, hoping to entice them to surrender one of the devices from their great warehouse. I was in luck, and gushed vigorously about my own lack of prescience as the payment was handled.

On paper the iPad is crap. Its hardware is too slow, it’s a rubbish laptop, it’s a media player that doesn’t fit in ones pocket, it needs a device running a full blown operating system to sync with etc. On such a basis I dismissed the concept before encountering it in person as some sort of fools adventure, where some visionary with no grounding in reality had lead a design team down the path of constructing a solution in search of a problem. It is so rare to find such a device where the end result is so vastly greater than the sum of its parts.

In actuality the device is a far superior media consumption device than say a PSP, iPod touch or some other device with a crippled screen. One must experience it to understand. Having watched my own blu-ray rips of Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children on my PSP and iPad, both encoded at recklessly high bit rates, I can say the experience on the PSP is an utter joke compared to the iPad. To be able to hold such a magnificent window into the universe in ones very hands, to be able to carry it anywhere and gaze into the viewing delights it provides, it now invokes almost a feeling of revulsion in me when I see scrawny characters stooped over the screen of a small device attempting vainly to “experience” something through a tiny keyhole.

One can read a whole library of content at leisure using the iBooks app, every page turn an immensely satisfying visual experience. My eyes have never tired using the device and I can report no real crippling issue or even annoyance. Again, compared to trying to read something on any other of those numerous small devices, one just has a whole new paradigm, a whole new exponentially superior ease of existence. Even listening to music is a more pleasant experience, one having a proper interface through which to select the desired tune.

While it is said by some that the iPad is a crap laptop, it might be more accurate to state that any laptop taken outdoors is a bloated, poorly designed iPad with numerous inconveniences and stressful annoyances, and any laptop remaining indoors is but an expensive box of compromises relative to a desktop computer with most of its advantages counting for naught in such an environment. To show a friend some pictures one need only pass the iPad in a simple motion and the friend is free to physically manipulate the device with the utmost freedom and intuitively browse through the picture collections, sharing with others various moments by merely twisting their wrist in the direction of the individual they seek to share with. Contrast this to lugging out the battleship laptop and passing it over, trying to not poke out the eye of anyone nearby with one of the edges as they clatter and wallop off various obstacles. The thunderous weight of the device requires an annoying effort for all who physically manipulate it. Browsing through the pictures will be slightly more difficult owing to the lower suitability of a trackpad and keyboard for the task. While I may be accused of gross exaggeration or outright whinging, it is only the reckless rationaliser who will try to pretend that there is no difference in the pleasantness of using these two devices for this task.

An iPad is a much neater and easy to carry device than all but the most crippled laptops. Unless the laptop is huge and horridly inconvenient, the viewing experience on an iPad for much content will be almost as good, with reading a book arguably being much superior on an iPad. It seems a strange and perhaps unintended effect, but the iPad seems to have made laptops a somewhat less attractive choice in general. For an iPad and desktop do both the tasks of a laptop in a superior manner. In fact I dare say I will never buy a laptop again.

But there is one caveat to all this: The iPad is useless for productive people. Or rather, it is useless for all those who are productive outside of “base”. The road warriors, war drivers, programmers who take off at full speed doing real work once the seat belt sign is turned off, basically men who still create when non-stationary, shall find little in the iPad. For the iPad is a device that enables the best possible mobile consumption experience. It is a magnificent window through which one can consume the works of others with the least of physical inconvenience. In this sense it is the opposite of a laptop, which is a poor mobile consumption device but an excellent mobile production device.

I find myself as one who only really produces when at home in my bunker. There are too many distractions, inconveniences, uncomforts in the outside world to set oneself in the mood for production, and since I leave my oasis relatively infrequently, even if I was of the mind to engage in productive endeavours, the opportunities to do so would not justify the tradeoffs in using devices suited to mobile production. So for me, when I do find myself travelling or otherwise in the outside world, I only wish for a device that relieves me of some of the tedium of travel, or allows me to easily share with others some content, such as emails, pictures or videos. For this the iPad is ideal and far more suitable than a laptop. Back in the bunker, a desktop then has a clear advantage over a laptop, as the laptop scores no points for allowing mobile consumption, while it makes sacrifices in price and components to fulfil the restrictive needs of full mobility. So I find myself coming to the conclusion that, at least for those who do the vast majority of their productive activities at “base”, the iPad has the curious effect of making the desktop far more relevant in 2010 than it was 2009.

Having acquired an iPad and greatly desiring to program it, while simultaneously tiring of trying to use programming languages much inferior to that of Objective-C in other endevours, I resigned myself to the fact that I would have to purchase a Mac mini. While waiting and hoping for an update of the hardware I frequented macrumors.com. I was amazed at the amount of people who had almost the exact same “story” as me, that is, “dumping my laptop for an iPad and Mac mini.” Once the device was updated I purchased it and a wireless keyboard from Japan as it was cheaper there than in Ireland, it allowed me to get a Japanese keyboard and my friend’s parents who were visiting him in Japan were kind enough to be bring it back for me. While it may sound as if I am some sort of Apple fan or enthusiast from these actions, I must say that it is only with a new found sense of productive pragmatism that I purchased these devices. The Mac mini provided the most superior means to write programs useful for both work and play in a beautiful language and environment, it provided a means to program the iPad itself, it is very power efficient and space efficient (significant concerns as I will likely be living in quite a small apartment in the future) and has a most beautiful design. OS X 10.6 is arguably moderately more pleasant to use than Windows 7 aswell.

And in the spirit of pragmatism and lack of irrational love, I can name many things I significantly dislike about my two new delightful devices. The lack of inclusion of a blu-ray drive on the Mac mini is backwards and almost embarrassing. Apple is engaging in a juvenile reality denying exercise trying to force people to buy recklessly compressed 720P pseudo-HD shite off iTunes by crippling its own computers. This is a prime example of how different divisions of a large company can cause anti-synergy. The fear of competition with its direct download iTunes model has lead Apple to gimp its own hardware. If these two sections of the company were separate businesses this destruction (or rather, deliberate uncreation) of wealth would not occur. Blu-ray has succeeded, has been universally adopted across the consumer electronics industry, offers far higher quality than direct download and is the only choice possible for those who have poor internet access. Apple is trying to leap to a medium-less future far too early, before the necessary infrastructure is in place. This just needlessly cripples the present experience, and won’t make the medium-less future come any faster as it is dependent on huge factors outside of Apple’s control. And if Apple really believed that the medium-less future is here today, then why do they not drop DVD and CD support aswell, which unlike blu-ray actually are at the point of being realistically made obsolete by the internet. In the end it all comes down to trying to shovel that low quality iTunes crap, but crippling my Mac mini isn’t going to make me pay for that rubbish.

Another complaint is the price of the device, which is clearly unreasonable for the hardware contained. But one can justify that by the value of the software in allowing the user to better get real work done, which was certainly the judgement I made when deciding to buy it. As for the iPad, while I of course consider it a revolutionary device, it is only the start of good things to come. Web browsing is annoyingly slow (at least by my standards) and syncing with iTunes is a disaster if one ever changes computer and it can be a colossal pain having to setup everything in the way iTunes wants. One cannot just drag and drop a video onto an iPad, it has to be copied into the iTunes library (and often converted to an iPad friendly format before this) resulting in numerous duplicated files and inability to use an iPad to transfer data to and from computers that one does not own. The more I think of it, iTunes seems to be the source of all my woes. Such a terrible piece of software, in fact I’d go as far as to say iTunes as a whole represents a terrible design philosophy I most wholeheartedly detest.

On that miserable note I end this article of praise for two excellent devices.

As this is the first manga in this series, much of the stories involve the main character getting used to the new world he lives in…and dealing with the complex emotions from getting transformed into a beautiful girl. Basically the girl, called Meari, who brought him to this new world survives by eating the pleasant dreams of humans. The main character (Miu) was dreaming about a girl from a game he was playing. When Meari ate his dream, something went wrong and he melded with the girl from the game in his dream and got sucked into Meari’s world. Meari is trying to find a way to send him back, but also tells him that for the time being she will take responsibility for ensuring he becomes an “Exquisite lady”. So she gives out to him for walking like a guy and buys him clothes that are so cute as to make him horribly embarrassed to go outside.

While the plot may sound a bit off the wall, there was actually some wisdom etched in this manga. In this scene, Miu complains about Meari insisting that he wear fashionable cute clothes. But she bursts out, basically along the lines of “A flower’s life is only short! If you’re not going to wear fashionable things now, when will you!?” People only really have until their early thirties to really shine out full blast, and I found myself feeling very thankful that Japanese people take their appearance so seriously and give us such wonderful eye candy in public. One should not squander opportunities when young, or a life of slow decay and regret will follow…

Anyway on to the obligatory swimsuit scene:

In this scan Meari and her friend Fiyu (who Miu has falled head over heels for, much to the chagrin of Meari) are both trying on swimsuits to help Miu decide which one to buy, though in reality he doesn’t want to go to the beach at all as it’s mortifying.

Here Fiu and Miu are talking about Meari. パンツ！This drawing style really is just beautiful, though no doubt there’d be moral hysteria if something like this was released in the West owing to the depiction of “underage” people in a “sexualised” manner. Oh the outrage, oh the irrational panic! I can see the lynch mob nailing me to a cross. Anyway, the failure of the west aside, back to beautiful things:
和ロリキターーー！！Here is an example of how the Japanese continually cycle out new embodiments of their own culture (often also infused with their own interpretation of aspects of foreign culture) in a timeless and continuous manner. This girl is wearing a garment that is a sort of fusion between a Yukata, a dress and maid clothes. This traditional Japanese inspired goth-loli infused fashion is known as wa-loli, with wa meaning “Japan”. I love this stuff. Such elegant harmony.

As for the girl herself, she is another type of non-human, but her kind hunts Meari’s kind and claims to be protecting humans from the dream eaters. She attacks Meari but then gets a fever from being out in the rain, so they take care of her for awhile. After this she calls Miu “Master” and decides she wants to stay with them.

More bonus points here for the girl on “girl” borderline behavior. This first volume closes on this happy note, though the author kindly leaves us more fan service with these two pullout illustrations:


The second volume was released last February I believe. I’m looking forward to getting my hands on it. Asides from being entertaining, the level of Japanese is just right to assist in study.

Some information about options for those of you not familiar with the concept: An option is a contract that provides the right, but not the obligation for the holder to buy (or sell, depending on the type) a certain amount of shares at a certain price until a certain pre agreed time. There are two types of options, puts and calls. Put options allow one to sell shares at a certain price. They thus act as a sort of insurance/downside protection. If one held 100 shares of Toshiba which were trading at ¥100, one may be able to buy an option that allows one to sell those shares at ¥80 for the next three months. This means that even if Toshiba drops to ¥70 in two months time, one will still be able to sell the shares for ¥80.

Call options give the right to buy shares at a certain price. If one held a call option on Sumitomo group shares with an agreed price (know as the strike price) of ¥200, then no matter how high Sumitomo group shares rose, one would still be able to buy them for ¥200 each within the agreed timeframe.

Obviously, as these options act as a sort of insurance against future changes in share prices, they can have significant value. So when one buys an option from someone else, in order to induce that counterparty to take the risk that these “insurance” contracts may be used in the future, the counterparty must be compensated with a premium. This is the price of an option, and it varies according to many different things, such as interest rates, the underlying asset type, “fear” in the market, length to expiration of option etc..

It has been documented in several academic papers that options, particularly put options, on share indexes have tended historically to be “overpriced”. Meaning that those who sold these contracts made profits disproportional to the risk they were undertaking. There are numerous theories as to why which I won’t go into in this post.

