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Domain: annmariabell.com
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Comments · 36
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way way off topic...but thanks for the party invite!
I've finally updated my 'instant friends' guestbook.
oh yeah, and we're having a halloween dinner party tomorrow and then going to see the original (silent) phantom of the opera, so if you're in the midwest, drop on by....
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way way off topic...but thanks for the party invite!
I've finally updated my 'instant friends' guestbook.
oh yeah, and we're having a halloween dinner party tomorrow and then going to see the original (silent) phantom of the opera, so if you're in the midwest, drop on by....
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Re:"Worthless Navigation Systems"why can't auto makers put this kind of thing in a dash
The more autos it's installed in, the less effective it becomes. Giving people access to identical information about conditions can even increase traffic congestion, a phenomena we also observed in a computer model of decentralized agents learning to solve a simple coordination game. The paper has references to the transportation literature, where this result has been known for some time.
Here's a link to
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Re:Who needs sports?I agree that sports are given too much emphasis --- for boys. But look at the other side of the coin, the long dark years before Title IX when girls didn't have the opportunity to play sports at all. I wrote a long screed about this in January after an 11 year old friend of mine (whose winter sports are/have been indoor soccer, ice hockey and downhill racing) asked me what I sports I did when I was her age. Answer: none.
Here's my take on some important life lessons that can be learned from participating in team sports, even if, or maybe especially if, you suck:
1) no matter how bad you are when you start, you get better with practice
2) no matter how overmatched or behind you are, you play to the end of the game
3) even if you happen to be winning, you still have to pay attention.
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Re:i'm not even trying to be an ass here....A fine option to consider if you have the resources, but most people who work near minimum wage jobs do so because they have no other choice. (And many work two jobs at that.) For a brilliant account of what it's really like out there check out Nickel and Dimed: On (not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich. It's a fascinating account of her attempt to get by on service sector jobs, and a real eye opener for people with lots of education. A short review from my website.
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definition of "commons"The Digital Library of the Commons definition, in short:
The commons is a general term for shared resources in which each stakeholder has an equal interest.
They go on to note that:Research on commons usually focuses on some aspect of the relation between the physical resource and human institutions designed in the use and maintenance of that resource.
The statement that If you have an institution managing a common resource, then it's not a commons is not consistent with the standard usage of the term, at least as it used by academics and public policy analysts.It's a mistake to posit altruism and the market as the only alternative institutions --- the Balinese example does not rely on altruism, it's consistent with a game theoretic model with rational actors.
As to the benefits of introducing market-mechanisms into the internet, I would pose the following question: how many viruses, worms, etc. would we expect to see released in an environment where there was a potential monetary payoff for such actions?
Enron made a huge mess of the electricity markets in California, partly through fraud and deceit, but mainly because the people who designed the rules of the market didn't think the problem through. Let's not repeat that mistake with the Internet based on some theoretical ideas about the efficiency of markets.
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reference on Balinese water templesThis summary of the Balinese water temple system is from an article by Bradley J. Ruffle and Richard H. Sosis that looks at the use of religious practice to encourage cooperation via field experiments in kibbutzim.
It follows that multinational corporations and foreign institutions investing in the developing world and dependent on collaboration with the indigenous people may profit from preserving indigenous ritual practices and the environment in which they take place. The well-documented water temple system of Bali represents a case in point (see Lansing, 1991, for an authoritative study). A lake in a volcanic crater on the island as well as the rains that run off of the volcano irrigate Bali's rice fields. The Balinese have developed what has proven to be an ingenious cooperative system of aqueducts to supply water in equitable amounts to the surrounding farmers. At the heart of this coordinated effort lies an indigenous religion that worships, among other deities, Dewi Danu, the goddess of the waters emanating from the volcano in whose honor an immense temple stands at the volcano's summit. Smaller temples for worship are located at every branch of the irrigation system and at the fields onto which the aqueducts empty.
The wisdom and success of the Balinese water temple system became clear when the Asian Development Bank imposed a farming alternative on the Balinese in the 1980s. The Asian Development Bank concluded in 1988 that, "The substitution of the "high technology and bureaucratic" solution proved counter-productive and was the major factor behind the yield and cropped areas declines experienced between 1982 and 1985
Lansing, J. S. (1991) "Priests and Programmers: Technologies of power in the engineered landscape of Bali ", Princeton: Princeton University Press. Leviatan, U., H. Oliver, J. Quarter (1998)
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tragedy of the commonsThis is not the main point of the article but:
The Tragedy of the Commons , often cited by environmentalists, describes 14th-century Britain, where each household tried to gain wealth by putting as many animals as possible on the common village pasture. Overgrazing ruined the pasture, and village after village collapsed.
