Connectionality

CVAC

2011-10-13T07:50:00.000-07:00

http://www.dropshotdispatch.com/2011/10/13/djokovics-cvac-conundrum-djokovics-controversial-training-method-examined/

Infinite Series Without Numbers

2011-03-09T04:01:00.000-08:00

It is painful to realize the insight I didn't have when I tried to figure this out and even worse that a very young cute girl has it nailed. Just watch this!. Oh, and she does binary trees and exponential functions too.

Parentheses « xkcd

2011-03-08T17:37:00.000-08:00

I (really) like this (a lot), (and XKCD is amazing (if you didn't already know)).

Bananagrams Again

2011-03-08T09:52:00.000-08:00

Clemens Kogler - Le Grand Content

2010-09-13T06:57:00.000-07:00

Le Grand Content by Clemens Kogler is all about connections.

2010-09-13T06:45:00.001-07:00

Rethinking the Mobile Web by Yiibu

View more presentations from Bryan Rieger.

New Proof Unknown "Structures" Tug at Our Universe

2010-03-25T08:47:00.000-07:00

Evidence would be a better world than proof, but nonetheless this National Geographic Article is fascinating

2010-01-28T06:08:00.000-08:00

This is the guy from the ipad video on the Apple web site. The traffic was pretty heavy the first day, and the stream stalled on my screen during the quarter of a second he had this expression on his face (click to enlarge).

My wife noticed and said, "What's wrong with him?"

Bananagram Histogram

2010-01-19T12:47:00.000-08:00

Note: daedlus42's histobananagram predates
mine by four months, but I was unaware of it
until I googled bananagram histogram.

Euphoria

2009-11-18T12:58:00.000-08:00

As the soles of my shoes hit the soft ground, I pushed past the tall cottonwood trees in a euphoric cadence, and meandered through willow branches that the moose munched on,

The BETTERHO Egg Scissors

2009-02-22T11:10:00.000-08:00

We found this in a drawer at Patricia's house. I've never seen anything quite like it before.

H.R.7260 Transparency in the Creation of Wealth Act of 2008

2008-12-16T03:49:00.000-08:00

110th CONGRESS

2d Session

H. R. 7260

To increase the quality and public accessibility of research by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System on the effects of monetary policy on the distribution of wealth in the United States, and the proportion of newly created monetary resources directed into various sectors of the economy, and for other purposes.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

October 3, 2008

Mr. KUCINICH introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Financial Services

A BILL

To increase the quality and public accessibility of research by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System on the effects of monetary policy on the distribution of wealth in the United States, and the proportion of newly created monetary resources directed into various sectors of the economy, and for other purposes.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as the `Transparency in the Creation of Wealth Act of 2008'.

SEC. 2. ESTIMATE OF THE OVERALL MONEY SUPPLY.

The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System shall devise, calculate and publish a replacement for the discontinued M3 monetary statistic, in order to provide a transparent estimate of the nation's total money supply.

SEC. 3. STATISTICAL ESTIMATE OF THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH IN THE UNITED STATES.

The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System shall tabulate and publish a statistical description of the current distribution of wealth in the United States by quintile, including a further examination of the uppermost 1% sections by 0.1% each.

SEC. 4. CREDIT INSTITUTION SEIGNIORAGE CALCULATION FOR REPORT TO CONGRESS.

The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System shall calculate and report to the Congress the total annual seigniorage interest income received by financial institutions as a result of their being allowed to create money in the form of the credit they extend above their own cash deposits or reserves prior to extending the loans.

SEC. 5. CALCULATIONS FOR THE SEMI-ANNUAL HUMPHREY-HAWKINS TESTIMONY.

The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System shall calculate and publish semi-annually the loss or gain in economic output due to the deviation of the previous year's actual unemployment rate from the 4% level required by the Humphrey Hawkins Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act of 1978 (15 U.S.C. 3101 et seq.), including such loss or gain, in income by quintile.

SEC. 6. ACCESSIBLE STATISTICAL COMPARISONS OF WHERE CREDIT IS BEING DIRECTED .

(a) In General- The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System shall tabulate and publish data showing the amount of credit and the percentage of credit now being created and directed into each of the following:

(1) Public infrastructure.

(2) Primary residences.

(3) Secondary residences.