Anyway, as there seems to be some evidence that index options and especially index put options are overpriced, I thought it would be good to analyse their return in the Japanese market. Japanese shares have performed poorly for the past 20 years, and since put options tend to do well when the underlying asset performs badly, it would be quite a rigorous result if selling put options still turned out to be profitable in such a market. Unfortunately I was only able to get the data on Nikkei 225 options from March 2006 to the present. Data is available from the middle of 1989 onwards but it would cost around ¥230,000. I can’t afford that at the moment, though should I find myself in a more secure financial position I would be happy to purchase such data to more rigorously test my theories.

But even taking the subsegment of March 2006 to the present, the Nikkei index itself (like most of the rest of the world’s share indices) has performed poorly. Thus it should be a reasonably strong test of options selling strategies. In this case one would also expect call selling to be profitable, as call options do poorly in falling markets.

So when deciding to sell options, even when one has decided the type (put or call) to sell, one is still left with the issue of which of the many strike price and expiration date combinations to choose. The strike price is the price that the option seller agrees to accept/pay from/to the buyer of the option for the share in question, regardless of the market price of the share. The buyer has the option to force the seller to do this transaction, but the buyer does not have to execute the transaction if he does not wish to do so. Obviously he will only execute the trade if the option strike price is better than the market price. The option will also expire at some agreed date, and all else equal, it will lose value as that date approaches. Some options can be exercised at any time between purchase and the expiration date, whereas some can only be exercised on the expiration date. In the case of options of the Nikkei 225, they are of the latter type.

An option with a strike price that is currently “in the money”, meaning that for a put the strike price is higher than the market price, or for a call the strike price is lower than the market price, will be priced significantly higher than an option that is “out of the money”. Why would anyone buy an option that has a strike price less favorable than the market price? Because the option still provides a level of insurance until the expiration date that even if the market price of the underlying security moves unfavorably, one’s losses will not exceed a certain level.

In general, it has been found that “out of the money” options tend to be overpriced, while “at the money” or “in the money” options are more of a toss up. In my testing program that I wrote I am able to test strategies at varying levels of “moneyness” and in general I found those conclusions to be correct.

I also tested the relative profitability of selling options with different amounts of time left until expiration. 1, 2 and 3 months to expiration were tested. 1 month to expiration seemed to consistently be a far superior selling strategy than either of the other two.

In addition to testing put selling and call selling strategies, I also tested selling both at the same time. This strategy is know as a strangle (or a straddle, depending on the strike prices involved). It has the interesting property, that if one sells both an out of the money put and an out of the money call with the same expiration date, at the expiration date one of them will always expire worthless, and it’s possible that both of them will. This significantly reduces the volatility of the strategy, as the infrequent but often massive one off losses that occur when selling out of the money options are attenuated by both the premium received from the other option that expires worthless and by the fact that one is selling only half the amounts of each option relative to a single option based strategy.

My first graph includes the performance of the Nikkei and the 3 option selling strategies. Each option selling strategy is the average of 11 different strategies based on different levels of moneyness (all out of the money, but to varying degrees). I could’ve cherry picked the most profitable level of moneyness for each strategy, but I thought it would be fairer to show the average performance of a wide array of out of the money strategies. Just to be clear, all of the 11 individual option strategies that make up each of the average strategies (33 strategies total) in this graph were profitable by themselves (i.e. I am not averaging them as an attempt to mask massive levels of volatility and differences in performance between them.) The time period in question is March 2006 to June 2010. Click on the images for full resolution.

As can be seen, one would be much better off selling options, of either type or both, than investing in the Nikkei itself. After 4 and a third years one would be up between 16% and 21% depending on the option strategy taken, while the Nikkei was down around 38%. Selling puts was actually more profitable than selling calls, despite the overall downward trend in the index. Selling both was almost as profitable as just selling puts. The huge drop in the performance of the put selling strategies occurred when Lehman brothers was allowed to go bankrupt in the latter half of 2008 which caused the massive worldwide market collapse. Interestingly the premiums paid for options exploded after this, allowing the put strategies to recover quickly and the call strategies to make huge gains. The later huge drop for the call selling strategy occurred after the market bottomed out and turned up in March 2009.

Notice that I have written “no leverage”. When selling options one needs to hold a cash reserve so that if the position moves against oneself, there will be sufficient cash at hand to payout to the option purchaser. In the case of put options, I defined a no leverage strategy to be one in which one held enough reserves so that if the index fell to 0 on option expiration date, one would have enough cash to payout in full. The index going to 0 is the maximum potential loss scenario for a put seller.

In the case of call selling it is actually impossible to define a “no leverage” level of selling, as there is theoretically no limit to how high an index can rise. So I arbitrarily defined a “no leverage” strategy as holding enough cash to be able to payout even after a 100% rise in the index.

In either case protecting against a 100% move in the index every month is a most conservative strategy. I tested the strategies with reserves enough to cope with a 50% move:

Note the scale on the left increases with each graph.

A less conservative approach increases the volatility of the options strategies but allows for significantly higher returns. Interestingly the strategies that involve selling both types of options have overtaken the put option selling strategies, benefitting from the “spike moderating” effect I described earlier.

Reducing the reserve level to 35%:

Here we see that although all three sets of selling strategies have increased their returns, the strategies involving selling both have benefitted to a much greater extent. The put selling strategies have now fallen behind the call selling ones as the hit after the Lehman failure exerts an increasingly disproportionately destructive effect.

Reducing to 25%:

Amazingly selling both types of options would on average earn a 97% return over the period. Increasing leverage is making the performance of the put selling strategies worse however, they now return less than when no leverage was used at all. The call selling strategies only note a very small increase in return, being close to the point where massive one month losses begin to overwhelm the benefits of additional leverage.

Finally, taking it to a 20% reserve level:

Many of the put selling strategies were completely wiped out at this level, so they couldn’t be included. The call selling strategies now only return about what they returned when the “no leverage” strategy was pursued, having reached the damagingly volatile level of leverage that the put based strategies reached in the previous graph. The spectacular rise to 5 times the initial investment only to fall off a cliff, losing on average 3.5 times the initial investment in only one month is rather nauseating. The selling both strategies managed to still improve returns, now finishing with a 124% average return.

Beyond this level of leverage the call selling strategies quickly all collapse. Some of the both selling strategies start to deteriorate in performance and eventually they start to collapse around a 15% reserve level.

In the end I am left with the conclusion that selling 1 month to expiration out of the money strangles on the Nikkei 225 seems to be a most scandalously profitable activity, at the very least worthy of significant further investigation. The nature of the strategy results in much lower volatility than selling puts or calls alone, allowing the seller to hold much lower levels of reserves and therefore make much greater profits. I would be able to make a more authoritative conclusion had I access to a longer dataset, but the current findings are most positively suggestive.

This tomato plant was grown from a seed in an Aldi bought tomato. I much prefer trying to grow stuff from the “industrial” varieties found in supermarkets, rather than some “local” variety or ones bought in seed packets. Through my own foolishness I left this tomato plant inside a plastic mini-greenhouse on extremely hot days when it was a mere seedling and managed to burn off half of both its first leaves. Amazingly it managed to pull itself together and keep going, even when many of the other plants exposed to those conditions gave in. I have high hopes for some decent yield off this guy. He has started to flower:

I have another Tomato plant derived from the seeds on an Aldi tomato. This is a good example of the “positive non-interventionism” gardening philosophy! In general I try to avoid excessive intervention to artificially protect my crops from the woes of the world. A certain level of stress will encourage stronger and more rigorous growth, by activating defense mechanisms and outright killing the weakest of plants, preventing them from passing on their genes which are unsuitable for the conditions in which I grow them. For instance, when tomato plants are exposed to strong winds they build up thicker stems to resist being blown over. These are also useful later when they set fruit as the tomatos themselves can be quite heavy. If a plant was kept under sheltered conditions the stem would be much weaker and if ever exposed to more severe conditions would run a much higher risk of snapping.

But in this case the wind exposure proved too much for one of my plants. His stem snapped at the bottom during a particularly windy day. The market fundamentalists would at this point argue that as a failed institution, the tomato plant should be left for dead to be liquidated by his creditors (it might be fair to imagine the Earth or at least the soil as the ultimate creditor, with the insects and bacteria being the bankruptcy lawyers or other officials who manage the liquidation process). But one must look at the real consequences for the system as a whole from these actions. Since I have only two tomato plants of this variety, it is difficult to really say whether it was genetic weakness or some other factor which caused this plant to fail and the other to survive. They were both in different locations and different sized pots. If I had twenty of these plants and only a few snapped, one could more reasonably assert that it would be quite likely that in culling the ones that snapped, one would be at least somewhat bluntly selecting for a more wind resistant future variety. In any case this debate is somewhat moot as these tomatos nearly always self fertilise, meaning that there will be no genetic recombination among their offspring. So the seeds of the snapped tomato could just not be planted and one could rest assured that because of the inbreeding nature of these plants, the snapped tomato would not have contributed it’s genetic material to the offspring of other tomatos through fertilising the flowers of those plants with its pollen. As I have noted, even if these plants were outbreeders, it would perhaps be unreasonable to draw much conclusion about the genetic weakness of a plant to the wind when there was only two plants in the sample.

So I ordered a decisive and rigorous government intervention to bail out this tomato! A quote on positive non-interventionism is in order! “Haddon-Cave goes on to say that the “positive” part means the government carefully considers each possible intervention to determine “where the advantage” lies, and although usually it will come to the conclusion that the intervention is harmful, sometimes it will decide to intervene.”

I drove a massive stake into the ground right next to the plant and tied him upright right against it. The goal was to prop up the plant while it tried to repair itself. As the roots and leaves were now only connected by a thin part of remaining stem, it was not clear whether or not the support would be enough to allow the plant to survive. However it seems that the intervention was successful, with new leaves growing on the plant over the past week or so. In a somewhat unsettling move, the plant has started to flower:

This has given huge ammunition to the free market lobby who insist that the flowering of the plant is evidence that it no longer needs government support. They further point out that the cable tie between the stem and the wooden stake is damaging to the stem by being over tight, potentially restricting water and nutrient flow to the leaves. But to remove government support this early would be reckless in my view. The balance of risks is clearly skewed against such action. Removal of support risks another catastrophic collapse, destroying all that has been saved. Keeping on the support risks restricting growth and moderate damage to the location where the tie is wrapped around. I think that is a small price to pay for insurance against outright collapse. The time may come later in the season when support can be removed or at least loosened, but my hand will not be forced by reckless ideologues!

I also planted some seeds of Tomatos bought in Lidl:

These were planted significantly later than the Aldi tomatos, but have grown with the utmost vigor. I suspect they benefitted from not being placed in that disastrously over heated plastic mini-greenhouse that I mentioned earlier.

This chaotic tomato was grown from a seed in a packet of “cherry tomato seeds”:

He expands wildly in all directions, with his leaves often competing more with his own other leaves than the leaves of other plants. While perhaps counterproductive, I am starting to think this plant might make an excellent manager of the commanding heights of a communist economy, as he demonstrates an ability to create huge amounts of intra-organisation competition. I’m surprised at the amount of flowers he has created and since each flower will turn into a tomato, I am somewhat apprehensive that he may have gotten over ambitious and may not be able to output enough glucose to meet the demands he has placed on himself. He has the privilege of being the first tomato plant under my control to begin production of an actual tomato:

These next two tomato plants were given to me so I don’t have any idea how they will end up:

Interestingly when I transplanted these two plants, they were both around the same size but the first one had a much larger root system. As time has passed the first one has grown at an extremely quick pace while the second one seems to be limited by its inferior root system and has not grown nearly as much. What happens below ground is just as important as what happens above.

