The Dilemma of the PhD

The dilemma of a a PhD Student. (This has happened to me many times.)


(PhD Comics)

Does Fred Thompson Remind You of Walter Williams?

They seem to sound alike:

In the Fred Thompson administration, there will be no need for the leaders of terrorist states to visit Ground Zero; Ground Zero will be wherever they live.

Save Microsoft Files as PDFs

I used to need the full version of Adobe Acrobat to do this. Now Microsoft is offering it as a free download:

Do you need to take Word or other Microsoft Office documents and save them as PDF files? Microsoft offers a free download that makes this easy, and you get options for e-mailing PDFs with it too.

This is a very handy feature, especially if you want to share files that can't be edited, ensure your formatting is maintained, or share documents created with software most people don't have. I used this kind of feature on an almost daily basis when I was working as an engineer. (I needed the full-blown version of Adobe Acrobat to do it.) It's nice to see Microsoft now offering it for free.

(HT Joe Carter)

Greenspan on the Jon Stewart Show

In this video, Jon Stewart asks Alan Greenspan a great question:

Why do we have a Fed? Why do we have someone adjusting the rates if we’re a free-market society?

Greg Mankiw comments:

Alan's answer is not satisfying, but I don't blame him: The economics profession does not have a good answer.

We economists have rigorous and fundamental theory to explain why we have environmental regulation (externalities) and to explain why we have antitrust laws (market power), but there is no consensus about what market failure calls for the existence of a central bank. The answer has something to do with the benefits of a system of fiat money. And it has something to do with the possibility of short-run monetary nonneutrality (due to sticky prices and/or imperfect information about prices). But the precise combination of elements that would yield a satisfying answer is still elusive.

Stewart stumbled upon a fundamental question of monetary economics. If anyone has a good answer, let me know, or publish it in the American Economic Review.

Economics in One Page

What makes it [economics] most fascinating is that its fundamental principles are so simple that they can be written on one page, that anyone can understand them, and yet very few do.
—Milton Friedman

Mark Skousen:

In fact, one professor even suggested to me that economics can be reduced to one word: price. Or maybe, I suggested alternatively, cost. Everything has a price; everything has a cost.

Additionally, sound economic policy is straightforward: Let the market, not the state, set wages and prices. Keep government’s hands off monetary policy. Taxes should be minimized. Government should do only those things private citizens can’t do for themselves. Government should live within its means. Rules and regulations should provide a level playing field. Tariffs and other barriers to trade should be eliminated as much as possible. In short, government governs best which governs least.

Unfortunately, economists sometimes forget these basic principles and often get caught up in the details of esoteric model-building, high theory, academic research, and mathematics. The dismal state of the profession was expressed recently by Arjo Klamer and David Colander, who, after reviewing graduate studies at major economics departments around the country, asked, Why did we have this gut feeling that much of what went on there was a waste?

On the following page is my attempt to summarize the basic principles of economics and sound economic policy.

---

Economics in One Page
by Mark Skousen

1. Self-interest: The desire of bettering our condition comes with us from the womb and never leaves till we go into the grave (Adam Smith). No one spends someone else’s money as carefully as he spends his own.

2. Economic growth: The key to a higher standard of living is to expand savings, capital formation, education, and technology.

3. Trade: In all voluntary exchanges, where accurate information is known, both the buyer and seller gain; therefore, an increase in trade between individuals, groups, or nations benefits both parties.

4. Competition: Given the universal existence of limited resources and unlimited wants, competition exists in all societies and cannot be abolished by government edict.

5. Cooperation: Since most individuals are not self-sufficient, and almost all natural resources must be transformed in order to become usable, individuals—laborers, landlords, capitalists, and entrepreneurs—must work together to produce valuable goods and services.

6. Division of labor and comparative advantage: Differences in talents, intelligence, knowledge, and property lead to specialization and comparative advantage by each individual, firm, and nation.

