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weekly quote #17: Neal Stephenson January 31, 2008

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It’s been one of those days. So, to ease my troubled mind (and ignoring the fact that I never even got a wq up last week…) here’s one of my favorite bits from one of my favorite novels, Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon*; it’s a fictional World War II interview between bedridden Marine Bobby Shaftoe and Ronald Reagan, interviewing him for the news serials, on page 109 of my edition:

“Ronald Reagan has a stack of three-by-five cards in his lap. He skids up a new one: ‘What advice do you, as the youngest American fighting man ever to win both the Navy Cross and the Silver Star, have for any young Marines on their way to Guadalcanal?’

Shaftoe doesn’t have to think very long. The memories are still as fresh as last night’s eleventh nightmare: ten plucky Nips in Suicide Charge!

‘Just kill the one with the sword first.’

‘Ah,’ Reagan says, raising his waxed and penciled eyebrows, and cocking his pompadour in Shaftoe’s direction. ‘Smarrrt–you target them because they’re the officers, right?’

‘No, fuckhead!’ Shaftoe yells, ‘You kill ‘em because they’ve got fucking swords! Have you ever had anyone running at you with a fucking sword?‘ “

* Hands-down one of the best novels I’ve ever read — cryptanalysis, war, espionage, data-havens…

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weekly photo #68: Flood January 30, 2008

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Flood
It’s been a while since I posted a photo from Hawai’i — so here’s another from the massive lava plains in Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park. The dark horizontal line is a fresher remnant — active flows were off behind me as I took this photo.

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the halucinogenic agenda January 29, 2008

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Forget Heather Has Two Mommies — we need to save our impressionable youth from this!

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where the dog is buried January 28, 2008

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There’s an expression in Russian — vot gde sobaka zaryta! — which translates literally as “That is where the dog is buried!” and means ‘That’s the real problem / heart of the matter / essence of the issue’.

I think that there is one fundamental and completely unavoidable problem with any and all forms of representative government. As I was skimming through Paul Krugman’s text as cited on Economist’s View, I read this bit, lamenting how all-too partisan politics followed a inclusivity-based campaign in the early Clinton Presidency: “So what good did Mr. Clinton’s message of inclusiveness do him?”

I immediately thought to myself, “It got him elected.”

The problem is, the people who will wind up in office in a representative government are those who are good (if not the best) at getting elected, and not at all necessarily those who are good at running a government. In other words, we get politicians, and not statesmen.

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Wherefore species? January 25, 2008

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I’m not biologist. In fact, my knowledge of biology doesn’t go much beyond having read a few layman-targeted books. So, I’d like to begin this post by saying that I realize it is quite possible that I’m missing something that is obvious to someone who has studied biology deeply enough to move beyond layman’s terms. If that’s the case, and if such obvious information is pointed out or conveyed, I’ll happily alter my view to suit.

That said, the problem I’m going to try and discuss is, I think, important because of the fact that species are a big touchstone for the layman interested in biology — and an even bigger deal for the creationist seeking to undermine the acceptance of biology among the non-biologist public.

So, here we go…
(more…)

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weekly photo #67: White On White January 24, 2008

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White On White
This is probably one of the oldest photos I have, from late November 2001. I went up to the Seattle area from Monterey (yes, I’ve been to Monterey before; this is my third time living here) to visit my friend a brother of mine. We drove out to Mount Rainier, the snow was not too deep and fresh — the kids loved it. Not much to say about this photo; I think it speaks for itself.

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don’t lose it January 22, 2008

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One of the things I’ve come across in my reading on human behavior and economic behavior (sorry, can’t think of where, although I’ve read it more than once) is that people value not losing more than they value winning — in a short phrase, we’re risk-averse. A common example is that people are more likely to pass up a chance to get a sum of money if it entails a risk of losing money, even if the risk is very small relative to the gain.

Overcoming Bias has a great example of this risk-averse behavior:

Suppose that a disease, or a monster, or a war, or something, is killing people. And suppose you only have enough resources to implement one of the following two options:

  1. Save 400 lives, with certainty.
  2. Save 500 lives, with 90% probability; save no lives, 10% probability.

Most people choose option 1.

[snip]

Ah, but here’s the interesting thing. If you present the options this way:

  1. 100* people die, with certainty.
  2. 90% chance no one dies; 10% chance 500 people die.

Now, I’m not so sure about the rest of the post… I tend to agree with Roland’s analysis, with something along the lines of apples vs. oranges, and also with those commentors who note that not all graphs are straight lines.

* The original post has the number 400 here, but I believe that is an error and that it should be 100, with a total population at risk of 500.

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making money January 22, 2008

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One of the big topics today on the econ blogs was the decision at the Fed.

Here’s the BBC’s news site on it.

And here’s The Austrian Economists with the best very short version of why it might not be the best idea…

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worth 990 words January 21, 2008

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The latest xkcd, “The Data So Far” — which has ten words in it — is, as usual, spot on:

(I wonder, should I have a comma after that second double-hyphen up there, or after the second quotation mark..?)

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