On that point it would be good to mention these two carrots:

I selected them both when they were young as my prized specimens to be raised separately from the others in case my patch was destroyed for any reason. The smaller of the two promptly rapidly slowed its rate of growth and was an utter disappointment. But the larger one grew at an amazing pace. I was worried that it might be unsustainable and sure enough it suddenly ground to a halt. When I decided to transplant them into this bigger pot I found that the bigger one had completely saturated the soil of the small pot it had been in with its roots and they had wrapped themselves around the inside bottom of the pot many times over. Root capacity constraint! It would seem that this was the cause of the sudden collapse in the rate of growth. The ability of the vigorous carrot to expand was initially limited by its leaf area but as that was continously expanded the capacity of the roots began to become the limiting factor. Eventually, without room to expand the roots, leaf growth could not be maintained and it entered a prolonged era of low growth. Sounds like the Japanese economy after the unsustainable bubble at the end of the 1980s. But despite transplanting it into a much larger pot, from what can be seen above ground, it does not seem to have grown much. It could be that the roots have been growing vigorously and that it will soon launch a renewed leaf expansion, but so far there has been no evidence of much progress. The smaller guy is a useless as always, big pot or small.

On to my potted onions…

These three were planted in pots as another sort of insurance against something disastrous happening in the plot. I don’t know if they got squashed by something or attacked or something else, but as can be seen things are not going well. This other guy is doing ok on his own though:

These guys are a mix of various alliums:

They haven’t done so well either and I’m at a loss as to why.

This onion was found sprouting in a press so I planted him in the hopes of him flowering and producing some seed:

He seems to have stalled at this point though. Luckily I have these two heroes of the orient to do the job:

The guy on the left is an onion I grew from seed last year while the guy on the right is another one I found in the press. They are both “yellow” onions but different varieties. They’re sending up seed heads at the same time so it’s looking like they’ll flower together. This will be my first chance at genetic manipulation! Hopefully I can cross pollinate them and take the seeds with me to Japan for the next growing next season. What wondrous new variety shall emerge from this combination!?

And finally the great industrial farm:






There are several varieties of onion as well as some leeks and carrots planted randomly. Some have done much better than others, but on the whole growth has been much better than I anticipated. The transplanting process I put them through was brutal and reckless and I thought most of them would die. But perhaps only 10% have actually been killed since planting. I also put some more Lidl tomatos and some Lidl bell peppers at the back of the patch. The bell peppers haven’t grown all that much though.

The carrots are fattening up:

The garlics I planted out the front have mostly died down:

I might dig down and see if they have actually made any cloves, though I don’t dare to hope for much.

As for my experiments planting Japonica rice, they all ended in disaster. I’m not sure if it was trouble with the rice seeds I was using (could’ve been processed in some manner that damaged its ability to grow into a proper rice plant), or trouble with the soil they were in, or over/under watering or cold/cloudy spells killing them off, but they all died before exceeding much beyond 5cm in height.

The man behind me announced that as a student of the right he could not but wholly endorse this privatisation as a step forward for the area and that as leader of the Swedish delegation, he would be arguing in favor of the privatisation with the village elders. I said that in this case a private monopoly would result in less real wealth being created but he became furious and said he couldn’t accept that.

Aside: Many many years beforehand there had been a great evil lord that attempted to overrun Europe with armies of demons. He was known as the “Doomking” wielder of the mighty Doomsword. He was assassinated while leading his army south but legend has it that his young son, who would’ve been but ten years old, escaped the assassination and disappeared into the night. He took the Doomsword with him and it was said that some day he would return to reclaim Europe. This was known as “The legend of the Doomprince.”

Later that day myself and the young Swedish man were admiring a statue when we were approached by a group of locals. They asked us to swear by the statue that we would do what was right for Afganistan. I drew my sword, a silvery, thin blade that could be split into two separate swords upon need, stabbed it into the ground and swore that I would do what was best for the country. The Swedish man drew a massive black blade, barely smaller than Cloud’s buster sword, and swore the same. They then asked us to swear that we would not advocate privatisation of the local service. I promptly pledged again, but the Swedish man refused. At that moment an older man, probably in his sixties, walked out of the shadows towards us. It seemed he was the father of the Swedish delegate. His son threw him over the black sword. As he caught it and continued to advance forward he announced, “I am the Doomprince, wielder of the Doomsword and heir to my fathers legacy!”

I split my sword into the two separate blades and prepared to fight this demon lord and his son, the endorser of disastrous economic policies! Unfortunately I woke up at this point.

I play Eldar with the Farseer hero, while Terran plays Space Marines with the Force Commander. I was lucky enough to get my hands on a Seer Council, henceforth referred to as “The Rape Train”, by the middle part of the battle. They look so awesome.

Terran got terminator armour and lightning claws for his Force Commander. Almost impossible to kill and he shreds anything that gets too close.

And the rest of his army didn’t look half bad either:

We were up against a Chaos player using a Chaos Lord and an Ork player using a Warboss. I spent alot of my time fighting the Chaos guy and things were going well enough until he let loose one of those ridiculous IMBA horse things on me:

Meanwhile Terran’s force commander was facing off against the Ork Warboss and a squad of Nobs. You can see the Warboss land a fairly brutal blow on the Force Commander in the first pic.

My Wraithguards landed some awesome shots, they can be insanely effective against anything that stands still.

Terran’s Force Commander gives my wounded Farseer a hand up (the awesome thing about DoW II is that this is what is actually happening, heroes can revive each other):

A predator with a twin-linked lascannon and a devastator squad with a regular lascannon unleash their fury on the Ork Warboss at the same time:

Seconds later Terran’s Force Commander teleports in to meet the Warboss in close combat:

As the Force Commander and Warboss duel in the background, my Farseer and squad of Banshees do battle with the Orks:

Some time later, Terran’s Assault squad launch themselves into the air to close the distance between themselves and an Ork tank:

Just as they land in front of the tank, a lascannon devastator squad scores a direct hit on the tank:

But the tank responds with a most brutal salvo:

With the green tide swelling to insurmountable numbers…

I was left with no choice but to summon an Avatar of Khaine!

He proceeded to skewer a load of Orks with that massive sword:

Also used his ground pounding line of explosion ability to great effect:

A duel with the Warboss:

My Farseer uses her gravity blade to levitate some Orks while the rest of my troops pound them:

Just when I thought we had the enemy entirely dominated, the Chaos player managed to get a Great Unclean One. This creature is even more powerful than the Avatar, so I was shitting myself when it waded into the fray.

However, thanks to the inspirational effect that the Avatar had on those around him (30% more damage dealt, 30% less received), the combined might of The Rape Train, Banshees, Farseer and Avatar, along with the timely arrival of the Force Commander ensured victory over this most faul spawn of Nurgle.

I must say that was one of the best battles of Dawn of War II I’ve had in some time.

The guy that got bitten in half by some feral creature is barely clinging to life, with his lesser half having succumbed to his brutal injuries and is now nowhere to be seen.

I put three red onions into the ground that I bought in a shop on the off chance they might send up a flower stalk and get me some seeds this year. As onions take 2 years to go from seed to seed, these could save me a year if they flower this summer.

Meanwhile out the back, another garlic clings to life. I’m not sure what the plant that resembles a garlic to the left is. Might as well let it grow and see what happens.

The leek that tried to flower was beaten down and collapsed in failure over the winter. Some green still left on him but overall a pretty dead looking entity. He may rise like a phoenix this summer for another flowering attempt so I’ll let him be for now.

One of the onions that overwintered sent out some shoots, but after being hit with a hard cold spell it seems to have halted growth for now. No sign of life from his friend. I stuck another red onion in with these two, in the hope that if they flowered together I could cross them and get some hybrid seed. Again, not looking so good at the moment.

The mysterious garlic that died and was reborn twice last summer still seems to have some life in him. I wouldn’t put it past this guy to do some mad crazy shit this summer, so I’m cautiously optimistic.

After germinating some japonica rice and some onion seeds I left them out on the garden table in a good location for getting sun. However, I woke one morning to a scene of horrific destruction.

It seems a load of birds swooped down and tore the place up, feasting on the rice and onion seedlings!

Not an onion or rice survived! Such savagery. Since this attack I’ve restarted these and also started many others, and I haven’t made the same mistake of giving the birds the opportunity to have their way with them. After the attack I spotted this war criminal surveying the destruction he no doubt bankrolled if not actively participated in:

He may look like a most civilised gentleman, with his top hat and monocle, but the red war paint donning his chest gives away his true nature as a man of the hunt! He yearns to brazenly swoop through the fields snatching seedlings and worms from their homes and inflicting the most brutal and shocking deaths upon them. Were it not for his privileged upbringing he would soon be frequenting the local tavern, warbling with the common folk and making the most offensive of slurs about the female robins. Thankfully his need to save face saves us from the greatest of his boorism.

Anyway, that was the state of affairs around a month ago. I’ve made significant progress with this years crop so I shall document that soon.

Recently I gained a somewhat more accurate understanding of the monetary system. Thus I became instantly terrified that the Eurozone, without a spender of last resort, was going to strangle itself trying to force fiscal austerity on a set of economies some of which are mired in the most brutal of balance sheet recessions. While a demand collapse actually implies related deflation which would increase the individual purchasing power of a Euro quanta, as this collapse progresses the real economy’s output and long term growth prospects will collapse with it. I imagine that this would kill any speculative desire to hold the Euro (because of a dearth in Euro-denominated useful investments and because the ECB would likely be less willing to raise rates as the whole machine falls apart which will send the hot money elsewhere (or further still a carry trade funded in Euro might develop)). Also on a purchasing power parity basis the Euro is still looking moderately overvalued and since I was planning on converting my Euro denominated savings into Yen within the next 6 months to a year in any case, I decided to jump ship a bit early.

In the true spirit of 1929 I waded fourth into the money market crying “Sell!! Sell!!!” waving about liabilities of the ECB at any financier who looked like they might have some liabilities of the BoJ. Unfortunately while I was eager for the drama, role play and spirit of the markets I was abruptly brought back to the dull reality when the banks I rang universally stated they required at least a week to get their hands on some Yen. So I waited the first week in terror that the Eurozone would collapse before I could get out. When I arrived into the financial institution (bankrupt on paper as they gave people loans to buy houses), they informed me that they hadn’t been able to secure all the Yen that I requested. This was horribly inconvenient, but fed into my already massive ego as it would seem that even the international capital markets could not cope with my speculative excesses. Nay, it was not that the market could not cope, for I realised it then, I was the market! Who do you think lends to 白川様 when a sturkín gets stuck in his printing press!? Never thought about that did you.

So I was handed a massive load of Bank of Japan notes. This silly financial institution had got most of their order in 1000 Yen notes. What utter folly! There are 3 larger denominations which can fit far more purchasing power in the same space. Having such a huge stack of notes gives me a false sense of security, as given the small purchasing power of 1000 Yen I will quickly run this pile down when it has to actually be spent. Nevertheless, the sheer amount of them gives me command of most of the world economy. There was also some 5000 and 10000 notes so it wasn’t all completely ridiculous.

I had to wait another week before I could finally dump the last chunk of my Euro denominated savings on an exhausted and demoralised international monetary system. Luckily this time I was presented with 10000 Yen notes, the financial institution finally doing something that didn’t end up in complete failure and wealth annihilation.

When I finally got around to counting my hoard, I was in for a pleasant surprise.

Two series D 1000 Yen notes! These were suspended in 2004 to make way for Series E, but there’s still some in circulation and they are legal tender, only shredded and replaced if they end up back at the BoJ. I’ll be sure to spend these first in Japan, so that they can continue their heroic service as a store of purchasing power and transacting goodness. This reminds me of when I got a really old 5 Yen coin (minted in 1949 I believe) that used the old kanji for country (國 instead of 国) in change from a shop in Sapporo. I brought it back to Ireland with me and then washed it vigorously with various cleaning solvents and then scraped the remaining dirt/tarnish off it using an pointed implement. Then the next time I returned to Japan I spent it in a shop and hoped that with the reinvigoration I had given it it would serve as a store of purchasing power for another 58 years. Perhaps then another will again restore it to its full glory and it could continue its beautiful existence.

I still have some worthless scrip lying around so I decided to let it bask in the glory of being in the same picture as the Yen:

Particularly:
Follow You
Negimaniax
Sound of SOS
Spirits of Rebel Army
Flower Forever

I haven’t gone through it all yet so there might be more good stuff.