The "tragedy of the commons" that Hardin's article is devoted to is increasing world population. What evidence is there for overgrazing in England before as opposed to during and after the forced transition to private ownership? Most cultures with a common land tradition also have a set of rules for governing land use that avoids such tragedies, for example, irrigation systems in Bali where the farmer who gets the water last controls the water flow. Ones that didn't solve the problem of overuse of resources are conspicuous by their non-existence (Easter Island, some settlements in the Southwest US, some populations on islands in the South Pacific ).
The 'tragedy of the commons' is one of the most misunderstood and overused metaphors of our times. The idea that a system with resources held in common is necessarily unworkable is false --- what is needed is institutions that effectively manage common resources, and such institutions have emerged repeatedly and continue to exist. Often it is when these cultures come into contact with market-oriented societies that the traditional systems are undermined and collapsed. Often what happens is not "the tragedy of the commons" but "the tragedy of failed privatization" in which a traditional management system is destroyed without establishing a viable alternative.
How does this relate to the internet? It's a cautionary tale --- be very very careful when introducing monetary incentives into a system that has previously relied on cooperation and cultural norms.
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Re:Popular names.Wow, six people in your class were named "RatBastard"?
I am guessing that your name is Jason.
When I was teaching I used to tell my students, if I can't remember your name and you're a guy, I'll guess 'Jason', if you're a girl, I'll guess 'Jennifer". I once had a class with 8 women, 3 of whom were named Jennifer.
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Re:Its too bad..ah, a friend who works at the googleplex reports that such lists do exist, and they looks something like:
1) pr0n variation a
2) pr0n variation b
3) pr0n variation cand so on until you get down to about 7). Not sure where goatse.cx falls in the list.
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Re:What is money?It is a fiat currency. It has no inherent value.Exactly right.The paper bill is simply a physical container for a fractional unit of confidence in the US government, nothing more or less.This is a bit off target --- my belief in the value of U.S. currency has less to do with faith in the U.S. goverment than with my belief that other people will be willing to exchange goods for U.S. currency in the future. The only requirement for people be willing to hold a fiat currency is the belief that it can be exchanged for something else in the future. Where confidence in the U.S. government matters is in establishing price stability --- believing that the government will not dramatically increase the money supply in the future, creating inflation and lowering the value of the cash I am holding.
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Re:The ./ obsession with a cashless society?I don't where slashdot gets the obsession, but a lot of the hype about e-money and a "cashless society" comes from financial institutions desire to be in the business of "creating alternative currency." When you put money in a bank, the bank loans it out to other people at interest. (This, of course, is how & why the bank pays you interest to deposit money.) Many ideas for e-money basically ask you to deposit money in a bank or somewhere else (though it goes under the label of "putting money on the card") with zero interest. The French cards discussed earler today were like that, they get your cash now, you get to spend the money later. Traveller's checks are like that also --- most of the revenue comes from interest American Express collects between in the time elapsed between when the checks are bought and when they are spent. (At least traveller's checks provide some insurance --- few money cards do.) Of course, a traveller's check issuer will not typically loan the money out themselves, they will invest in financial instruments that derive their ultimate value from loans or direct investment.
I'm not sure what the banking requirements for e-money schemes would be like, but banks are only required to keep a small fraction of deposits in reserve. If that applied to e-money as well it would expand the investment options for the money collected by e-money firms.
Of course, consumers understand this logic perfectly well --- why should I pay for the privilege of spending my own money? why not just use a debit card and cut out the intermediate steps? That's one reason why these ideas have been floating around since the 1980's without really catching on.
My point: a lot of hype about a "cashless society" is coming from firms with an interest in replacing the current system with one in which they effectively "issue currency" and make money off of the float, as well as from percentage based and flat fees. They don't mean "cashless"--they mean "use our cash instead of theirs."
arrrggh, I never thought it would come to this, but...
1) issue alternative currency
2) ????
3) Profit!except that in this case ????? = collect interest.
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jackals eat technologyThe jackals are one of the projects of the tangentlab artist collective -- they scavenge and hack their way through technological detritus:
There have always been jackals, there always will be jackals. We are the ones who put your tech to use, the ones who recycle the glut and make it useful in aesthetic glory. The technology is neither servant nor master, but merely our raw material, to gnaw, rework, shape and build.
