Muybridge

Caffeine Stand Off

Tree of

What it would take to persuade me that current climate policy makes sense

Matt Ridley:  Ten Tests:

....................

9. Indeed I will need persuading that dashing to renewables can cut emissions rather than make them worse; this is by no means certain given that the increased use of bioenergy, such as wood or corn ethanol, driven by climate policies, is indeed making them worse. Meanwhile shale gas use in the USA has led to a far greater cut in emissions than any other technology, yet it is opposed every step of the way by climate alarmists.

Money, Paper and Wealth

http://youtu.be/EqHUBYfxh4k

Doug L. Hoffman: Ecologists Have Model Envy | Climate Realists

Doug L. Hoffman: Model Envy: "Computer climate models have proven to be climate science's Achilles heel. They have consistently over promised and under delivered results for decades and show no sign of improving significantly. If a program to create ecological models is launched the temptation to make similar, overreaching promises will be irresistible—particularly when government funding is at stake. “But just by attempting to build general models, ecologists will find out what they need to know to truly understand ecosystems,” the article summarizes. To propose a massive modelling project in order to discover what ecologists should be studying as a side effect is beyond inane. There is a way to figure out what ecologists truly need to understand—it is hard, time consuming and messy. That way is called science."

'via Blog this'

The cuckoo clock

"In Switzerland they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock!"  Orson Welles

Trying to Close a Sale? Try Backing Off

Try Backing Off :

 A few weeks ago I picked up a book on my shelf and re-read a particular section. I had interviewed the author a few years ago and something prompted me to go back into her book.
 It had a whole new meaning for me in that moment, so I wrote her to share the experience and tell her it had given me an a-ha moment. The email I received in response literally went from “great to hear from you” to here’s what else I can sell you.

It so set me back on my heels.

Arguably, it is smart marketing and diligent follow-up to mention an upcoming course or book in that situation. But how about some personal connection first? Some acknowledgement that a reader got something truly meaningful from your work? Even when I wrote back again inquiring about another book she’s working on, she tried to enroll me in a course.

I respect her work immensely, but it’s safe to say I won’t be engaging her again. The hard sell makes me sprint in the other direction.

Living Beyond Your Means

7 Signs You're Living Beyond Your Means

2.  You vacation on credit.

__marebear/statigr.am

You work hard and you’ve earned that vacation, right?

Consider this financial rule of thumb when it comes to credit purchases: If it takes you longer to pay for the purchase than the actual “life span” of the item, you can’t really afford it.

Start a plan to save money for vacations well in advance of the time you’ll need to book tickets or make reservations—even if you intend to charge your trip for purchase protection reasons.

Make sure you pay the balance down before you’re charged a dime of interest and be realistic about all the “extras” that can add to the cost of a trip, like tips, parking, and baggage fees.

» The Addition Culture Coffee Theory

» The Addition Culture Coffee Theory: "Michel de Montaigne realized (back in the 16th century) that the last thing a doctor needs is for you to be healthy. This is a variation of the agency problem, which basically means that there is a conflict of interest at play in the doctor-patient relationship. If everyone were living a vibrant healthy life, what would doctors and pharmaceutical companies charge people for?"

Be Less Creative

http://www.businessinsider.com/people-need-to-learn-to-be-less-creative-2013-1

Dick Thaler advice to econ students:

Work on your own ideas, not your advisor’s ideas (or at least in addition to her ideas).

I think this is bad advice.  Kids love to think that they can do it all themselves in an Ayn Rand fantasy, independent of others. Yet, to succeed is to succeed socially, because we are social animals, so we need not just good ideas, but good ideas people are receptive to. This means, understand what customers/readers/users want, and what colleagues want to help you with.  Sure, you can do it yourself with sheer brilliance, but it's infinitely more difficult than simply extending someone else's work.

In the book I’ll Have What She’s Having, the authors argue we mostly copy everyone else: first our parents, then our peers, then anyone who seems to be doing well. Generally, it works, as if you want to figure out how to ride the subway, you could do worse than stand back and watch everyone else. Evolutionary biologist Mark Pagel takes this a step further by stating emulating others is the basis for almost every idea we have, and notes that very few of us create things that are later used by many others; think the number zero, the wheel, soap, iron, the alphabet. Kids aren't good at listening to their parents, but they are predictable imitators because that's a good strategy. 