To get many of the things requires alot of knowledge of Japanese mentality and customs, so there was alot that went over my head. But sometimes the stuff that I “got” I found really hilarious or could emphasise strongly with. One thing I found particularly funny (though needless to say describing it doesn’t make it sound funny at all…) was a scene where one of the girls in the main character’s class goes to see a doctor. The doctor is the main character’s brother and looks just like him. So she says 「先生！」 (“Teacher!”), but in Japan when one goes to see the Doctor it is proper etiquette to also refer to him as 「先生」　so he just responds with 「はい」　(“Yes?”). Then the girl says 「そうじゃなくて、先生！」 (“No not that, teacher!”) with “that” referring to the custom of calling the Doctor “Teacher” in Japanese. But he doesn’t understand and just responds the same. I can’t say exactly what I found so funny about it, it’s difficult to describe properly, but it was one of many scenes that made great use of irony in regards to cultural practices.

In the last episode there is a girl who is so paranoid about her presence or actions disturbing others that she is constantly apologising and hesitating about doing anything. I was embarrassed that I really emphasised with this. In Japan I sometimes feel reluctant to enter a shop, because I don’t want to trouble the staff who might feel bothered by my actions. This is especially the case where I don’t intend to buy anything. Also I sometimes feel quite bad about possibly making people feel uncomfortable by my presence, as one look at my face clearly identifies me as a Gaijin, which might make some Japanese people feel uncomfortable because on average Gaijin are much more violent and dangerous than the average Japanese and are often either ignorant of or knowingly trample all over public etiquette which makes Japanese people feel very uncomfortable. So even though I know that I am not like the average Gaijin, without talking to each and every Japanese person around me, it’s impossible for them to know that so my presence will be troubling alot of them, making me feel somewhat guilty for the disruption in harmony that my existence is causing. This type of behaviour was parodied extremely well to much humorous conclusion in the last episode, with people getting caught in a taking responsibility cycle, where each asserts that they are fully to blame for some perceived negative outcome or transgression.

There are two more series of this and some OVA’s to watch (evidently quite popular in Japan) and it seems to have been adapted from a Manga series. In fact I vaguely recall looking at them in a shop the last time I was in Japan and wondering whether it was my type of thing or not. It’d probably be a bit more difficult reading rather than watching, but might be interesting none the less.

For those of you not into this type of stuff it’s worth listening to the hilarious conversation around 2:43.

萌えました。

Japan’s dependence on oil is pretty shocking, though I believe it has much improved since then. Overall though it seems that a large amount of the countries “blessed” with the black gold seem to suffer from the resource curse, with the situation on the whole being surprisingly similar today as it was 28 years ago.

Anyway finding this old atlas has reignited my hunger for reading old articles. I always strive to avoid being a “victim of my time” by being overly influenced by both the framing of debates and physical reality of the current time. It’s not that I have any sort of nostalgia for the arbitrary “before time”, it’s just a pragmatic way of kicking myself into thinking properly by exposing myself to more than one distorting intellectual atmosphere.

Here’s an interesting example that I have shamelessly and illegally copied and pasted from the economist’s archives:

Fiscal paralysis
Japan’s feeble economy needs a boost
Feb 26th 1998 | From The Economist print edition

Amazingly, Japan’s fiscal policy remains slightly contractionary, though far less so than in 1997. Most forecasters expect little growth in Japan this year, following growth of only 1.3% a year, on average, since 1992. There are renewed fears of a 1930s-style debt deflation, where falling prices increase firms’ debt burdens and depress demand further. Interest rates, already close to zero, cannot go much lower. So the obvious solution—obvious to anybody outside Japan—is to cut taxes or boost public investment.

The government says it cannot afford a big stimulus because its finances are perilous. It is true that Japan’s gross public debt has risen to 87% of GDP (even 100% by some measures), but net debt (including accumulated social-security surpluses) amounts to only 18% of GDP, the smallest among the G7 economies. The general-government budget deficit (ie, also including social security surpluses), 2 1/2% of GDP, is smaller than its European counterparts’. Rightly, the Japanese are worried about the future pension liabilities implied by their rapidly ageing population. But now is not the time to sort the problem out. Far better to cut the budget later, when the economy has recovered its strength.

Just now, in fact, Japan is a textbook case of a country in need of fiscal stimulus. Confidence is so weak that firms and households are unwilling to borrow even at record low interest rates. There is little risk that government borrowing will “crowd out” private spending—the standard argument, usually justified, for fiscal caution. Just as important, however, is the form any stimulus takes. A temporary income-tax cut, as announced by the government in December, is more likely to be saved than spent. A permanent cut—as part of a reform of Japan’s inefficient income-tax system—would be far more likely to spur activity, thus bringing short-term relief to the economy as well as improving its longer-term efficiency.

A broader lesson
Japan is the pathological case, but other governments too seem unduly bound by fiscal conservatism. Many have taken fears about crowding out to mean that budgets are impotent and only interest rates should be used to steer economies: the rule is balance your budget or reduce borrowing below some ceiling, such as the 3% of GDP which has been laid down as one of the entry conditions for Europe’s monetary union.

It is true that monetary policy is generally better suited to managing demand. Interest rates are easier to change quickly than budgets. And it is also true that too much government borrowing harms economies. But budgetary policy still has a useful role to play, on occasion, in dampening the business cycle. When EMU goes ahead, and they lose the power to set national interest rates, European governments will need more—not less—fiscal flexibility to avoid deep recessions.

Given the expected growth in their debt as pension bills rise, governments are right to aim for a budget surplus or balance over the cycle. Again, this need not prevent swings into deficit in times of recession—or heavily into surplus when an economy is overheating. Britain’s government slipped up by not raising taxes more last year to squeeze consumer spending. Relying on interest rates and hence a stronger pound to cool the economy has put a needless strain on manufacturing. Yet sensible people can disagree about fiscal policy in Britain. It is in Japan that the case for a blind fiscal conservatism has been reduced to an absurdity. Other governments should ponder the example, and remember it.

That article is only 12 years old but already one can taste the essence of a different era. Of course there is nothing immediately mind blowing about this article, but I find it nudges me to analyse the concerns of the era, note how they have changed or what was prophetic and then use this as a counterbalance to the general mood of the current time. I find it almost “thrilling” to see the things that go unremembered from this era (especially the little details, like the pressures of excess consumer spending in Britain at the time). I can’t quite convey why I value old analysis like this so much, but I feel it assists in “tearing new pathways” in the thought process of the mind, to stimulate it and avoid stagnation into the same old recently overused thought routes.

There’s so many different past sub-segments of time with their own many different auras and spirits each of which can push one’s perception to a higher level. I remember finding an article about the increased ability of Japanese to acquire all sorts of consumer durables in the 1960s with quotations from a man enjoying his rising purchasing power. This is pure gold compared to refreshing bloomberg or reuters for the latest news story. As always I am focused on Japan, but there is a host of other topics that I would find great satisfaction in reading past articles on. Articles about the Chinese economy written in the 1990s are often interesting. With enough casual searching, one can come across some true jewels of insight. Some of the most interesting stuff I have read I had not actively considered existed beforehand and it was only through typing in various phrases that I thought up of into a search that I managed to uncover a perhaps indirectly related but most rewarding result.

Today’s news is probably not worth reading until 15 years from now. And it may be the most insightful 45 years from now, depending on the evolution of events, the materialisation of various processions of intellectual atmospheres and the language in which one is reading such sources. A visit to the library is in order!

This is going to get very ugly. I’ll take my chances with 白川様

So anyway on to the game itself. The graphics are amazing, I’m surprised they can get this much out of the PS3′s GPU. There probably was some dilligent work in offloading whatever they could to the Cell. Some of the environments are extremely beautiful, very good use was made of reflective floors. The characters themselves stylistically are very much in harmony with each other and the game as a whole and are done in an ideal enhanced stylistic reality style, as opposed to the often jarring and ugly emulation of reality present in many games. The performance of the game has been massively improved from the demo though I noticed that later parts of the game had more slowdowns that the earlier bits. Perhaps more time was spend on the earlier bits? Maybe people complained about the lag in the demo (which was from the start of the game) so they focused improving performance more on that part. In any case as I’ve said already I’m very pleasantly surprised that the PS3 can output such good graphics at high frame rates.

The sound quality is great, some very satisfying noises at parts! The music is probably below average for a Final Fantasy game, that is to say way better than most games. The boss fight music is probably the one that I found best which is unusual for me as I usually prefer the normal battle music in other FFs.

The game starts at a relentless pace and just keeps going. It’s very linear, feels like a constant out of the frying pan and into the fire type experience. I absolutely loved this aspect. It’s amazing that they can keep this going for so long, though it is interspersed with appropriate flashbacks to steady the pace. To my dismay about 60 – 70% of the way though the pace suddenly dies and the player is abruptly given very large freedom to roam about a massive area. This completely killed the experience for me, it feels kind of tacked on to satisfy the freedom junkies who aren’t happy unless they can wreck a cohesive game by stamping their individualism all over it. So basically the game goes nowhere for awhile. This wouldn’t be so objectionable if the stuff that was offered in this part of the game was more fun – but it isn’t really. You basically can go around killing monsters as part of “mission” like assignments, but it’s all the same and much of the area is the least visually impressive segment of the game. Once one escapes this the linear high-pace kicks back in with some spectacular CG. It runs strong pretty much right to the end.

The story and characters feel quite convincing. So convincing that I quite enjoyed seeing how they all coped and changed through the story. I don’t recall cringing at any time from any of the lines, though if they use American voice actors in the English translation they’ll probably make even perfectly reasonable statements sound ridiculous. You can’t use that casualised and devolved dialect in a fantasy work such as this, it just recreates the atmosphere of one of those gaudy McDonalds restaurants. EPIC BATTLE – would you like fries with that? Immersion annihilation. So I hope for the sake of all the people playing the English version that they use proper British voice actors, that the game may maintain some of its dignity. I recommend playing Heavenly Sword if you want to see voice acting done properly in an English language game. Anyway I’ve just about reached the level where I don’t have to play a game in English to understand what’s going on, so I don’t have to worry about this problem anymore.

In line with the well balanced and portrayed characters, the ending felt just dramatic enough. It was one of those rare occasions a creator of a great work didn’t squander the whole thing by pushing too far at the end. After playing FFXII I had though that maybe I had just gotten old and didn’t like FF games anymore, but it turns out that is was just that FFXII was shit as my love for FFXIII has shown me. Playing FFXIII was like an exact reenactment of playing FFVIII ten years ago. The building anticipation – but tempered by doubts, rushing downstairs early in the morning to start it, getting all I had hoped for and more, being traumatised by having to leave the house over the Christmas period because of obligations to visit relatives or do other stupid things etc.. All a complete replay, so many familiar sensations. In some regards I haven’t really changed at all, I just know more precisely what I like (and hate) internally from experience and development.

Anyway fucking epic game, will play it again.

So while I have already given up on the place and will be immigrating to a utopia once I am finished my education, I have given some thought as to what is wrong and how to fix it, or at least what I would like to see different in the place if I was actually stuck here for the rest of my life. There’s a very large intolerance in Irish people for people who don’t look like “normal” Irish. By Irish normal I mean a dire fashion sense, a raw, roughly hewn look and general inelegance and boorism. Ireland has adopted many of the undesirable characteristics of American society such as a general “Law of the jungle” outlook, machoism etc. but at least there can be some argument that in America’s case people are less likely to be cajoled and abused over their not fitting within a narrow subset of misguided fashion sense, likely owing to the American obsession with personal freedom at any cost. What strikes me as the greatest irony though is that in Japan, a country renowned for its collectivist spirit that “hammers down” individualism, there is a spectacular array of expressive and accepted fashion trends that anyone can embrace without being abused at random by a stranger. Indeed one can wear clothes of one’s preference in Japan that would illicit no unwarranted snide remarks or hostility from strangers yet the same clothes would likely induce a literal assault on one’s person (as I have witnessed happen to someone in Limerick city) in Ireland and at the very least roaring mindless abuse without cause or provocation (as I have personally encountered). Indeed if one is male and has long hair (not shaved basically), wears anything colourful or does not aspire to a troll-ape hybrid aesthetic, one is likely to be unable to walk in public without being the target of random insult and/or violence.

