Big Pickles

I thought of Suzanne when I saw this.

Labels: origami

Kottke has assembled a bunch of end-of-decade best-of lists. This will take some time to get through.

Labels: internet, lists

My demographic has the second-lowest unemployment rate. Women of my age, race, and education are slightly more employed.

Labels: news

I don't know who Dustin Curtis is, but I'm enjoying his blog. Lots of ideas that I'd considered before but never quite articulated, you know?

Start at the bottom.

Labels: blogs

Every family has their own naming system.

The very last one is totally a headlight piece. Or am I the only one?

Labels: toys

Last night I'm giving Timothy a bath right after he watched the Great Pumpkin special on TV.

"Dad, why does Linus keep going to the pumpkin patch when the Great Pumpkin never comes?"

"Because he thinks the Great Pumpkin will come next time."

"But the Great Pumpkin isn't real."

"Lots of people believe in things that aren't real."

"I don't."

"Yes, you do."

Then he looks up at me and his voice gets quiet. "Santa Claus?"

I neither confirmed nor denied, but I have to admit that it's fun to see the wheels turning.

Labels: parenting

I think I've linked to a couple of Paul Graham essays before. He seems to have a way of zeroing in on the heart of complex matters.

In Lies We Tell Our Kids, he doesn't tell us anything we don't already know, but he presents it in a straightforward manner that can sometimes be unnerving. As a parent, it really gets me thinking about the influence I can have in shaping my kids' view of the world.

I especially liked the last footnote. It's amazing how early teenagers begin lying to their parents for the same reasons their parents lied to them just a few years earlier: the truth would freak them out. It's not to avoid getting in trouble, but to spare their parents from knowing things that might devastate them.

Labels: parenting

Let me get this straight.

There are two regulatory agencies overseeing stock and futures trading: the Securities and Exchange Commission, created in 1934, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, created in 1974.

Are you with me so far?

A year after the financial crisis, as lawmakers are trying to come up with ways to reform the financial sector, it has been proposed that these two agencies be combined into a single entity.

Republicans think this is a great idea.

Democrats think this is a great idea.

The SEC and CFTC both think this is a great idea.

But it will never happen, because it's politically impossible.

How can that be? Quite simply, it's impossible to get a committee chairman in Congress to give up power. If the two agencies were combined, the CFTC would no longer fall under the purview of the Agriculture committee, and that chairman would lose power in the form of lobbyist attention and special interest donations, among other things. Apparently, this is such a distasteful thing for a committee chairman to have to endure that they are able to marshal incredible forces to keep it from happening.

And so it can never happen. Even though virtually everyone else in the federal government thinks it would be a great idea.

It makes me wonder why we even bother evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of the arguments for the various positions on all the pressing issues before Congress, when in the final analysis, whether or not good policy is enacted depends on entirely on something so stupid as one committee chairman's self-interest.

Labels: politics

Melissa and I recently did a 20-mile bike ride that included parts of downtown Fort Worth. It's a beautiful city in many ways, if you've never had a chance to see it.

We mostly rode along the Trinity River, and took a short break at the Water Gardens.

I thought downtown Fort Worth was a pretty fun place to ride in traffic, but hopefully it's about to get better. The city is proposing several bike-friendly improvements that it hopes will encourage both commuting and recreational biking.

Labels: bikes

I wanted to post a link to the article that Dan referred to in his last comment. I read it just yesterday and it's chock full of good ideas. It's an op-ed in the WSJ by Whole Foods CEO John Mackey. (Seriously, though, I've got to get off politics and back to baby pictures pretty soon, this stuff just weighs on you after a while...)

I think Mackey highlights the philosophical underpinnings of the health care debate when he says:

Health care is a service that we all need, but just like food and shelter it is best provided through voluntary and mutually beneficial market exchanges. A careful reading of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution will not reveal any intrinsic right to health care, food or shelter. That's because there isn't any. This "right" has never existed in America.

That's the widely-held view of the American right, and I certainly understand it and mostly agree with it. But I also understand why not everyone does. Here's an op-ed by British columnist Ian Dunt that expressed the opposite view:

Besides, basic human decency makes a debate over 'socialised healthcare', as the American right calls it, utterly irrelevant. If healthcare isn't a right - rather than a privilege – then I don't know what is. Healthcare isn't a Turkish delight chocolate bar, or a Jacuzzi. Healthcare is life.

That's an interesting point. Is health care life? Are food and shelter? The Declaration of Independence claims we have a right to life, along with liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Does a right to life imply a right to food, shelter, and health care?