Khazarian Hypothesis

http://www.sciencecodex.com/new_study_sheds_light_on_the_origin_of_the_european_jewish_population-105231

Despite being one of the most genetically analysed groups, the origin of European Jews has remained obscure. However, a new study published online today  in the journal Genome Biology and Evolution by Dr Eran Elhaik, a geneticist at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, argues that the European Jewish genome is a mosaic of Caucasus, European, and Semitic ancestries, setting to rest previous contradictory reports of Jewish ancestry. Elhaik's findings strongly support the Khazarian Hypothesis, as opposed to the Rhineland Hypothesis, of European Jewish origins.

The Rhineland Hypothesis has been the favoured explanation for the origins of present-day European Jews, until now. In this scenario Jews descended from Israelite-Canaanite tribes left the Holy Land for Europe in the 7th century, following the Muslim conquest of Palestine. Then, in the beginning of the 15th century, a group of approximately 50,000 left Germany, the Rhineland, for the east. There they maintained high endogamy, and despite wars, persecution, disease, plagues, and economic hardships, their population expanded rapidly to around 8 million in the 20th century.

The rival explanation, the Khazarian Hypothesis, states that the Jewish-convert Khazars – a confederation of Turkic, Iranian, and Mongol tribes who lived in what is now Southern Russia, north of Georgia and east of Ukraine, and who converted to Judaism between the 7th and 9th centuries – along with groups of Mesopotamian and Greco-Roman Jews, formed the basis of eastern Europe's Jewish population when they fled eastward, following the collapse of their empire in the 13th century.

Spatial disorientation

Without visual cues (e.g. the horizon) you can't distinguish between gravity and acceleration. Which means if you're flying through clouds you can't tell what the attitude of the aircraft is. You could feel like you're flying straight and level while in fact you're descending in a spiral.The solution is to ignore what your body is telling you and listen only to your instruments. But it turns out to be very hard to ignore what your body is telling you. Every pilot knows about this problem and yet it is still a leading cause of accidents
http://www.paulgraham.com/swan.html

Free e-books on Amazon

From Gizmo's Freeware Reviews:

 www.freebooksifter.com

There are tens of thousands of free e-books on Amazon that you can download to your Kindle (or to the free Kindle app on your computer, if you prefer). Finding those free books can be tricky, but a new web site called Free Book Sifter (www.freebooksifter.com) automates the process and updates its listings regularly. Just browse to the site, choose the book you want, and follow the link to its page on Amazon. You can then download the book to the Kindle.

In my tests, a couple of the books I clicked on turned out not to be free. Presumably because Amazon has changed the pricing since the Sifter last updated its pages. But the site is still an incredibly useful resource for book lovers who want free books.

 www.freebooksifter.com

You need an Amazon account.

Retroactive Tax

Retroactive Tax - Business Insider:

California's capital gains taxes are a high 9%, so the deduction reduced the capital gains rate to 4.5%. This encouraged the entrepreneurs to start and keep their companies in California, instead of decamping to lower-tax states.

And, for many years, California entrepreneurs and investors have taken advantage of the deduction.
But now the state has apparently decided that it no longer needs to encourage entrepreneurs to start and keep their companies in California.

So it is eliminating the tax deduction.

Far more startling, the state is eliminating the deduction retroactively--going all the back to 2008.
In other words, anyone who sold their California company in the past 5 years and took advantage of the tax deduction is now going to have to pay the tax.

With interest!

'via Blog this'

Six

In early 2033, a worker retiring at 62 would face a 25% SS benefit cut

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis:


Those abrupt benefit cuts of about 25% a year for today's 62 year olds and workers nearing the early retirement age would come at an especially bad time — late in life when savings have dwindled and health care bills are on the rise.

Read more at http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2013/01/social-security-cliff-in-sight-retirees.html#UrDXhGQRDQsYJMVL.99

Medicine “like a Jiffy Lube"

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/cash-doctors?page=1

http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2010/05/markets-in-everything-cash-for-doctors.html

"On a wall inside Dr. Brian Forrest's medical office in a suburb of Raleigh, North Carolina, is something you won't find in most doctors' offices, a price list:

Office visit: $49

Wrist splint: $41

Pap-smear: $51.

Those are the prices patients pay for the services, and they pay on the spot. Forrest doesn't take insurance. If he did, the prices would be far higher and not nearly as transparent. He says listing prices up front is about trying to do business in a straightforward way, "like a Jiffy Lube."

