I think FactCheck.org thought they'd be able to rest after the presidential election.
Wrong.
Between chain mails (a popular conduit of nonsense for the right) and GOP Senators (another conduit of nonsense) FactCheck is quite busy exposing undeniable whoppers.
People without allegiance to reality are full time employment for an organization attached to the facts.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Bank stock prices are rational now - the nationalization effect
Krugman points out than until recently bank share prices reflected the hope that the Feds would bail out the banks -- and stick taxpayers with the bill.
Now that it's becoming clear that shareholders will get stuck with the bill, bank share prices are returning to a rational level. Meaning about zero...
Nationalization fears - Paul Krugman Blog - NYTimes.com
So everyone agrees that fears of nationalization are driving bank stocks down. That’s probably true, but those fears have to be carefully interpreted.
We are not talking about fears that leftist radicals will expropriate perfectly good private companies. At least since last fall the major banks — certainly Citi and B of A — have only been able to stay in business because their counterparties believe that there’s an implicit federal guarantee on their obligations. The banks are already, in a fundamental sense, wards of the state.
And the market caps of these banks did not reflect investors’ assessment of the difference in value between their assets and their liabilities. Instead, it largely — and probably totally — reflected the “Geithner put”, the hope that the feds would bail them out in a way that handed a significant windfall gain to stockholders.
What’s happening now is a growing sense that the federal government, in return for rescuing these institutions, will demand the same thing a private-sector white knight would have demanded — namely, ownership.
Pakistan's objections to American drone attacks somewhat less credible now ...
I don't think many people trusted the sincerity of Pakistan's complaints about American drones invading their air space. That number has now gotten even smaller ...
Google Earth exposes a U.S. drone base in Pakistan. - By William Saletan - Slate Magazine
... The image was freely available on Google Earth until Wednesday, when the News of Pakistan published a story about it. At that point, it vanished, as other sensitive military pictures have done. Today, you can still view it on the Web site of the Times of London. If you're a Pakistani citizen, it confirms that the United States has been launching its killer drones from inside your country, contrary to your government's pretense of opposition...
The bright side of the news is that this is positive sign of US-Pakistani cooperation. The consensus on the drone attacks is that they're killing bad people -- in addition to innocent bystanders of all ages. Their accuracy must be coming from Pakistani intelligence sources, which have presumably deeply infiltrated the Taliban.
The down side is it would have been nice for Pakistan to have had more deniability.
When will Google 2.0 sell a branded netbook?
The great thing about the netbook is price (batteries not included). Of course, like any computing device of any quality, netbooks also need network access -- but I think network access will also be commoditized.
The bad things are quality, cost of ownership, and value delivered.
The Target Trutech that triggered my netbook interests was/is incredibly crummy. The hardware is crummy, the software is ugly, the usability is lousy, and in fairly short order a new wave of virus attacks will destroy the first generation linux-based netbooks.
On the platform side Google Chrome for Linux will address one set of issues. That still leaves hardware quality and virus security as obstacles to Google's Chromestellation strategy. An extra $5 spent on a keyboard will vastly improve user experience, but at the brutal low end of the market there's no brand awareness to justify a $5 price boost.
Google, of course, can address those issues. Unlike Apple they don't have a hardware franchise to protect, and, of course, unlike Microsoft they don't have a software franchise to support.
Google will sell a Google-branded netbook. They'll do the ultra-thin Linux distro, and they'll do the antiviral and security updates. Their device, sold under the Google brand, will be able to justify the $15 higher price point that will take the $135 2011 Google netbook something everyone will own.
Which bring us, inevitably, to antitrust.
Google is now so dominant in search that a revived American antitrust division is already making noises. If they come to own the entire western, and possibly world, netbook industry they'll make the Microsoft of old look modest.
Google will sell a branded netbook, but they'll have to split the company to do it. Google 1.0 will have search, and Google 2.0 will have the netbook.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
All stupidity is rooted in tax law
Why have companies learned to finance operations through debt?
The merits of equity v debt | Debtors' prison | The Economist:If you ever see something in the world that seems bizarre, like rice paddies in the middle of 1970s Tokyo, think tax law and accounting.
