thomasquinlan.com http://thomasquinlan.com Indulging in the spotlight effect... posterous.com Tue, 20 Dec 2011 21:37:57 -0800 Review: David Fincher's "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" (No Spoilers) http://thomasquinlan.com/review-david-finchers-the-girl-with-the-drago http://thomasquinlan.com/review-david-finchers-the-girl-with-the-drago
The-girl-with-the-dragon-tatto

I'll admit right up front that I was nervous about how this movie was going to turn out.  I had reasonable suspicion that Daniel Craig would do well as Mikael Blomqvist, but serious trepidations about Rooney Mara's handling of the Lisbeth Salander character.

Those fears were put to rest this evening.  I've just returned home from the movie and it was very well done.  Fincher took a couple of minor liberties with the story, but overall it is faithful to the book - moreso than even the Swedish original.  It's very well shot (the camera work is fantastic), and the stark minimalism in a lot of the scenes is actually quite beautiful.  (It reminded me a lot of the scenes in Fargo.)  They had to have waited for weather in some of the shots because it was obvious that the snow scenes were real and dark and pretty.

The music by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross is amazing and works with the film throughout.  The music has been out for a bit now, but to actually hear it combined with the film is a different experience and heightens the emotion and impact of the film.  The opening title sequence is very... interesting.  (It seems like it would fit in a Bond film, and that's probably not an accident given Craig plays Bond.)

The acting was superb.  Daniel Craig plays a very believable Mikael Blomqvist, and while it's tough to separate the role from that of the portrayal by Michael Nyqvist, Craig's portrayal is a little less magazine-editor and a little more journalist.  He plays more absorbed that Nyqvist did, though a little less pointed in terms of figuring out what Lisbeth was up to the entire time.

Noomi Rapace (who played Lisbeth in the Swedish version of the movies) is a tough act to follow, but Rooney Mara did extremely well.  She's a little softer than Rapace, but plays the nearly-autistic mostly anti-social character well.  The one advantage her character has in this film that was also in the book (but not so well done in the Swedish version) is the emotional investment toward the end of the movie.  Mara plays that very well and one can see the growth the character is supposed to take as well as the gravitas of the final scene.

The story itself is faithful to the book, and anyone who has read the book and seen the original movies knows that the final scenes are only covered in a cursory fashion in the Swedish movie.  They are included more here in the American version, which is good because it is an important part of the story, especially since it helps set up the second book/movie.  I'm looking forward to seeing what they do with the second movie, but given how the first was done, I'm sure I have nothing to worry about.

9.5/10

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/999167/me_CC.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4bmN2q6hArFn Thomas Quinlan thomas_quinlan Thomas Quinlan Sun, 04 Dec 2011 09:27:07 -0800 Did My Good Deed For Today http://thomasquinlan.com/did-my-good-deed-for-today http://thomasquinlan.com/did-my-good-deed-for-today
2011-12-04_10-09-12_969

As I was driving back from DC this morning, I came around a bend on 66 and found this scene in the right lane.  I had noticed cars slowing down and a cloud of smoke, but only one other person stopped.  His name was Rory, and he was a lawyer and a paramedic-in-training.  (His car is the other on the shoulder - mine was in front of his.)  Thankfully, the girl in the totalled car was unhurt, though obviously upset.  (She didn't really have a reason for the accident - I suspect she was texting, or fell asleep.)  She had swerved right, and over-correct to the left - her car went headfirst into the left guardrail, and her bumper tore off and stayed there while the rest of the car rebounded into the right lane.

She called her parents first, so I called 911.  I spoke to the dispatcher and gave her details, and then got transferred to the State Police, for whom I repeated the details.  (My phone then went into emergency call-back standby mode, which was indicated by a red notification bar across the top.)  Since this is the second time I've been on scene at an accident, I knew to give the street name (66), the direction (westbound), and the mile marker (69).  I had to go to the back of the car to get the woman's plate number, and also reported to the cops that she was alert, walking, and on the phone with her parents, and seemed to be unhurt, but that the airbags had deployed.  (I left an actual diagnosis of her condition to Rory, as he obviously had the better skillset in that regard.)

Luckily, she crashed near a construction zone, so I was able to take some of those big orange column-cones and block off the right lane about 1/10th of a mile up the road from where she crashed.  (People were obviously driving slowly so I wasn't in any danger.)  There were parts of her car strewn all over the road, so Rory attempted to clear the big pieces off the left lane.

The cops arrived after about fifteen minutes.  I gave them a written statement (as did Rory), and they ensured that the girl was fine.  The fire department arrived (they take care of the potentially hazardous liquids spilling from the car), and after the cop took our statements she closed off the left lane to allow Rory and I to leave.

Thankfully, no one was hurt!  The young woman was very lucky, and I've had enough excitement for one day!

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/999167/me_CC.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4bmN2q6hArFn Thomas Quinlan thomas_quinlan Thomas Quinlan Fri, 11 Nov 2011 08:34:14 -0800 The Flipped Classroom - Excellent Concept http://thomasquinlan.com/the-flipped-classroom-excellent-concept http://thomasquinlan.com/the-flipped-classroom-excellent-concept This is a very interesting concept... it's high time the educational system moved away from the agrarian model and into something more commensurate with the times. (Even my grad school has only ever offered one of my classes online, forcing me to commute in rush hour traffic three times a week.)

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/graphjam/~3/hfQrV3w8swI/

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/999167/me_CC.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4bmN2q6hArFn Thomas Quinlan thomas_quinlan Thomas Quinlan Wed, 09 Nov 2011 21:38:07 -0800 Ah, DRM, Making Criminals Out of the Legitimate Buyer http://thomasquinlan.com/ah-drm-making-criminals-out-of-the-legitimate http://thomasquinlan.com/ah-drm-making-criminals-out-of-the-legitimate
Drm

So I'm attending grad school, and use an HTC Flyer to purchase my textbooks through Amazon's Kindle.  I have the Kindle software on my Flyer, my Mac, and the Cloud Reader installed in Chrome on my Mac.

I went to class this evening, and took my laptop instead of my tablet as I had some coding to do which I wanted to get done before class.  When class time came, I opened my Mac Kindle software, and attempted to open my book for class.  The software told me that the book couldn't be opened, and that I should re-download it.  I did that, and got the same error message.

I tried to open it in the Kindle Cloud Reader, and that's when I found out that I couldn't read it there either, because "The number of licenses for this book has been reached.  Please deactivate it on another device if you wish to use it here."  That meant, of course, that I couldn't read the book in class; without the tablet, I couldn't de-authorise it on there, and I couldn't open it on my Mac.  Thankfully, a classmate shared her book with me for the instances where it was necessary.

However, what galls me is that I should have been able to open the book on my Mac.  There's no reason why, when I purchased the book legitimately (for $56.47), that I can't read it on all the devices that I might use.  Now, in order to be able to use the book I legitimately bought I'll have to find a software that would remove the DRM.  If I choose to use it, I would technically be breaking the law, making me (in effect) a criminal.  While I wouldn't expect prosecution (especially since I haven't actually done it), it's a ridiculous thing that DRM makes criminals out of legitimate purchasers.  This makes me less inclined to make legitimate purchases, and more inclined to try and find pirated copies of textbooks in the first place.  After all, a pirated copy wouldn't have all these issues!  If I'm going to be a criminal no matter what happens, I might as well save the $56.47.  This is how the "protection" that's supposed to protect writers actually ends up hurting them, and makes criminals out of legitimate users.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/999167/me_CC.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4bmN2q6hArFn Thomas Quinlan thomas_quinlan Thomas Quinlan Mon, 17 Oct 2011 18:05:00 -0700 Tonight's #Bulletproof Dinner http://thomasquinlan.com/tonights-bulletproof-dinner http://thomasquinlan.com/tonights-bulletproof-dinner

20111017_bulletproof_dinner

For tonight's bulletproof dinner I made:

  • Lamburgers (not a typo)
  • Broccoli Florets
  • Bulletproof Tea
I bought vegetarian-fed locally-raised (they were out of Icelandic) ground lamb at Whole Foods and rolled it into patties (similar to what one would do with ground beef), and cooked the lamburgers in an iron skillet in a mixture of salted Kerrygold butter, honey, extra virgin olive oil, and coriander.  When they were done I spread a very thin layer of Laughing Cow Creamy Swiss cheese on top.  (That last bit's not so bulletproof, but adds a nice texture and an additional nice taste.)