Forrest's practice, Access Healthcare, was born out of his frustration with the bureaucratic system run by major health care providers and insurance companies. His epiphany came about 10 years ago, as he was completing his family medicine residency at Wake Forest University. "I was basically being told I needed to see 30 patients a day every day, and that's what we had to do," he recalls, speaking with a soft drawl. He didn't care for that pace, preferring to spend 45 minutes to an hour with each patient.

At one job interview, he was told he would be required to sign a contract saying he'd see a patient every seven minutes or have his pay cut. Most new physicians sign those contracts. Forrest, 38, wouldn't. "I'll borrow a term from McCain: I'm 'mavericky,' " he says. "I like to fix things that are broken."

He spent some time researching alternative business models and found inspiration in People magazine, of all places, which profiled a Vermont doctor who carried a stopwatch, charged patients $2 a minute, and didn't take insurance.

Forrest decided to take a similar approach—minus the stopwatch. Clients pay him cash when they're seen, known in the industry as "fee-for-service." He sees a maximum of 16 patients a day and leaves the office at 5 p.m. Because he doesn't have to file insurance forms, he only needs a single office assistant, and the low overhead allows him to charge less than other doctors. Occasionally, his charges wind up being less than just the co-pays for Medicare or private insurance."

Music and the military

For those Suffering from High Self Esteem :):)

---

"By turns entertaining, illuminating and—when you recognize yourself in the stories it tells—mortifying."—The Wall Street Journal

Yin and Yang

"I probably shouldn't say this, but,"

Bogleheads : When I start to form a sentence in my head that begins with a phrase like:

"I probably shouldn't say this, but," or

"I hope this isn't going offend anyone," or

"Don't take this the wrong way,"

I have finally figured out that I should keep it within my head and not speak the sentence. It's taken me six decades to figure that out.  I still do it anyway, but I do it less often than I used to. In the real world, once words are out, they're out.

Drug Money and Comic Books

The Meth King:

If you deal drugs, you make plenty of money. But fast cars, women and a playboy lifestyle can become unsatisfying. Which is perhaps why Aaron Castro, the leader of a 41-person methamphetamine ring, turned to comic books, using his earnings to buy 18,753 of the things.

Bogus: "Renting is throwing money away"

Renting is often much cheaper per month than owning the same thing. If you don't rent, you either:

1. Have a mortgage, in which case you are spending money on interest, tax, insurance, and maintenance.
2. Own outright, in which case you are spending  the extra income you could get by converting your house to cash, investing in bonds, and renting a similar place to live for much less money. This extra income could be 50% to 200% beyond rent costs forever, and for many is enough to retire right now.

Currently, yearly rents in the San Francisco Bay Area are about 3% of the cost of buying an equivalent house. This means a house is returning about 3% rent minus taxes and maintenance, bringing the landlord's return down to 0%.

Landlords are loaning a house to their tenants at a 3% interest rate, called rent. This is a fantastic deal for renters. When it is possible to borrow a million dollar house for 3% yearly rent at the same time a loan of a million dollars in cash costs 6.5% interest, plus 1.3% property tax, plus 1% maintenance, something is clearly broken. Renters are enjoying an extreme discount at the owner's expense.

If someone tells you that you are throwing money away, reply "The landlord is giving me a huge gift. He's subsidizing me to live in his rental. I'll take free money any day."

If someone tells you that you are "Not building equity", you can reply you are not losing equity, which happened to millions of people, and is still going on right now.

http://patrick.net/

What is the story behind this photo?

Kinky Coffee Ad

Lice and congress.

Reason.com:

PPP has released the results of a poll pitting Congress against various unlikeables, including  brussel sprouts, NFL replacement refs, traffic jams, the country of France, and the band Nickelback. Congress is less popular than lice, colonoscopies, and Genghis Khan.

The survey also finds there are things people hate more than Congress, including the Kardashians, John Edwards, Fidel Castro, North Korea, and Communism. And, uh, gonorrhoea.

'via Blog this'

true in a trivial sense

Daniel Crevier

"The Tumultuous History of the Search for Artificial Intelligence," 1993

"There is a popular cliché which says that you cannot get out of computers any more than you have put in…, that computers can only do exactly what you tell them to, and that therefore computers are never creative. This cliché is true only in a crashingly trivial sense, the same sense in which Shakespeare never wrote anything except what his first schoolteacher taught him to write—words"

Incentives

Buying Green Makes You Do Bad Things

The market for “green,” environmentally-friendly products is big and getting bigger. Buying these products certainly seems to make a segment of the buying public feel good about itself. But even aside from the debate over whether green products are truly good for the environment, there’s something else about all this do-gooding that just feels… bad.