... Corporate-finance theory may state that the value of a company should not be affected by its decision to finance itself with equity or debt. But, in practice, interest payments are generally tax-deductible; dividends are not. That gives companies a big push in the direction of debt...
Why are humans such wimpy primates?
Chimps don't look so big. Size isn't everything ...
Why are we such runts? We look pretty big, and we still run pretty well, but in hand-to-hand combat we're hopeless.
My guess it's so that we don't damage each other when we fight. We're not a particularly peaceful primate (though we're becoming far gentler than we were), and we're very expensive to rear to adulthood. Maybe it's better for our hand to hand combat to be relatively harmless; a means to establish dominance rather than do harm.
For harm we have tools, fire, pits and cliffs, and we've killed anything that was ever remotely threatening.
We're the Potemkin primate -- at least so far as muscles go.
The rest of the article is worth a read. Briefly, chimps are not, shall we say, domesticated. Dogs are domesticated. Cats are sort of domesticated. Humans are domesticated. Chimps are not.
Tigers and chimps are playful prior to puberty, but unlike dogs or humans they're not playful as adults. Adult chimps are very aggressive, and, to us, unpredictably vicious.
Stay far away from chimps.
Update 2/20/09: Another explanation would be that chimp muscles take a lot of energy to run and produce a lot of heat. We need to feed and cool our hungry brains, tools mean our main problems are microbes, entropy and each other, so we sacrificed our muscles. I couldn't find any publications on this topic, but the energy balance idea isn't novel.
Update 3/1/2009: Aha! Chimpanzees aren't as strong as we've been thinking! They're stronger than we are, but not fantastically stronger. On the other hand, we're clearly wimpy primates. John Hawks mentions a couple of genes that may have been important in the loss of human strength. He doesn't mention his thoughts on what's going on, perhaps, based on his past practice, because he has relevant research underway. From what Hawks has taught us about evolution, I suppose some of those genes might have been knocked out in the cause of re-purposing them for something related to human cognition.
Why would a chimpanzee attack a human?: Scientific AmericanI don't think it's so much that chimps are exceptionally strong for a primate, it's that modern humans are really weak.
... The chimpanzee has strength for a human that is utterly incomprehensible. People watch pro wrestlers on TV and think they are strong. But a pro wrestler would not be able to hold a chimpanzee still if they wanted to. Chimpanzee males have been measured as having five times the arm strength as a human male. Even a young chimpanzee of four or five years, you could not hold it still if you wanted to. Pound-for-pound, their muscles are much stronger...
Why are we such runts? We look pretty big, and we still run pretty well, but in hand-to-hand combat we're hopeless.
My guess it's so that we don't damage each other when we fight. We're not a particularly peaceful primate (though we're becoming far gentler than we were), and we're very expensive to rear to adulthood. Maybe it's better for our hand to hand combat to be relatively harmless; a means to establish dominance rather than do harm.
For harm we have tools, fire, pits and cliffs, and we've killed anything that was ever remotely threatening.
We're the Potemkin primate -- at least so far as muscles go.
The rest of the article is worth a read. Briefly, chimps are not, shall we say, domesticated. Dogs are domesticated. Cats are sort of domesticated. Humans are domesticated. Chimps are not.
Tigers and chimps are playful prior to puberty, but unlike dogs or humans they're not playful as adults. Adult chimps are very aggressive, and, to us, unpredictably vicious.
Stay far away from chimps.
Update 2/20/09: Another explanation would be that chimp muscles take a lot of energy to run and produce a lot of heat. We need to feed and cool our hungry brains, tools mean our main problems are microbes, entropy and each other, so we sacrificed our muscles. I couldn't find any publications on this topic, but the energy balance idea isn't novel.
Update 3/1/2009: Aha! Chimpanzees aren't as strong as we've been thinking! They're stronger than we are, but not fantastically stronger. On the other hand, we're clearly wimpy primates. John Hawks mentions a couple of genes that may have been important in the loss of human strength. He doesn't mention his thoughts on what's going on, perhaps, based on his past practice, because he has relevant research underway. From what Hawks has taught us about evolution, I suppose some of those genes might have been knocked out in the cause of re-purposing them for something related to human cognition.
