ekzept

holiday!

Mon, 02 Mar 2009 05:30:15 GMT

news feeds for the new blog

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 00:48:39 GMT

people and friends who want to follow my blog can easily subscribe to my posts at my new home, by providing one of these links to their news reader or aggregator:

for ATOM, use this feed link
for RSS, use this feed link

Bush-Cheney

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 20:37:39 GMT

Bush is a-goin'.

:-)

(that link goes to my other and main blog.)

new post at my other blog

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 19:20:41 GMT

see new post.

Living Steve Jobs

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 05:38:34 GMT

where Steve's been: a journey.

Text of Steve Jobs' Commencement address (2005)

leery of LJ's new management

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 00:14:00 GMT

i'm a tad leery of LJ's new management, even if they technically owned things from earlier.

so, to all my LJ friends, i'm (also) posting all new blog entries at a new home. i will try to post them here, too, but i've run into a busy patch in my life, and it's difficult to post at all, let alone edit up entries for two blogging machines.

meanwhile, i'm seeing if there's some way of replicating all my blog entries at the New Place. alas, the same time limitations are cutting into that project, too.

update 20090111 1446 ET: Google is working on blog data portability. remarks yonder.

another mythological free market ...

Thu, 25 Dec 2008 21:52:32 GMT

... this time in natural gas prices. current spot prices for natural gas are 73% of what they were in December 2007. at the same time, both for our local gas supplier, NSTAR, and for the national average residential price (see series N3010US3 among others), via the U.S. government's Energy Information Administration, prices are 25% higher than they were in December 2007. sure, residential prices are typically higher than those paid per therm for commercial and residential customers. but, point by point, why are residential customers not seeing the benefit of collapsing prices in energy?

looks like market failure to me, possibly arranged by a domestic energy cartel.

update 20081230 2018 EST: here's a response from NSTAR:

I am responding to your email regarding the cost of gas.

While global energy prices are down considerably from peaks this summer, only about one-third of the natural gas NSTAR purchases for the winter heating season is bought from the current market. The winter heating season runs from November 1 to April 30.

The remaining two-thirds of the supply NSTAR purchases is bought over the course of the year through fixed price contracts. Purchasing natural gas in this way helps stabilize the Cost of Gas and protect customers from large price fluctuations during the winter heating months - when most NSTAR Gas customers use natural gas to heat their homes.

Since we purchase our gas throughout the year and not during the current market, the cost does not mirror the market. Since previous costs were higher, customers will still see that reflected in the cost of gas. However, it also works in reverse where lower prices in the beginning of the year could mitigate an increasing price trend.

If you have any other questions or require additional assistance, please feel free to contact us by email or call us at 800-592-2000.

Sincerely,

...

Customer Service Representative

'An Amazing Year in the Markets'

Wed, 24 Dec 2008 19:57:53 GMT

the Financial Times' John Authers tells the amazing tale of 2008.

CREDIT CRUNCH: The Board Game

Wed, 24 Dec 2008 17:24:58 GMT

The Economist offers some holiday cheer: Credit Crunch, a board game:

the rules
left side of the game board
right side of the game board
player icons or, as the editors say, "or you can use your diamond cufflinks, or any other mementos of your former wealth, to represent you"
risk cards, set one
risk cards, set two
risk cards, set three
10m currency notes
50m currency notes
100m currency notes
500m currency notes
1000m currency notes

enjoy!

science is just cool: 'we make a big mess'

Wed, 24 Dec 2008 17:01:24 GMT

meet Stephanie Waterman, fluid dynamicist, scientist, and one of the stars of the MIT/WHOI Joint Program in Oceanography.

two Germans in Baghdad, Reiner and Volker

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 06:06:34 GMT

in an intriguing report, Spiegel Online reports how two German soldiers provided key and detailed reconnaissance on Iraq, behind enemy lines, and in stark contrast to their government's official position about participation in the Iraq War.

i'd say so goes the European way. it's a lesson the United States government and the American public should heed.

the Fed is scared

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 22:41:45 GMT

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

Paul Krugman, The New York Times

the Fed is scared.

update 20081217 1401 EST: reaction to the Fed decision from Germany.

update 20081217 1516 EST: where we have to go.

bankrupt circles

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 02:34:58 GMT

journalists and editors really ought to take more science and math courses. at least they should take more statistics. at the very least they ought to study Tufte (e.g., Envisioning Information) and read things like Huff's How to Lie with Statistics and Barnett's "How Numbers Can Trick You: The Six Deadly Sins of Statistical Misrepresentation" (Technolology Review, pp 38-45, October 1994).

so, today's New York Times gave an example of where they have. there is a timely article about Harvey R Miller, bankruptcy lawyer workin' the Lehman Brothers fiasco. accompanying this article is a graphic, drawn from data at BankruptcyData.com. they don't have this graphic, so i presume it's a New York Times production.