The broccoli florets were bought frozen from Harris Teeter, and steamed in the microwave using water and two bowls placed one on top of the other for four minutes.  Ideally these would be fresh but it's fairly close.

The bulletproof tea is PG Tips decaffeinated (since it's after 3pm) with a little bit of honey and unsalted Kerrygold butter.

I had to eat on a paper plate since all my plates are in the dishwasher as I've been doing so much good cooking!

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/999167/me_CC.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4bmN2q6hArFn Thomas Quinlan thomas_quinlan Thomas Quinlan Sun, 02 Oct 2011 16:19:10 -0700 So Global Warming Makes The Stratospheric Arctic Winters... Colder? http://thomasquinlan.com/so-global-warming-makes-the-stratospheric-arc http://thomasquinlan.com/so-global-warming-makes-the-stratospheric-arc
Ozone

So, it appears, according to environmental scientists, that the ozone in the Arctic has actually disappeared to the point where there's an ozone hole similar to the one above Anarctica.

From the article:  "It was continuously cold from December through April, and that has never happened before in the Arctic in the instrumental record."

Of course, the standard argument will now be that it's "climate change" and that you can have sections or the earth or particular seasons that are making things worse in others.  This is now the standard argument since "global warming" as a concept does not jive with the fact that things tend to be a lot colder (in many places) than warming would suggest.

The earth and its weather is a chaotic system, with more variables than can possibly be measured at the moment.  (It should be noted that models are getting better, though that means that global warming - again - may not be as large a problem as originally thought.)  Until we have the data to back it up (through long term measurements, instead of relying solely on ice cores - which, incidentally, show that the earth has warmed considerably in the past!) we've got a lot to study before a verdict can be drawn.

(Picture from the article.)

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/999167/me_CC.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4bmN2q6hArFn Thomas Quinlan thomas_quinlan Thomas Quinlan Thu, 29 Sep 2011 02:57:00 -0700 #Facebook v. #Google #Plus #socialnetworks http://thomasquinlan.com/facebook-v-google-plus-socialnetworks http://thomasquinlan.com/facebook-v-google-plus-socialnetworks

Unless you're one of the few people who is not on a social network, you're aware that Facebook is rolling out its new interface, Timeline, in the very near future.  I watched the f8 conference in which Mark Zuckerberg announced the new timeline, and what I saw scared me outright.  While I appreciate Timeline from a UI design perspective (it does look quite nice), it's unnerving to me to have the possibility of everything I've ever done available to just about everyone in the world at just a few clicks.

Timeline

If Timeline itself weren't dismaying enough, Facebook has changed the way I can control my data.  Here I'm not even referring to privacy controls; I'm referring to the fact that you can no longer delete data in most places!  When I started to really worry about Facebook's use of my data, I deleted everything on my wall up to the previous week, and then kept only about a week's worth of activity on my wall.  I was able to remove posts, remove the little 'stories' that they put there every time I interacted with someone, and I had control over what could be seen with my profile.  About two weeks ago, this changed - I could only "Hide" activity, not delete it directly.

This is an important distinction - from now on, regardless of your privacy settings, there will still be a record of everything you do on Facebook.  Even if you restrict your profile through potentially improved privacy controls, you are granting Facebook the right to create your permanent record.  Remember how your teachers threatened you with a "permanent record" in primary school?  It exists now, and Mark Zuckerberg is the one who decides what gets done with that.

Mine is currently empty.  I've deleted everything (that I could) associated with my account.  There's nothing on my wall; there are a few email messages still remaining (which I won't delete for a couple of weeks to allow the recipients the chance to read them - thankfully email still works in the way that allows deletion), I have no notes, and I've deleted all the pictures, apps, and videos.  I won't go so far as to close the account, because it's still how I've managed to keep in touch with a lot of people that I otherwise wouldn't.  I may log in every once in a while without interacting with people - which of course defeats the purpose.  However, I'm hoping to convince people to start moving over to Facebook's only competition, Google Plus.

I must say that as of late I'm impressed with Google Plus.  While many of the same privacy concerns exist with Google Plus as do Facebook - we're creating a record with what is essentially a marketing company in each instance - Google Plus seems to be doing things correctly.  First, Circles is a great idea - I can determine who sees what content quickly and easily.  Secondly, I still have the power to delete things.  This is important!  I can control my data in all instances on Google Plus.  Finally, Google Plus is actually a social network.  I realise the irony of an introvert looking to be more social, but with Google Plus it's easy and powerful.  One of my grad school classes has required that we have group meetings in a smaller group of four and in conjunction with a larger group of eight - and we've been having these meetings on Google Plus Hangouts.  It is really easy to use, real-time, and no one has to leave the house!  As you can imagine, scheduling eight people to meet somewhere - when those eight people who are working professionals (some with families) who also attend grad school - is extremely difficult.  With Google Plus Hangouts, all we have to do is agree on a time we'll all be home (this is in the evening, natch) - we can still meet "face to face" and be productive without having to worry about having to drive from MD, VA, or DC to a central point.  
Hangout
I also had the opportunity to look at the Beta version of Hangouts - it has all the features of the existing hangout, but adds the ability to do Wave-esque (as in Google Wave) things such as concurrent document editing in Google docs.  Once that's implemented, I think a lot of people will come to find that they can really get a lot more done with Google Plus and it'll become a serious tool for students, small businesses, and even some large businesses.  

Is any social network perfect?  No.  Will they ever be?  No.  However, at the moment, Google Plus seems to be the way to go - it provides many benefits, allows for productivity, puts the social back in "social" network, and has fewer concerns where privacy is concerned than does Facebook.  Facebook may be the "third largest country" on the planet, but the small nation of Google Plus is growing.

 

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/999167/me_CC.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4bmN2q6hArFn Thomas Quinlan thomas_quinlan Thomas Quinlan Sun, 18 Sep 2011 23:08:00 -0700 Debunking Robert Reich's Debunking of Six Lies http://thomasquinlan.com/debunking-robert-reichs-debunking-of-six-lies http://thomasquinlan.com/debunking-robert-reichs-debunking-of-six-lies

00_world_economy

I've been given the charge (on Facebook no less) to counter the points made by Robert Reich in this video:

The six lies (according to Reich) are:

1) Tax cuts to the rich and corporations trickle down to the rest of us. (No it doesn't and it never has.)
2) If you shrink government you create jobs. (No, you get rid of jobs that way.)
3) High taxes on the rich hurts the economy. (No, the economy grew when the US did this under Eisenhower.)
4) Debt is to be avoided and it is mostly caused by Medicare. (No, if debt is properly used to grow the economy, it becomes a smaller part of the budget because of increased revenue and Medicare has the lowest overhead of any health insurance plan out there.)
5) Social Security is a Ponzi scheme (No, its solid for 26 years. Social Security is solid beyond that if the rich pay the same percentage in social security taxes as the rest of us do.)
6) We need to tax the poor. (This is what Republicans have been proposing when they say any "tax reform" needs to involve all Americans because poor people pay no income tax. The poor have no money and taxing them will not solve our budget problems.)

I'll take them in order (I suggest you watch the video first - it's under ten minutes).

"Lie" 1
To put it very simply, tax cuts "trickle-down" everywhere, all the time.  When taxes are lessened on people or corporations, those people or corporations have more money to spend, save, and/or invest.  (Ignore the "trickle-down" moniker if you must - think of it as immediate benefit, which is what it is when there are less taxes!)  That Jon Stewart was able to recently lambast the Republicans (correctly) for saying the poor had things like refrigerators and TVs is the very essence of what "trickle-down" economics was originally meant to be; as the economy gets richer, the rich get richer, but so do the poor.  (The rising tide lifts all boats - the poor of today have a standard of living that would have made kings of old jealous, and rightly so.  We need to continue making it so that the poor continue to have their standard of living raised.)  Admittedly, there is a growing inequality (which Reich mentions) and that is unfortunate and needs correcting, as he rightly points out.