Reading and hand signals
The opening paragraph of an article on hand motions and representing arithmetic reasoning
The value of handwaving to arithmetic | A handwaving approach to arithmetic | The Economist
HUMAN language is the subject of endless scientific investigation, but the gestures that accompany speech are a surprisingly neglected area. It is sometimes jokingly said that the way to render an Italian speechless is to tie his wrists together, but almost everyone moves their hands in meaningful ways when they talk...
Is an excuse for me to again reference an old idea that doesn't seem to have caught on.
Almost thirty years ago, puzzling about why humans are able to translate written squiggles into concepts and thoughts, I wondered about evolutionary antecedents. I concluded that we humans are able to interpret letter and word forms because we already had the brain mechanisms to read hand shapes, and that we probably had those mechanisms before we could speak.
So it's not surprising that deaf persons can read; reading may be older than speaking.
Super science 2009: The Economist at the AAAS meeting
The Economist today highlights a few of the recent super science (AAAS) meeting.
Cooking is humanity's "killer app" (emphases mine) underscores that we are not natural, we are a creation of our own technology. Perhaps cooking is the oldest profession ...
...without cooking, the human brain (which consumes 20-25% of the body’s energy) could not keep running. Dr Wrangham thus believes that cooking and humanity are coeval.
In fact, as he outlined to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), in Chicago, he thinks that cooking and other forms of preparing food are humanity’s “killer app”: the evolutionary change that underpins all of the other—and subsequent—changes that have made people such unusual animals...
...even modern “raw foodists”, members of a town-dwelling, back-to-nature social movement, struggle to maintain their weight—and they have access to animals and plants that have been bred for the table. Pre-agricultural man confined to raw food would have starved...
...Dr Wrangham suspects the main cause of the modern epidemic of obesity is not overeating (which the evidence suggests—in America, at least—is a myth) but the rise of processed foods. These are softer, because that is what people prefer. Indeed, the nerves from the taste buds meet in a part of the brain called the amygdala with nerves that convey information on the softness of food. It is only after these two qualities have been compared that the brain assesses how pleasant a mouthful actually is....
What goes into a dog breed emphasizes how plastic our forms are, and how fungible ...
Dr Ostrander has already used dogs to track down the genes behind certain cancers that the species shares with people, and to work out the dog family tree. At the AAAS she described her search for the genes controlling three of the most important features of a breed: its size, its hair and the length of its legs...
... The size of water dogs, she found, is governed mainly by variations in a gene called insulin-like growth-factor 1—and that is probably true of other breeds as well...
...Short legs, a phenomenon known as chondrodysplasia, are characteristic of many dog breeds, perhaps most famously dachshunds and corgis. In people the condition is known vulgarly as dwarfism. Dr Ostrander’s work showed that in dogs it is caused by the reactivation of a “dead” version of a gene involved in the regulation of growth. Chromosomes are littered with such non-functional genes; they are the result of mutations favoured by natural selection at some point in the past. Here the gene in question has been reactivated by the arrival within it of what is known as a LINE-1 element. This is a piece of DNA that can jump about from place to place within a genome, sometimes causing havoc as it does so....
...Dr Ostrander found that 80% of the variation between breeds in coat form and furniture was explained by differences in just three genes. Different combinations of these result in different mixtures of coat and furniture...
Now that you're thinking about how a few gene variations can cause amazing changes to shape and size, you're prepared to contemplate another genome ... that of our brother Neandertal ...
Svante Paabo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, in Leipzig, chose Darwin’s 200th anniversary to announce what would, until recently, have been thought an impossible discovery in evolutionary biology—a draft of the genome of Neanderthal man.
Dr Paabo made his announcement to the AAAS meeting via a video link from Germany, and followed it up by a lecture in person on the 15th. The Neanderthal Genome Project, as it is known, is the culmination of a career devoted to the examination of ancient DNA by a man whose work provided inspiration for Michael Crichton’s novel and film “Jurassic Park”...
...one-fold coverage gives you about 60% of the genome, and that is what Dr Paabo’s first draft has achieved...
...the Neanderthal line and that of modern humanity parted company only shortly before the oldest known Neanderthal fossils were alive...