In short, there is an ignorance in the place of beauty. As I said to one of my friends who shares many of my views, the worst thing is that alot of Irish people don’t even realise how appalling they look. I almost stop feeling angry and start feeling sorry for them. Pitying the poor creatures brought up in a society that doesn’t know any better. It’s amazing they were able to coddle together even a housing ponzi scheme given the state of how they look and treat each other. There is no desire for something higher (as in high-culture, or at least some sort of aesthetic beyond the slum look), nor even awareness of its existence except for the subconscious desire that comes raging fourth to destroy anything that has some sort of composure and aesthetic beauty.

Indeed if a male adopts a fashion aesthetic that strays in any margin from the most brutally masculine and ugly testosterone pumped default he will be accused of being a homosexual. I find this truly bizarre. I look far more effeminate that the average Irish male, but this has no bearing on my sexual orientation. I find the concept of sexual relations with another male to be repulsive in the extreme. Could it be, that I just do not want to look like a troll-ape hybrid? Is this so absurd a position? According to the average Irish person, it is. And therein lies the problem, for Irish society thinks it is good to look boorish and uncouth, that beautiful men must necessarily have warped sexual preferences and that any attempt to better oneself and rise above the level of ones peers is to be brutally suppressed at all times least the majority become actively aware of its own ugliness and failure.

How would one address this social mentality issue (which is a much broader problem than the narrow fashion aspect that I have documented above)? Such things are very difficult to purposely change but what would certainly benefit the country would be to aspire more towards some of the more elegant cultural aspects of it’s European neighbours. In unison with this, a “market socialism” mentality that many in Europe hold might help kill some of the infighting and cynicism that drives Irish people to lash out at the refined. Seeing as I have discussed it a little, from a fashion perspective pretty much anything would benefit Ireland immensely but something that might be more tractable (and beneficial to the country from many perspectives) would be if some sort of aesthetic movement emerged that re-fused some aspects of say traditional Irish clothing into standard western clothing. In Japan not only is traditional Japanese clothing actually still worn, it has been incorporated into various fashion trends. So there is a 和ロリ (wa-rori, wa meaning Japan/Japanese and rori meaning lolita) sub-trend within the general lolita fashion that reworks traditional yukata’s and other garments into cute dresses. With various appropriate accessories it ends up being a beautiful continuation and “reinvention” or a long and elegant culture that clearly reflects both its deep history and the creativity of those that have adopted it. In Japan they even adopt other countries traditional clothing into their own new fashion trends with Victorian dress being a particularly strong influence in some areas.

So I think Irish people could benefit both through reinventing their past and fusing other aspects of other elegant cultures into their own creations. Getting them to do this is one thing, and frankly I’ve no interest in trying to push Ireland to be more than the sad, sad place it is as I’ve got nothing but abuse for any efforts over the years and as I said, I’ve given up and am leaving. But for those left behind who want to try and pick up the pieces, one can start by telling Irish men that it’s not cool to be an oaf.

In summary, Irish males need to be more pink in a heterosexual sense. There should be less drinking of black guiness and vomiting it back out into a toilet an hour or two later and more using of those guiness glasses to make pink smoothies, which should be admired for their beautiful aesthetic before being consumed and improving the skin condition of the drinker who delights at the occurrence, as he aspires to be a beautiful man.

I’ll buy you all a drink if that ever actually happens.

Here’s a pic of my bag of win PS3:

Anyway enough of this linux dependancy crapfest, back to playing Final Fantasy XIII.

そらのおとしもの(sora no otoshimono)

This was definitely my favourite anime out of the five. It’s about an “angeloid” who crashes down from the sky and becomes the main characters servant. The fan service is brilliant and relentless in this and there are some very funny scenes. The animation is also extremely beautiful and the story is actually quite moving in parts. We even get to see the main character transform into a girl and act out his “ideal female”, which basically amounts to being a どじっ子 (a klutz) that feels up other girls. Truly awesome.

Another notable moment is the ending credits of the second episode where a load of girls underwear fly around the world like birds/jets to a cover of the very moving 岬めぐり, it’s highly amusing but also a surprisingly forlorn spectacle that actually induced that fleeting beauty feeling that happens alot in Japan. I finally got my hands on that cover of 岬めぐり today, here is a torrent for the whole soundtrack. Needless to say there was some moral hysteria from the gaijin that saw this ending on various video sites accusing Japan of “going insane” etc., as usual Westerners are completely devoid of any aesthetic appreciation for anything beyond their own lifeless, ugly and unbearable colourless cultures.

I found the Japanese used in this to be fairly manageable, with only some technical/historically descriptive speeches from one of the characters to be difficult. I’d love to be able to talk in that relentless string of Kanji manner, it sounds so intellectually developed.

11eyes

This anime was unusually dark for an anime that I’d watch but it maintained appropriate fanservice and beautiful aesthetics so I was not left unsatisfied, with some of the fighting scenes being entertaining in their own way. Like many anime, this was originally an エロゲ(erotic game). It’s awesomely surprising how many somewhat minor エロゲ get made into proper anime. The story revolves around a group of students who get smashed into the 赤い夜(red evening) every evening which is like a parallel world full of monsters that attack them. They each have various powers and some of the action is extremely violent and almost disturbing with characters being killed off relatively frequently in a brutal fashion. But this fits well with the goth-loli type aesthetic that is somewhat present. The sudden brutal deaths actually added a layer of depth that I found to be quite suitable.

It also deals with some psychological issues, with one of the girls pretty much going mad with paranoia and jealousy. Needless to say this plot thread provides numerous opportunities for relevant fanservice! I found the whole thing to be an unusual and refreshing mix and hope to see more like it again. The Japanese used was quite difficult, with the plot being rather complex and difficult to follow. My knowledge of vocabulary related to “fighting” scenarios is still somewhat limited, there tends to be alot of words not really used in everyday Japanese in these type of anime, making it hard at times.

真恋姫無双 (shin koihime musou)

This is again derived from an エロゲ and is an interesting take on the romance of the three kingdoms. Romance of the three kingdoms is a famous Chinese story about three warring kingdoms in China, I believe around the 2nd century. Games, anime and manga derived from it are extremely popular in Japan. Some of you may have heard of the 三国無双(dynasty warriors) games that are based on this. Kessen 2 for the PS2 also uses the same setting.

In this case all the male characters are replaced by appropriately 萌え girls that go on various adventures together. There’s a massive amount of characters so every episode features new ones being introduced which keeps things very interesting. I found this anime to be very funny in parts though since everyone speaks in the Japanese equivalent of “medieval” speak and all the characters have Japanified Chinese names it can be very hard to understand sometimes. From an asthetic perspective at least, I find some aspects of Chinese culture to be quite admirable, particularly the music. I don’t have any experience with Chinese society though from what I have read and from speaking to Chinese people in Japan, they do seem at least moderately more individualist than Japanese people which would lead me to suspect the place would not be ideal for me, but I guess it couldn’t be worse than the West from a social mentality perspective. In any case a bit of Chinese culture here and there is pleasant indeed!

けんぷファー(kampfer)

This one is really great. The main character becomes a “kampfer”, who have the only purpose of fighting other coloured kampfers. However since kampfers can only be girls, every time he transforms into kampfer form he becomes a girl version of himself. That’s two out of the five this season that feature transforming into girls, an interesting coincidence.

Anyway he is in love with a girl called Kaede, but she isn’t interested in him normally but is in love with his female form. On top of that there are three other girls in love with his male form that he is hesitating about so there is epic opportunities for fanservice and other trials and tribulations. I looked forward to this every week almost as much as I did for そらのおとしもの. The Japanese was probably the easiest to understand of all of them too. Wouldn’t it be great if we could all transform into kampfers and be pursued by other hot girls. Afterall, we are all just lesbians trapped inside men’s bodies.

生徒会の一存(seitokai no ichizon)

This was a very unusal setting. Most of the anime takes place inside the “student council” room, with the council consisting of one guy and four girls. He constantly refers to the council as his “harem” and generally the story revolves around his delusions about reality and desire to merge the real world with the fictional　エロゲ/萌え(erotic game/moe) world. There are alot of parodies of other anime and some of the most difficult use of Japanese I have seen in an anime, making it extremely difficult to understand.

As an aside the story is based in Sapporo, and one episode has a perfect animated version of the outside of Sapporo station complete with the glass structure and odd shaped sculpture. This made me extremely nostalgic for when I was living in Sapporo. They even take the overnight train under the sea through the seikan tunnel going to Tokyo that I took in reverse from Tokyo to Sapporo, and they had the train itself done exactly as it is in reality. This touches on one of the best things about Japan, that everything is set in its own Japanese way that seems to eternally reflect the unchanging essence of the place…

Anyway I wouldn’t recommend this anime to anyone who doesn’t have very good Japanese as it really is heavy going in parts. A knowledge of alot of other anime would also be necessary to get many of the parodies.

With such a good season of anime behind me, I can’t help but feel it will be unlikely I’ll be this lucky in finding as many really good anime in the coming season.

He has it all backwards. China’s irrational currency policy is effectively a subsidy for the rest of the world’s standard of living. We require less of our currency than it “should” require to acquire simple, real goods to meet our basic everyday needs. This leaves us more purchasing power to spend on real high end goods that are made in Germany, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan, boosting these economies. The Chinese government is paying for our lifestyle at the expense of their own people, who have higher inflation and less purchasing power than they would without the silly policies. Long may it continue.

The stealing jobs argument rings a bit hollow when we see that Japan is still running a trade surplus with China despite the Chinese undervalued currency, because Japan makes real high end things that the Chinese want. The problem can therefore now be seen as a structural problem with the American and UK economies, which have too many marketers and usurers and not enough capacity to make real goods. America seems to think its job is to consume the goods that everyone else makes and then tries to blame currency policy when it spends more than it can make back. How does it expect to pay for its consumption if it doesn’t make anything? And no, “value added” “financial services” does not constitute “making” something. Not only is financial services an obvious parasite on the rest of society by skimming off the cream from any capital that passes through it, it probably also as a whole has cost the USA and UK more money between bailouts and financial collapse than it has provided them with tax revenue over the past decade (with the tax revenue argument being a favorite of the market fundamentalists trying to rationalize the existence of a parasitical drain on society as the main focus economic pseudo growth instead of focusing on making actual things like semiconductors, chemical factories, consumer electronics etc..)

So from my point of view, what would happen if China allowed the Yuan to appreciate? Basic stuff imported from China would get more expensive for me, meaning I could spend less on the high end stuff that I want, damaging Japan’s economy. Japan’s trade surplus with China might increase a bit more, but the goal of economic policy shouldn’t be to increase trade surpluses further, it should be to enhance the purchasing power of Japanese consumers (so long as this goal doesn’t conflict with making real things, social collapse etc.) How much more of a trade surplus with China does Japan need? There’s going to be diminishing returns from larger surpluses and ultimately economic policy that tries to run surpluses at any cost is mostly self-defeating, as evidenced by the Chinese today. Better to take the cheap low end goods, sell them back more high end goods and have more money ourselves left over to buy even more of our own (Japanese) high end goods.

All the Chinese irrational policy has done is highlight the structural problems in the American and UK economies. Even if the Yuan appreciates, alot of the low end manufacturing isn’t going to come back to the USA and UK but they’ll have to pay more for alot of basic goods, damaging their own purchasing power. The solution to these structural deficits is industrial policy to encourage specialization in various high end areas of manufacturing that require significant intellectual capital. However, I hope that the USA and UK do not try to address this problem appropriately, as I’d prefer to have them enslaved to the producers of real high end goods (one of which is Japan) rather than having them as additional competitors.