Again, the moniker of "trickle-down" is often misunderstood and misapplied; that Reich uses it as he does suggests more that he understands what it is but is using it as the convenient scape-goat for his arguments.  Regardless of his knowledgeability, the bottom line is that when government taxes less, more money goes into the economy, and the economy gets wealthier.  This point is largely moot though, since anyone or any corporation that has a lot of money also knows how to shield it from taxes.  (There is also the additional complication which such speeches as Reich's always avoid, and that is that corporations are taxed differently, and they can carry losses and surpluses forward and back in years to assist with their past, current, or future taxes.)

Reich mentions that the corporations are sitting on piles of cash and that profits (and the wage/profit ratio) are the highest they've ever been in decades.  I'm not quite sure why this is a bad thing, but assuming he means it to be negative, it again eludes my grasp as to why he's making a mountain out of a mole hill.  This is the reason corporations exist; they accumulate cash.  They use it to operate and to return value to shareholders.

(There are two additional points he may be trying to make; the first would be that they have too much money; the second may be that somehow since we're in a bad economy that the hoarding of cash has some negative quality to it.  Addressing those two - first, I'm not quite sure how much "too much" is, but if it's $2 TRILLION then that opens the door to such slippery slopes as who determines how much is too much and how it gets "redistributed", and good luck forcing that one on anyone.  The second may be that corporations should be spending the money - but if that's the case, again, it's the job of the corporation to decide what to do with its money.)

Finally, to address one last point about trickle-down economics for tax-cuts to the rich and the corporations - corporations are notoriously skittish.  Having been through quite a bit of business school, I can tell you that there is a good amount of analysis that goes into decisions about how to invest money.  (I was surprised at how much it involves.)  Corporations (with the possible exception of those in the financial services sector) take an agonizing amount of time and effort into making sure that deals they're going to do will be profitable and return value to their investors.  This is significantly more difficult in an uncertain economic climate, and more so when you have a government that seems to be incapable of action, let alone results.  That corporations are sitting on cash should come as no surprise to anyone, let alone a former Secretary of Labor.

"Lie" 2
This is the most disingenuous of the supposed rebuttals Reich makes.  He mentions talking to conservatives and asking how laying off government workers creates jobs.  He talks about "teachers, social workers, fireman" and others such as school builders and road repair crews.  This is either the red herring of his argument, or it proves he really doesn't listen to his opponents.  No one who suggests that a down-sizing of government workers creates jobs would suggest that we lay off these people; for starters, they are invariably state-government workers, and even if that's not the case, his opponents are referring to the people who work for the federal government.  These are people that work for Federal agencies such as the Department of Defense or others; people who may serve functions that are either unnecessary or redundant.  Once hired by the government, a person is more likely to die than be laid off or fired.  (http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/federal-workers-die-lose-jobs/story?id=14107075)  Additionally, while government has shrunk since the time of Bush the First, the Federal government has been slowly increasing in size again since then.  (However, as a percentage of the total population, it appears to be shrinking - this is because the population is expanding so fast.  (http://voices.washingtonpost.com/federal-eye/2010/09/how_many_federal_workers_are_t.html))  Regardless of all of that, however, the point is that what dollars the government spends it must first take from somewhere (or print, thereby devaluing the rest of the money), and a growing bureaucracy retards economic growth, thereby reducing private sector hiring.  By reducing the size of the government, more money is available in the private sector for hiring.  In the private sector, the quest for profitability leads to greater efficiencies; no such impetus exists on the Federal level.  Reich has a point that laying off government employees may be seen as reducing jobs, but he misses the larger point in that those jobs may be "artificial" jobs in the first place and/or assumes that those people would not be hired in the private sector.  (For instance, a laid off government worker who is then hired in the private sector does not negatively affect the number of jobs, yet shrinks the size of government.)

"Lie" 3
High taxes hurt everyone, regardless of their income status.  Again, this lie is really hit-or-miss; for starters, he conflates several things in his assessment of the term "economic growth".  He argues that a 91% tax rate (and "really high" effective tax rate) under Eisenhower helped lead to a robust economy.  However, it could easily be argued that the economy's return to a non-war footing had as much or more to do with the economic growth of the 1950s - after all, there was a significant manufacturing base in this country then and instead of making things that would eventually be destroyed in Europe or Japan during war, the output was being deployed to goods and services that people could actually buy and use.  (That they had endured rationing for so long could also have spurred significant consumer demand).  Again, the rich usually shield their money (he does make the distinction between actual and effective tax rates here, and that is important) but even if they don't, taxing the rich is invariably ineffective at best and counter-productive at worst.  The French have recently started taxing their rich at the request of those same rich people; this is expected to raise about $300 million Euros in extra revenue.  (http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/23/us-france-wealthy-idUSTRE77M25320110823)  Considering that France has approximately 87% debt-to-GDP ratio (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904007304576496263949498784.html) and their current GDP is about $2.65 TRILLION (http://v.gd/UVdLb0), then we're looking at a debt of about $2.35 TRILLION, of which 300 million Euros is not even a percentage point: 300 million Euros is about $413,550,000, which as a percentage of $2.35 TRILLION is 0.018%.  So the French super-rich are paying an additional tax, but it means that the French government still has to find 99.982% of the money they owe.  Yes, it's better than zero, but not by much.  Finally, when you tax the rich too much, they tend to leave; many states have found that out.  (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124260067214828295.html)  This makes it at best largely ineffective; at worst, counter-productive.

"Lie" 4
Debt is not necessarily to be avoided; in general, Reich is right on this point.  However, there is good debt and bad debt; good debt is the kind that is not to be avoided.  (Examples of good debts include mortgages on rental properties, or car loans on vehicles that you use for work, etc.)  Government debt is broken down into several pieces; very little of it could be considered good debt.  An exhaustive list of where the government spends money is available for anyone with access to Google or a library; a link to the Wikipedia article is the easiest to read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget.  Suffice it to say that the vast majority of government spending is on defense and health care, along with interest on the debt.  (These three account for about 50% of the government's spending.)  There is no good debt to be had in policing the world, and few would argue that our current wars are tenable, much less affordable.  This is certainly not helping to grow the economy, with the possible exception of some manufacturing jobs and soldiers' pay.  (I suspect that many of our military gear is not made here, but have no proof; either way, they are not utilized in a manner that helps our economy.)  As to health care, Reich claims that Medicare is highly efficient and has less administrative costs than comparable private sector plans without offering any shred of proof.  Even if it does cost less, his point about it as compared to the population is only relevant because the population is currently expanding.  If it stops expanding, then that point is either moot or wrong.  Again, this assumes his point is correct; however, it has long been argued that it is not.  (http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2009/06/medicare-administrative-costs-are-higher-not-lower-than-for-private-insurance)

Finally, looking at debt as a ratio to GDP, we can see that even 'socialist' countries such as France are only at 87%, while the US is very close to 100%.  Using Reich's own numbers, we could take the $2 TRILLION that US companies are holding, and all the wealth of the rich (approximately $1.3 TRILLION) and apply it to the debt and we would still be at 77%.  His argument that debt is good if it creates jobs may be reasonable, but there is little evidence that government debt creates jobs - one has only to look as far as our current economy for this point to be refuted.  The government has spent tens of TRILLIONS of dollars in the last twenty years; in the last three it has overspent by $3.6 TRILLION, and unemployment is still at 9%.  (Keep in mind that that's the "official" unemployment rate, while the "underemployment" rate is above 15%. (http://www.economytrack.org/underemployment.php) (http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2011/09/us_unemployment_rate_remains_a.html))  If debt spending leads to job creation, then clearly we should have much lower rates of un-/under-employment.

