Greg Egan - strong drink for experienced readers

Greg Egan leads my list of mind expanding authors. He's strong stuff though. You don't start with Greg Egan, unless you like your reality straight, no water.

You start with Vinge, or Iain M. Banks. They're superficially benign. If an inattentive reader skips through the embedded essay on the relationship between the problem of evil and the Simulation Hypothesis in the midst of Bank's Matter the rest of the book is only mildly perturbing.

Of course Banks is a masterful deceiver. There are lots of perturbing ideas beneath the superficial space opera. I'm a veteran reader, and I'm sure even I've missed some of the many levels of meaning in Matter. There's always another layer of player in Banks.

Egan doesn't bother with mere accessibility. The first chapter of Diaspora outlines a persuasive model for the development of consciousness and self awareness, and a prescription for the creation of human-like minds within a digital world. In 27 pages. At the start of the book.

Jon Evan's essay on the mysterious non-stardom of Egan explains why Egan is not for the novice ...

... I love his short story “Wang’s Carpets,” (also part of his novel Diaspora) which is sort of about Fourier-transformed aliens⁴—but would I have understood what the hell was going on if I didn’t have an electrical engineering degree, the acquisition of which required the calculation of far too many Fourier transforms before breakfast? Do readers without any technical background have any hope of getting Egan at all?

Vinge, Stross and Banks do some deep dives, but their cover stories are accessible to the newcomer (Banks is especially good at this wonderful trick). Egan doesn't condescend -- he's strong drink, straight up.

I like my coffee black, my whisky rough, and I like Egan. His ideas haunt me like no others. Egan is the ultimate mind expanding author.

So don't start with Egan. But when you're ready, his books are waiting.

Update 6/16/09: See also my later post on Egan's Permutation City.

Bankruptcy for GM and Chrysler - opponents need a better case

Well written, sober, and understated - Roger Cohen of the NYT on why bankruptcy is the right path for GM and Chrysler.

His Pan Am and Alitalia comparisons are well chosen, but slightly misleading. When Pan Am went bankrupt it vanished. I've been flying on a bankrupt airline for months that's recently been acquired ("merged" technically) by another bankrupt airline. Bankruptcy has evolved.

Modern bankruptcy is not what it was. It feels like the right choice for GM, Chrysler and America. If it's not, someone has to make a much better case than we're hearing so far.

Madoff and how the victims con masters like best

Two weeks before my obligatory Madoff post I admired an article on spotting a con man:

Gordon's Notes: Rule #1 for spotting a con ...

[Portfolio.com] ... The sharper someone makes you think you are, the more likely you are to believe that you're in control—and the more vulnerable you'll be when the loop of deception is closed. 'The easiest person to con,' says Robbins, 'is someone who thinks he's too smart to be conned...

One of the many astounding aspects of the Madoff con was that people had to go to him to be conned. Only the savviest, the smartest, the most wealthy and clever, those blessed by fortune and fame could be accepted.

I wonder how long we'll all remember this lesson.

Six months?

No, we're not that smart.

Update 1/6/09: A wonderful and insightful essay by a writer who lost a third of her assets, a child of Auschwitz fleeced by Madoff.

Apple's quality problems continue ...

As usual, an essential [1] but "minor" OS X update with no significant new features causes widespread issues, though most can be resolved ...

Applers howl over Mac OS fix | Register Hardware

...Overall, the 10.5.6 rough spots are about par for the course for an Apple OS upgrade. However, we at The Reg still recommend that before you attempt the 10.5.6 update - or any update, for that matter - you should create a bootable backup of your entire system, including files and apps. Yes, doing so a time-consuming pain in the wazoo, but as your dear mum used to say, "Better safe than sorry."

Things are bad when reasonable advice includes a full backup bootable backup rather than checking the integrity of routine data backups. Of course since the update addresses issues with corrupt Time Machine backups that can't be restored the backup needs to be done with some other application. Incidentally, it's true that many Apple users have an unhealthy tolerance of Apple's failings. Cognitive dissonance, perhaps?

Apple's due for a leadership change, so it's possible there will be a different approach going forward.

PS. I don't do full system backups prior to these point releases. My procedure is:

1. Wait two weeks from initial release.
2. Check out any sync related products I use (Spanning Sync, etc) and any Preference Pane products. Those often break.
3. Check Macintouch and Apple's discussion forums for any really bad news with products like mine. Especially check the PPC (legacy) discussions.
4. Verify I can do a random file restore from my daily backup.
5. Install first on our MacBook (MacTel machine).
6. A week later install on the primary household machine (G5 iMac).
7. When I install I first do a safe boot restart to clear out caches and test the machine. I then shutdown, and detach all peripherals. I then restart to an admin account and do the install. After install I do a regular restart, then a safe boot, then a regular restart. Tedious, but I attract nasty bugs.