I don't know which side I come down on. But I do agree with something Dunt says later:

We live in a mixed economy. We aim to have enough free market to control the state, and provide the things we want. But we also need enough socialism to ensure we do not live like savages, the weakest amongst us starving to death on the street while a rich woman buys a Gucci handbag. Socialism without capitalism turns to tyranny. Capitalism without socialism turns to barbarism.

There is no getting around this. We are already socialist. We have "socialized safety" in our police, fire, and military protections. Socialism is not a bad thing at all. We just want to come up with the best mix of capitalism and socialism that prevents either big government or big business from gaining too much power and taking away our freedoms.

I don't know whether health care is a privilege or a right, or whether it's best provided by the free market or the government. But I don't trust either implicitly enough to make a decision on ideological grounds. I'm not willing to hold the default position that deregulation is always best, that everything works better in the private sector. The last twelve months have shown that big companies will screw us all over given half the chance.

We know that our politicians lie to us, but we need to remember that private companies do to. They invented advertising, after all. We know that the government can be slow and inefficient, but we need to remember that it wasn't government producing crappy cars in the 70s and 80s, it's not government keeping us waiting on the tarmac for hours at a time, and it's not government denying our legitimate insurance claims based on technicalities. Without the government our paint would be full of lead and out prospectuses empty of material information. We need to be skeptical of both, and figure out a balance between the two that will keep them both in check.

Pi Approximation Day.

Labels: comics, math

This is a complex and nuanced issue, so I just want to zero in on one talking point that I disagree with. The health care industry is fighting hard against a public option because they complain that the government does not compete on a level playing field. There is some truth to this, but I don't think it's entirely accurate.

First of all, consider one industry where the government offers a "public option" that competes directly alongside private companies: the carrier industry. When you go to ship a package, you can choose between several private companies like UPS or FedEx, along with lots of smaller local carriers, or you can go with the United States Postal Service. Everyone knows the difference in price and quality that this choice offers. The postal service is a little cheaper and sometimes not as fast or convenient, but for most people it's good enough most of the time. When you need more speed or reliability, you look at the private carriers.

Does the USPS compete on a level playing field with the private carriers? Not really. They can operate at a loss--and have several times over the years--without going out of business. But this has never threatened the viability of the private carriers. Rather, it establishes a benchmark of quality and price that the private companies need to exceed in order to maintain a competitive advantage. The government being what it is, this benchmark isn't too tough to beat.

No, the private carriers are usually much more concerned about the competition they receive from each other. UPS isn't trying to get you to switch from USPS, they want you to switch from FedEx.

As the above article indicates, this is the kind of competition that's lacking in the health insurance industry. Because so many health insurance markets are near monopolies, a public option wouldn't be introducing unfair competition--it would be introducing competition, period. The distinction is meaningless to the insurers, of course. However you define it, a public option will subject them to a level of competition they will consider onerous. But I think it makes all the difference in public perception. Most people probably wouldn't have a problem asking health insurers to compete for business in the marketplace the same way UPS and FedEx do. (In fact, most people probably assume they already do.)

Amusingly, the toilet on the International Space Station really did break down. It's fixed now.

Twitter ties it all together.

Labels: science, tv

Clark pointed out in my last post on the Washington Post's statistical analysis of the Iranian election results that we can't conclude from an event with 4 in 1000 probability of occurrence that there is a 996 in 1000 probability that occurrence of the event was faked. This is true, of course, and I should have been more clear in my remarks.

The information we want is the probability that the Iranian election results were legitimate, given the data we see. What the WaPo has given us, however, is the probability of seeing the data that we see, given a legitimate election. They sound like the same thing, but they're not.

The Wikipedia article on conditional probability gives the classic example of why this is the case. Suppose you have a test for a disease that is 99% accurate--it returns a false result 1% of the time. That sounds pretty good, but if you use it to screen for a disease that affects only 1% of the population, then the probability that a person actually has the disease, given a positive test result, drops to 50%. So the probability of seeing a positive test result, given the presence of the disease (99%) is not the same as the probability of having the disease, given a positive test result (50%).

The Prosecutor's Fallacy describes the application of this logic in the real world. Here, the minuscule probability of certain evidence emerging, given the innocence of the accused, is used to argue that the probability of the accused being innocent must be just as tiny. This is what the WaPo appears to be engaging in with their statistical analysis.

Or is it? The thing to remember here is that this discrepancy exists because of the discrepancies in the prior probabilities that our conditional probabilities are based on. For example, in our disease scenario, the test becomes as accurate as it appears if 50% of the population are affected by the disease. The probability of seeing a positive test result, given the presence of the disease, and the probability of having the disease, given a positive test result are both 99%. It's the fact that the disease is so rare to begin with that makes all the difference.