As for the Chinese, it seems to me that they are following the current policy out of fear of the social instability that may result from any disruption in the structure of their economy, rather than out of economic reasons. Ultimately they are poorer and I am richer because of it so I am not complaining. Also Krugman’s bizarre assertion that the dollar losing international purchasing power would benefit the American economy is disturbing. A weak currency encourages inefficiency and the establishment of export oriented enterprises that cannot compete at rational currency exchange rates. After the huge run up in the value of the yen in early 1995 (and before that in the mid 1980s) Japanese firms invested massively in efficiency and productivity improvement, as they had to invest or die. Ultimately despite the increase in the yen they were still able to outcompete other firms because the increase itself made them push themselves harder than their competition. When the yen came down to more rational levels (and then later somewhat irrationally weak levels) this competitive edge remained and produced huge dividends, but the proceeding long period of yen weakness actually damaged competitiveness as they got “sloppy” and used the weak yen as a competitive crutch. Ultimately I see the recent strength of the yen as a positive stress on Japanese firms that will drive forward their productivity (this is the same logic that I use to argue that the minimum wage can cause efficiency gains by making it more expensive to throw labour at a problem instead of automation.)

Another train of thought may be that their assessment of the economic situation remains unchanged, but that there was a moderate shift in the “regime” towards desiring a slightly more doveish definition of price stability, which would warrant additional monetary easing in order to bring this new desired reality to manifestation. In any case I take issue with the new definition of price stability as being a greater than 0% and less than 2% change in the CPI. Surely by definition, if one desires price stability one desires an inflation rate of 0%, where the net purchasing power of a nominal amount of money remains unchanged from a broad perspective through time. Such a situation would greatly facilitate the ability of market participants to discern the relative price changes of different goods to an unchanging constant standard, enhancing the market pricing mechanism by removing the noise of a general economy wide excess expansion of the money supply. Arguably along similar lines, a change in the price level of less than 0% could also interfere with the information content of the market pricing mechanism, though given that falling prices is the natural state for a good which is undergoing growth in the productivity of it’s creation, I feel this argument is less robust in regards to deflation being undesirable, as long as the deflation rate remains less than or equal to the rate of productivity growth.

For hundreds of years most monetary systems in the world were rooted in real assets serving as the monetary specie. As in general (or at least for some of the metals that were used), the supply of these assets increased on average at a lower rate than the growth of the economies that they were serving as money for, a general price deflation was often the case during peacetime. Though this moderate deflation was persistent, massive real growth in productivity, output and the standard of living occurred throughout this era. Times of war frequently resulted in sudden large spikes in inflation as the capacity to provide goods was destroyed or turned towards wasteful war production. Thus on a net basis, prices were relatively unchanged over very long periods of time despite huge increases in living standards. It was only after the second world war that a large aversion to deflationary productivity growth set in to the collective mentality of many economists, perhaps spurred by the huge demand collapse (as opposed to the good, supply expansion driven deflation) that occurred in the great depression which trigged massive levels of deflation in many countries in the early 1930s.

That aversion to deflation caused by supply expansion is absurd can be seen in the functioning of the market for many digital electronic components. The capacity to produce computing power/memory etc. has expanded exponentially for decades causing incredible levels of supply driven price deflation of these devices even when measured in currencies that are often increasing in supply by 5% or more per year. This massive deflation is evident to me personally (and most others I would imagine) whenever I consider purchasing some sort of digital computationally dependant device. There is a silly argument that people will not buy something when they know it will be cheaper in the future. This argument is used as a thesis against 1% or 2% general supply expansion driven price deflation. But has there not been 40%+ price deflation every year for decades in the price of many digital devices that is likely to continue on relentlessly for some time? Surely if the argument was true, no one would ever buy a digital device. I could have likely bought 40% more computing power with the same nominal amount of money in March 2009 as I could have bought in March 2008 and I knew this, so why did I still build a computer in March 2008? An excessively mathematically bound economist might say that it was because a 40% faster computer in a year had a lower present value to me than a computer now and they would probably be right in some vague respect. There are many reasons why I chose not to defer my construction of a computer but without even thinking about it much I can say that even if there was an anticipated further acceleration in the deflation of the price of computing power anticipated, I still would have built it then as it fulfilled a desire over a time period that would never come again given the linear progression of time. That is to say that humans are not anything like the rational future discounting beings that some silly economists try to model them as and despite any anticipation of future utopian price conditions, they will still purchase items in the present as their desires and needs in reality will so frequently and easily overcome abstract theories of non-consumption under economic progress and price deflation.

So it is with some disappointment that I look upon this clarification of the BoJ’s desired range for price stability, of whose higher end (just below 2%) is most definitely not price stability by the definition of reality and whose lower end (just greater than 0%) has still not reached even a balanced interpretation of the term. While the BoJ should not be berated for failing to maintain price stability (as it,the Swiss central bank and perhaps the Bundesbank are arguably the only major central banks who haven’t completely abused their own currencies over the past 50 years or so), any attempt to move the definition higher than its already economically damaging too high level should be opposed.

In particular the strength of Patrick Stewart’s acting and the sheer depth of Captain Picard serves as the anchor and moral compass, central to the premise of the entire series. The captain is a stern, somewhat brooding but deeply ethical man who wrestles with the philosophical and moral dillemas he is faced with in a truly rigorous manner. At every juncture, he aspires to be more than the sum of his parts, to rise to the challenge of the unknown, to maintain his dignity in the most hostile of circustances, and more importantly the dignity of those in weak and exploited circumstances. He assaults the limits of human thought and reasoning and shapes the structure of his crew in these ideals.

I had always thought highly both of the character and series as a whole and of the acting abilities of Patrick Stewart. But some of the episodes we watched really brought home to me the sheer quality of writing and portrayal that had somewhat faded in my memory. In the episode “Chain of Command”, where Picard is setup, captured by the Cadassians and brutally tortured, I found myself feeling I was looking at a work of art and not just common entertainment. The psychological effects of torture and deprevation are magnificently portrayed by Stewart, who shows how it induces both madness and truth seeing in the tortured but ultimately robs only the toturer of his dignity. It was a deeply disturbing yet also somewhat heartening set of events as we find that even at the end the captain can see the reality of his torturer as a frightened small child who cannot do anything, while at the same time being himself driven almost to madness to the point of seeing five lights in front of him when there really are only four. There are so many lessons from this scene, some of which Picard himself describes. Toture itself is not a reliable form of information extraction, the torturer is ultimately the powerless one, everyone ultimately breaks etc.. This is a most deep issue, of powerful emotional weight with real philosophical relevence that is really the heart of what Star Trek is about. There was no quick one liners, reckless simplification or skirting of self-examination.

So it is now with an even greater detest that I look at the recent film that calls itself “Star Trek”. This film is a steaming pile of shit and vomit. Captain Kirk has a horrendous hormone imbalance problem that causes him to compulsively hump anything in sight, drive other people’s old sports cars off cliffs, and shout and bully his way to the top of any situation. There is not one consideration of moral or ethical issues in any manner that can rise above Kirk’s own huge ego which necessitates him taking the most dramatic and reckless course of action at every possible opportunity. Kirk is the personification of everything that is wrong with America. Selfish, ignorant, base, completely uncultured, violence and bullying as the default solution to any problem, zero self-awareness or self-criticism and a complete and irrational belief in his own ability to fuck the world’s cake and have it too. It’s embarrassing (and absurd on multiple levels, both in-universe and from an external writing/philosophy of star trek perspective) that this child was given responsibility for an entire starship and its crew. It’s embarrassing to watch him do anything, he reminds me of some of the worst behaved stupid people when I was in secondary school.

There was no appeal in the film for man to rise above his most base instincts, for man to aspire to be more than just another animal. There was no sense of cultural interaction, of scientific exploration in a utopian perspective. It was all just base violence and degenerate egoism. It was like one of those American teen sex films. The philosophical perspective of the film would have been better captured by the title “American Pie 8″ than “Star Trek.” There wasn’t even any good ship battles! Just as much as I demand robust treatment of ethical and moral issues so I also demand aesthetically pleasing ship battles which have their own form of elegance and sheer entertainment. One can and should have both in a Star Trek adaptation.

I am deeply disappointed that many of my friends who praise the performance of Patrick Stewart and the depth of story telling and philosophical rigour in The Next Generation can turn around and say that “Star Trek” is a brilliant film which they loved. Is it too much to ask that a Star Trek film aspire to the ideals and depth that have crafted the universe for many years, that it be more than just a vomiting trough for the failure of American society?

“Star Trek” is not Star Trek. It is not even a good film, and is an insult both to the philosophical legacy of the series and to the rigorous intellectually powerful masterpiece that was produced by all those involved in The Next Generation.

At least I can take some solace in the fact that I will be enjoying Star Trek VII – X on blu-ray this Christmas and that Patrick Stewart is to be knighted in the New Year’s Honours list.

My wireless network has no password.

I am amazed that those who champion individual freedom the most are often the most paranoid in “securing” themselves from threats (mostly entirely imaginary and the rest unstoppable even with any amount of life destroying security) and in the process of doing so actual give up much of the freedom they so relentlessly demand. Many of my friends have locked down their own wireless networks in their own homes, requiring a most tedious entry of a password on occasion and a huge hindrance to guests in the house who cannot avail of internet access without having the host slowly call out the password as they type it into their device. Should many guests be at the house at the same time, this can be most bothersome especially as the host cannot be with everyone at once. Asides from the drudgery of trying to find someone who knows the password and type it in correctly I find the concept of presumed guilt that the requirement of a password implies to be completely revolting.

For it is to say that a man who wishes to access the internet in this home is presumed a criminal, a terrorist, a wild destructive lout-animal hybrid who will most certainly deploy his advanced knowledge of computer networks to attempt “bad” things. His integrity, his dignity, his reputation are so brutally assaulted by the violation that is the password prompt. Indeed it is the dignity of the host of the network that suffers most of all. For he is the prisoner in his own home. Should he want to access the internet, nay, even access another device within his own network, he is subject to an implied interrogation that assaults the very base of his character. Is he an unamerican* terrorist who hates freedom, who seeks to destroy “our” post September 11th hysterical mess of a society? That is what his own wireless network asks him when he wishes to interact with devices in his own home. It is as if within his own mind every thought must be followed by a self-torture session where he tries to force himself to admit to imaginary crimes which he never committed and knows such and that shouldn’t even be considered crimes even if they were true in any case. This is sadism, self-mutilation and the voluntary annihilation of one’s own dignity.

If a man can get use out of my wireless network to check his email when located close to my home, then he is most welcome to do so. If a lost individual, weary from their travels, can use my wireless network to help find his sense of direction, then he is most welcome to do so. To allow such things is to create real wealth, for the world is economically better off when such random passers by can benefit from my wireless network to fulfil even the smallest immediate communication need. I offer this open hand in a spirit of solidarity, that I may benefit someone in need. That I may benefit the society I live in without demanding anything in return. There is a net wealth creation through cooperation. Everyone is better off that my network is free, including me.

For asides from living in a wealthier society, I am not accused of terrorism or criminality by machines in my own home. I do not have the subtle stress of having to authenticate myself when interacting with different machines or introducing new ones. My ability to interact with the devices in my own home becomes closer to the visualisation (API perhaps?) that I have of them in my own mind, as there are a few less practical barriers to be overcome when translating what I wish to achieve from my own mind into physical actions and interactions with machines. All in all, by offering others the potential ability to infringe on my own freedom I have actually set myself free while enhancing the society I live in. For my open network says to another man that I presume him a dignified gentleman, a civilised most respectable individual in a top hat, monocle and tailored splendour who upholds the highest standards of respect and politeness to others. This in itself helps to create the very civilised existence that I am implicitly saying I believe to be present in the unknown individual as a fellow existential being.