The return of mad cow disease and ideas for writing about science

Fears raised over new vCJD wave tells us that the first wave of "mad cow" victims all shared a common (42% of the UK) gene variant called MM. New cases suggest a new wave in non-MM persons.

We don't know if this '2nd wave' will be more common as well as later onset, but the current guesses are roughly the same frequency -- meaning rare for the population as a whole.

I wonder why we don't see more retrospective reviews of the science of these historic disease outbreaks. We ought to have a tradition of five and ten year historic reviews of things like "Mac Cow" (variant CJD) and SARS-associated Coronavirus disesase.

How about it science writers? Just look back in the NYT's archives and find out what mysterious diseases were big 10 years ago. Do it every January 1st, and then put out a retrospective with the best current science. Could be a career.

The "No Rick Warren" facebook site

Well, that was a pretty short honeymoon.

Rahm Emanuel may yet end up in big Blago trouble, and now we have a colossal blunder in the choice of minister for Obama's inauguration.

From the Facebook activist group page:

Facebook | No Rick Warren at Obama Inauguration

... Anti-gay pastor Rick Warren has been selected to give benediction at Obama inauguration, this is an utter nightmare and a total insult to the LGBT community and their straight allies.

Send Obama a letter at

http://change.gov/page/content/contact/

And ask Rick Warren to be removed from the event!

Please email Parag Mehta, Obama's LGBT liaison on the transition team at parag.mehta@ptt.gov, to express your concern.

I wonder when Parag Mehta will resign.

Houston, we have a problem.

Lots of layoff tips

The Complete Guide To Surviving Layoffs

I, Cringely - now post-PBS

Robert Cringely, a longtime tech pundit, has left his PBS home. Happily, he hasn't stopped writing.

His new blog has its first post up: I, Cringely - Surviving 2009.

I'm a subscriber.

The Max Planck Institute's very funny cover ..

I'd read of this fabulous blunder, but this story had more details ...

Chinese 'classical poem' was brothel ad - News, TV & Radio - The Independent

A respected research institute wanted Chinese classical texts to adorn its journal, something beautiful and elegant, to illustrate a special report on China. Instead, it got a racy flyer extolling the lusty details of stripping housewives in a brothel...

... There were red faces on the editorial board of one of Germany's top scientific institutions, the Max Planck Institute, after it ran the text of a handbill for a Macau strip club on the front page of its latest journal. Editors had hoped to find an elegant Chinese poem to grace the cover of a special issue, focusing on China, of the MaxPlanckForschung journal, but instead of poetry they ran a text effectively proclaiming "Hot Housewives in action!" on the front of the third-quarter edition. Their "enchanting and coquettish performance" was highly recommended...

They'd employed a "Sinologist" to review the text, but apparently they need a refresher course. Of course "enchanting and coquettish" seems a bit formal too ...

Apparently some mainlanders thought they were being mocked, but, mercifully, most found it hilarious.

A collector's item. Anyone who has this journal needs to preserve it for future sale.

You know that trouble we're in?

It's deep.

ZIRP! - Paul Krugman Blog - NYTimes.com

That’s zero interest rate policy. And it has arrived. America has turned Japanese.

This is the thing I’ve been afraid of ever since I realized that Japan really was in the dreaded, possibly mythical liquidity trap. You can read my 1998 Brookings Paper on the issue here.

Incidentally, there were a bunch of us at Princeton worrying about the Japan problem in the early years of this decade. I was one; Lars Svensson, currently at Sweden’s Riksbank, was another; a third was a guy named Ben Bernanke. I wonder whatever happened to him?

Seriously, we are in very deep trouble. Getting out of this will require a lot of creativity, and maybe some luck too.

I encourage the Japanese people to indulge in some schadenfreude. Really, we deserve it. Many Americans (not me though) were quite obnoxious during Japan's long deflation.

Pile it on, friends -- your scorn is the least of our injuries. I'm only sorry we're dragging Japan down to.

As to the creativity bit, I like my plan. But I would, wouldn't I?

The Peak Oil answer to collapsing oil prices: queuing chaos

I waited 5 months after oil zoomed up before making my Peak Oil call.

Shortly thereafter the price collapsed.

You're welcome.

So now I'm in the market for desperate validations of my opinion. Like this one ...