"Lie" 5
Social Security can easily be shown to be a Ponzi scheme by looking at the first recipient, Ida May Fuller.  "Ida May Fuller worked for three years under the Social Security program.  The accumulated taxes on her salary during those three years was a total of $24.75.  Her initial monthly check was $22.54.  During her lifetime, she collected a total of $22,888.92 in Social Security benefits." (http://www.ssa.gov/history/idapayroll.html)  As the first recipient, she paid $22.54, and received more than one thousand times her initial investment.  Current beneficiaries, by Reich's own admission, are expected to receive $0.  (He states that it is solvent for only 26 more years.)  So anyone paying in now who does not retire in the next 26 years will get nothing.  This is the definition of a Ponzi scheme; money is taken from the people who come after to pay the people who went before.  (My social security taxes, for instance, invariably go to today's retirees; they do not get "stored" for me, or else the system would not be insolvent when I am due to collect.)  Even assuming that the inequality Reich speaks of can be fixed (a huge assumption, as he points out) and that the system can be made solvent for longer than the 26 years it is currently supposedly solvent for, there is no one today who actually plans to retire on only Social Security.  There are plenty of anecdotal stories of retirees collecting Social Security who eat cat food; even assuming these are made up there is no one who assumes that Social Security will provide any reasonable standard of living for them in their retirement, or even a minimal one.  Social Security has three other factors working against it - the first is a continually expanding population; the second is a higher unemployment rate (as the unemployed do not pay Social Security taxes), and the third is that the government continually borrows from the Social Security trust.  While it has so far managed to make all the payments from its borrowing (http://www.ssa.gov/oact/progdata/fundFAQ.html), there is no guarantee that this will always happen, and as our recent debt ceiling debacle showed, the likelihood of realistic, reasonable, and effective plans for the future are slim.  Furthermore, as these payments currently account for 20% of the government's spending, they would only continue to grow unless the borrowing stops; at some future point they would begin to assume larger and larger portions of the debt, which is a vicious (and inescapable) cycle.  Even assuming we raise the cap rate on Social Security, we have the same issue that taxing anyone generally has - it will be largely ineffective.  It may make the system solvent for an additional period of time, but the other two factors will still be working against it.  Add to that the the government ties Social Security increases to their artificially low inflation numbers, and it certainly does not bode well for the future.

"Lie" 6
We don't need to tax the poor.  In this Reich is correct.  I've addressed taxing the rich already, above.  It can be effective in miniscule amounts (at best), but taxes take money from one area and redistribute them to another area, which may be a better or worse use of the money.  (I'd argue it's usually worse, as the government is not a good arbiter of financial decision making, as its entire budget outlay will show.)  I'd argue that we could forego taxing anyone who makes under a certain level; other than the "equitability" factor there's no good argument for taxing the poor.  The equitability argument holds little water too, in that if we want things to be more equal, helping the poor is a great way to do that.  A progressive taxation system doesn't have to include the lowest earners - it can still be fair by starting at the second or third "rung of the ladder". His arguments for more tax brackets could be useful in this regard.  (I would also mention that the inequality problem is at least partially to blame on the inflationary policies of the government; the poor have their purchasing power lowered by the hidden tax of government inflation.)

Reich continues by suggesting that the crowd not give into cynicism, and that that's what the "other side" (read: Republicans) really wants, as that cynicism deadlocks government and thereby leads to more Republican victories when Democrats lose face.  This argument works well at stirring up the crowd, but is largely nonsensical; both parties are completely inept, and both try to deadlock the other when the other is in power.  Furthermore, the people have reason to be cynical; the federal government is largely too far removed from the people to be an effective tool for positive change in the lives of most of the people it claims to represent.  Here I am not giving into the cynicism that Reich suggests; I am merely examining the possibility of a representative Democracy in which there are 535 representatives for 310 million people - it seems mathematically likely that representation on the order of 1 representative for every 500,000+ people is just not a system that can adequately address that which is important to the electorate.  That doesn't even factor in corporate interests; while those are obviously represented more (due to lobbying) there are still more than 30 million corporations, which means that there'd be a 1:50,000 ratio, which is ten times better but still impractical at best.  (It is further skewed by the influence that larger corporations have compared to the smaller ones.)  Lastly, given the recent shenanigans over the debt ceiling, it would be difficult not to be cynical - our politicians act like children most of the time, and have managed to spend TRILLIONS of dollars to the tune of the entire GDP of the country for a year, with no end in sight.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/999167/me_CC.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4bmN2q6hArFn Thomas Quinlan thomas_quinlan Thomas Quinlan Mon, 12 Sep 2011 14:48:00 -0700 Why Capitalism Isn't To Blame For Unemployment http://thomasquinlan.com/why-capitalism-isnt-to-blame-for-unemployment http://thomasquinlan.com/why-capitalism-isnt-to-blame-for-unemployment
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Global-capitalism260x260
Over at AlterNet (now also reprinted at Mother Jones), there is an article which states in the title, that Massive Unemployment is Proof that Global Capitalism doesn't work.  To summarise, the authors paint a picture of a time when people could subsist on their own if they couldn't find employment, principally by going back to what people always did - they farmed, bartered, or did whatever it was they had to to provide a life for themselves and their families.  Only after property started concentrating in the hands of the few did the people have to start doing involuntary work in exchange for a salary that they then had to spend to obtain their livelihood.  The term "involuntary" is thrown around a lot.  Images of scores of people shifting about the country looking for work are also used.

The problems with this article are multiple.  First, while the article is long on identifying the problem, it is short on any of the solutions.  Unless one counts going back to the hard-scrabble life of having to eke each meal out of the earth is a solution, the authors don't present any.  Frankly, I'm not all that keen on milking cows at four in the morning or slaughtering pigs, nor tending vegetable gardens.  (This latter is slightly more appealing, but I wouldn't want to depend on my green thumb for my meals.)  I voluntarily trade some of my time and effort for a salary that allows me to obtain meals in a much easier fashion, and the throw-back to another era isn't really a solution.  I think you'd be hard-pressed to find people willing to trade the conveniences of modern-day global capitalism to work on the farm or in the garden, which isn't anymore "voluntary" than capitalist work when you need those carrots to survive.  Additionally, capitalistic, or near-capitalistic nations are among those with the highest standard of living; while it would be best to ensure that that standard of living is shared by everyone, throwing the baby out with the bathwater is never a good idea either.

Secondly, it conflates global capitalism with a host of other things while ignoring everywhere on the globe except the US.  I'm not an expert on Europe by any stretch of the imagination, but this whole "global capitalism" is a fairly new thing for them, and they've had high unemployment for some time.  (Spain comes to mind, which as I recall has largely leaned socialist, and their unemployment has always been very high, especially among their youth.  France as I recall has had similar problems in the past, though less so now - an argument that maybe global capitalism could be helping there.)  It ignores the realities that in many of the countries which are affected by this "global capitalism" that many of the tenets of that same capitalism aren't practised there or are practised in different fashion.  So to blame capitalism exclusively for "massive unemployment" is disingenuous at best and likely just wrong at worst.  No one has ever claimed that capitalism was perfect, just that it was better than most other systems; communism, for one, might have given people full employment but as they were never paid and had to have spouses stand in line for bread all day, the alternatives could be much worse.

Additionally, the authors don't seem to understand what capitalism even is.  In their haste to paint pictures of the jobless roaming the countryside, they seem to assume that full or near-full employment is even possible.  It's not possible for a number of reasons; for starters, not everyone needs or wants to work.  Even if we exclude those people, there will always be a fraction of people out of work for one reason or another.  Ideally, as they point out, we want this to be as low as possible, and we want to help those who need assistance.  However, to say that the "new norm" is a bad thing is not necessarily the case.  (I'll get into why it is in a second, but stay with this idea for a moment.)  To argue that it's not a bad thing, one has to look at what causes unemployment.  Typically, it's disruptive technology.  When was the last time that you saw a washer-woman?  Well, they were put out of business by that device that you have in your basement into which you throw your clothes every week.  Sometimes, increasing unemployment is a function of technological improvement.  This is no comfort to those affected, but it does happen.  Given that our technological advances from the past fifty years or so have grown exponentially, I suspect that this may be part of the "new norm".  Admittedly, shipping jobs overseas is a fault of global capitalism; something the authors suprisingly neglect to mention.  Of course, their "global" capitalism argument only discusses unemployment in America; it ignores other countries and the fact that jobs shipped overseas provide employment overseas.  The reason there's been an Indian tech-boom is largely because of that.  Though Americans obviously would prefer unemployment be less and that those affected be employed, the flip-side to the coin is that others elsewhere are employed and they have their standard of living raised.  This point is entirely ignored by the authors, who use the term "global" constantly but only refer to Americans in their analysis of unemployment.  A slightly more interesting (and relevant) fact that might have helped their argument would have been if more people globally were unemployed!

