I don’t really wanna get too mired in this, as right now there’s lots of heat but little light.  It never ceases to amazes me how people appear to be incapable of seeing how stupid they look when they type stuff on the internet. (Although given how agitated I was when I wrote my last post, maybe I shouldn’t be too hasty – who knows what nonsense I typed!) Climate change discussion in the blogosphere seems to be mostly based around either declaring the whole thing a dastardly plot designed to create a world government run by the greens with Al Gore as supreme overlord (complete with sustainable, carbon-neutral baby eating) or declaring it the modern holocaust complete with modern holocaust deniers who should be summarily executed, preferably slowly by drowning in the last vat of oil to be ever pumped from the ground.  At least the scientists are keeping their cool right?……

<Ahem>

Okay, so maybe they’re not keeping their cool, but at least they’re doing science.  That’s what makes them scientists, right?  Well, I’m just not so sure about that either any more.

One thing that comes out of the CRU crack/leak/misfile is some code.  Some very badly documented code at that.  Now the first point in my mind is: If this is kosher code used to generate publish results, why did it need to be leaked?  Surely it should have been published with the results? (I had to give source code for all my uni work – what makes them so special?)  If it’s not kosher code, where *is* the kosher code?

Second thought I had was that only the author of the code has any hope of understanding it.  I’ve seen references to this code:

;
; Apply a VERY ARTIFICAL correction for decline!!
;
yrloc=[1400,findgen(19)*5.+1904]
valadj=[0.,0.,0.,0.,0.,-0.1,-0.25,-0.3,0.,-0.1,0.3,0.8,1.2,1.7,2.5,2.6,2.6,2.6,2.6,2.6]*0.75   ; fudge factor
if n_elements(yrloc) ne n_elements(valadj) then message,'Oooops!'

yearlyadj=interpol(valadj,yrloc,timey)

What sort of documentation is that?!  Whoever wrote this should outsource their coding work.  The major problem with such a generic comment as “apply a very artifical correction” is that it gives no idea what this correction this is (ie what method, and what it fixes – unless it’s somehow obvious what was meant by ‘the decline’), so it would be very easy to forget about it and recreate this correction somewhere else.

This of course assuming that this correction is valid.  I’m not familiar with the language/libraries used so I don’t know precisely what this code does.  It doesn’t look friendly though.

My last thought is about the cracker who got the info (if it was indeed a crack), and there’s some indignation on the consensus side that there’s not much outcry from the non-consensus side about illegal activity to obtain the info.  Trouble is, it’s never quite as simple as that in these sorts of cases.  If the information gleaned turns out to be publically important and was being deliberately hidden, then you can make a case that prosecuting the intruder would be a miscarriage of justice.  Just imagine if it had been the other way around.  Actually, I’m gonna predict that there’s gonna be revenge attacks on non-consensus sites now.  I don’t think this is over yet…

‘Cause it can’t be called healthcare anymore can it?!

What gets my goat about this is how disingenuous it is, and how we as a culture are harvesting the results of our inability to make tough choices (our approach to healthcare is much like our approach to economics it would seem). To illustrate my point, consider if all the other sick babies in the country suddenly became well, and no longer needed care.  You’d find very quickly that the doctors would reverse their position as they’d find something among all that equipment and medicine now not being used that would help improve the child’s quality of life.  They’d be clamouring for something, anything  to do to help.

What’s really happening here is a direct result of the philosophy that we apply to healthcare, which is that it’s a fundamental right.  The problem with fundamental rights is that they can only try to defend what we intrinsically have.  It can’t grant us things we do not.  We have the fundamental right to life, but we all die.  We have the right to work, but not to be employed.  We have the right to think and learn, but not to be educated.  Fundamental rights are there to prevent people taking away things that we have, rather than provide things for others.  Maybe we as a society think we should do that anyway (I for one think it’s a good idea), but if you do it in the name of fundamental rights, you are guaranteed to overextend.  When healthcare is a fundamental right, there’s no such thing as an overpriced treatment.

Except that, of course, there is, because our made up rights don’t trump reality, and when they face limited resources, the inevitable result will be people becoming exceptions.  They can’t philosophically admit that they were wrong, and so they need to find a reason why these exceptions are not deserving of having their ‘right to healthcare’ met.  Too old, too fat, too smokey, too sick (ironically), too ‘undignified’ (what does that even mean anyway? he wears a nappy for crying out loud, what would be so dignified about him even if he wasn’t ill?).

We should see this as the tragedy that it really is.  A child is sick, we don’t know how to help him, and we don’t have the resources to do so.  Instead, we have certifiable lunatics trying to tell us that he doesn’t deserve it. That his living couldn’t possibly be in his interests.

The real question here is, who can pay for his care?  The hospital clearly doesn’t want to (nor do I think should they be forced to).  Maybe the father isn’t capable.  Maybe someone else can help, but if the boy continues to be treated as an ‘exception’ they won’t be allowed to.  There’s the real tragedy.