So with the Iranian election, if we already knew that there was a 50% chance the election results were faked, then the analysis described in the WaPo would be strong evidence indicating shenanigans. I'm not saying we know that, but there does seem to be a lot more evidence of irregularities other than statistical analysis alone.

One more example to illustrate what I mean. Suppose 99 out of every 100 swans are white, and one is black. If you're walking along in the park and you see a black swan, you've just witnessed a rare event, with a probability of 1%. But this does not mean that you can be 99% sure that this swan is fake. That's because the odds of seeing a fake swan are based on something else entirely, and are usually far from 50%.

Suppose, however, that you heard on the news this morning that people have been out spray-painting white swans black. Suppose further that half of them have been spray-painted. Now, when you see a black swan, the odds of it being fake have climbed much closer to 99%, because you know the odds of seeing a fake swan to begin with are 50%.

Labels: math, politics

Regina Spektor has a new album out today. I bought the version with the DVD. Everyone seems to be sticking DVDs in their CDs these days. I guess they feel like they need to give you a reason to buy the CD in the store, what with iTunes and everything.

Speaking of iTunes, I realize I'm in the minority here, but I like albums. Even if I only want one song, I prefer to own the entire album that comes with it. I don't know, it just feels like it belongs to something bigger. Maybe the rest of the album gives context to the song. I can't explain why, but it is incredibly annoying to me whenever I scroll through the songs on someone's iPod and there are all these solitary songs without their full albums. They're like socks without mates or something. Songs belong in albums.

So the whole iTunes business model has never appealed to me. I have never felt ripped off because I bought an album for one song and never listed to the rest of it, I guess. If anything, it's the opposite with me--there might be one song on the disc that I skip. So why pay $13 for an iTunes album when I can buy the same thing at Target for $10 and get the physical media and liner notes and everything?

So yeah, get off my lawn.

Hello, loyal readers. My apologies for not blogging in over three months.

My excuse is that I got a new job, and this new job eats up my time in several ways. The commute is very long and the work itself gives me little opportunity to surf the Internet. So I have less time for actual blogging, and less time to find interesting things to actually blog about.

But hopefully as I settle in I can find a way to work this blog back into my routine.

To that end, check out this statistical analysis of the election results in Iran. Just by looking at the various vote tallies, it can be shown that there is a 99.5% chance that these tallies were made up by a human rather than generated randomly, as would be the case in a clean election. Fascinating.

Labels: math, politics

Why do we all have this dream?

And he really does nail it, at least for me, almost verbatim. It starts off with the instructor mentioning a big project or a book, something that would be impossible to catch up on at this point in the semester. Then the realization that you haven't even been attending class leads you to accept that you're probably going to fail. So you start thinking about how that will affect your graduation plans, and then suddenly remember some detail about graduating (for me it's always the date: I've written April 2001 on so many resumes, it has to be real, right?) followed by confusion. It uncanny how many of us share this dream, down to the details.

There is a similar dream shared among many returned missionaries I've talked to, about finding yourself back on a mission even though you've been home for years and have already started a family and career. Yet there you are alongside fresh faced 19-year-olds, who themselves are a little bewildered about why you are serving a second mission. Part of what motivates a missionary is dreaming about the life beyond--who will I marry, what will I do for a living, how will what I'm doing now help me later in life? But you already know all of that, and you know how much (or more likely, how little) anything you're doing now affects any of it. So you are extremely unmotivated, but you go through the motions, and serve your time anyway.

It's been several years since I had that dream, but I still have the school dream regularly.

Labels: dreams

[Warning: this post is chock full of Nintendo, although I will try to keep discussion of Pokemon to a minimum.]

Owing to the generosity of the Blockburger clan, my kids have been glued to the Wii since Christmas morning. Their favorite game on the Gamecube was Super Smash Brothers Melee, and so it should come as no surprise that they are just as excited about the Wii reboot of the title, Super Smash Brothers Brawl. (It's only a matter of time before Super Smash Brothers Nuclear Annihilation, isn't it? Back in my day we were satisfied with Super Smash Brothers Fisticuffs, and its sequel, Super Smash Brothers Donnybrook.)

Personally, I don't get the appeal of these games, and I'm pretty into video games myself. But that's kids these days. If you aren't familiar, these games feature characters from all over the Nintendo universe fighting one another for trophies, or points, or something. You would have to be a serious Nintendo junkie to actually recognize all these characters, though, so the game serves as a pretty nifty marketing tool for Nintendo to introduce a generation of kids to characters they may have missed while they were busy not being born yet.