7. Dispersion of knowledge: Information about market behavior is so diverse and ubiquitous that it cannot be captured and calculated by a central authority.

8. Profit and loss: Profit and loss are the market mechanisms that guide what should and should not be produced over the long run.

9. Opportunity cost: Given the limitations of time and resources, there are always trade-offs in life. If you want to do something, you must give up other things you may wish to do. The price you pay to engage in one activity is equal to the cost of other activities you have forgone.

10. Price theory: Prices are determined by the subjective valuations of buyers (demand) and sellers (supply), not by any objective cost of production; the higher the price, the smaller the quantity purchasers will be willing to buy and the larger the quantity sellers will be willing to offer for sale.

11. Causality: For every cause there is an effect. Actions taken by individuals, firms, and governments have an impact on other actors in the economy that may be predictable, although the level of predictability depends on the complexity of the actions involved.

12. Uncertainty: There is always a degree of risk and uncertainty about the future because people are often reevaluating, learning from their mistakes, and changing their minds, thus making it difficult to predict their behavior in the future.

13. Labor economics: Higher wages can only be achieved in the long run by greater productivity, i.e., applying more capital investment per worker; chronic unemployment is caused by government fixing wage rates above equilibrium market levels.

14. Government controls: Price-rent-wage controls may benefit some individuals and groups, but not society as a whole; ultimately, they create shortages, black markets, and a deterioration of quality and services. There is no such thing as a free lunch.

15. Money: Deliberate attempts to depreciate the nation’s currency, artificially lower interest rates, and engage in easy money policies inevitably lead to inflation, boom-bust cycles, and economic crisis. The market, not the state, should determine money and credit.

16. Public finance: In all public enterprises, in order to maintain a high degree of efficiency and good management, market principles should be adopted whenever possible: (1) Government should try to do only what private enterprise cannot do; government should not engage in businesses that private enterprise can do better; (2) government should live within its means; (3) cost-benefit analysis: marginal benefits should exceed marginal costs; and (4) the accountability principle: those who benefit from a service should pay for the service.

Looks like a good list to me.

For an even shorter list, here's Greg Mankiw's top 3 economic concepts.

Your Vote Doesn't Count?

Some of the bad news from the economic analysis of voting:

One of the first things you learn when you study social choice theory is that your vote will almost never make a difference. That is, if you calculate all the possible votes that a group of N people can cast, there is a very, very, very, very tiny chance that the margin of victory will be one vote. And it makes sense - most elections with moderate or large size electorates are decided by thousands, or millions, of votes.

So what’s a civics teacher to do? They should just admit one vote almost never makes a difference and that we have some good rules to reduce these one vote outcomes.

The good news:

And maybe it’s a good thing - do you want a system that frequently puts a lot of power into small groups of voters?

A political system that doesn't hinge on a single vote sounds much more stable to me than one that changes based on each vote.

Does all this mean you shouldn't vote? Not necessarily. I was a Boy Scout long before I was an economist. I continue to vote despite accusations of irrationality by my colleagues. If you value the voting process, you should too.

Uncluttering Advice From The New York Times

Unclutterer just posted this great roundup of New York Times articles on de-cluttering:

• May 15, 1988: “After the Tag Sale, the Garbage”
• June 16, 1988: “Home Improvement”
• April 23, 1992: “Surrounded by Stuff? Call a Clutter Buddy!”
• July 25, 1993: “Your Home: Salability; A Slovenly House is a Turn-Off”
• December 18, 1994: “Orderly House, Orderly Mind”
• November 9, 1995: “Clutter Counseling: Just Say Throw”
• September 13, 1998: “Pitching the Kitsch”
• October 4, 1998: “Out of Space? Get Rid of Clutter”
• June 8, 2000: “Grand Gestures in Tiny Spaces”
• June 20, 2001: “Waiting for the Organizing Fairy To Wave Away the Office Clutter”
• April 11, 2002: “Unloading His Books, But Not His Conscience”
• April 19, 2002: “A Weekend Fling With Clutter”
• January 1, 2004: “Clutter Combat: Containing the Enemy”
• October 24, 2006: “This is a Job for ‘Senior Move’ Managers”
• May 6, 2007: “A Drastic Cure for Procrastination”
• July 12, 2007: “Room to Improve”
• July 18, 2007: “101 Summer Express: Simple Meals Ready in 10 Minutes of Less”
• September 20, 2007: “Refeathering the Empty Nest”