They also have awesome techno-jackal masks that use the same elements as the critters from the original post. The jackals were most recently seen lurking under a bridge as SIGGRAPH 2002. I have pictures from the jackal invasion of the MCA in Chicago last April here. -
a miracle?So he can turn water into beer and wash his socks at the same time?
A better trick than turning water into wine, IMHO.
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patches and ripsOkay, this is a bit offtopic, but I've been scanning the comments on various stories about the Slammer virus and have noticed that, according to many many posters, security patches can introduce new bugs in the software that cause it to behave erratically.
My offtopic question is: why doesn't this happen with Linux ? (or does it happen with Linux?)
I don't use Linux and I'm not a bonafide geek (I've never had 'root' access, which seems to be one of the key requirements --- that may change now that I use Mac OS X), and I've always wondered why using fixes, new functions, patches, whatever, written by numerous different people hasn't turned Linux or other open source into a non-functioning morass of code. I read Eric Raymond's The Cathedral & the Bazaar but I didn't really feel like he answered the question, other than refering to the gospel of Linus "with enough eyes, any bug is shallow."
Isn't an operating system more complicated (or at least more fundamental) than an application? Why doesn't (or how often) does fixing one bug in Linux create two new ones?
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Re:Not meaning to flame...It's not about the death of seven people. It's about our collective desire for exploration, for understanding and appreciating the vast vast universe that we inhabit. It's about attempting something that is larger than any one or any seven individuals, and watching as it literally disintegrate. Space travel should and can represent a common aspiration to explore space in peace and for the benefit of humankind. I know that the space program hasn't always fulfilled these aspirations, but it's our best effort so far.
I, for one, felt a deep heavy sadness when I saw the news this morning, far beyond the deaths of seven human beings. Space flight is dangerous, and astronauts are brave and dedicated --- I think it's reasonable to feel differently about a group of people that die trying to achieve a worthy and inspiring goal than about the same number of people, or even the exact same people, dying accidentally.
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Re:why stop at human waste?PS: words by Lee Hays, music by Pete Seeger, complete version of lyrics (I left a few lines out, and it's Lee not Pete in the last line) at the bottom of this page on Country Joe's website.
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why stop at human waste?a little ditty that pete seeger (I think) used to sing:
if I should die before I wake
all my bones and sinew take
put them in the compost pile
to decompose there for a while
when corn or radishes you munch
you may be having me for lunch
then excrete me with a grin
chortling 'there goes pete again!' -
alternate definitionsWhy stick to the official definitions? Here are some alternates from an old Washington Post contest:
Abdicate (v.), to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.
Carcinoma (n.), a valley in California, notable for its heavy smog.
Esplanade (v.), to attempt an explanation while drunk.
Willy-nilly (adj.), impotent.
Flabbergasted (adj.), appalled over how much weight you have gained.
Negligent (adj.), describes a condition in which you absentmindedly answer the door in your nightie.
Lymph (v.), to walk with a lisp.
Gargoyle (n.), an olive-flavored mouthwash.
Bustard (n.), a very rude Metrobus driver.
Coffee (n.), a person who is coughed upon.
Flatulence (n.), the emergency vehicle that picks you up after you are run over by a steamroller.
Balderdash (n.), a rapidly receding hairline.
Testicle (n.), a humorous question on an exam.
Semantics (n.), pranks conducted by young men studying for the priesthood, including such things as gluing the pages of the priest's prayer book together just before vespers.
Rectitude (n.), the formal, dignified demeanor assumed by a proctologist immediately before he examines you.
Marionettes (n.), residents of Washington who have been jerked around by the mayor.
Oyster (n.), a person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddish expressions.
Circumvent (n.), the opening in the front of boxer shorts.
Frisbatarianism (n.), Belief that, when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck. -
buggy as swamp in julyWith XDarwin and OroborOSX it's about as perfectly integrated as it can get
If this is as good at it gets I'm in deep trouble. One of the synergies between Mac OS X and Linux is that Matlab is available for the Mac again, after Mathworks had previously announced that would no longer release on the Mac platfrom. Very good news for me, however, Matlab for Mac OS X uses XDarwin and OroborOSX, and it's incredibly buggy. (I am using Simulink, which relies heavily on OroborOSX.)