...The team has also looked at a few genes of particular interest. The most famous of these is FOXP2, damage to which prevents speech in modern humans. Neanderthals turn out to have the same version of FOXP2 as Homo sapiens (and thus a different one from chimpanzees). Researchers are divided about how significant FOXP2 really is, because it is involved in the mechanics of speech production, not the mental abilities that lie at the root of language. But some regard this discovery as evidence that Neanderthals could speak.
Much more information should emerge as Dr Paabo increases his one-fold coverage to 20-fold, the point at which almost every base pair is represented. At that moment, science will have in its grasp the genetic details of what is probably modern humanity’s closest relative...
Min-pin and Newfie look less alike than Neandertal and us. They cooked, of course, but perhaps not as well as we did ...
Sanity timidly emerging eight years after 9/11
It took eight years for sanity and reason to begin to emerge after 9/11 ...
Schneier on Security: Terrorism Common Sense from MI6
... Refreshing commentary from Nigel Inkster, former Assistant Chief and Director of Operations and Intelligence of MI6:
I laughed at this one ...
"If I hear one more speaker suggest that the root of terrorism is poverty I'll probably become a terrorist myself," he joked. "But we have to acknowledge that it's a factor."
Read the excerpt and then the original. Obama and his team understand this. This by itself would have been reason enough to elect Obama and reject Palin/McCain -- though only one of many, many, reasons.
It has taken far too long for reason and sanity to emerge from the foxhole. It took the end of Bush and Cheney.
If only.
The netbook train rumbles onwards - heading below $200 this year
The NYT has been paying a lot of attention to the netbook* train -- the train that's going to run over the industry in the next year or two. They recognize this isn't about features, it's about hitting the $125 2011 Barbie b-smart netbook batteries-not-include price point. They haven't quite figured out that Google's advantage isn't merely Microsoft's (avoidable?) doom, it's Google's Chromestellation strategy, but they're getting there ...
Can Cellphones Grow Up to Rival PCs? - Saul Hansell - NYTimes.com
... Coming by the end of this year are a new crop of small inexpensive notebook computers, known as netbooks, based on the ARM microprocessor design and running one of several versions of Linux, including perhaps Google’s Android cellphone operating system. ..
... Netbooks have been a rapidly growing category of computers, mainly because they are more portable and typically cost $400 or less. So far they have been mostly based on Intel’s Atom chip, which uses its X86 instruction set and thus can run Windows. Some manufacturers, including ASUS and Hewlett-Packard have also offered versions of their netbooks that run Linux, but these have not yet been popular in the market.
Some argue this will change as the combination of an ARM processer and Linux may allow netbooks to be sold for $200 or less.
Earlier this week, Freescale, the chip company spun out of Motorola, announced a new high end chip, based on the latest ARM designs specifically for netbooks. This follows a similar announcement by Qualcomm last month...
... its chip will cost about $15 each when bought in large quantities, with about $5 of other chips that support the processor; the Linux operating system, of course, is free. The company estimates that a computer maker would need to spend $50 to $60 on an Intel Atom, related chips, and Windows.
Mr. Burchers said that the company figures that the $200 netbooks will not have a hard drive, but will have 4 gigabytes to 8 gigabytes of flash memory. The devices will mainly be used, he figures, by people to surf the Internet. A few, more expensive models will be able to connect to cellular data networks, but mainly they will be aimed at young people who connect through Wi-Fi networks.
... No manufacturers have announced they are building netbooks using the chips, but Freestyle was showing a prototype manufactured by Pegatron, a Taiwanese affiliate of ASUS, that makes notebooks for a number of brands...
... Freescale is working with Linux makers to make them easier to use. The chip is designed to be used with Linux versions made by Phoenix Technologies, Xandros, and Canonical, which makes Ubuntu. Freescale added support for Android to its plans this year because computer makers said they see a market for it...
Close, but just wide of the mark. Android is just a smokescreen here. The real story is Google Chrome for Linux, and Google's "Chrome OS" strategy -- aka "Chromestellation".
Of course, let's not forget China's Godson project.