When the salaryman in Japan puts his briefcase on the rack above his seat and falls asleep on the late night train home, he is implicitly saying that he believes others in the group, the society he is a member of, are dignified and will not steal from him. He is actually creating the very behaviour in others that he believes exists by voting with his actions as to the integrity of others. The same applies when many Japanese people leave their keys in the car while they stop for a few minutes to go into a shop. This is a beautiful existence. The triumph of solidarity and gentlemanly conduct over the whinging of reckless tragedy of the anticommons individualist freedom.

I say, the “securing” of wireless networks represents a pitiful low that some men have fallen to (including in Japan). Those of you that chase security for “protection” of your individualist pseudo freedom are little more than spluttering, hysterical ruins, conquered by your own self. You have already lost everything.

*The author is not American, and is merely mocking the mindset of a significant portion of that country as a semi-aside.

I included a 12 month moving average to smooth out the December spikes. Note the numbers on the left are meaningless by themselves, it is just the scale that is important (they are actually measuring the real purchasing power of outstanding banknotes and coins per person so it would be possible to align them to correspond to the purchasing power of the yen at a certain point in time, e.g. outstanding amount of real yen (2000 value) per Japanese person.) By this measure, “real wealth” (as I like to call it….though imaginary wealth might be a better name) increases exceptionally fast until the first oil crisis after which it stagnates for the rest of the decade. Just as it begins to increase again the second oil crisis arrives causing another moderate decline. The early 1980s show moderate growth which takes off during the latter part of the decade. Real wealth suddenly plateaus as the bubble bursts but a recovery soon emerges that runs strong for the rest of 1990s even picking up steam towards the end of the decade. The 2000s are then marked by a very large slowdown with only moderate progress made by this measure.

I thought it might be a good idea to produce this measure for other countries so after much bother I put together the same graphs for the USA and the UK.

The measure for the USA lacks bumpiness as the banknote and coin data was seasonally adjusted. By this measure the 1970s was most brutal for the USA with the two oil shocks leaving it worse off at the start of the 1980s. However after this there is an almost constant steady expansion running from the early 1980s all the way to 2000, doubling the real “wealth” of the country. While Japan quadrupled it’s measure over a similar period, when we consider that Japan was still at a low overall base in 1970, this is quite a strong performance by the USA. A significant slowdown in the increase in the measure is also noted in the USA during the 2000s.

The UK’s performance under the metric is truly abysmal. The fact that the great inflation in the 1970s was horrific in the UK (13% a year on average for the decade, worse than the USA) is probably a contributor to the poor performance through an increase in velocity, though the measure itself should be somewhat neutral to “printing” derived inflation as an increase in CPI is offset by an increase in banknotes,.This leaves one pondering why the UK did so poorly under the measure given that the USA and Japan experienced the same supply side shocks that eroded purchasing power without having near as bad an outcome. The drop during the latter part of the 1980s is somewhat curious aswell, though I believe there was significant increases in oil prices around then. If we take this measure as being indicative of real wealth we are left with the somewhat objectionable conclusion that the British were no wealthier per person in 1999 than they were in 1973, and that they were far wealthier in 1973 than in 1991. As a small compensatory prize, the slowdown in the increase in the measure since 2000 does not seem quite as large in the UK as in Japan and the USA.

What I have started to come to notice is that the measure seems to be strongly reactive to commodity supply shocks. The two oil shocks, the 1990 spike in the price of oil and the broad rally in commodity prices since the early 2000s also coincide with decline, stagnation or only slow increase of the measure. As the three countries in question are dependant on importing oil and other commodities, this is a somewhat intuitive result. I believe it’s quite true to say that citizens in these three countries really are less wealthy when commodity prices increase significantly as so much of their economies are based on using commodity derived energy to run enhancing processes on other commodities to create high end goods. When both the raw materials and the energy needed to process raw materials becomes more expensive, the capacity to produce these real goods declines. There is therefore less real wealth able to be created and so the real purchasing power of all the money in the country as a whole should decrease.

I have not seen other research that takes much notice of narrow measures of money such that I have, nor do many seem to associate such measures with actual wealth. I think adding the adjusting factor for the CPI adds a significant robustness to the measure’s ability to indicate some real changes in wealth/production/some positive thing, but at the same time I accept there will be significant noise introduced from things like changing velocity. All in all, my interest in deriving such measures is likely very much related to my own love of banknotes for their intrinsic essence (as opposed to things they can buy) as much as it is out of interest for measuring wealth and monetary policy.

Perhaps I have spent too long in the ivory tower, and constructed measures so abstract as to be quite absurd. Or perhaps I have made something useful and the BoJ will employ me!

My knowledge of biology is poor but from some papers I’ve glanced through and other general reading as well as noting what I have physically experienced, garlic seems to induce a body wide purge of all the “gunk” that accumulates in it. The sulphuric compounds spread throughout the body, even coming out through the skin. Hence the complaint people often have of being able to smell garlic from their own sweat. However I believe this “undesirable” effect is the most beneficial health effect in action. When the compounds come out through the skin they drag all the gunk they’ve dislodged in the body with them. Hence if there’s alot of impurities in someone’s system, they may get some pimples after consuming large amounts of garlic particularly on the arms and legs where they wouldn’t normally be seen. This is of course unpleasant in the short term, but ultimately one wants these artery clogging substances to be extracted out of the body which is what this achieves. I read a paper concluding that garlic reduces the incidence of Atherosclerosis (buildup of fatty deposits on arteries), which would be consistent with my crude “gunk” cleaning out theory.

Anyway one could argue that the potential cleaning out of one’s arteries isn’t worth the strong odour generated by the use and consumption of garlic. But not only did I theorise about gunk being cleaned out of my system and notice the occasional pimple on an arm as evidence, I saw a very large difference in the quality of my complexion. I don’t know how to describe these things well but I can say my skin seems much “brighter” or clearer which I especially noticed in my face. By no measure did I suddenly become anything near 100% ideal skin condition, but there was clear undeniably visible improvements in certain factors in relation to skin condition. I also noticed a smooth, clear feeling on my back, like it had been purged of impurities. I noticed these improvements within a week of starting regular consumption of one raw, crushed clove every evening. I usually put it into a sandwich like creation with tomatoes, lettuce, spinach etc..

The strength of the odour of crushed raw garlic is very strong and I certainly wouldn’t eat it just before going into a social situation (not that I do much of that.) But I also found some countermeasures to it. If one spreads the crushed garlic on the bread and then covers the garlic with tons of parsley quanta (really use this to excess) it kills alot of the strong smell. Furthermore drinking a small amount of semi-skimmed milk after consumption also seems to assist significantly.

I would strongly recommend attempting to consume one crushed clove a day for a week. If one does not notice the improvements I have described after that length of time I would be most surprised. Asides from the smell of the garlic (which can be controlled as mentioned above), the taste of crushed garlic may feel very strong and “spicy” almost to the point of a mild burning sensation if one is completely unaccustomed to it. Some people may find it moderately upsets digestion until they get used to it, but that is the case with many foods or drinks that are suddenly introduced to a diet.

I’ll continue my slow search for other foods and drinks that induce clear health benefits, but I can’t help but feel I may never find another as dramatically beneficial as garlic.

The first collection was outright boring, but in this one I found a good few of the stories to be pretty interesting and funny. Why did I buy them if I find them boring? At the time that I bought them I was just about to go back to Ireland from Japan and wanted to stock up on some Japanese reading material for the long dark age when I’d be away from Japan. There were two series of manga collections being sold based in the Little Busters! universe, one of the series’ had a sample scene from one of the stories within them printed at the back. Looking through these I found them all to be completely hilarious and really wanted to buy the books. But the shop was missing the second book in that series and as I wanted to buy a few of them I had an autistic compulsion against being “missing” one of the books in the middle. So I presumed that there’d be similar quality content in the other series of books based in the same universe and bought the first three of them instead. As it turned out the first one was a disappointment, though the second one was much improved. Hopefully the third will be very good, but I’d be surprised if it was. Like many manga and anime, this series actually began as an エロゲ (erotic game) and given its popularity I’m very surprised it hasn’t been made into an anime aswell. There have been much more obscure エロゲ that have been turned into anime so it is quite a puzzle indeed.

I’d say it took me about 4 hours to get through this one. As always I notice a relentless but extremely slow ongoing improvement in my Japanese. I’ve been reading a short novel aswell for the past few months very much on and off, but that’s alot tougher. It can be very hard to plow through walls and walls of text especially when one hits a dogey patch with alot of unknown words that have to be constantly looked up which kills the flow. Of course the opposite occurs when going through a good patch, starting to believe absurdities that one is “almost fluent” until the bubble bursts again. I have some more manga ordered in any case that are closer to my interests (unrelenting fanservice/萌え系) that have furigana so I’m looking forward to them and they should certainly help my study.

I took the JLPT2 (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) exam last weekend with my friend Daniel. Unfortunately it was rather a disaster for me, I ran out of time at the end of the comprehension section so had to quickly select “2″ as my guess for the answers for the last 20 or so short questions. I should have done the short questions first instead of starting with the longer comprehensions. But in any case even if I had had more time, level 2 is just a bit beyond me at this stage. I definitely failed (<60%) the listening and kanji sections aswell. It was always going to be a long shot and while I built up some good momentum with study for a few weeks I then got busy with alot of projects at University and couldn’t put in the time for studying Japanese. Daniel fared a bit better though, I’m pretty optimistic he passed based on talking to him. I’ll try the exam again of course and given the very slow but unstoppable grind towards improvement that has been the constant long term trend for me, I’ll get it sooner or later.

One of the strangest things that has happened in this batch is my leak which is attempting to flower in the middle of winter. I’m amazed it’s still alive though given the extremely mild autumn and winter so far it has had luck on its side. This particular Leek was being grown with others by my Mother in the shade. She insisted on keeping them (and another big batch of onions) up against the house in the shade for “tidiness” sake which brutally crippled their growth. Eventually I had to intervene and nationalise this Leek to save the wider populace from starvation. I got him his own pot and moved him to a place where he could actually absorb some energy from the sun. Originally I had selected a different Leek for nationalisation who had held up the best in the miserable conditions of the shade but when my Mother agreed to it and proceeded to attempt to pull it up she ended up decapitating it. A few days later it actually started to regrow but it was again pulled up, this time for consumption by the populace. Needless to say given the public outrage from my previous nationalisation I was powerless to intervene to stop this travesty.

Anyway getting the Leek into the sun clearly helped him but he had lost so much good opportunity for growth that he only started sending up his flower stalk this autumn. Of course all the other Leeks in the shade failed to send up a flower stalk at all, so my intervention certainly helped.

I’m wondering will he actually make it to flowering though. He could just die down all of a sudden, but even if he did flower would there be any insects around to enable polination or indeed any other leeks flowering at this time to provide their pollen? Very unlikely I would say. However it might also produce those “bulbil” things that alot of Alliums have instead of flowers which are sort of like miniture asexually produced bulbs that will grow into a clone of the parent plant. But there is almost no genetic recombination from asexual reproduction apart from freak errors so I am far less interested in it. It will be interesting to see how this pans out.

Flower, you hero!!! The depths of winter be damed!

My two onions, the only things that grew for me this year acording to how the “textbooks” say they should, are slumbering away throughout the winter. These two legends were grown from seed, they had a third friend but he fell in battle when the great tide of slugs came and wiped out much of the useful production in the garden. His fallen form fertilised the ground though and his two friends grew stronger than ever until no slug would dare assail them. I’m going to buy some red onions in the shopping centre in the spring and try to grow them at the same time these two come out of dormancy. If I can get the red ones and these white ones to flower at the same time I can cross their pollen and create hybrid seeds. Who knows what wondrous Allium will emerge from the forging together of such genetic materials!