(4) Stocks, bonds, commodities.

(5) Foreign currency and derivatives trading.

(6) Mergers and acquisitions.

(7) Education.

(8) Manufacturing infrastructure.

(9) Military expenditures.

(b) Additional Analysis- Each category referred to in a paragraph in subsection (a) shall be further analyzed by type, gender, race, wealth status, and location, if applicable.

SEC. 7. LAND VALUE CALCULATION FOR THE FLOW OF FUNDS REPORT.

The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System shall develop a market-based estimate of the value of residential, corporate and publicly owned land and report figures.

SEC. 8. FOREIGN DEBT CALCULATION.

The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System shall make projections, in 10 year increments, of the net foreign debt, and estimate and report on the location of Federal reserve notes, by country and type of holder; including an estimate of lost notes.

SEC. 9. GAO AUDIT REQUIREMENT.

Notwithstanding the requirements, limitations, and exceptions contained in section 714 of title 31, United States Code, the Comptroller General shall conduct a full audit of the Federal reserve system in every year before a Presidential election year.

SEC. 10. IMPROVEMENTS TO THE SURVEY OF CONSUMER FINANCES.

The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System shall undertake the Survey of Consumer Finances every year.

SEC. 11. SUMMARIES OF TOTAL CREDIT MARKET DEBT AND ECONOMIC GROWTH.

The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System shall publish a summary of total credit market debt, quarterly and annually.

SEC. 12. PUBLIC NOTIFICATION REQUIREMENT.

The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System shall release--

(1) the statistics required to be compiled by this Act at a quarterly news conference; and

(2) the survey of consumer finances and the total credit market debt report at an annual news conference.

END

Teachers of the common herd

2008-12-14T12:07:00.001-08:00

Capital must protect itself in every way…Debts must be collected and loans and mortgages foreclosed as soon as possible. When through a process of law the common people have lost their homes, they will be more tractable and more easily governed by the strong arm of the law applied by the central power of leading financiers. People without homes will not quarrel with their leaders. This is well known among our principle men now engaged in forming an Imperialism of capitalism to govern the world. By dividing the people we can get them to expend their energies in fighting over questions of no importance to us except as teachers of the common herd.
--J.P.Morgan

Niebuhr, Obama

2008-12-04T10:41:00.000-08:00

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint; therefore we must be saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness.
From The Irony of American History
by Reinhold Niebuhr

"[Niebuhr] is one of my favorite philosophers. I take away [from his works] the compelling idea that there's serious evil in the world, and hardship and pain. And we should be humble and modest in our belief we can eliminate those things. But we shouldn't use that as an excuse for cynicism and inaction. I take away...the sense we have to make these efforts knowing they are hard."
- Senator Barack Obama

Just Another Day

2008-10-28T17:26:00.001-07:00

Milkmen

2008-10-09T06:11:00.000-07:00

When I commuted and I drove the hours before dawn, the radio played all-night new age music, always a piano, overly bright in timbre, with synthesized strings, chimes and nature sounds. I'm not sure why I didn't turn it off. It wasn't my kind of music. We didn't have milk boxes out front anymore, or the sort of milkmen whose presence was heralded by the soft comfortable clanking of glass milk bottles. But at gas station convenience stores, brightly painted dairy trucks coughed sweet diesel smoke into cool damp air. Grinding transmissions, sliding doors, loading ramps, and hand trucks harmonized. Paper cartons were carried in plastic boxes. I bought cigarettes and black coffee. I imagined my smug moodiness, the world still asleep as I smoked and drove, could only be, must be, the disposition of milkmen. I had no milk, but in those hours, ones worth is rarely questioned.

If this is the greatest, well damn ...

2008-09-25T12:01:00.001-07:00

McCain's move: Putting priorities or politics first? - CNN.com: "Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House, called McCain's decision to suspend his campaign the 'greatest single act of responsibility ever taken by a presidential candidate."