Photos From the Indian Concert

Here's a photo from the Indian concert mom and dad were in last weekend:



I got to wear an outfit Triya brought back from India for me from her trip this summer. Wearing it brought back memories of my own trip to India in 2003.

Here are a couple more photos:



Afterwards, Triya and I went to IHOP with a new friend Brad who was also at the concert. The Fairfax Symphony Orchestra will perform again on October 20th. GMU students can get free tickets if we obtain them early enough.

IRFN: North Korean Army Seeks to Eradicate “Cancer” of Religion

glasses off:

1. Fifth Jehovah’s Witness Sentenced in Turkmenistan (Sep. 13)
2. North Korean Army Seeks to Eradicate the “Cancer” of Religion (Sep. 13)

AsiaNews reports that the North Korean army, worried that its soldiers are displaying an interest in religion, has distributed a booklet entitled “Saving Our Soldiers from the Threat of Religion”. The pamphlet aims to “eradicate [religion] without delay” as religion is “spreading like a cancer inside North Korea’s armed forces”. The book identifies religion as something embraced by North Korea’s enemies, and regards belief as a “poison that corrupts socialism and paralyses class consciousness.” Those who wish to publicly practice their religions in North Korea must join religious organizations controlled by the communist party, and worship of the current leader, Kim Jong-Il, and his father, Kim Il-Sung, is encouraged.

3. Belarus: Baptist Fined for Organizing Church Activities (Sep. 14)
4. Malaysian State Set to Monitor Muslims During Ramadan (Sep. 16)

Reuters reports that the Parti Islam se-Malaysia (PAS), the hardline Islamic party which governs the northern Malaysian state of Kelantan, has established patrols in the state during the month of Ramadan to ensure that Muslims keep the fast and refrain from smoking and drinking. Ten plainclothes officers will be dispatched to monitor food outlets, where those who are caught breaking the fast will be fined 20 ringgit ($6). Vendors caught selling food to Muslims during daylight hours, on the other hand, will be fined up to 500 ringgit ($144).

5. Schoolchildren in Indonesia Forced to Wear Islamic Dress (Sep. 17)
6. Restrictions on Religious Practice Increase in Uzbekistan (Sep. 17)

Features:

The US State Department’s office of International Religious Freedom releases its 2007 report, citing major concerns about Iraq and Afghanistan. The full report can be read on the State Department’s website.

China Aid Association reports that Cai Zhuohua, a Chinese house church pastor, has been released from jail after serving a three-year sentence for printing and distributing Bibles and other religious materials. While in prison, Cai spent 10 to 12 hours a day making sports equipment that will be used in the 2008 Olympics.

International Religious Freedom Archive

Sign up to have underreported international religious freedom news delivered straight to your e-mail inbox.

The Starfish and the Spider

This sounds like a great book:

I have just finished reading a marvelous book, The Starfish and the Spider by Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom. (Full disclosure: Ori Brafman endorsed my new book Group Genius.) SS (I’ll call it by the title’s initials) is, at root, a book about complex social networks, and the principles and stories in it will be immediately recognizable to scholars who study social networks, complex dynamical systems, and social emergence. But what’s brilliant about this book is that it’s so accessible; not a single academic citation, not even in the notes. Instead, their point is made with fascinating stories, and they make concrete recommendations that managers will easily be able to apply to their own organizations.