(image not necessarily to scale as appeared in New York Sunday Times)

anyway, this caught my eye. it's nice, but there are lots of ways to compare circles. the most honest and obvious way is to compare the circular area of one to another. it wouldn't be the first time a major news source messed up a graphic by failing to pay proper attention to area, nor are financial institutions immune. maps are the usual victim. for instance, someone might have scaled diameters proportional to losses, thinking that would suffice. they'd be wrong.

here, just looking, it didn't appear like the diameters of these circles were all scaled proportional to the sizes of bankruptcies. so, curious, i took four, and measured them:

Bankruptcy	diameter (cm)	amount (billion $)	area (cm²	ratio of areas (Lehman=1)	ratio of amounts (Lehman=1)
Lehman	3.0	691.1	7.07	1	1
WaMu	2.0	328.0	3.14	0.44	0.47
IndyMac	0.5	32.7	0.20	0.03	0.05
WorldCom	1.2	125.1	1.13	0.16	0.18

note i worked from the printed version of the Sunday Times as we are subscribers.

not too shabby. it may seem like a small thing, but when conveying information, these kinds of things are important. it's nice to see attention to detail respected.

failure to lead

Sun, 14 Dec 2008 01:36:13 GMT

Steven Pearlstein of the Washington Post argues business and government are showing a severe lack of leadership, blaming current economic misfortune on the 'shit happens' defense.

i, in particular, love the line which Mr Pearlstein quotes from business leaders who believe him to be too harsh,

Given what was known at the time and the competitive and legal pressures that come to bear in these situations, they believe their actions and judgments were reasonable.

sounds all too familiar: "Based upon the intelligence we had at the time, the decisions were correct." but the intelligence was not correct. what was known at the time was not correct. is it too much to ask that decisions be made which don't involve the implosion of the Universe should any particular piece or subset of the information on hand turn out to be marvelously false? will the executives then say, Well, that would make us too timid and indecisive! what is this, a testosterone contest? (irrespective of the gender of the executive: women have testosterone, too, even if that's pushing the metaphor a bit far.)

i don't entirely buy Mr Pearlstein's idea that One Leader, One Savior would suffice. i do think that minimizing the abandonment Lehmann Brothers as a colassal mistake is the quitessential failure to lead. sure, maybe it looked like the right thing at the time. sure, we, collectively, didn't know what they knew. but, in retrospect, they got it wrong, and they should be judged by their actions. failure to perform is failure to perform.

i like the interview Mr Pearlstein did with Fred Smith, CEO FedEx, despite Mr Smith's use of the "perfect storm" image:

'greedy, selfish, self-absorbed baby boomers'

Sat, 13 Dec 2008 23:09:20 GMT

examples of the supposed greed, selfishness, and self-engrossment of the Baby Boomer generation are legion. for instance,

'as selfish in near death as they were in life'
the self-deprecating don't trust a baby boomer
baby boom ... and bust
a Tempe Arizona dude wrote:

As a Gen X kid I am appalled at the Baby boomers. These greedy individuals quite simply want everything. They don't want to die. They don't want to get old. They want to take it with them when they go.

They heavily abused drugs, partied insanely in the 60's and 70's, sucked the economy dry in the 80's, lived off the intellectual abilities of the Gen X crowd in the 90's and the 00's, and they wont stop obsessing about dying. A natural part of life.

These greedy souls used the Pill and abortion to DECIMATE my Generation, a generation that could be DOUBLE the size it is. Instead these greedy fiends wiped out half of my cohort through their own inability to accept responsibility for their own actions.

I have scrambled and worked my tail off all my life, my parents were too busy being selfish and spending their incomes on their own pleasures while we kids ended up paying for our own college.

I despise the greedy boomers and I will heave a sigh of relief once they start dying at the rate they were born.

but Gen X economics wrote a pithy piece lamenting the terrible loss of something we Boomers did do well: consume. arguably, on top of our Steve Jobs-ish ideals, being somewhat disconnected and certainly disrespectful of economic reality, the sheer ability of people of my generation to buy and spend was not only what the United States needed, it is what the world needed and expected. we did that by actively disregarding and disrespecting the past, believing them irrelevant, and realizing we could make our future what we wanted it to be. Baby Boomers were the first major marketing demographic, and got sliced and diced and sold to in ways worthy of our government. after all, isn't it stereotypical of a neocon view that the reason the United States "won" the Cold War was because 'we spent the Soviets into the ground'? that's not true, of course, even if we thereby began to spend ourselves into the ground. (see funny commentary.)

