Monthly Archives: February 2010

John’s Desire for Self Bondage

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John Hobo has a short piece on his desire for tools for self binding.

“So I maintain that Western Civilization can be saved … if only someone will come up with a simple app for time-locking our computers and mobile devices. Indeed, it would be such a basic and powerful productivity tool that it should come standard on all devices.”

I like how people are in the comments are admitting to their techniques for self binding.  Put your network cable out of reach.  And, this is too funny!

I think I’ve written before that I’m surprised that User interface designers haven’t done more to help with the focus of attention problem. It really ought to be standard equipment to be able adjust how hard it is to get to other programs and require that only the current program have control of the screen, etc. etc.

In this interesting essay on distraction by Paul Graham, who argues that distraction has evolved to become increasingly virulent. Which reminds us that the platform vendor isn’t entirely your side here. Apple’s recent announcement that applications on their iP*d’s will only be allowed to use location in “beneficial” ways is an example of this dynamic. Beneficial to who?

Charts & Tea Leaves

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Brad DeLong  posted this chart.  I’ll assume I understand this.

These lines show your annual return on a stock portfolio.  The pink line is the return on a portfolio held for a decade, and the blue is the return for two decades.  The pink line ends in 2000, if you had invested then and cashed 10 years later you’d have lost between 5% and 10% per year.  Nice work Republicans.  The blue line ends in 1990, and if you cash out now you’d make maybe 4% per year over those 20 years.
Stock brokers do not lie, the average for both curves indicates a positive return on average.  But they don’t tend to highlight how volatile the market it.  One two decades is a long time in a person’s life.  Some periods have been awful – 1910 was a bad time to buy and hold for a decade – as well as some wonderful ones, see 1950!
We don’t live forever, so if your playing the market for you retirement you might want to think about how many decades you’ll have to smooth out these bumps.
20100207 Shiller Da#23FC8FE.xls
This chart also shows four dips, or cycles, and so, of course, an obvious question is does this chart say “Buy Buy Buy!” or “Sell Sell Sell”?
It says sell if you think the last dip is predictive of what will happen this time.  Notice how happy you’d be if you’d cashed out in 1960, and how long you’d have wanted to stay on the sidelines.  Very U-shaped.
It says buy if you think the dip will be more like the other two.  Or, if you hold period is long enough to wait out the dip.
Of course all that presumes that this kind of chart analysis is actually meaningful; or put another way the underlying system has cycles and the there is something consistent about the system over a period of 150 years.  I find that a bit hard to believe.
I find it interesting that buying in 1930, 1931 to hold for a decade got you a pretty good return.

Insta-theories on where the boys are?

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I find this chart extremely thought provoking.  It illustrates a huge change in American society over the course of my life.  Very roughly 10% of the male working age population no longer work.  Each time we have a recession a few percentage points never return to the work force.

Economagic: Economic Chart Dispenser

A few insta-theories:

  • The discriminatory wage differential means women are cheaper.  As employers overcome their prejudice against women in more roles they are displacing men from those roles.
  • The shift toward a service economy has created roles that employer’s tend to fill with women rather then men.
  • The complementary unpaid home child rearing role is increasingly acceptable, desirable, or the best option and so is filled by men.
  • An increasingly large swath of the low end labor performed by men takes place off the books, i.e. in a gray market.
  • Men are inherently lazy bastards and as the standard of living has risen 10% of them have puzzled out how to act out on that.

More insta-theories?  Please.

Play

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I liked this tentative list from Peter Gray’s “Freedom to Learn” blog at Psychology Today.  Writing on the Value of Play he begins with a long definition, in short:

  1. Play is self-chosen and self-directed;
  2. Play is activity in which means are more valued than ends; 
  3. Play has structure, or rules, which are not dictated by physical necessity but emanate from the minds of the players; 
  4. Play is imaginative, non-literal, mentally removed in some way from “real” or “serious” life; and 
  5. Play involves an active, alert, but non-stressed frame of mind.
I’m stuck, saying that all web sites are massive multiplayer games, for a decade now.  Plays, one would presume, is central to that.  Manipulating users is key to talent scraping business models.  Best if they think it’s play rather than manipulation.

Just a bit of counter point.  The above list aren’t something people strive for.  People strive for: appreciation, affiliation, autonomy, status, and role.  Peter’s list makes play almost synonymous with a somewhat brutal kind of freedom.

Energy Budgeting

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Both axis are per capita.  The horizontal is log GDP while the vertical is linear energy consumption.  I assume the bubble size is population.

I see two things.  Obviously the US, and some smaller countries, seem pretty inefficient.
More interesting is how much energy this suggests it is going to take to pull India and China up by a factor of 10 to 30.  That ain’t going to happen on current energy flows!
I plucked that chart  here.
An alternate view of the Y axis here.