So it was with my kids and Starfox. They had grown to like the character on the Gamecube version of the game, but the Wii version actually includes a snippet of the old Starfox gameplay, which is kind of a 3D futuristic dogfighting thing. The kids fell in love with that and wanted more. As luck would have it, the Wii allows you to download games from older consoles, so it wasn't long before the boys were playing Starfox 64 like it was 1997.

That's when I started seeing these Lego formations all over the house.

On the printer:


On the piano:


And more of a minimalist installation:


I assume these are Starfox characters flying around in formation. I like how they chose a basic design that could be reproduced with ease.

This is the conversation I had with my daughter a couple of nights ago as I was tucking her into bed. She's four.

DAD: Amy, this room is a mess! Why is it so messy?

AMY: Because I just like to play with all my toys.

DAD: Well, why don't you put your toys away when you're done playing with them?

AMY: Because I just like my room to be messy.

DAD: Well, when your room is this messy you can't even walk from the door to your bed.

AMY: I just don't like walking places anymore.

DAD: You don't like walking? How are you going to get to your bed?

AMY: I'm just going to fly.

DAD: Oh really? And how are you going to do that?

AMY: [deep in thought] ...I'm just going to need a bird costume...

Labels: kids

Buzzfeed has a new meme for you. Basically you let Wikipedia, The Quotations Page, and Flickr design an album cover for your band.

Here's mine:

Garble Arch, by Blame Ringo



There's also a live webcam.

Labels: music, video

If you want to learn something, just go to TED and start watching videos. You can't go wrong.

TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader.

The annual conference now brings together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).

Barry Schwartz on wisdom should be required viewing at school and in the workplace.

And I felt vindicated by Steven Leavitt on car seats. It's not that I'm anti-car seat or anything, but something about the way people are so fanatic about them has always made me skeptical.

Labels: video

Whenever you write, you should have your audience in mind. Even if you're just updating your status on Facebook. But if you've amassed a substantial number of friends, then that audience can be a pretty diverse group.

Bone up on your Facebook privacy settings and make sure that only your close friends see your goofy side while you maintain your public image for professional contacts (and parents).

Labels: internet

This web page is a mile long. Or tall, I guess I should say. Anyone can add reference points, like the height of the Empire State Building, for instance.

It's scaled 96 pixels per inch, so whether it really adds up to a mile depends on your monitor's size and resolution. I'm looking at a 19" CRT (18" viewable) set at 1024 x 768, so I figure I get about 71.1 pixels per inch, so the inches look larger than life to me. I'm guessing they used a 17" LCD set at 1280 x 1024 to come up with their 96 pixels per inch.

Start at the bottom.

Labels: measurements

It's Guitar Hero for the 8-bit Nintendo! Be sure to watch the videos, Sweet Child o' Mine actually works pretty well.

Labels: music games

Melissa took the boys to get haircuts on Tuesday. When I came home from work, the following conversation ensued:

Dad: (feigning ignorance) Hey, something seems different about you guys...

Michael: Yeah, we got haircuts.

Dad: (continuing with the ruse) I don't know what it is, you guys just seem snappier than usual...

Benjamin: THAT'S BECAUSE WE GOT HAIRCUTS, DAD!

Benjamin: (to Michael) See? You gotta yell it.

Labels: parenting

Over the holidays I had a chance to talk with one of my cousins who just got home from his mission and is back in school, but doesn't know what he wants to major in. (We've all been there, right?) Sure, he'll minor in his foreign language, but he doesn't really have anything in mind other than that.

He didn't ask for my advice and I didn't offer any, but having been in that situation myself, I feel like I have something to offer that could be valuable to someone out there. At least I know what I would do differently if I could go back and do it again.

The short answer is this: Major in accounting.

It's simple really. BYU's accounting program is consistently ranked in the top five in the nation, often taking the top spot. As long as you're at BYU primarily for reasons having nothing to do with academics (value, environment, to get married) why not get the most marketable degree they offer while you're there? It works on it's own or as a foundation for med school, law school, etc. If BYU's electrical engineering program was the best in the nation, I'd recommend it for all the same reasons.

The long answer is from Paul Graham: stay upwind, solve problems, and follow your curiosity.

Labels: college

I passed one of these on the way home from work on Christmas Eve. I'd never seen one before. (I guess that's what I get for never watching an Austin Powers movie.) I can't decide if I like them or not. From the back it looked like a VW Bug, from the front it's something more like Speed Racer's Mach V. At the same time something about it was giving me an AMC Pacer vibe as well.

According to Wikipedia, Enzo Ferrari called it the most beautiful car ever made. I will say the convertibles and the later models are quite nice. The one I saw must have been an early sixties model.

Labels: cars