However, it's more likely that the "new norm" is a bad thing, and has other reasons.  However, I suspect that capitalism, while providing the framework for employment/unemployment, is not the root cause.  The problem is more likely government interference.  With interest rates being altered and a climate of uncertainty that pervades the business market (see the VIX if you're not convinced that people are skittish about investing), people simply have no cause to hire, and certainly have no cause to cut costs.  A perfect example is Bank of America.  This bank, too big to fail, has been bailed out by the government and yet the growing supposition is that they will lay off about 40,000 people in the next three years.  (They have not announced this as of yet officially.)  Is that a fault of capitalism?  Or is it the fault of a government that interferes by taking money from where it should have gone and misallocated it to banks that then had no incentives to properly align their acquisitions?  In this case, it could be argued that the acquisitions themselves are to blame, and partially defend the original article's thesis; however, in a properly functioning market, the acquisitions would have been done properly at the time of inititiation and any layoffs would have been spread out over a much longer period of time.  So, instead of laying off 40,000 over the course of ten to fifteen years, the length of time Bank of America has been growing, in a way in which the market might be able to more readily absorb the affected, it now happens in a much more concentrated timeframe - three years.  In this case, while the net results are that 40,000 people lose their jobs, the shock to the system is much more pronounced in a market in which the government regularly interferes and obscures both investment signals and incentives.  Remember, the only way that the government can provide money to anyone or any corporation is if it first takes it from someone else or prints it - both of which will distort the picture for those who would otherwise want to put that money to better use than some hack in DC.

This brings us to the final point - the "99ers".  These are people who have been out of work so long that they have exhausted their unemployment benefits.  The authors of the article use this to point out that unemployment is serious, new and different this time, and demoralising.  However, the article mentions at least one time (1873-1874) in which the unemployed were organising for two years, so while it may still be objectionable, it is not new.  However, again, we have issues with interference from DC; unemployment benefits probably do not discourage job seeking, so I am not going to rehash that tired saw.  (Any rational person understands that a person would rather collect a full-check than much smaller benefits.)  However, the issue again becomes a misallocation of capital; instead of encouraging employers by getting out of the way, the government continues to rob Peter to pay Paul and print what it can't steal from Peter.  I am certainly not going to argue that we shouldn't have some form of assistance for the unemployed, but oftentimes in the goodness of their hearts and/or in an attempt to be seen to be doing something, the government will actually exacerbate the situation.  (President Obama's recent jobs bill will not help matters much; it will encourage employers to hire people unemployed for less than six months and essentially leaves people unemployed for longer out in the cold.  By offering credits for hiring and not retention, it also encourages turnover.)

Is global capitalism a perfect system?  Not by any means - there is no such thing in a world that's define by scarcity.  (Ideally, global capitalism will lead us to the post-scarcity era, and we'll have new, less pressing issues.)  However, while it may be a framework in which undesirable things happen , it is certainly not the fault of that framework - but the actors within it who distort its normal function.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/999167/me_CC.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4bmN2q6hArFn Thomas Quinlan thomas_quinlan Thomas Quinlan Sun, 11 Sep 2011 19:08:00 -0700 Ten Years Ago Today http://thomasquinlan.com/ten-years-ago-today http://thomasquinlan.com/ten-years-ago-today

Wtc_pamphlet

Today differs from my day ten years ago in that I slept through a lot of today.  Ten years ago on September 11, 2001, I was actually up really early and went into work early.  My office was on 35th and 7th in Manhattan, and I still don't remember why I was up early, but I sat down at my desk at around 0830.  Just a few minutes later, my colleague Brian, who sat next to me told me that his friend had just IM'ed him that a plane had crashed into one of the World Trade Center Towers.  My first words were "That must have been one hell of a mechanical error..."

We gathered around a television someone had brought from one of the media rooms, and we saw one of the Towers on fire.  Of course, at this point, there hadn't yet been a second crash, but that happened, and the cameraperson couldn't believe their eyes.  Nor could we!  Of course, at that moment, we knew it wasn't just a mistake - we were under attack.

I immediately called my parents to let them know I was okay, and my brothers as well.  At the time, I managed to get through, but I think that's only because I was so quick about it.  Most people didn't get through on cell phones until later that day or the next.

Of course, we found out about the plane at the Pentagon and the one in Pennsylvania shortly after, and watched the Towers fall.  (That was terribly shocking.)  There were a number of other rumours - bombs in schools and a threat against the Empire State Building.  (As our office at the time was very close to the Empire State Building, that one got the most attention.)  Finally, our IT Director Bradley (my boss) kindly suggested to the management that they might want to let us go home.

So they did.  It was about 1200 by then, and the entire Island was shut down.  I lived in Westchester, so I couldn't really go anywhere; I resolved to walk up to my Aunt's apartment and see if she could put me up for the night.  Along the way, I stopped at a hospital to give blood.  The person on the line in front of me was very familiar to me - I couldn't quite place her at first - but it was Mariska Hargitay of Law and Order: SVU fame.  Of course, given the gravitas of the day, she was just another New Yorker trying to help, and other than an "I love your work" from the lady at the table signing people up, no one who recognised her said anything or bothered her.

I finally found out from a policeman that they were letting people off the Island - trains going out were running again.  I went to GCT and boarded a Metro North train.  That train was the most crowded train I've ever been on, and of course people were crying and screaming and trying to call people and it was general bedlam.  It was a somber ride, and of those not crying or screaming, no one spoke except to comfort those who were.

I arrived home safely, and obviously, no one went to work the next day.  I don't think we went back to work until the following Monday, though my memory of the rest of the week is a bit fuzzier than on that actual day.

**********

I found out later in the day that one of my classmates from Regis, Greg Trost, had been in one of the Towers during the attack, and had died.  I was never very close to Greg, but he was easily the funniest kid in our class, and had a great outgoing spirit, and it was very difficult to hear that he'd been killed.  My class have started a scholarship to Regis in his name, and hold a series of events every year in remembrance of him.

**********

I found out later still that one of my coworkers/friends from PricewaterhouseCoopers had also been in the Towers during the attack, and she had been killed.  Dominique Pandolfo was a girl I worked with at PwC who moved to Marsh and McLennan to be a trainer.  As I'm told, she normally worked in the midtown office, but was doing a training session at WTC that week.  She was an attractive girl with a great bubbly personality, and I had considered asking her to lunch one day.

**********

I lived in California from January 2002 - March 2003.  It was a difficult thing to leave, and especially after the attacks, but I had planned on moving in October and things had been put off for a while.  When I came back, my parents sold the house we lived in shortly thereafter for their retirement to Florida, and one of the things we found in the attic is the pamphlet whose frontpage is scanned above.  It's an original from the 1970s, and one that I plan to keep.  I'd been to the Towers myself on only one occasion, for a LInux User's Group meeting, and this was after the first bombing attempt.  I don't have any of the material from that day (which would have been just my badge anyway), but as I have the pamphlet now I have something to keep as a small reminder.