The book’s unifying thread is the distinction between two kinds of organizational forms. A spider is a centralized organization, the hierarchical company of the 1950s. If you cut off a spider’s head, it dies. The starfish is a decentralized organization, what scholars would call self-organizing, self-managing, or emergent (although these terms don’t appear in the book). A starfish doesn’t have a head. If you cut off one leg, the starfish grows a new one; and the detached leg can actually grow itself another four legs. I knew that; but what I didn’t know was that a starfish has no central nervous system. As Brafman and Beckstrom report, neuroscientists have discovered that what happens when a starfish starts walking is that the urge to walk begins in one of the five legs, and then somehow the other four legs are convinced to join in (scientists don’t yet know how this happens).

This makes the starfish an apt metaphor for leaderless, self-managed organizations. Their examples include Al Qaeda, Wikipedia, the Apache’s resistance to the Spanish colonists, Alcoholics Anonymous, and how the abolitionist movement piggybacked on the Quaker community’s decentralized organization. Of course, the Internet is frequently mentioned–not only as a starfish itself, but as a mechanism that makes the formation of starfish much more easy than it was in the past. These are familiar stories, but SS does a wonderful job of identifying the common themes and translating them into practical advice.

Read the whole thing.

Politicizing Monetary Policy

Greg Mankiw:

The last thing we need is the perception that the Fed is caving in to political pressure. Such a perception, even if unfounded, would raise inflation expectations and make the Fed's job even harder.

To which Megan McArdle replies:

Note to Congress: if inflationary expectations go up, the Fed has to raise interest rates in order to combat them. Thus, demanding that the Fed ease the money supply is actively counterproductive. Please stop.

It is sometimes said that economists make poor politicians, but this proves that politicians are even worse economists. No wonder people are expecting a recession next year.

Posner on Law Professors and the Legal Profession

The Volokh Conspiracy:

The University of Chicago Law Review has posted a series of short essays commemorating the late Professor Bernard Meltzer; among them is this quite interesting piece [PDF] by Richard Posner on law professors' relationship to the legal profession.

Game Theory: Tit for Tat

Here's a great explanation from the TV show NUMB3RS of the tit-for-tat strategy in an iterated prisoner's dilemma game.

Tit for tat is a highly effective strategy in game theory for the iterated prisoner's dilemma. It was first introduced by Anatol Rapoport in Robert Axelrod's two tournaments, held around 1980. Based on the English saying meaning "equivalent retaliation" ("tit for tat"), an agent using this strategy will initially cooperate, then respond in kind to an opponent's previous action. If the opponent previously was cooperative, the agent is cooperative. If not, the agent is not. This is similar to reciprocal altruism in biology.

Here is the basic set-up for the prisoner's dilemma game. Notice that regardless of what the other prisoner does, each prisoner is better off betraying the other rather than staying silent, even though their optimal cooperative strategy would be for both to stay silent. (Hence the dilemma.)

	Prisoner B Stays Silent	Prisoner B Betrays
Prisoner A Stays Silent	Each serves six months	Prisoner A serves ten years Prisoner B goes free
Prisoner A Betrays	Prisoner A goes free Prisoner B serves ten years	Each serves five years

The prisoner's dilemma has many applications in the analysis of economics, law, biology, politics, etc. It's ubiquity is what makes it such an interesting thing to study.

From what little I've seen of it, NUMB3RS is an excellent show. As a former math teacher, it is great seeing a show like this popularizing many of the cooler aspects and applications of various branches of mathematics.

Data: By the Numbers

The life of a PhD student:

Home Ownership and Economic Growth

Is this one more reason to rent?

The conventional wisdom says homeownership is a growth spur. This was especially the case in the fordist mass production economy, where long-term employment was the rule for many and home-buying prompted purchases of automobiles, appliances and consumer durables.