What kinds of bugs you ask? I can't always navigate through the fields in parameter boxes (one button mac mouse and the key combos just don't do it). I can't use the letters 'f' or 'd' in comments when OroborOSX isn't in the mood (well, there are 24 other letters in the alphabet). Matlab crashes reliably if I choose "cancel" instead of "save" with the "save as" command (in a Simulink model).
And sometimes when Matlab crashes, XDarwin doesn't shut down completely which prevents me from being able to reboot from the system on my internal hard drive -- I have to reboot from an external hard drive and then restart. It happened (again) yesterday while I was working at a coffeeshop.
I'm not sure who's to blame here, and I'm really pleased that Matlab is available, but the integration of these various programs still has a long way to go.
blog-O-rama (more raving & ranting about my experiences with OS X, etc. etc.)
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Re:Model T FordThere's a subtle tautology involved in the author's claim that "the whole product" that cornered the market was superior. It's equivalent to saying that the product must have been better or people wouldn't have bought --- there's no way to falsify this claim.
If the whole product includes the network externalities involved with purchasing the dominant product, which is the argument that the author makes about 'Wintel PCs', then the superior technology is by definition the winning technology, and vice versa. I think we still want and need to separate out technological issues from the strategic marketing decisions. The "whole product" concept does not prove that an inferior technology cannot prevail in the marketplace, it simply defines the possibility out of existence.
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congestion caused by too much information...According to the article, this system is aimed at providing maintenance crews with more information about the best action to take to maintain road conditions, an excellent idea.
However, a system which aims to provide better information about traffic congestion to individual drivers can have the unexpected consequence of making congestion worse --- one study by Mahmassani and Jayakrishnan showed that when individuals use a best response strategy the performance of the system as a whole degrades if more than 25% of drivers have access to real time traffic information.
We show how this concentration effect works in a paper on the El Farol bar problem titled "Coordination Failure as a Source of Congestion in Information Networks" (download from here) --- when agents have "too much" information they are unable to successfully coordinate their behavior.
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Re:Environmental IssuesCheck out the work of architecht and industrial designer William McDonough, who has great ideas and several cool projects that use cutting edge technology to rethink the entire production process. Check out his new book Cradle to Cradle, written with chemist Michael Braungart,
"is a manifesto calling for the transformation of human industry through ecologically intelligent design. Through historical sketches on the roots of the industrial revolution; commentary on science, nature and society; descriptions of key design principles; and compelling examples of innovative products and business strategies already reshaping the marketplace, McDonough and Braungart make the case that an industrial system that 'takes, makes and wastes' can become a creator of goods and services that generate ecological, social and economic value."
This recent slashdot post talked about his firm's ideas for a recyclable car. -
how many segways needed to reach critical mass?San Francisco was the birthplace of critical mass, the bicycle advocacy group that organizes monthly rides to take-back-the-roads --- as they say
"we aren't blocking traffic, we are traffic"
how long before segway riders organize take-back-the-sidewalks rides?
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co-evolving tactics...While the overall behavior of the RIAA (and judging from the article, of the IFPI) is despicable, it's interesting to see how the tactics of opposing groups co-evolve over time. The problem, mentioned time and time again, is that the overall strategy of the music industry is backward looking, seeking to preserve the advantages it enjoyed in the past rather than looking forward to see how it can put itself in the best position in the future.
I also thought the comment that one of the major mistakes that the industry made was letting napster et. al. create the expectation that music was/is, and hence should be, free (as in beer). Record companies resist lowering the price of CDs in part because they want to preserve the belief that $16.95 is a "reasonable" price.
The idea that people base their purchase decisions on what items "ought" to cost is almost completely at odds away with how consumer behavior is modeled by economists --- the analytical results that show how markets are efficient would go right in the trash under these assumptions about individual behavior.
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cycle of productivity1. Spend time mulling over and planning new features
2. Code, debug, document
3. Detest everything about this project and do nothing at all
4. Rinse and repeat...Ha! That's a familiar cycle to me, not just for coding, but for lots of projects that involve intense concentration. Fine if you work on your own, or in an environment where you have substantial control over your own time like academia --- harder to manage in a more structured environment. Maybe this is one reason for the success of open source, it readily accomodates this kind of nonlinear effort and progress.
The trick is knowing when to give it a rest or pass it on to someone else, and when to give yourself a kick in the butt to get back to work.
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Re:Memories...Our brains certainly store memories that we can't access on demand --- a few years ago I spent some time everyday doing writing exercises described in Natalie Goldberg's book Writing Down the Bones and found myself remembering long forgotten events from junior high school. Among other things, I remembered that I had a written an ongoing soap opera with a friend, based on the people we knew at school and also that I had written a note back and forth with Keith Hendrix (he had completely dropped out of my memory) on the bus on the way to a school ski trip. The coolest part was, I also remembered that I had saved all the notes and was able to dig them out of my parent's attic.