In the bad old days, human rights were considered to have been bestowed only on those who could speak (which left the deaf disenfranchised).  We’ve come a long way since then, now you only have to be able to play peek-a-boo.

I had two utterly insane thoughts today.  The second I cannot share.  The first however, is fair game.  Following my fascination with economics recently, it’s an attempt at a solution to the liquidity trap.

What’s a liquidity trap I hear you cry?  Well, take the following scenario:

A visitor enters a hotel in a small town.  The people of the town are in a financial crisis.  They are all in debt and have no money to pay their particular debt.

He gives the hotelier £100 as a deposit while he inspects his room.  The hotelier realises that the £100 will pay off the money he owes to the baker, so he rushes to the baker and gives her the £100.

Upon receiving the money, the baker realises she can pay off the farmer, who realises he can pay off the fisherman, who realises he can pay off the bait supplier, who realises she can pay off the hotelier.

Just after the bait supplier leaves the hotel, the visitor returns, complains about the room, takes back the deposit and leaves.

Before the visitor arrived, the town was in a liquidity trap.  When all the debts were totalled up, nobody actually owed anyone anything, but because each individual could only see what they themselves owed or were owed, they thought they were broke.  Note that no-one earned anything in order to pay off the debts.  It was the mere presence of the money that enabled it.

This story illustrates current theory on how to beat a liquidity trap.  Someone else needs to step in, loan some money, then take it back again a short time later.  In modern parlance, this is called quantitative easing.  However, in theory a better solution would be to get everyone together and work out who actually owes what to whom, because it can often be less than everyone thinks.

When Lehman Brothers went bust, there were $400bn of Credit Default Swaps written against it, which in theory could have toppled more banks, triggering more CDS reckoning, causing more failures etc.etc. However, the CDS resolution process allowed everyone to work out final totals of what was owed before anyone paid anything and when it was all finally worked out the amount of money actually owed between the parties was approx $7bn, as most parties with positions on one side, also had positions on the other side (which does raise the question of why they bothered in the first place, but there you go!).  What was feared as a harbinger of doom turned out to be a damp squib, as most of the debts cancelled each other out.

That fear however, was very real prior to the resolution and would have had an affect on what the market did at the time.  What would be even better, would be to be able to automatically resolve liquidity traps and cancelling-out trades as they happen.  To do that though would mean everyone would have to see everyone elses financial status, which has obvious fatal issues.  Which is where Identity 2.0 comes in.

The theory behind services like Cardspace is that they can be used to handle complex data relationships while only releasing the minimum amount of personally identifiable information.  In the case of liquidity trap resolution, in theory that means no identifiable information at all, as what’s important are the amounts, not the identities of the debtors/creditors.  If it’s possible to trace through a debt chain and find that it’s circular then it can be wiped out automatically.  It would also hopefully show when you are actually *not* in a liquidity trap, where quantitative easing is a hinderance rather than a help.

Like I say, it was an utterly insane thought. I promise though it wasn’t as insane as the second one.  I’m going to be losing sleep over that one.

Anyone remember SimCity 2000?  One of the power stations you could build was the microwave receiver, that accepted power from satellite solar arrays.  Well, now there’s a company who reckons they can have a working system by 2016 (which is 4 years before it becomes available in the game! Maybe fusion power *will* actually happen!)

Read the interview here.

The company’s website is here.

And while we’re on the topic of strangely useful inventions, how about the ‘bumpy road’ aircon compressor!

I kid you not…

As part of my attempt to understand the current financial times, I’ve been constructing an imaginary world in my head, and trying to visualise the first principles of trade.  Yes, I know, I have far too much time on my hands.

The first thing I noticed is that you don’t have to worry about trade between borders.  Just extend the border.  While in the real world political interference is a real influence on the way business operates, you want to first find out what would happen in the natural state and then consider how you want to interfere!  The only fundamental reason for cross-border trade (whether international, national, or municipal) is if the economy in question desires something it does not have and cannot produce.

The second thing I noticed was that the nature of a self-contained economy is directly related to its population size.  It comes down to what the purpose of the economy is, which is to meets the requirements of the human population.  That means food.  If you don’t have many people to feed, you can gather.  As the population increases, you’ll need to hunt, then farm, then industrialise, then…..whatever comes next (looking like GM?).  This is the necessity that drives invention.

Which raises the question, what would happen if the population became static?  The need for improved technology would certainly be lessened.  While we naturally seek to improve the way we do things, we simply wouldn’t have the incentive to spend too much time on it (except for maybe a new energy source at this point).  What would that do to economic balance, because by this time labour has already specialised.

You don’t need many people building machinery because they’ve already built them all.  They just need to fix/replace broken equipment from time to time.  The farmers however, still need to work just as hard as they’ve always done, because what they do, but its nature,  does not persist.

The reason I bring this up is that this seems to be the classical problem of standard economic theory.  There is always a requirement for new stuff.  But sometimes there isn’t.  What do you do with the machinery creators who are now surplus?