The Oil Drum | Oil Prices Below $40 per Barrel

... This chaotic outcome with respect to commodities prices in face of scarce supply was studied by Ugo Bardi, who found interesting examples of it in the past. I first got to know his work soon after I read Kenneth Deffeyes' book and was especially impressed with the pattern Ugo identified in whale oil prices after the peak in sperm whale catches in 1850. The Whaling Industry was possibly the largest of its time, on a global scale that in many ways can be compared with the modern day Oil Industry. To me a most fascinating aspect about Peak Whale Oil is that in the book Moby Dick, published right about that time, Herman Melville lays down quite clearly the reasons for a coming decline of the Industry: in his view Easy Sperm Whale was over.

With all this information I became convinced an increased volatility in oil prices would unfold, eventually leading to a series of "boom and bust" cycles, just like whale oil prices in the XIX century. Predictions of oil prices would become impossible, and I never attempted to forecast them.

Another important aspect to my understanding of this issue was presented by Carlos Cramez and Jean Laherrère in 2006 at the seminar that kicked off ASPO-Portugal. They showed a chart with oil prices in terms of the number of working hours required to buy the oil in the US and France, and concluded that to return to 1980's levels, the last oil crisis, prices would have to reach something like 125$ per barrel (in 2006 dollars). This number stuck to my mind, and I assumed this would be about the level at which the "boom" would turn around into "bust"...

I'd feel better if he'd linked to past posts where he, you know, actually wrote, for example, that oil prices would crash at $125 / barrel.

I figured they'd go up and down, but not to $40 a barrel.

Of course I didn't figure on the world economy going off a cliff and then splattering on the rocks below.

I still don't know what's going on with oil prices. I really need Paul Krugman or Brad DeLong to speak up but they've been suspiciously quiet. Krugman in particular was very confident that the price rises did not represent speculation, so I think he has moral obligation to say something.

PS. This would be a good time to start slapping a carbon tax onto oil, offsetting the economic burden by reducing some other tax.

The Madoff story and trust in the market

In a normal time, discovering that a highly respected financier was running a $50 billion con would get quite a bit of attention.

These days, the story is almost a blip.

One thing in particular impressed my household...

Bernie Madoff: Wall Street titan who fell to earth | Business | The Guardian:

... Clients describe Madoff as pleasant and easygoing. He was chairman of the technology-focused Nasdaq exchange...

Technically, he was a former chairman, I haven't been able to find out when.

It's getting harder to reassure certain people that the entire American stock market isn't completely corrupt.

Update: This doesn't help.

... There are also warnings from lawyers that practices such as these are more likely to unravel during tricky market conditions. Steven Philippsohn, chairman of the Commercial Fraud Lawyers Association, said: "This is the tip of the iceberg."..

Update 12/18/08: Well, it's not a blip. No-one will remember this story in 10-15 years, but I must confess it's astounding enough that it does stand out.

How to make money in the market - wait for the chumps

It was only an experiment, but isn't it persuasive?

Grasping Reality with Both Hands: The Semi-Daily Journal of Economist Brad DeLong: Monkeys Trade Assets I

... In fact, the people who make the most money in these experiments aren’t the ones who stick to fundamentals. They’re the speculators who buy a lot at the beginning and sell midway through, taking advantage of “momentum traders” who jump in when the market is going up, don’t sell until it’s going down, and wind up with the least money at the end. (“I have a lot of relatives and friends who are momentum traders,” comments Noussair.) Bubbles start to pop when the momentum traders run out of money and can no longer push prices up..."

Good traders in these experiment pay attention to fundamentals, but the best traders play the chumps. They wait until "Joe Sixpack" decides to start buying shares. Then they bail.

Incidentally, in my experience, "Joe Sixpack" is a physician. When surgeons start trading stock tips with the medical types, the chumps are in position. It's time to exit gracefully.

Global warming: have we lost already?

Imagine that we spot a dino-killer coming our way, 10km of space rock due to impact in 80 years.

I think that would concentrate our minds.

So how does a 10km meteor compare to this view of our climate future? (emphases mine)

Too late? Why scientists say we should expect the worst of global warming | Environment | The Guardian

At a high-level academic conference on global warming at Exeter University this summer, climate scientist Kevin Anderson stood before his expert audience ...

.... Anderson, an expert at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at Manchester University ... pointed out that carbon emissions since 2000 have risen much faster than anyone thought possible, driven mainly by the coal-fuelled economic boom in the developing world...

.... he said it was "improbable" that levels could now be restricted to 650 parts per million (ppm).

The CO2 level is currently over 380ppm, up from 280ppm at the time of the industrial revolution, and it rises by more than 2ppm each year. The government's official position is that the world should aim to cap this rise at 450ppm.