On the other hand, I also have a journal entry from high school talking about a day I would never forget --- I actually wrote "I don't need to write down what happened today because I'll never forget it". Yeah, right.
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Re:UFOs - a skeptics view
"The weight of the evidence must be in proportion to the strangeness of the fact."
I believe the quote is attributed to LaPlace, but a cursory google search didn't confirm it.
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sauron's point of view...At the end of the article Brin talks about seeing the world from Sauron's point of view. Two excellent books retell the story from the villain's point of view: Grendel by John Gardner (who like Tolkien was well versed in mythology; and Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire. (I recently read Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf and then reread Grendel, an excellent contrast of historical perspectives.)
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why this fantasy?People who say it's "just a fantasy --- lighten up" are missing the point of Brin's article, which asks "why this fantasy?" In particular, why a fantasy that embraces ideas like belief in the divine right of kings (or elves, or any elite) which were pushed aside for good reasons? I also thought his point about how Romanticism started out opposed to feudalism but ended up embracing the rule of mythical elites was also worth making.
I, of course, am planning on going to the opening of the two towers dressed as an elf anyway.
And for those of you who haven't read it: the article is funny, which makes up for a lot. for example Brin writes: "Witness the most amazing accomplishment of NASA -- managing to turn the exploration of space into a huge snore."
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Re:Why is space travel so expensive?the fuel they use costs something around $10,000 per pound of cargo/payload
I can't resist plugging my favorite cost cutting measure:
only short vegetarian women should be allowed to be astronauts.
They not only weigh less, they eat less and breathe less and take up less space, so the total payload savings would be substantial. Brawn is not what's needed in space -- we only have big beefy astronauts because NASA draws so many from the military. If strong and agile is required, how about former gymnasts or maybe (champion rock climber) Lynn Hill?
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Re:It is a shame but...
"the human adventure is only beginning..."
I think space will always be able to inspire humanity, on different levels as our understanding of the universe has evolved along with our technology. Powerful political and economic incentives that favor the grossly inefficient military spending worldwide are powerful to be sure (and it's not just in wealthy industrialized nations that military spending siphons off resources from other potential uses.)
Cornell economist Robert Frank draws an excellent analogy between military buildup and the prisoner's dilemma: it's better to for both countries to have low levels of armament than for both countries to have high levels of armament, but both countries would also prefer to be highly armed while their neighbor weakly armed. The outcome ends up in the worst possible situation, with resources being wasted by all parties --- both countries would be better off with a binding, enforcable arms treaty.
The key point is that we always face a choice between guns & butter (or guns & space stations, or guns and health care, etc.) If space exploration is going to inspire a new generation, it needs to be more than an extension of the arms race between countries.
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Re:some sort of paradox...... we have no way of proving we are not a simulation being run by a higher life form
We also have no way of proving that we are not chained inside a cave, mistaking shadows on the wall for reality, unable to turn to see the fire or the figures that cast the shadows, unable to leave the cave and go out in the sunlight.
In fact, seems like we're trying to get into the CAVE.
virtual reality == the decline & fall of western civilization (at least according to Plato).
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500 GB...great --- I'll never have to delete another email.
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Re:NASA should benchmark other organizations,
organizations that capitalize on the intellectual assets and fervor of their members, rather than throwing money at problems and overengineering them.
I think that NASA during the Apollo era did both, actually, so it's hard to attribute the success of the Apollo missions to money or inspiration exclusively.Dan Goldin, the former head of NASA, tried to promote a policy of "faster, cheaper, better". (He also used to send around memos saying "safety is our number one priority".) As an economist, I think he missed the tradeoff, in general you can either have "faster & cheaper" or "better & safer". I think Goldin (and the poster) underestimate the damage done to NASA by mission failures like the loss of the Mars probe. Shortly after the Mars mission failures, a panel reviewed the "faster, cheaper, better" policy and decided that the agency had in fact pushed fast and cheap too far.
annmariabell.com -
not all that funny
I found this a tedious read, heavy handed and predictable.
The Onion packed more humor into one fake headline:
"NASA delays shuttle launch out of sheer habit"
than that essay manages in endless paragraphs. (disclosure: I worked at the NASA Ames Research Center.)
annmariabell.com