* Since the NYT is still using the term, Psion's trademark battle might be hopeless.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Newsweek stakes future on ... George Will
Fifteen years ago The Economist was pretty good. It's pablum now, but it occasionally tosses off a few sparks. It also makes money; indeed, when it got dumber it also got richer.
There really ain't no justice.
Newsweek wants to emulate The Economist, and it's got just the team to do it ...
George Will?!! Christopher Hitchens?!
This is too sad to be funny.
Newsweek, RIP.
There really ain't no justice.
Newsweek wants to emulate The Economist, and it's got just the team to do it ...
Newsweek Plans Makeover to Fit a Smaller Audience - NYTimes.com:George Will? A man who's been over the hill for at least 10 years? Author of a recent global warming denial essay that has been been itself denied by its own sources?
.... Newsweek also plans to lean even more heavily on the appeal of big-name writers like Christopher Hitchens, Fareed Zakaria and George Will...
George Will?!! Christopher Hitchens?!
This is too sad to be funny.
Newsweek, RIP.
SciAm's quantum weirdness day: Nonlocality
Almost exactly two years ago a Wired magazine article inspired me to catch up on the past 15 years of popular physics. I've had a great time since then, but I particularly appreciated Gribbin's willingness to meet quantum weirdness head on.
I'm thus pleased to report that SciAm has an article and a few blog posts on one of my favorite topics -- non-locality ...
To be clear, I'm over any childhood pretensions to novel insights into modern physics. I'm strictly a non-participatory fan, and very grateful to physicists who try to translate their world into our world.
I'm thus pleased to report that SciAm has an article and a few blog posts on one of my favorite topics -- non-locality ...
To be clear, I'm over any childhood pretensions to novel insights into modern physics. I'm strictly a non-participatory fan, and very grateful to physicists who try to translate their world into our world.
Jon Udell's 21st century radio: SpokenWord.org
Jon Udell, one of my favorite deep thinkers, is championing community collaborated audio sources, a kind of 21st century radio service ...
Then there are the Teaching Company's lectures. Not free of course, but you can by a lot from the backlist for a bit of money.
Still, if Jon's into it then it's worth examining. I've signed up.
Introducing SpokenWord.org - Jon Udell:I can't believe Jon ran out of In Our Time podcasts. My personal collection goes back about five years, and it offers a lot of listening and re-listening.
...Back in the good old days, circa 2006 or so, I was a happy podcast listener. During my many long periods of outdoor activity — running, hiking, biking, leaf-raking, snow-shoveling — I sometimes listened to music, but more often absorbed a seemingly endless stream of spoken-word lectures, conversations, and entertainment. Some of my sources were conventional: NPR (CarTalk, FreshAir), PRI (This American Life), BBC (In Our Time), WNYC (Radio Lab). Others were unconventional: Pop!Tech, The Long Now Foundation, TED, ITConversations, Social Innovation Conversations, Radio Open Source....... From the FAQ:
Think of SpokenWord.org as a funnel. You collect streams (RSS feeds) of programs from all over the Web, then combine them into a singe collection on SpokenWord.org. Then in iTunes you subscribe to just one feed: the feed from your SpokenWord.org collection.
Managing feeds, in addition to (or instead of) managing items, is an aspect of digital literacy that’s only just emerging. I think it’s critical, so I’m a keen observer/participant in various domains: blogging, microblogging, calendaring, or — in this case — audio curation...
... I’m hoping that SpokenWord will become a place where curators emerge who lead me to places I wouldn’t have gone...
That hasn’t happened yet, of course, since SpokenWord.org just launched in beta this week. Meanwhile, the site offers a variety of lenses through which to view its growing collection of feeds and programs: tags, categories, ratings, user activity... the Active Collectors bucket on the home page has alerted me to a couple of feeds I hadn’t known about, notably BBC World’s DocArchive...
Then there are the Teaching Company's lectures. Not free of course, but you can by a lot from the backlist for a bit of money.
Still, if Jon's into it then it's worth examining. I've signed up.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Staggering towards health care access ...
There's just a hint these days that Americans are, for the first time in about sixteen years, starting to think about health care semi-seriously ...