Now, maybe not so much. That is, according to new analysis by Joe Cortright which suggests that homeownership may actually dampen economic performance in this highly mobile creative age.

More here.

See some of my other posts:

• Should You Buy A House?
• A Manifesto For Renting
• More Advice for Renting, From the NYT
• When Should You Buy a Home?
• Real Estate Roller Coaster
  

Robert Lucas on Monetary Policy

Here's a short excerpt from Robert Lucas' article in today's Wall Street Journal (subscription required):

Mortgages and Monetary Policy
By Robert E. Lucas, Jr.

In the past 50 years, there have been two macroeconomic policy changes in the United States that have really mattered. One of these was the supply-side reduction in marginal tax rates, initiated after Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980 and continued and extended during the current administration. The other was the advent of "inflation targeting," which is the term I prefer for a monetary policy focused on inflation-control to the exclusion of other objectives. As a result of these changes, steady GDP growth, low unemployment rates and low inflation rates -- once thought to be an impossible combination -- have been a reality in the U.S. for more than 20 years.

To me, inflation targeting at its best is an application of Milton Friedman's maxim that "inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon," and its corollary that monetary policy should concentrate on the one thing it can do well -- control inflation. It can be hard to keep this in mind in financially chaotic times, but I think it is worth a try.

(HT Greg Mankiw)

What's Wrong With Economics Education in America?

Russ Roberts:

If you want to know what's wrong with economics education in America, go here. It's a web site created by Wal-Mart to convince viewers that Wal-Mart is good for America because lower prices free up income for people to enjoy other things. How bizarre is it that a company has to spend thousands if not millions of dollars on this web site and elsewhere making the case that low prices are good?

It Be Talk Like A Pirate Day!

Avast, me hearties! Did ye be knowin' today be national be rrrattlin' on like a pirrrate day?

If ye do nay be knowin' how in th' salty sea t' be rrrattlin' on like a pirrrate, do nay worrrrrry, this website can do it ferrr ye! Learrrn morrre about this special day herrre and herrre, and a bottle of rum!

Even th' frrree staterrrs be joinin' in th' fun!

Me be wonderin' if that scallywag Pete Lesson be known' 'bout t'day?

Shiver me timbers!

P.S. -- Herrre be a review of "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" by that Ninja scallywag. (Hattip to me matey, Ali!)



(This be me post frrrom yon last yearrr. Arrr!)

Pittsburgh's Next Mayor: A GMU Grad?

First one went into space. Now a GMU grad is running to be mayor of Pittsburgh:

Mark is the real deal. Mark is smart and sophisticated. He has a PhD from George Mason and long experience at every level of government, including a long stint in DC in Senator John Heinz office and at Office of Science and Technology Policy.

This is a real test for Pittsburgh's future. Denver has John Hickenlooper, New York Michael Bloomberg, Baltimore had Martin O'Malley - the list of progressive mayors leading American cities cleaning up after decades of machine politics is long and impressive. Pittsburgh has had none of it. Pittsburgh's current mayor Luke Ravenstahl is by all accounts tied the the machine and an empty suit. Mark, while a long shot, would be a real shot in the arm for my former hometown.

Read a recent profile in the Post-Gazette here (via Mike Madison's terrific Pittsblog).

Take A Bus From London to Sydney

This sounds way too cool:

We are an adventure travel company like no other! We operate a regular overland service for backpackers travelling between London and Sydney.

Whether you're heading off backpacking, or returning home from overseas, OzBus offers you the radical alternative to flying.

This is a truly awesome experience and the ultimate overland adventure; become one of the few people ever to undertake this epic journey.

The journey travels through 20 countries with lots of camping out along the way.

I wonder if there's a way to squeeze this into my educational experience along with the PhD and law school?

(HT Tyler Cowen)

New York Times Gives Free Access To Its Full Site

The New York Times:

The New York Times will stop charging for access to parts of its Web site, effective at midnight tonight.