The science is fuzzy, but experts say that could offer an even-money chance of limiting the eventual temperature rise above pre-industrial times to 2C ...

At 650ppm, the same fuzzy science says the world would face a catastrophic 4C average rise. And even that bleak future, Anderson said, could only be achieved if rich countries adopted "draconian emission reductions within a decade". Only an unprecedented "planned economic recession" might be enough. The current financial woes would not come close.

... Many scientists, politicians and campaigners privately admit that 2C is a lost cause. Ask for projections around the dinner table after a few bottles of wine and more vote for 650ppm than 450ppm as the more likely outcome.

Bob Watson, chief scientist at the Environment Department and a former head of the IPCC, warned this year that the world needed to prepare for a 4C rise, which would wipe out hundreds of species, bring extreme food and water shortages in vulnerable countries and cause floods that would displace hundreds of millions of people. Warming would be much more severe towards the poles, which could accelerate melting of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets...

... Garnaut, a professorial fellow in economics at Melbourne University, said: "Achieving the objective of 450ppm would require tighter constraints on emissions than now seem likely in the period to 2020 ... The only alternative would be to impose even tighter constraints on developing countries from 2013...

.... Earlier this year, Jim Hansen, senior climate scientist with Nasa, published a paper that said the world's carbon targets needed to be urgently revised because of the risk of feedbacks in the climate system. He used reconstructions of the Earth's past climate to show that a target of 350ppm, significantly below where we are today, is needed to "preserve a planet similar to that on which civilisation developed and to which life on Earth is adapted". Hansen has suggested a joint review by Britain's Royal Society and the US National Academy of Sciences of all research findings since the IPCC report...

There's not necessarily a lot that's new in this review, more a collection of bad news since the IPCC report. The situation is particularly confusing now because while many believe the island nations are doomed, it's thought that open declaration would sabotage agreements that would benefit everyone else.

It makes sense. If you live on an island nation, you may not have much interest in supporting a 550 ppm target since you'll be under water anyway (or live elsewhere). You might push for 400 ppm, though that would require onerous changes in China, and thus we'd have no agreement at all.

So how does 600 ppm, maybe with permafrost and ocean methane release feedback, compare to a 10km meteor impact?

I think the hot earth is preferable, but I'd like to hear from an authority I trust.

Root causes: The elusiveness of low cost videoconferencing

Over the past 10 years or so I've been trying to make low cost webcam based business video-conferencing work. That's almost as long as I've been trying to unify my family, corporate and personal calendars.

In both cases I've come close to the proverbial brass ring several times, only to see it recede from my gasp. I thought we were close with iChatAV and the firewire iSight webcam, but then Apple discontinued the iSight and lost interest in iChat. [1]

Now we're on another go-round. Over in Gordon's Tech I'm updating a brief state of the art summary. Once again the ring feels close, but I'm not willing to say it's a sure thing.

So what makes low cost business videoconferencing so hard. Haven't we had the basic technology for about 10 years?

Here's my current list. Comments are most welcome:

1. Affordable travel: Current videoconferencing solutions, maybe even teleprescence solutions, are a poor substitute for being there. As long as travel was affordable the market for teleprescence was limited.
2. Unlimited flat rate network access: I hate flat rate access. I want my ISP to want me to burn bits. Flat rate access means Comcast is incented to kill BitTorrent and videoconferencing is collateral damage.
3. Perverse customers: Recreational home p*rn was a major driver of 1990s webcam development software. They want blurry images and attract virus-infested software. Not good for business use.
4. Firewire licensing costs: Unwise Firewire patent holders set licensing costs too high. That meant CPU-sucking wimpy voltage USB took over. Uncompressed 800x600 images at 15 fps uses bandwidth that's no problem for Firwire, but seems not to work so well with USB. In theory USB 2 should have more than enought capacity, but firewire camcorders (Canon's for example) and the firewire iSight delivered much better images. I've long wondered if the USB 2 chipsets of years past were really up to the job, or whether there were issues with older CPUs supporting persistently high volume non-bursty USB transactions. I admit I seem to be alone in this suspicion.
5. Limited uplink speeds and limited reliability of many internet connections: It's not only the historically poor uplink speeds, but many net connections aren't reliable. Video conferencing software is pretty demanding.
6. We need h.264 compression and its variants to make this scale, they're pretty new and demand a lot of CPU (or a dedicated chip).

Any other explanations of why we're still not quite there yet?
--
[1] Apple ties their product (ex. iChat) improvements to major OS releases. This doesn't work for me. I think this policy is a strategic blunder.