**********

Obviously, in the time since, things have changed quite a bit, and not necessarily for the best.  I think George W. Bush handled the initial crisis well, but wasted huge opportunities to steer the country in a positive direction, and our politicians have been flailing ever since.  I'm not going to get into the politics of it, but my feelings are that we should do what we can on the intelligence side to find and thwart potential attacks, but our current security theatre (and the naked scanning and molestations from the TSA) are not making people safer and come at great cost to our liberty.  I'm hoping that in the spirit of Patriot Day, as today is now called, that we can reverse some of the gains the terrorists made that day and remember what makes America great - freedom, liberty, and justice for all.  We owe it to the people we lost to remember their sacrifice and ensure that it was not in vain.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/999167/me_CC.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4bmN2q6hArFn Thomas Quinlan thomas_quinlan Thomas Quinlan Fri, 09 Sep 2011 13:58:33 -0700 Book Review: Crash Proof 2.0 by Peter Schiff @peterschiff http://thomasquinlan.com/book-review-crash-proof-20-by-peter-schiff-pe http://thomasquinlan.com/book-review-crash-proof-20-by-peter-schiff-pe
Cp2

I'm always a little leery of reading too many things that will tend to agree with viewpoints that I already hold.  While I'm fairly set in my ways, I love to learn, and I like to hear viewpoints that may be opposing (or not related, even) to mine for the experience of learning something new and checking the information against what I already believe.  Books like Crash Proof 2.0 tend to fall into the category of mirroring my own beliefs, and as such I wasn't as quick to read it as I might have otherwise been.

It's a shame that I didn't read it in 2006.  Peter Schiff correctly, and I mean correctly, predicted most of what happened in 2008, a full two years prior to its occurrence.  When I started reading the book, I was reading the original Crash Proof (not 2.0) as I had found excerpts online, and noticed that it was written before the financial crisis.  Interested in what little I had read, I searched to see if there were updates, and found that Crash Proof 2.0 had been written in 2009, with the original book intact, but with updates from 2009 written at the end of each chapter.

I plunked down the $12 for the Kindle version, and read it on my HTC Flyer.  It's one of the best purchases I've made this year!  It's very interesting to see how the predictions made in the original book came so true, and of course with the 2009 updates, Peter expands on his thinking from then, and provides further insights as to what to expect for the future.

The book is filled with expert advice, particularly if you think there is an upcoming dollar collapse and that the government printing trillions of dollars is just not the way to go about ensuring prosperity.  He starts with an analysis of the problem - that America is no longer a producing nation, and that our government is literally trading away our prosperity to foreign investors.  The Federal Reserve continues to print money like it's going out of style, and so people's wealth is slowly being robbed of them without their knowledge - as things get more expensive and they make the same amount of money.  Analysing the stock market and the real estate market, he shows from the 2006 standpoint how the two are inter-related and predicts a collapse (which happened, of course), and we get the wisdom of both foresight and hindsight in the analysis of the economic crisis with updates from 2009.  From that point, the book devotes the rest of its chapters to what individuals can do to protect themselves from the coming dollar devaluation by investing in foreign markets, precious metals, and maintaing certain levels of liquidity.

Most people will dismiss the book, even though it's filled with accurate predictions and sound advice.  Most people don't see a coming dollar collapse (though Schiff is in the same company as many Austrian economists, and even other financial pundits like Robert Kiyosaki, who all agree that it will happen) and so aren't particularly worried.  As the last part of the book details, this is an unfortunate occurrence, but it's one that readers can take steps to alleviate.  Whether protecting themselves, or helping others by sharing the knowledge, the way to do just that is contained in the book!  I highly recommend it for that reason.

Peter Schiff's website is www.europac.net.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/999167/me_CC.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4bmN2q6hArFn Thomas Quinlan thomas_quinlan Thomas Quinlan Tue, 06 Sep 2011 14:40:00 -0700 A Better IP Address GREP For EnCase http://thomasquinlan.com/a-better-ip-address-grep-for-encase http://thomasquinlan.com/a-better-ip-address-grep-for-encase

Hex

I was recently teaching a colleague about the use of keywords in EnCase, and in highlighting grep usage, we came across the default Guidance IP address grep string:

0|([3-9]#?)|(1#{0,2})|(2([0-4]#?)|(5[0-5]?)|[6-9])\.0|([3-9]#?)|(1#{0,2})|(2([0-4]#?)|(5[0-5]?)|[6-9])\.0|([3-9]#?)|(1#{0,2})|(2([0-4]#?)|(5[0-5]?)|[6-9])\.0|([3-9]#?)|(1#{0,2})|(2([0-4]#?)|(5[0-5]?)|[6-9])

The issue with a grep string like this is that you want to find IP addresses whose octets are always less than 256, but there is no "less than" operator in grep, so all one can do is attempt to construct each octet with digits (using OR), and/or accept some false positives.  (This means that you will get results that may not be IP addresses; instead you will get dotted decimal numbers that contain 'octets' greater than 255.)

The Guidance default grep string basically tries to construct all possible digits for the octets of an IP address.  While this is a reasonable way to do it, it has three problems.  The first is that it misses IP addresses!  It does not find "64.7.11.2", for instance.  Secondly, it leads to a large number of false positives.  Thirdly, that expression is rather convoluted to understand, and certainly maintaining it seems difficult.

My colleague and I came up with a better (but not perfect) IP address grep string:

(0|1|2)*[0-9]?[0-9]?\.(0|1|2)?[0-9]?[0-9]?\.(0|1|2)*[0-9]?[0-9]?\.(0|1|2)*[0-9]?[0-9]?

This IP address string is a lot less complicated that the one that ships with EnCase, thereby potentially mitigating some of the third problem with their default.  The first problem is also alleviated, in that it finds all IP addresses that we tested!  While it still suffers from the second problem, the number of false positives is significantly reduced.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/999167/me_CC.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4bmN2q6hArFn Thomas Quinlan thomas_quinlan Thomas Quinlan Sun, 04 Sep 2011 17:56:39 -0700 Thoughts On Mayorship @foursquare http://thomasquinlan.com/thoughts-on-mayorship-foursquare http://thomasquinlan.com/thoughts-on-mayorship-foursquare
Super-mayor-foursquare

I recently got kicked out as the mayor of my apartment complex on Foursquare.  I took a two and a half week trip, so I wasn't able to check in as often as I normally do.  Consequently, "Nic B." has become the mayor.

In the grand scheme of things, this isn't the worst thing in the world.  I understand that Foursquare creates mayorships based on the number of times any one person checks in at a particular place in the last sixty days.  However, what this means is that I'm unlikely to ever get back the mayorship of my apartment complex.

The first part to this is that we don't even have to assume that "Nic B." will never go on vacation.  All that has to happen is that his vacations are shorter than mine.  Consequently, he'd be able to check in more often in any given time period over sixty days, assuming he doesn't forget to check in for a considerable amount of time.  (Given his usage patterns, this seems unlikely.)  As I don't often take vacations, but take at least two weeks when I do, this is very likely.

The second part to this is that my long-term check-ins don't count.  I have more check-ins at my apartment complex than "Nic B." has total check-ins!  They even list this feature in the FAQ:

"We calculate mayorships based on the number of days that you've checked into a place over the past 60 days to keep mayorships current (It’s possible for you to have more check-ins over all time than the current Mayor, but just not as many recent check-ins)."

They do this to keep the mayorship "current".  Well, that may be well and good for the ADD-Gen-Y types who have absolutely no attention span, but for people who think and act more long-term, that part of the game is quickly losing its appeal.  I've lost a considerable number of mayorships that way, and have gone from 25 to 8.  (The remaining 8 are ones where there seem to be no competitors.)  Checking in is not fun for the sake of checking in; the goal has to be that occasionally it's rewarding!

I can understand wanting to keep mayorships current.  However, I think Foursquare could add some weight to long-term check-ins, and recalculate how they give out mayorships.  Otherwise, they may find that longer term players simply stop playing.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/999167/me_CC.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4bmN2q6hArFn Thomas Quinlan thomas_quinlan Thomas Quinlan Thu, 25 Aug 2011 22:25:14 -0700 The Keynesian Trap http://thomasquinlan.com/the-keynesian-trap http://thomasquinlan.com/the-keynesian-trap

1132842391

What do you do when rates are essentially zero and your trillions in quantitative easing are having an effect opposite of what you intended?

Therein lies the flaw of Keynesian Economics...