The move comes two years to the day after The Times began the subscription program, TimesSelect, which has charged $49.95 a year, or $7.95 a month, for online access to the work of its columnists and to the newspaper’s archives. TimesSelect has been free to print subscribers to The Times and to some students and educators.

In addition to opening the entire site to all readers, The Times will also make available its archives from 1987 to the present without charge, as well as those from 1851 to 1922, which are in the public domain.

This is good news indeed. I hope the Wall Street Journal soon follows suit.

(HT Lifehacker)

A Law and Economics Question

From Alex Tabarrok:

In Virginia the common law has long held that if a neighbor's tree encroaches on your yard you may cut the branches as they fall over the property line but any damage the tree does to your property is your problem. Your neighbor can even sue if your pruning kills the tree. Last week the Virginia Supreme Court overruled this 70 year-old precedent so that now it's your neighbor's duty to prune or cut down the tree if it is a "nuisance."

Discuss. Which rule is better the new rule or the old? What does this ruling imply about Posner's hypothesis about the efficiency of the common law? What would Coase say?

Spending the Afternoon in DC

Today was an absolutely gorgeous day and I spent a good portion of it in DC. After meeting a friend for lunch on Capitol Hill, I decided to stay in the city to do some studying outside and enjoy the wonderful weather.



I walked from there to the Smithsonian metro, strolling through a nice garden along the way. That's where I saw this popcorn mini-rose:



Of course, no trip to DC would be complete without seeing some sort of anti-war protest:



I also got stopped for a few minutes by a young lady trying to raise money for the ACLU.

I left the city around 4:30 and got back to campus at 5 PM. I keep forgetting how wonderful it is to live this close to our nation's capital and all it has to offer.

The Best and Worst Business Books

Buy or bye?

BNET has done a provocative piece on the 10 most overrated and 10 most underrated business books. Read the 2 lists below to see where they might have put a book you love or loathe.

Here are their 10 OVERRATED books:

1. Reengineering the Corporation
2. In Search of Excellence
3. Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun
4. Jack Welch & the G. E. Way
5. Jesus CEO
6. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People
7. The One Minute Manager
8. Who Moved My Cheese
9. Chicken Soup for the Soul at Work
10. Rich Dad, Poor Dad

Here is BNET’s 10 most UNDERRATED books:

1. The Tipping Point
2. Freakonomics
3. Nickel and Dimed
4. The Long Tail
5. The New Rules of Marketing and PR
6. Managers Not MBAs
7. The E-Myth Revisited
8. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
9. How to Win Friends and Influence People
10. Personal Finance for Dummies.

Be sure to follow the link to the overrated books and see what they recommend instead.

I'd agree with most of the first list other than Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. I cannot recommend The Halo Effect highly enough and would add Getting Things Done to the list as well.

(HT Joe Carter)

Should You Buy A House?

Megan McArdle ponders the question:

I spent some time this weekend traipsing around open houses with my sister, who is hoping to someday soon experience the burdens joys of homeownership.

Prices certainly don't seem to be coming down much in my neighborhood, the U Street Corridor. Smallish two-bedroom houses are listed for $595,000 and up. Since the rent on a similar place would be something over half the monthly mortgage payments and taxes, without taking maintenance into account, I think it is fair to say that the market is still pricing in quite a bit of expected capital appreciation in the house.

Is that reasonable? Not too long ago, I saw Suze Orman on television, urging people not to sink money into their 401(k)s, but instead plow that money into a house. A house, almost everyone I know tells me solemnly, is the best investment you can make.

But as Robert Shiller, the Yale economist, has pointed out, this is a very new idea. For most of history, a house was simply a very long-term durable good, which, like cars and refrigerators, began depreciating the day it was finished. Why do we think differently now?

Read the whole thing.

Here is my renter's manifesto and more thoughts on renting and on buying a home. Also, see this cool video showing changes in housing prices as though they are a roller-coaster ride.