Jonathan Edwards song, "Sunshine", captures the sentiment, my emphases added:

Sunshine go away t'day
Don't feel much like dancin'
Some man's gone, he's tried to run my life
Don't know what he's askin'

He tells me I'd better get in line
Can't hear what he's sayin'
When I grow up I'm going to make 'im mine
These aren't dues I been payin'

How much does it cost, I'll buy it
The time is all we've lost, I'll try it
B'he can't even run his own life
I'll be damned if he'll run mine, Sunshine

Sunshine go away today
I don't feel much like dancin'
Some man's gone he's tried to run my life
Don't know what he's askin'

Workin' starts to make me wonder where
The fruits of what I do are goin'
He says in love and war all is fair
He's got cards he ain't showin'

How much does it cost, I'll buy it
The time is all we've lost, I'll try it
B'he can't even run his own life
I'll be damned if he'll run mine, Sunshine

Sunshine c'mon back another day
I promise you I'll be singin'
This old world, she's gonna turn around
Brand new bells'll be ringin'

(download MP3)

the idea is that the Revolution of Free Love and anti-war failed, done in by Nixon, Mayor Daley of Chicago, and "the Establishment", masquerading as the early 1970s economic recession. so, the option was to 'revolt from within', although some of us ;-) , like Steve Jobs, decided that science and technology were a far more powerful means of changing the world. (it was, is, and forever will be.)

and, so, if that worldwide economic system built on the backs of our collective efforts, meager savings, and 1960s era conspicuous consumption (our parents aren't off the hook there; just check out Walt Disney) now has collapsed, i'm sorry, we're sorry, but we can't be saddled with it. everyone did well by us for a long, long time, even -- and perhaps especially -- the politicians. the common wisdom was that house values were supposed to go up for ever, the American way of life being what is it. yeah.

y'know, it's also possible that if acquisition were not the credo of the 1980s and 1990s, and if students demonstrated in the streets instead of buying into "the Establishment game", things may have been different. we might have, for example, had universal health care in the United States by now, for example. after all, if anything characterized the Summer of Love, it was that kids were able to go out and rebel and demonstrate because their parents' financial success made it possible. that's why the recession (of the early 1970s) transformed it. why didn't it happen again?

There's a great, big, beautiful tomorrow
Shining at the end of every day
There's a great, big, beautiful tomorrow
And tomorrow's just a dream away

Man has a dream and that's the start
He follows his dream with mind and heart
And when it becomes a reality
It's a dream come true for you and me

So there's a great, big, beautiful tomorrow
Shining at the end of every day
There's a great, big, beautiful tomorrow
Just a dream away

----------------------------

Now is the time,
Now is the best time,
Now is the best time of your life!
Life is a prize,
Live every minute
Open your eyes and watch how you win it

Yesterday's mem'ries may sparkle and gleam,
Tomorrow is still but a dream
Right here and now,
You've got it made,
The world's forward marching and you're in the parade!

Now is the time,
Now is the best time,
Be it a time of joy or strife,
There's so much to cheer for,
Be glad you're here for it's the best time of your life!

both these songs are from Disney's "Carousel of Progress", first built for the 1964 World's Fair in New York City.

The Ten Trillion Dollar Guy

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 05:55:59 GMT

yup, that's W.

see CalculatedRisk for the details.

"things that made me happy today"

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 03:17:18 GMT

somehow this feels like an elementary school "essay", but here i go ...

per quotamour's demand, the The rules are that for 8 days you have to post something that made you happy that day. yeah. there's more to it. i will not inflict this chore on anyone else. moreover, the doing-it-for-8-days part is dicey. where'd they get 8 as a number, anyway?

so,

workin' out at Ballys midday today, even if i started out feelin' crummy with a cold. i was well-centered, ran 3.2 miles after a 0.3 mile warmup walkin', and finished it off with 200 calories on the elliptical
thrilled that tomorrow is Helen and my 12th anniversary: Beach Boys' melody
lots of pretty music, including the song i'm listenin' to right now, Mindi Abair's "Lucy's", which is
totally there
feelin' so damn proud to part of the great enterprise that is Akamai Technologies and all we do
workin' my blog, offering engineering and math ideas for all kinds of people
thinkin' about my kids, Jeff and Dave
feelin' like there's so much more to do and accomplish, with great colleagues, great customers, great friends, like quotamour

narrative fallacy

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 06:52:08 GMT

We often listen to people for therapy.