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/999167/me_CC.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4bmN2q6hArFn Thomas Quinlan thomas_quinlan Thomas Quinlan Mon, 01 Aug 2011 07:05:35 -0700 Spent $1B for the last 2000 years? You'd not reach 90% of what the gov't spent in the last 3! http://thomasquinlan.com/spent-1b-for-the-last-2000-years-youd-not-rea http://thomasquinlan.com/spent-1b-for-the-last-2000-years-youd-not-rea
Screen_shot_2011-08-01_at_9

Government Spending Works!  The Proof Is The Economy - $22,000,000,000,000 Spent, Debt Ceiling Reached, Unemployment Up, Housing Down

I may not have a Nobel Prize in Economics but reading Paul Krugman's opinion pieces in the New York Times is just aggravating.  Take this piece today, for example:  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/01/opinion/the-president-surrenders-on-debt-ceiling.html?_r=2  He has two main points in the article.  The first is that Obama caved to the Republicans, and has shown basically no leadership as President.  On this point, we agree.  I never understood why people thought that "Hope and Change" would really come from anyone who worked as a politician, but a fair amount of people were hoodwinked, and now, hopefully, they're learning the lesson they didn't learn three years ago.

His second point, though, is that the debt ceiling compromise will effectively sink the economy even further because it cuts government spending, and that we should be increasing government spending to keep the economy going.  It's straight off page one of the "Keynesian Guide to Talking Points", and quite frankly, flies in the face of all logic.  Forget for a moment that I tend towards market anarchy.  Forget for a moment that I think that the markets are a better judge of how to set prices and rates better than Krugman or Bernanke or Geithner.  Forget all that, and forget even that any other school of economics even exists.  Examine his own statements in the light of the facts: that the government has been spending like gangbusters and that the Fed has lent out 16 TRILLION DOLLARS and the economy is WORSE now than it was even just a few months ago.

Paul Krugman thinks that the government is not spending enough.  We have a 1.65 TRILLION dollar deficit this year, after a 1.3 TRILLION dollar deficit last year, and a 1.5 TRILLION dollar deficit the year before.  In the last three years, the government has spent 4.4 TRILLION dollars more than it has taken in.  Add to that the 2 TRILLION dollars that Bush spent over what his government collected, and in the last ten years, the government has outspent its revenues by 6.4 TRILLION dollars.  Now add the 16 TRILLION dollars the Federal Reserve lent out (http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/07/21/audit-fed-gave-16-trillion-in-emergency...) and you come up with a number that is north of 22 TRILLION dollars in spending and loans by the government.  Think about that number.  That's 22,000,000,000,000 dollars.  If you spent 1 billion dollars a year for the last 2000 years, you would only get to 2 trillion.  The government has spent and/or loaned ELEVEN TIMES that in the last ten years, of which TEN TIMES that amount was spent or loaned in the last three.  22 TRILLION dollars is enough to have given every man, woman, and child (assuming a US population of 307 million) more than 71,000 dollars.  I don't think the government should be giving money away at all, but I think it would have been an infinitely better experiment to have given everyone 71 grand than to have entrusted it to the politicians and pundits who prove time and again that they're not to be trusted with it!

If this isn't spending enough, I can't possibly imagine what Krugman thinks we should be spending.  Furthermore, I don't understand how an obviously intelligent man can continue to call for an action that is not only clearly not working, but actually exacerbating the problem.  Therein lies the inherent contradiction of Keynesian economics; you're forced to continue clamouring for more of the problem in hopes that something will correct or that you'll reach a new (much lower) 'normal' and then you can say you were right.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/999167/me_CC.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4bmN2q6hArFn Thomas Quinlan thomas_quinlan Thomas Quinlan Tue, 26 Jul 2011 06:41:49 -0700 Apparently, I Suck At Sleeping #Zeo #biohacking @bulletproofexec http://thomasquinlan.com/apparently-i-suck-at-sleeping-zeo-biohacking http://thomasquinlan.com/apparently-i-suck-at-sleeping-zeo-biohacking
Zeo_night_1

Those of you that know me know that I view most (ok, all) things as Information Systems.  I chalk that up to my nature, but also to actual nature, since if you come right down to it, that's really what things are.  The work of scientists and futurists like Claude Shannon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Shannon) and Ray Kurzweil (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_kurzweil) has bolstered that viewpoint.  Building on their work and adding their own have been the biohackers, people like Tim Ferriss (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Ferriss ; http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/) and most recently, Dave Asprey (http://www.bulletproofexec.com/) who have taken the idea of biology as an information system that much further.

One of the things that has been bothering me lately is that I am mostly tired all the time.  Since I work a full-time job and take three classes a week in grad school, people think I'm over-working myself.  While that may be true to a certain extent, it's not the cause - I have worked much more in the past (there was one month at my previous job I worked 333 hours) and I know of other people who have a similar schedule and who aren't completely exhausted.  So when I came across Dave Asprey's post here: http://www.bulletproofexec.com/top-6-biohacks/ I decided I'd at least start with some of the top biohacks.

The first and easiest was the sleep hacking (http://www.bulletproofexec.com/category/sleephacks/).  Most of it made immediate sense, since I know that if I get around six hours of sleep, then I'm usually pretty good - the trick is getting up after six hours.  (Actually, I'm usually my best in multiples of three, but getting up is always the issue.)  I can usually get up after nine.  However, that's often impractical since sleeping nine hours a day doesn't really leave enough time for everything else.  Additionally, that sleep still wasn't restorative - I was often tired.  So I did what anyone would do and went to a doctor.

The doctor (aside from charging a ridiculous amount of money) spent most of the time asking me about my job.  He didn't actually do very much - I saw him for about 15 minutes.  I had blood and urine taken, and after a few days they called me to tell me nothing was wrong with me - the levels of everything they checked for were all fine.  Well, that's great - except it didn't address at all the problem that I had asked about.

So I decided to take matters into my own hands.  From Dave's blog I learned about the Zeo (http://myzeo.tellapal.com/a/clk/10CPhN - that's a referral link) which is an alarm clock-like device that measures your brainwaves at night to see how you've been sleeping.  You have to wear a headband (the toughest part of the whole thing) but it sends the information from the wireless headband to the alarm clock.  This has two immediate benefits.  The first is the obvious - it tracks your sleep patterns.  The second is that it has a "smart wake" feature which wakes you up at the best time closest to when you want to wake up (say, 0830) based on your sleep patterns.  (It woke me at 0829 this morning, and it's soft alarm was all I needed!)  You can upload your sleep data to your online Zeo account and keep track of it to see the patterns over time and adjust your habits accordingly.

As it turns out, my first night was interesting - apparently the headband fell off at about 0425 this morning, so as you can see my "ZQ" (the score they assign to your night's sleep) is only 18.  However, the data that I got even before that is quite interesting!  Apparently, in the two and a half hours the headband was on and recording, I already know it took me 23 minutes to fall asleep (part of which was due to the headband) but that I woke up twice without knowing it in that short time!  I only got 13 minutes of REM sleep and 19 minutes of deep sleep.  A fairly obvious pattern emerged - I'm waking up often and not getting enough restorative sleep!

Having the data will allow me to get a much better idea of what's going on, and now I'll be able to take steps to adjust accordingly.  The Zeo cost $250 (with replacement sensors - you can get the system itself for about $200) and so far, it's worth it.  Considering that the doctor charged about twice that (though my out-of-pocket costs were lower) with no meaningful results, I've already gotten significant value from both the Zeo and my first attempts at real biohacking.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/999167/me_CC.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4bmN2q6hArFn Thomas Quinlan thomas_quinlan Thomas Quinlan Mon, 25 Jul 2011 22:04:00 -0700 Forget Debt Ceilings! Fed Gave Away $16 TRILLION! http://thomasquinlan.com/forget-debt-ceilings-fed-gave-away-16-trillio http://thomasquinlan.com/forget-debt-ceilings-fed-gave-away-16-trillio

16_trillion

The picture that's attached to this post is Table 8 on page 133 of the Dodd-Frank audit of the Federal Reserve.  (See this link: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/07/21/audit-fed-gave-16-trillion-in-emergency-loans/  -  it shows up as page 144 of 266 in the Scribd version at the bottom.)  It shows that the Fed lent $16 TRILLION to various banks, ten of which are outside the United States.  People are squabbling over a debt ceiling while the Federal Reserve lends TRILLIONS of dollars, much of it outside the country!  The entire US GDP is only $14.5 TRILLION (which we all know thanks to the ridiculous squabbling over the debt ceiling, even if we didn't before) and the Fed lent out more than that in the short space of three years. 