Managed Care Matters - Comparative effectiveness - what's left after the sausage-making process
... As the Gooz said;
"Based on the experience of the past few weeks, it's clear the U.S. is still many years away from having a rational discussion about limiting access to technologies that have been priced far beyond a societally-agreed upon benchmark for what constitutes affordable care." ...
The mere fact that anyone mentioned "affordable", even in the context of saying we're year away from a serious discussion, is progress.
Why?
I'm so glad you asked. Excuse me while I pull out the soapbox.
There are an infinite number of ways to deliver health care services, but since the dawn of time they have mostly fallen into two large bins
- Deluxe (luxury)
- Adequate (spartan)
The word "quality" doesn't come in here. The appearance of luxury might mask lousy quality (think the bad years of American cars). Spartan things can be very high quality (Honda Civic, 1990).
In health care, as with everything else, a new medication, procedure, lab test, or imaging study can be very expensive. There's not that much competition, and there's a lot of development costs that need to be recovered. Five years later the prices are often a lot lower (though modern IP absurdities can keep price high). Development costs have been recovered, the technology may be "obsolete", there's more competition driving prices down, cheaper ways have been found to deliver the service, etc.
Part of what makes care "Deluxe" is the availability of new stuff. A lot of what makes care affordable is avoiding the expensive new stuff. Sometimes the new stuff is really good, so affordable care is inferior care. Sometimes the new stuff is overrated or even harmful, so affordable care is (usually in retrospect), superior care.
Real healthcare access is about making "good enough care" available to every US citizen and taxpayer. Good enough, as in at least 88% of the benefit for 50% of the cost.
Good enough care is not not Deluxe care, it's adequate care. Waiting rooms with peeling plaster instead of plush carpet. Formularies with good-enough drugs. Lacerations repaired by relatively inexpensive family docs rather than plastic surgeons. Care that follows the best affordable standard practices, rather than the preferred practices of a cutting edge surgeon featured in USA Today. (Ironically the "standard" practices usually turn out to be better in every way than the unscientific whims of a single star performer).
So that's what to watch for in discussions of Health Care reform. Any "reform" discussion that doesn't involve delivering "inferior", but good enough care, doesn't really move the ball.
The humbling of Economics
Economists are very highly paid academics. They can easily earn several times what a comparably paid physicist earns.
This may change …
Dismal scientists: how the crash is reshaping economics - The Atlantic Business Channel
...The current recession has revealed the weaknesses in the structures of modern capitalism. But it also revealed as useless the mathematical contortions of academic economics. There is no totemic power. This for two reasons:
(1) Almost no-one predicted the world wide downtown. Academic economists were confident that episodes like the Great Depression had been confined to the dust bins of history. There was indeed much recent debate about the sources of "The Great Moderation" in modern economies, the declining significance of business cycles…
… I myself was so confident of the consensus of the end of the business cycle that I persuaded by wife after the collapse of Lehman Brothers to invest all her retirement savings in the stock market, confident that the Fed would soon make things right and we could profit from the panic of a gullible public. The line "Where is my money, idiot?" is her's.
(2) The debate about the bank bailout, and the stimulus package, has all revolved around issues that are entirely at the level of Econ 1. What is the multiplier from government spending? Does government spending crowd out private spending? How quickly can you increase government spending? If you got a A in college in Econ 1 you are an expert in this debate: fully an equal of Summers and Geithner.
The bailout debate has also been conducted in terms that would be quite familiar to economists in the 1920s and 1930s. There has essentially been no advance in our knowledge in 80 years…
.. Recently a group of economists affiliated with the Cato Institute ran an ad in the New York Times opposing the Obama's stimulus plan. As chair of my department I tried to arrange a public debate between one of the signatories and a proponent of fiscal stimulus -- thinking that would be a timely and lively session. But the signatory, a fully accredited university macroeconomist, declined the opportunity for public defense of his position on the grounds that "all I know on this issue I got from Greg Mankiw's blog -- I really am not equipped to debate this with anyone."…
My recollection is that Paul Krugman has done pretty well over the past few years, but he’s been the exception.
I don’t think this is a fixable problem. We don’t have the science to understand the real economic world. We need something like Asimov’s “psychohistory”, but I’m not holding my breath.
In the meantime though, it would be nice if economists would be a bit humbler.
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