Wall St. Moral Rot: Spreading To Politics, Main St.? : NPR

2008-09-25T05:00:00.000-07:00

Wall St. Moral Rot: Spreading To Politics, Main St.? : NPR

Print The Truth

2008-09-24T12:11:00.000-07:00

Accurate Pie Chart

2008-09-17T17:45:00.000-07:00

Video Lectures | Public lectures given at the Institute for Advanced Study

2008-09-17T06:08:00.000-07:00

Video Lectures | Public lectures given at the Institute for Advanced Study

Mob Mentality

2008-06-17T07:04:00.001-07:00

There's a whiff of the lynch mob or the lemming migration about any overlarge concentration of like-thinking individuals, no matter how virtuous their cause.
- PJ O'Rourke

and then comes the bozo explosion

2008-05-13T04:23:00.000-07:00

bozo explosion n. The large number of inept employees that a company ends up with when it hires an incompetent executive, who in turn hires incompetent managers, who then hire incompetent workers.
-- from wordspy

The really scary part of the mediocrity revolution is that those responsible think they're doing something useful. They believe extreme short-term thinking and disregard for the welfare of customers, employees, and communities will make businesses more competitive.

I think there is a tipping point. When executives are simply peter principled incompetents, their effect is minimal. It's aggressive stupidity at the top that creates the conditions necessary for the bozo explosion. If you don't believe it, consider the government, or the phone company.

The Mediocraty Revolution

2008-05-11T11:00:00.000-07:00

It is the conventional wisdom that there is a productivity revolution afoot in the global economy, and that America is at its forefront. One imagines that, if everyone is more productive, goods and services should be less costly, and everyone should be better off.

Productivity is defined roughly to be output divided by input, measured roughly by dividing GNP by the total cost of production. Labor is among the most significant costs, especially in the service industries which represent a growing portion of the U.S. economy.

It follows that one effective way to improve productivity is to reduce quality and level of service. Airlines and mobile phone carriers are great examples.

Years ago I was a member of the IS department responsible for operating a mainframe computer shared by the departments of a multi-divisional company. When workload had grown to the point where an upgrade was desperately needed, upper management would always ask why we should upgrade when we were only using 90% of the machine's capacity. Of course, the answer is found in the restroom analogy. The most efficient strategy for restrooms is to have a long line at all times. The restroom will be utilized at 100% of its capacity. Nothing is wasted, except the time and comfort of the people waiting in line.

Similarly, the most efficient approach to customer service is to have customers wait in line. In fact, the longer they wait, the better, because if the wait is long enough, a lot of them will just give up. The result is not only a fully utilized customer service department, but the workload is actually reduced.

The search for excellence is over. In productivity we have found something better than excellence. And mediocrity (or worse if we can get away with it) is the way to achieve it.

Genetics and Politics

2008-05-08T05:58:00.000-07:00

It occurs to me that perhaps leader-seeking is a hard wired human trait, favored by natural selection perhaps because beneficial cooperation works better with a leader than without (the committee problem). But perhaps it's a promiscuous urge, and there is no built-in mechanism for taking leader quality into account. Or perhaps the urge is so strong that, in the absence of a good leader, any leader will do. There is no scientific basis for my speculation (as far as I know), but if I'm right, it would explain a lot.

Platypus Genome Decoded

2008-05-08T04:13:00.000-07:00

The New York Times reports the Platypus Genome has been decoded.

"It was quite a difficult thing," said Jennifer Marshall Graves of Australian National University in Canberra, who led part of the analysis after the St. Louis team derived the basic sequence.

"The genome was completely unknown, and we knew it was going to be fairly weird," Graves said. "You'd look at some of these repetitive sequences and think, 'What on Earth is that?' "

I know what that's like. Koffskey's code is like that.

Obama's Gas Tax Benefit

2008-05-07T09:00:00.000-07:00

In Obama's Gas Tax Benefit - The Opinionator - Opinion - New York Times Blog, Chris Suellentrop connects:

Newsweek's Jonathan Alter wrote, "[Obama's] refusing to pander reminded his base among college-educated voters of the reasons they liked him in the first place.
Economist Greg Mankiw suggests that Clinton and McCain exhibit, "Mendacity with a dash of condescension: They know the experts are opposed, and they secretly agree, but they think they can win some votes by pulling the wool over the eyes of an ill-informed electorate."

Apparently our intelligentsia is so jaded that the suggestion that people might reward a political candidate with votes for his intelligence and integrity can be made only in the most circumspect way. After all, pandering and demagoguery have been getting the job done for a long time, and once in a row doesn't make for much of a trend.