The politicians are fighting over billions here and billions there while the Fed hands out TRILLIONS like candy.  People are suggesting that we tax the rich more so that the US doesn't collapse, as if that could solve anything!  (Taxing the rich would result in miniscule amounts as compared to $16 TRILLION, and those same people that would be taxed are the ones handing out all the money in the first place - after the first use it (and thereby getting the benefit of using it before its inflationary effects are felt) - they would never let those taxes happen!)  The dollar's value is plummeting, and the world is now awash with them... politicians are squabbling over billions here and billions there  while the Fed has had them beat by several orders of magnitude even before this current debt ceiling became an issue.

In 1961, the price of an ounce of gold was $35.  Today, the price of an ounce of gold is $1613.  If you divide 35 by 1613, you get .0216986, which as a percentage, is 2.2%.  That means that the dollar today (as judged by the price of gold) is worth about 2.2% of what it was worth just fifty years ago, meaning that the dollar has LOST 97.8% of its value in fifty years.  Think about that - for every $100 in purchasing power you had in 1961, you now have the purchasing power of about $2.20.  Your $100 from 1961 couldn't buy you a gallon of milk or a gallon of gas!  That's just today - we may not know the full effects of flooding the world economy with so many TRILLIONS of dollars for some time to come.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/999167/me_CC.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4bmN2q6hArFn Thomas Quinlan thomas_quinlan Thomas Quinlan Wed, 16 Feb 2011 08:31:00 -0800 Very Interesting Things About Last Night's Jeopardy! Game (Spoilers) http://thomasquinlan.com/very-interesting-things-about-last-nights-jeo http://thomasquinlan.com/very-interesting-things-about-last-nights-jeo

Watson
It was quite interesting to watch Jeopardy! this morning to see Watson take on Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings again.  While it is notable to see that had this been a one-day game Watson would have won, there were some particularly interesting points in the game.

The first was the Double Jeopardy in which Watson didn't know the answer/question but still had to provide one.  It guessed.  Think about that for a second: a guess is really just a set of solutions we're not sure about but propose anyway.  This is exactly what Watson did - he had a set of answers and picked the one with the highest confidence level (still below an actual confidence level), which as it turned out was correct.  So in that sense, we just witnessed the dawn of computers guessing.  That's fairly telling, because that's one more thing that computers can now do that before was purely in the purview of humanity.

Such guessing was more telling in Final Jeopardy!, when the category was US Cities and Watson guessed Toronto instead of Chicago.  I'm not quite sure whether it was over-emphasis on Natural Language Processing (NLP) on the part of the IBM researchers, but there should have been a check somewhere in the code that looked at the category title and combined it with the possible answers.  I'm left wondering if Watson's performance has looked solely at the questions this entire time without taking into account the boundaries based on categories.

I've also been impressed with Alex Trebek's handling of the whole thing.  He treats Watson as any other contestant, which is exemplary, though he didn't attempt to shake Watson's hand.  Of course he wouldn't, as Watson has no hands!  However, it made me think that in the not too distant future that there may come a Jeopardy! show where Trebek will end up having to shake the hand of the first robot to play.

Finally, is it me or did Brad Rutter look quite annoyed at the end of the game?  If I had to guess (ha), I would suggest that it's not because he was beaten, but because he knew all the answers!  I have a feeling that he just can't signal fast enough, as he only managed to buzz in on a couple of questions, and in those questions Watson wasn't buzzing in anyway.  Ken Jennings doesn't appear to be signaling in much at all, and most of his answers came when he had control of the board.

It'll be interesting to see what happens tonight!

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/999167/me_CC.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4bmN2q6hArFn Thomas Quinlan thomas_quinlan Thomas Quinlan Sat, 12 Feb 2011 19:37:00 -0800 I Honestly Can't Say This Is Surprising http://thomasquinlan.com/i-honestly-cant-say-this-is-surprising http://thomasquinlan.com/i-honestly-cant-say-this-is-surprising

Money-house
So as the follow up to the story about my house being broken into (http://thomasquinlan.com/paying-taxes-is-supposed-to-get-us-something) I got my mortgage statement today from Bank of America.  My mortgage payment is going up $200 a month because my escrow balance has apparently gone down to the point where they have to start collecting more money.  This is a projection they've sent me that will start in April.  As it turns out, I do pay city taxes separately, and in addition to school taxes - the school taxes for 2010 were just under $1740 for the year.  The city taxes were $2045 for the year.  So of the taxes I paid on my house in 2010, 54% of them went to the City of Binghamton, for which I got nothing in return.  (I still don't even have a copy of the police report!)

The projection for the taxes for this year is interesting: $1740 for school taxes, and $2770 for the City of Binghamton for the year.  Yes, that's right, my City of Binghamton taxes are going up $725 dollars, or an increase of about 35%.  So, while the efforts of the City at providing youngsters with quality education will remain unchanged, efforts at police vigilance and other fine City services that I don't get will cost me 35% more.

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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/999167/me_CC.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4bmN2q6hArFn Thomas Quinlan thomas_quinlan Thomas Quinlan Fri, 11 Feb 2011 10:49:00 -0800 Could Morgan Stanley Suck Any Harder? http://thomasquinlan.com/could-morgan-stanley-suck-any-harder http://thomasquinlan.com/could-morgan-stanley-suck-any-harder

Greedy_pig

So I've had an account with Morgan Stanley for a few years now, due to IPO stock that was purchased at a prior employer through a "Friends and Family" program.  It was 150 shares of stock, and the company in which the shares were held has had its valuation drop significantly (as did many others) in the Second Depression we're all in.

Yesterday, Morgan Stanley sold 119 of the shares of stock without telling me, to pay fees on the account.  I admit, I didn't read the statements, because if I had, I would never have agreed to keep an account charging me $25/month on what was at best $1750 worth of stock.  However, what I object to is not necessarily the fees, but the fact that they sold the stock without telling me.

I'm sure somewhere in the fine print it said they could do that when the account was set up.  However, it seems to me that a normal business that has unpaid account fees would make some effort to contact the customer to have those debts resolved.  I might even have sold the stock myself to cover the account fees - but I would have liked to have had the CHOICE.  To make matters worse, because Morgan Stanley didn't have an updated W-9 (something else for which they might have contacted me!) the IRS is now going to withhold 28% of the money even though I have had it for more than a year and the stock was sold at a loss.  Now I have to go get my money back from the government because Morgan Stanley can't send emails from its system saying "We need an updated W-9".  (It's an easy form to fill out and send, and it would have taken me less than ten minutes if I had known it was needed!)

I've liquidated the account with them now, so I won't be doing business with them ever again.  As if I needed further convincing, they charged me $21.95 commission and a $6 'maintenance fee' to sell the other 31 shares of stock.  A $250 transaction cost more than 10% with them (to say nothing of the additional 28% of THAT money that I will now have to get from the IRS).  At Schwab, my commission is $9 with no 'maintenance fee', about a third of what Morgan Stanley charges.

Maybe I'm not the type of investor that Morgan Stanley wants as a client - it must have been really difficult for them to have let their automated systems care for the 150 shares I had.  Maybe I'm not rich enough for them.  To be honest, I probably wouldn't have ever had an account with them if it weren't required under the terms of the stock program, so the feeling is mutual.  What I can be sure of is that if I ever DO become rich enough to need a serious broker (and I'm working on it), then I can be damn sure that Morgan Stanley won't be getting my business.


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]]> http://files.posterous.com/user_profile_pics/999167/me_CC.jpg http://posterous.com/users/4bmN2q6hArFn Thomas Quinlan thomas_quinlan Thomas Quinlan