I planted a garlic clove last spring that had sprouted while in the garlic tray/bowl thing in the kitchen. But this guy has had a truly bizarre life. At first he grew two leaves up from the ground which looked a bit different to the other garlics that had been planted. But then he did nothing else but absorb quantas of sun and then began to slowly die down. After a few months there was nothing left of him above ground and I despaired at the events that transpired. About a month after he had died down in the early summer I dug down and had a look at the clove. It has transformed itself into a miniature garlic bulb! Strange indeed. It seemed still very much alive. So I let it be and about a month later it again sprouted up. Unfortunately it had missed many many sunny days that occurred during the early summer and the rest of the summer was not nearly as conductive to growing. This time he grew a good bit further than last but still strangely stalled again. Now he has been very slowly dying back over the past few months and he’s still looking quite ok in the dead of winter. I’m hoping he’ll die away and come roaring back in the spring again, although it’s impossible to tell what’s going on with this guy. I might have a look at the bulb though I prefer let things go as they are, a gardening philosophy I refer to as “positive non interventionism”, modelled on the British policies in Hong Kong before the handover to the PRC.

While the above are my “crop” from last year, over the past month or two I’ve put a few garlic cloves that have spouted into the ground at various locations. It seems it’s recommended to plant in the autumn, as it allows them to establish root systems and junk like that. Anyway I intend to continue planting cloves throughout the rest of the winter so as to have a wide enough distribution to get it “right” for at least some of them. Though I imagine it doesn’t really matter in any case.

This was quite a thin clove that had sprouted but it has done remarkably well. Can’t believe how big it is, especially cause I’ve read so much advice and old wives tales about only planting the fat cloves. I hope it doesn’t get fucked over by a load of frost, where its level of growth might work against it. I’m quite optimistic about this guy in any case.

Here’s a guy I put out the front, he’s chugging along fine nothing special to report.

There’s an epic story behind these two. I found a truly fat clove that had sprouted in the kitchen and planted it out the front near the last guy. It was growing ok but then one day I came home from University and found it ravaged, sundered in two and thrown off to the side. It had been assaulted by a feral beast!! The creature had gnawed off part of the clove and some of the shoots but fled in dismay as the sulphur compounds in the garlic unleashed themselves upon it. I had little hope for the clove but put it back down into its planting position and hoped it might recover from such a horrendous incident.

Yesterday when I went out to inspect the troops I found two garlics growing where I had replanted the attacked one. I dug down and discovered that the second garlic is actually the fragment that the feral beast had gnawed off before fleeing! Somehow it had dynamically determined that it had been separated from the rest of the clove and send up its own shoot. Imagine the type of failure detection system and redundancy that must be in place within a clove to be able to do such a thing. Truly amazing. It would be like if I cut a core off my CPU and that core auto detected that it had been severed from the main system and so grew its own bus interface etc..

The feral beast’s attack has truly failed. Not only was he left with a rotten taste in his mouth, but he has also doubled my productive output!

To try and briefly summarize a central concept of the book, it is asserted that under a balance sheet recession private entities will go into debt minimization mode and ignore the rational predictions of classic economic theory which states that they are always attempting to maximize profits. The private sector will continue to pay down debt despite near zero interest rates because of the horrific damage done to their balance sheets by the collapse in asset prices. Despite being profitable on an ongoing basis, many of the entities are technically insolvent with a negative net worth. Their only choice is to keep up the facade of being profit maximizing agents while in reality they are furiously plowing profits into debt repayment. This creates a demand gap, as there are no willing borrowers for the debt being paid down. If other borrows do not step in to invest the repaid funds in their own activities (as would happen under a normal recession where there is no balance sheet issues for the private sector) the downturn will be further exacerbated and the debt repayment efforts of the private sector will be self defeating. In order to facilitate the repair of private sector balance sheets (who are ultimately running profitable endeavours merely bogged down with excess debt) the government should run deficits to put the funds that the private sector will not invest to use.

If we agree that Ireland is now in a balance sheet recession, as opposed to a cyclical downturn that can be addressed purely by monetary policy, it becomes almost inevitable and dare I say necessary that there will be large budget deficits for a long long time over the coming years. If the budget was attempted to be balanced today there would be an overwhelming adjustment that would in a large part be self defeating. However given the sheer size of the budget deficit in relation to GDP, the benefits that a moderate decline in prices and costs would bring to the country (give the absurd level that some prices and wages had risen to during the bubble) and the boost in confidence to the bond markets which will lower the cost of debt, an attempt today to reduce the budget deficit from an alarmingly large level to a still very large but moderately less so level would be a course of action that I would not be opposed to.

However it should be recognized that the Irish government will have to run large deficits for many years to allow the private sector to repair itself and the government should convey this clearly to the public. I see today’s budget as cleansing the excess froth from the system (by reducing expenditure but not excessively so), but budgets henceforth will have to remain in high deficit to avoid pushing too large an adjustment on the private sector, which will collapse if not supported (at this point it is appropriate to point and laugh at the free market junkies for their empirical failure.)

Once the private sector has adjusted, which could take many many years, an iron willed fiscal consolidation will be needed. It is difficult to tell when the adjustment has been completed, but a good measure might be looking at the net debt repayment/issuance of the private sector as a whole. When this moves from net repayment to net issuance government deficits will stop becoming supportive and will start to have the large crowding out effect that damages long term growth by competing with the private sector for funds (which it is finally looking to borrow again after years of being in debt minimization mode). At such a point the government will not just need to balance the budget, it will need to run surpluses. Under normal conditions (presuming the government has debt and the private sector is not in a balance sheet recession (and hence is working for profit maximization)) government surpluses will allow some of the issued public debt to be repayed which then frees up this money to be lent to the private sector which will invest it in activities they deem profitable. In addition to this benefit the government surplus may also help to keep asset price bubbles under control as increasing government revenues from the general economic expansion will not be matched by increased government spending, effectively “leaning against the wind”. Though in my own belief it is primarily monetary policy which bears responsibility for fighting bubbles.

In Ireland’s case, the government throughout the last expansion squandered increasing revenue with reckless tax cuts and public sector expansion. The cheerleaders for the housing bubble and market fundamentalists believed that such unsustainable policies were creating a virtuous circle of prosperity whereas in reality such disastrous fiscal policy was destroying the rationality of the economy and building a massive ponsi scheme. In the future, many years from now, another private sector expansion will manifest itself. At this time the government and public must resist the temptation to repeat the same mistakes. Having lived through the last expansion and argued with many at the time for tax hikes and spending cuts so as to be ready for a “rainy day”, I have seen first hand the nauseating sense of entitlement and complacency that is formed during such economic climates. No one cared about the national debt at the time, people just wanted more tax cuts and more services. Suddenly now, everyone claims to be appalled at the increase in the national debt during the one time it can actually do some good in the economy. Where was the concern back when it mattered, back when small reductions in your standard of living could’ve bought the country large insurance and cushion against adverse developments?

In summary, balance sheet recessions are rare. In most recessions a recovery can be engineered through monetary policy alone and government stimulus will be counter productive. Under normal expansions governments should run surpluses to pay down debt which will provide funds that can be used by the private sector to best facilitate increasing wealth creation. On the rare occasions that a bubble has been allowed to develop and subsequently pops and destroys the private sectors balance sheets (Great depression 1930, Japan 1990, Ireland (and USA, UK and other countries today)etc.,), years of government deficits will facilitate repair of the private sector and avoid a depression.

With this logic in mind I believe anything greater than a moderate attempt at deficit reduction by the Irish government today will be counter productive. The government and public should be prepared to maintain budget deficits until such time as the private sector has repaired its balance sheet and begins to show demand for funds again. Once a private sector expansion has finally materialised tax-cuts and spending increases should be avoided and budget surpluses should be aimed for to reduce the debt and increase the amount of funds available to the profit maximising private sector. Any cyclical downturns that occur that do not involve large damage to balance sheets should be addressed purely by monetary policy, the government should not run deficits in these cases as the private sector will remain in profit maximising mode and will be able to pull itself out of a slump with some cheap credit from the central bank.

I hope I have conveyed some concept of the balance sheet recession in this post (and my views on how Ireland should conduct its budgets over the next few years) but I believe everyone would benefit massively from reading Richard Koo’s book. He explains the concept in a far better manner and has a large body of well presented empirical evidence to backup his case. It has truly enhanced my understand of macroeconomics and is well deserving of the title “The Holy Grail”.

On top of this, UT3 has hardware accelerated Physx and hardware accelerated audio and makes extremely good use of several cores (my Core 2 Quad Q9450 was around 60% load @ 3.2Ghz on the Strident map). This may be part of the explanation as to why it runs so well. A bag of win in any case.

I don’t even like first person shooters, so I feel that adds more legitimacy to my positive connotations about this game. I’m not into UT3 hardcore, but I’d certainly like to have a game or two with my begrudging friends. Preferably us vs. bots but they get very cranky when I suggest that because they hate cooperating together as a team. Even in small things like this I see relentless examples of reckless individualism ruining good things.

Anyway there’s a CTF map called Strident that looks insanely good so I took some screenshots for the viewing pleasure of my most illustrious readers. Click for uncompressed full rez quanta goodness.

The regular spikes correspond to the shopping season in December where there is significantly higher demand for cash. The lack of a spike down after December 1999 is also interesting, I believe there was extra liquidity provided by the Bank at the time over concerns about possible fallout from the Y2K issue, which never materialized in reality.

I decided to adjust the scale to a logarithmic one, as a linear scale over large values (where the percentage increase is what one cares about rather than the absolute change) tends to understate past changes and overstate recent ones in a general up trend. Here’s the more relevant graph:

It’s interesting to note that on a percentage basis the December spikes are now far smaller than in the past and that this has been a gradual trend over the past 40 years. The spike in currency in circulation from November 1970 to December 1970 was over 26%, the same November-December spike was only 3% in 2008. It’s difficult to tell what has caused this moderation. Increased use of electronic payment, a significant reduction in the velocity of money, larger outstanding cash balances held by the public, past higher levels of inflation or a more even distribution of cash demand over the year might all be possible explanatory factors.

Anyway what I am most interested in is the general rate of increase. Intuitively the outstanding level of banknotes + coins increased at a high rate during the disastrous levels of inflation in the 1970s. Luckily the BoJ maintained similar levels of discipline as the Bundesbank so the levels of increase in monetary base never reached the very high levels seen for the US Dollar or British Pound. The rate of increase picks up again during the bubble but flattens dramatically as the bubble pops in the early 1990s. Somewhat surprisingly though, the amount of cash outstanding increases faster from the onset of deflation in the latter part of the 1990s. Perhaps this could be explained by a decrease in velocity as Japanese people began to increase their hoarding of currency (I would’ve helped out but I was but a barely sentient creature who passed its days being gnawed upon by Western existence), which allowed an expansion of this narrow measure of the monetary base without the resulting inflationary pressures? The rate of increase has notably slowed since around 2000 which is consistent with prices being relatively unchanged on a net basis over the period.

One thing to note about this data is that I have not included the balances in current accounts and reserve balances held by financial institutions at the Bank of Japan. The current account balances in particular are arguably practically the same as Banknotes and Currency in nature and both are included in the measure of “Monetary Base” by the BoJ. The magnitude of the current account balances is around 19% of Banknotes + Coins in November 2009, while the reserve balances would add 18% to the measure of narrow money. I haven’t looked into it yet so I’m not sure how those changed under quantitative easing which lasted from 2000 until 2006, but since I believe the BoJ was targeting “excess reserves” which I’d interpret to be current account balances held by financial institutions at the BoJ, it may well have been that at that time the level of current account balances could’ve been many times the value of notes + coins in circulation. Quite a terrifying situation really, if banks had started to lend those balances aggressively there could’ve been a huge uncontrollable surge in inflation. Assuming my interpretation is correct, which I’ll try and look up when I feel ready for another thrill. This is really all a bit too exciting.

There’s 628,000 yen in banknotes and coins outstanding for every Japanese person as of November 2009. I’m pretty gutted my current cash hoard is only 250,000 yen.