Celebrating India's Independence

Triya and I went to see my mom and dad in concert at GMU on Saturday. It was part of a celebration of India's 60th anniversary of independence. The Fairfax Symphony Orchestra and the Warrenton Chorale did an excellent job supporting Indian performers Dr. L. Subramaniam and Kavita Subramaniam and their family.

The Indian musicians sat on the stage... Indian-style while Kavita and her daughter Seeta sang sweet, melodious songs along with the music, both looking stunning in their beautiful saris. The Indian group playfully volleyed music back and forth with the orchestra and the Warrenton Chroale supported with their voices. The Subramaniam group performed pieces that reminded me of Ravi Shankar and some interesting vocals that reminded me of Blea Fleck and the Fleckstones.

The music was absolutely wonderful and Triya was telling me afterwards that they were singing songs associated with India's freedom movement 60 years ago. Many Indians were in attendence and all the performers did a stellar job. It was especially fun for me to see my parents and some other friends from my hometown taking part in the production.

Fairfax's symphony did a wonderful job and I can't wait for their next performance!

The Difference Between Women and Men

See more differences here.

(HT haha.nu)

Quote of the Day

"When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other."
-- Eric Hoffer

"A Riff Horn Jelly Bear"

That's my full name jumbled up by this anagram generator.



(HT Joe Carter)

The Power of Humility

Why confidence is overrated:

Any good self-help book will tell you to be confident. Stand up straight, see past your critics and believe in yourself. I’d like to break tradition and argue the opposite. That humility is a useful tool and confidence can be overrated.

Deluded by Your Own Hype

Whipping yourself into a motivational frenzy may temporarily make you feel better, but it has hidden side effects. The major disadvantages from false confidence are:

1. Inability to Learn.
2. Avoid Humbling First Steps.
   
3. Arrogance Swingback Effect.

Humility Is Not Low Self-Esteem

Humility does not imply low self-esteem. If confidence is often faked by positive affirmations about yourself, humility is not created through negative ones. Humility is simply about focusing on the unknown rather than the known.

To illustrate this, take a look at the following diagram:

I’m separating all information into three broad categories. The things you know that make you positive, the things you know that make you negative, and the things you don’t know.

Confidence would come from focusing on the positive things you already know. In contrast, humility isn’t focusing on the negative information as it is focused on the overwhelming amount of information you don’t know.

Read the whole thing.

Seems like a good dose of humility would help minimize the effects of 7 stupid thinking errors you probably make.

Living in the Future

Unfortunately, there's a downside.

(HT Instapundit)

How to Make Your Mouse Roar

Did you know that if you're using a tabbed browser, clicking on a hyperlink with your mouse scroll-wheel will open the link in a new tab? Neither did I.

Here are 9 ways to make your mouse roar.

(HT Lifehacker)

Is Marriage the New Dating?

Dr. Helen Smith on the starter husband:

An article on MSN entitled "The Starter Husband" caught my eye this morning, mostly because the caption addressed to women seemed so ridiculously misandric: "You'd never buy a car without test-driving it first right? So why settle into a lifelong marriage before trying one on for size?"

The article, as one can gather from the title, is about women who marry in their 20's for practice and see nothing wrong with taking a guy out for a test-drive and dumping him off at the curb once the sheen wears off.

Here is an excerpt from the MSN article:

For some, a starter husband is like a starter home — a semi-commitment where you're willing to do some of the surface work, like painting the walls, but not the heavy lifting, like gutting the whole foundation; he's just not a long-term investment. Others compare a starter husband to a first job, where you learn some skills and polish your resume before going after the position you really want....

It's easy to write these women off as callous or self-absorbed. And yet on some level, they just might be pioneers: Why stay put in an empty shell of a marriage — an arrangement on paper only — instead of calling it what it is? "This generation is reinventing marriage," says Paul.