-- Nassim Nicholas Taleb

ah, that orthodox Puritanism ... !

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 14:31:47 GMT

about when being a Quaker was a hanging offense.

Matrix Cookbook

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 14:29:33 GMT

it's useful.

Who Protects The Internet?

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 14:25:03 GMT

on protecting the Internet from attack ...

Who Protects The Internet?

(Posted using ShareThis)

J.M.McConnell was at Harvard talkin' similar things.

checking BEFORE pontificating ... ?

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 02:22:18 GMT

i'm tempted to appropriate RealClimate.org's recent title "Why don’t op-ed’s get fact checked?" for this post, but didn't.

Exhibit One: 28 November 2008, 09:41, Martyn Warwick & Commsday, as posted at TelecomTV, the headline US e-commerce in serious decline, with the hisheartening lead, "According to research house comScore, the US e-commerce sector has suffered a serious contraction this month and online sales are down by four per cent year-on-year. The fall is the first ever recorded since the metrics company began tracking the e-commerce industry".
Exhibit Two: 28 November 2008, The Economist, in Online Advertising: Not Ye Olde Banners. thus spake the economic boffins: "Internet advertising will be relatively unscathed in the downturn ... Online traffic, in other words, is moving towards sites where advertising has so far proved ineffective and is therefore cheap. This, says Ms Meeker, presents an opportunity for innovation and arbitrage by clever marketing managers as they cut their conventional ad budgets. It may also provide a glimmer of hope for the advertising industry as it enters recession."
Exhibit Three: 20 November 2008, comScore press release: Black Friday Sees $534 Million in E-Commerce Spending, Up 1 Percent Versus Year Ago ... Upcoming 'Cyber Monday' Represents Strong Historical Bellwether for Total Holiday Season E-Commerce Spending.

and i thought the posturing for the "news cycle" ended with the election. foolish me.

Taleb and Roubini deserve monuments

Sun, 30 Nov 2008 18:21:33 GMT

i think we should erect monuments to Nassim Nicholas Taleb and to Nouriel Roubini in the same way we have them for Dawes and Revere.

Globalization creates interlocking fragility, while reducing volatility and giving the appearance of stability. In other words it creates devastating Black Swans. We have never lived before under the threat of a global collapse. Financial Institutions have been merging into a smaller number of very large banks. Almost all banks are interrelated. So the financial ecology is swelling into gigantic, incestuous, bureaucratic banks – when one fails, they all fall. The increased concentration among banks seems to have the effect of making financial crises less likely, but when they happen they are more global in scale and hit us very hard. We have moved from a diversified ecology of small banks, with varied lending policies, to a more homogeneous framework of firms that all resemble one another. True, we now have fewer failures, but when they occur ….I shiver at the thought.

(Nassim Taleb written 2003-2006)

update 20081210 1826 EST: despite the upbeat market of the past week or so, things out there remain very strange, and China's experience is counter to what everyone expected, including the investment boffins at Harvard University's endowment.

checkmate

Sun, 30 Nov 2008 05:30:11 GMT

J Bradford DeLong says the United States Federal Reserve and Treasury have screwed the pooch and it's checkmate. Nouriel Roubini recently predicted on Bloomberg that 4Q2008 would see a 6% contraction in United States GDP. that is friggin' enormous. it's nearly half of the total amount Roubini predicts is needed to adjust to the collapse of credit, but he originally was hoping it would take 4 years to minimize financial destruction. doesn't look like that's in the cards.

so, if Roubini is right (again), it looks like we'll start climbing out of this with whatever's left by mid-2010 assuming, as he said, there's an adequate and deep social stimulus program on the part of the United States government. he talked $700 billion of financial system capitalization and then in addition $500 billion to a trillion dollars of direct social support spending.

Big Three Auto is dead, gone. possible scenes? hugely long waits at emergency rooms for critical medical care, because people won't have any other kinds of health insurance, and hospitals will fire nurses and doctors.

update 20081201 2214 EST: on expunging the last of the Thanksgiving optimism. Bernanke says the Fed is buying long term bonds. message? DEFLATION.

dismality in demise?

Fri, 28 Nov 2008 18:41:04 GMT

... And if this crisis kills Real Business Cycle theory, as it surely should, it cannot be all bad.

Yet I can’t get away from this feeling of inadequacy. One might not expect much from economists, but one would surely expect them to warn us of a crisis on this scale.

that's Martin Wolf in a great confessorial post. he's got a lot more to say there.

on the same topic, Paul Krugman basically echoes Professor Sheila Widnall's sentiment that There's nothing more dangerous than a close call: If you get away with it, it's OK next time; past successes may be the first step toward future failure.