Do green products really make us better people? Does engaging in a virtuous act of consumption build on itself, making us more socially-conscious, in turn encouraging virtuous behavior in other areas of our lives? Or does buying these products make us feel better — but, in reality, make us act worse?

According to a new study, set to be published in the journal Psychological Science, the answer is — unsurprisingly for those of us with a cynical disposition toward human nature — the latter. While mere exposure to green products may “prime” us to think about social consciousness and perhaps improve our behavior, if we actually buy a green product, we appear to take it as license to act like jerks.

At least, that’s what researchers Nina Mazar and Chen-Bo Zhong of the University of Toronto found in the lab. In an experiment, they had student subjects look at products in one of two online stores: a “conventional” store (with few green products) and a “green” store (with lots of green products). Some of the students were asked to purchase goods in these stores; others were just asked to rate the products.

Things got interesting when these students were subsequently given $6 for an economic task and asked to share it with an unknown partner. The students who had purchased products in the green store, it turned out, were far less generous with the $6 than students who had merely been exposed to the green products.

A subsequent experiment pushed things even further. Students were again asked to shop in a green or a conventional store. They were then put through an experiment where they had the opportunity to earn extra money by cheating — even to steal money from an envelope left in the room. Consistent with the previous experiment, participants who had purchased from the green store were significantly more likely to cheat and to steal than participants who purchased from the conventional store.

So, what do the results of these experiments tell us? That environmentalists are jerks? That “good” people are all secretly frauds?

The answer’s a little more nuanced. While people’s morality may behave according to different rules than we might have expected, that doesn’t mean people are being immoral or dishonest. It just means that they’re engaging in a sort of moral balancing act of which they tend to be unaware.

This study on green purchases is just the latest data point in a body of research on how humans engage in what’s been termed “moral self-regulation.” Previous studies have found, for instance, that white people who voted for Barack Obama felt more justified in engaging in racist behavior later on. Similarly, people who engage in an act of gender fairness have been shown to be more likely to engage in an act of sexism down the line.

It seems from all of these experiments that we have, essentially, a moral set point — and we’re disinclined to move too far from it in either direction.

Another study published this year in Psychological Science found that people not only engage in “moral licensing,” acting worse the better they think they are, but also “moral cleansing,” attempting to do good when their self-image is threatened. In the experiment in this study, people were asked to write short stories about themselves, focusing on positive or negative traits; they were then asked if they would like to make a small donation to a charity of their choice. The people who wrote stories emphasizing negative traits about themselves gave five times more to charity than those who focused on positive traits.

While it perhaps makes sense that people who feel bad about themselves would want to do something positive to raise their self image, it’s a bit more of a puzzle why we seem to feel the need to curb feeling excessively good about our moral status. The authors of the charity study offer at least one plausible answer: that because altruistic behavior is costly to engage in, it makes sense that there would be some sort of mechanism for limiting it.

So, as we enter the season of charity and altruism, the lesson is paradoxical: If you want to hold onto your money, think about how good you are; if you want to do good, think about how bad you are.

Ryan Sager writes the blog Neuroworld at TrueSlant.com.

Psychobabble meets Self Help Silliness

Can't get your fill of Dr. Phil? Do wish you could do more Cosmopolitan quizes? The site for you:

http://www.inpowr.com/

Onion Video Satire: FDA Approves Depressant Drug For The Annoyingly Cheerful

Despondex is the first drug designed to treat the symptoms of excessive perkiness.  This is not serious!

Click on image or link to view video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=jd4tugPM83c

Prognosticator and proctologist

What do a prognosticator and a proctologist have in common?

They both involve pulling something out of your ass.

A Modest Proposal

John Cage Short short stories

 A    composer    friend    of    mine

who    spent    some    time    in    a    mental

rehabilitation    center

                                            was    

encouraged    to    do    a    good    deal    of

bridge    playing.

                                 After    one    game,

                                                        his

   partner    was    criticizing    his    play

                                       of    an    ace

                                         on    a    trick

                                           which    had

   already                                            been

   won.

                       My    friend    stood    up

and    said,

                                                “If    you

   think    I    came    to    the    loony    bin

                                             to    learn

   to     play     bridge,

                                    you’re     crazy.”