So the financial world is in chaos, and has been for the best part of 2 years.  By official accounts, the chaos is now ending, but I find it hard to understand how that could possibly be, seeing as nothing has been done to address the proximate cause. No-one appears to have gone to prison for the sub-prime fraud.  The overvalued houses bought with liar loans are still overvalued, even with recent drops.  According to this piece on the BBC news site, rumours fly that there are houses repossessed by state-supported banks but not being liquidated, presumably in order to manipulate house prices.  Ridiculous lending is still encouraged by government (even though they plead with banks to also not lend ridiculously, which makes it just all the more ridiculous!).

However, that isn’t even the root of the problem.  For that you need to watch the Money as Debt II video series on Youtube.  While you’re there watch the original series as well, although I think the new series better explains what’s actually going on (even if I’m not necessarily convinced by its solution).

The digital money idea is especially intriguing.  It would need to be coupled with something like Cardspace.  We need some way of digitally storing your money that would work internationally and digitally but not require a bank.  Part of the reason that the banking system is relatively unopposed is that in order to do any kind of trade you need to go through the banking system.  They are the gatekeepers.  They are holding all the keys.

In any case, something needs to be done about money, because it will prove to be our destruction.  The problem is that nobody really understands what money is, youtube videos notwithstanding.   What does it represent? Fiat money (that is anything that has no value in and of itself *) used to represent a holding of a precious metal.  It doesn’t anymore.  I asked a friend in my ward who works in the city about it and he said it represents all assets now, not just gold or whatever.

So instantly the question is how do you know how much money should be in the economy?  As I understand it, the current system was put in place to try and resolve that issue.  It doesn’t seem to be working.  Which means we need a replacement.  Any ideas?

*cash is a good example as without the government saying it’s worth £5/£10/whatever, it’s just a scrap of paper worth less than pennies because it’s been used already!

Just thought I’d poke my head in and do…something….can’t remember what.

I’ve had a thread running in my head for a while about economics.  Hopefully I’ll get that down soon.  Otherwise, in the meantime I think I’ll take questions from the floor.  Anything in particular you guys wanna know?

Been thinking about a scripture recently (Alma 32):

13 And now, because ye are compelled to be humble blessed are ye; for a man sometimes, if he is compelled to be humble, seeketh ^arepentance; and now surely, whosoever repenteth shall find mercy; and he that findeth mercy and ^bendureth to the end the same shall be saved.

14 And now, as I said unto you, that because ye were compelled to be ^ahumble ye were blessed, do ye not suppose that they are more blessed who truly humble themselves because of the word?

15 Yea, he that truly humbleth himself, and repenteth of his sins, and endureth to the end, the same shall be blessed—yea, much more blessed than they who are compelled to be humble because of their exceeding poverty.

16 Therefore, blessed are they who ^ahumble themselves without being ^bcompelled to be humble; or rather, in other words, blessed is he that believeth in the word of God, and is baptized without ^cstubbornness of heart, yea, without being brought to know the word, or even compelled to know, before they will believe.

That very last phrase is an intriguing one but that’s for another post.  Today I’ve been mulling over the humility bit.  It implies that at first, we are given the chance to be humble of our own accord.  If we don’t, we are ‘compelled’.  In this case, it’s the poverty of the people to whom Alma is speaking, but I think it can be applied more generally.  In any case, there’s only one way to ‘compel someone to be humble’ and that is by humiliation.

Now that word usually makes you think of fraternity/sports team initiations or having your trousers pulled down in public or suchlike, but the base idea is of an external force overwhelming you in such a way that you are unable to deny that  force’s supremacy.  In the Zoramites’ case, it was the injustice of their society, but it needn’t be something public or even recognisable by anyone else.  At some point, and in some way, it will be forcefully demonstrated to you that you are not all-powerful, or all-knowing, or whatever.  That you are not ‘all that’!  The question is what happens next.  Will you get mad and kick out and blame God for your troubles, or will you look to see the lessons that can be gained from your experience?

The closest analogy I can think of is if you’re playing a sport and you lose badly.  You can spend your time blaming the conditions or the referee, or you can go back to training and improve your game.  And that decision makes all the difference.

Seems everytime I go to post here, the layout of the text editor has changed.  I never know from one post to the next how to do anything. I must be getting old…

So – to those people who check this blog once a quarter or more – Hi! How’s things?

The big scoop of the century is that I have made it to 30.  I say made it, like it’s the pinnacle of my existence, but to be honest I was kind of hoping to never be here.  Not that I was hoping to die or anything psycho-depresso like that, but I’m officially old, and… well… I still live with my parents with pretty much no hope of escape.  I’m also now pretty much whoever it is I’m going to be for the rest of my life (’cause lets face it – old folks don’t get reputations for being stuck in their ways for nothin’!), and I have to say I’m not particularly impressed.

I’m also discovering extreme grumpiness, especially when exposed to politicans and the utter nonsense they spout on an hourly basis.  I will forbear from ripping them to shreds for now, but I make no promises…

So yeah – I’m not overly thrilled or excited; just gettings to grips with the mundane.