To which Helen Smith responds:

I thought pioneers were supposed to be brave people who ventured out to discover new things and make the world a better place, not cowards who are too afraid to say "no" to a marriage that they don't want just to "have a gorgeous party, and make my parents really, really happy" as one woman put it.

Read the whole thing and let's all hope this is not an increasing trend.

(HT Instapundit)

Weight-ography

An interesting map of the distribution of obesity in the US:

Percent of Obese Adults - Body Mass Index Greater than 30, 2006

Source: Centers for Disease Control. Click here for Body Mass Index maps by county.

Interesting perspectives from two of my favorite bloggers, Julian Sanchez and Ryan Avent.

See this post on how changing prices of food affect what we eat and listen to Russ Roberts' podcast on the economics of obesity.

The Flight of the Boomerang

How to make and throw the Aussie magic.



(HT information aesthetics)

Are Most Scientific Studies Sloppy?

Most science studies appear to be tainted by sloppy analysis:

Dr. Ioannidis is an epidemiologist who studies research methods at the University of Ioannina School of Medicine in Greece and Tufts University in Medford, Mass. In a series of influential analytical reports, he has documented how, in thousands of peer-reviewed research papers published every year, there may be so much less than meets the eye.

These flawed findings, for the most part, stem not from fraud or formal misconduct, but from more mundane misbehavior: miscalculation, poor study design or self-serving data analysis. "There is an increasing concern that in modern research, false findings may be the majority or even the vast majority of published research claims," Dr. Ioannidis said. "A new claim about a research finding is more likely to be false than true." . . .

Statistically speaking, science suffers from an excess of significance. Overeager researchers often tinker too much with the statistical variables of their analysis to coax any meaningful insight from their data sets. "People are messing around with the data to find anything that seems significant, to show they have found something that is new and unusual," Dr. Ioannidis said.

Here's more:

Ioannides attributes this to "messing around with the data to find anything that seems significant," and that's probably part of it. The other part is that, even if all statistics are done according to plan, the estimates that survive significance testing will tend to be large--this is what we call "Type M error." See here for more discussion.

I wish I could say economics had a better track record...

(HT The Volokh Conspiracy)

Life Imitates Star Trek

Is the Star Trek tricorder soon to become reality?

The tricorder from Star Trek was a pretty fancy piece of equipment. Wave it around, let it make an odd whistling sound for a few seconds, and it could tell you almost anything, from the presence of nearby life forms to the chemical composition of a particular rock.

It might seem far-fetched, but Marc Reisch at Chemical & Engineering News reckons some very similar devices might soon become a reality.

Reisch writes that many scientific instrument makers are working hard to make portable and rugged versions of mass spectrometers, infrared spectrophotometers, ion detectors and other devices. He presents an interesting survey of the field - X-ray fluorescent analysers, flash luminescent analysers, ion detection units and more. You name it, it seems someone is trying to fit it into a convenient hand-held device.

First we had flip-up cellphones that looked like Star Trek communicators; then Bluetooth earpieces that look a lot like the earpiece Lieutenant Uhura wore. Soon there will be tricorders too. As the 21st century progresses, life increasingly imitates Star Trek.

Use Aluminum Foil to Sharpen Scissors

Last week it was tennis balls. This week it's aluminum foil:

Home improvement site DIY Life has compiled a list of fifteen uses for aluminum foil; among them is the ability to sharpen scissors. All you need to do is stack about seven pieces of foil together and slice through them with your dull scissors, and voila! Scissors are sharp again. I tried this myself and it took more than one cut-through, but it actually did work. After your sharpening work is done, you can recycle the foil for other tasks around your kitchen.

15 awesome uses for aluminum foil [DIY Life]

Want To Reduce Carbon Emissions?

Greg Mankiw argues in favor of a gas tax. On the other hand, you could just dump iron into the ocean.

Fight for Kisses

When babies and dads have to fight for mom's attention...



(HT Presurfer)