tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-56753212870295684232024-03-05T06:11:40.884-07:00Narj"Ready, shoot... Aim!"Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02749591528183545498noreply@blogger.comBlogger125125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5675321287029568423.post-51594569004672739382023-10-27T06:06:00.000-06:002023-10-27T06:06:03.633-06:00Constellation<p> I named the boat Constellation. I don't often come up with a good one like that, but this is a boat name to recon with. Obviously her forebearer is the mighty frigate, but also, Constellations is what I've been doing. Counting generously Orbcomm, Teledesic, OneWeb Starlink, and just now Kuiper, I've launched five flying constellations. Probably I have more spacecraft on orbit than anybody?</p><p>I love that boat. Home for years, with all the features -- I like to say -- that separate us from the animals: hot showers, RADAR, laundry. In all the time I lived aboard (one decade, two constellations) I never made a blog post. So, maybe I'm back.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXcIBYL49jlO92FmgYHfEVwr-nAUiz7yznNQSmzT7SpFFAXbvsQgbZ50tFYOtVqW1Q1zNqL7GHeZDiRtu6dmDKcfCjv_DUqn_grVrE-CqFnvyKELESgIHg01e_f2ls3T8Q6RIYpgvlsjdT6cP0BtxRoNznkMIMNFaKxX7V3LX41_YKUJ3b48BP8J_Ucxgq/s4032/20200617_170320.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2268" data-original-width="4032" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXcIBYL49jlO92FmgYHfEVwr-nAUiz7yznNQSmzT7SpFFAXbvsQgbZ50tFYOtVqW1Q1zNqL7GHeZDiRtu6dmDKcfCjv_DUqn_grVrE-CqFnvyKELESgIHg01e_f2ls3T8Q6RIYpgvlsjdT6cP0BtxRoNznkMIMNFaKxX7V3LX41_YKUJ3b48BP8J_Ucxgq/s320/20200617_170320.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6kSL33DrMR9klHmIaZh6G7e3aKGlUgTZuSqHE7BTbivTdvHFAzZ1ZOT4sxOcw7ecQ7AJdhzEvYZGrCmAbT-wAfkMXpEIPoOQQuPp16-s5VZYkyMReEhh-F98969XaKLhgngmhot5CxVdtT99rq6u9NuhrS2YETuRArciO9s0X0pmCV5KfQcX4kICR8hi6/s2880/20210103_081536.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2160" data-original-width="2880" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6kSL33DrMR9klHmIaZh6G7e3aKGlUgTZuSqHE7BTbivTdvHFAzZ1ZOT4sxOcw7ecQ7AJdhzEvYZGrCmAbT-wAfkMXpEIPoOQQuPp16-s5VZYkyMReEhh-F98969XaKLhgngmhot5CxVdtT99rq6u9NuhrS2YETuRArciO9s0X0pmCV5KfQcX4kICR8hi6/s320/20210103_081536.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02749591528183545498noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5675321287029568423.post-60207706537883414522021-03-30T21:36:00.001-06:002021-03-30T21:43:30.585-06:00Boat CONSTELLATION! Constellation!<p> Constellation</p><p>CONSTELLATION!</p>Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02749591528183545498noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5675321287029568423.post-81127624724257212582018-09-03T05:49:00.000-06:002018-09-05T08:54:49.922-06:00100% Death Tax<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://www.the-crises.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/gini-index-usa.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.the-crises.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/gini-index-usa.jpg" data-original-height="564" data-original-width="800" height="225" width="320" /></a></div>
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the Gini index. (It now stands at .48)</div>
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Abraham, getting ready to switch to the goat.</div>
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<a href="https://i0.wp.com/tomasgarciahuidobro.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Philippe_de_Champaigne_-_Le_sacrifice_dIsaac.jpg?fit=1000%2C1200&ssl=1" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="667" height="320" src="https://i0.wp.com/tomasgarciahuidobro.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Philippe_de_Champaigne_-_Le_sacrifice_dIsaac.jpg?fit=1000%2C1200&ssl=1" width="266" /></a></div>
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(I think the goat can tell)</div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">I</span>n this essay the problem in consideration is the economy. The Gini curves of income and wealth are the economy's thermometer, and they continue to bend steeper over time. For those unfamiliar, the Gini index is a concave plot showing disparity. There should be some uneven distribution of course. Some people through hard work, perseverence and initiative are more successful than others and deserve the fruits of that labot. Others just get lucky, or unlucky. It's very unlucky to be born poor. (More on that later.) What is the "right" amount of income or wealth disparity?<br />
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My thesis here is that there must be some level that would be too extravagant, and we're way past it. For comparison, the US is tied with China for third worst in the world, behind Brazil and Mexico. These are not countries whos social and economic systems we typically like to compare ourselves to, right? Maybe you’d still be suspicious it’s a bad thing to have a high Gini Index, so let's consider our own historical trajectory of this number. Now days, the Gini Indicator shows a dynamic range not seen since the Great Depression. That's the plot at the top of the page. During America's "golden age" after WWII, it was lower than ever.<br />
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Another related measure of economic opportunity is Mobility: the chance to change your social class. Low mobility would mean if your parents are wealthy, you will be too, and same if they are poor. Excepting only Great Britain the US is at the bottom of the developed world in this measure of opportunity. That means the “American Dream” is something of a fiction: <i>maybe</i> you can lift yourself up, but you would literally have a better chance of it if you lived anywhere else. Mobility and wealth disparity are statistically correlated too, everywhere. I suggest that's no surprise because the system is mathematically unstable. What that means is that there's a snowballing effect where extra wealth seems to enable accumulation of MORE which I hope rings true? If you have a little extra, you can save it and it will grow.<br />
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Ok that’s the problem: what do we do about it? I think we should directly measure and control these parameters. Instead of arguing what’s the right tax rate, just change it (cautiously) in response to the feedback we get from measuring the economy. I’m a fan of equalizing income and capital gains taxes for instance. People who have more wealth are able to invest it, so they make capital gains, which are lightly taxed and consequently enable spiraling capital gains. This powers the snowball effect, so closing that loophole would help put the brakes on it. Also, income and capital gains taxes are types of “derivative control” which respond to the problem by tamping down change. Income is the rate of change of your wealth. A proportionate control is also needful, one that would tax the value of (not the change in) wealth. Property tax is one example and another is the much maligned and overlooked inheritance tax. Proportional in this case means the more you have, the greater proportion is taken.<br />
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That’s the thesis: the inheritance tax should grow from zero to 100% as incremental inherited wealth exceeds a few million dollars. Just to put a cherry on top of it, it should be a total, not “per child” amount.<br />
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These may seem like radical proposals. This is an extreme situation! As a species, we humans have exceeded the design goal we received from evolution, (go forth and multiply) and are now forging unknown territory, the hegemony of humanity breeding and consuming like it was still a 50/50 bet whether we or the baboons would dominate the savanna, ...and our chromosomes aren’t able to learn from success: only failure wipes out a characteristic. We ought to design better behaviors for ourselves before evolution gives us a hard negative lesson through collapse. I am saying we should use our brains, through policy, to affect the future instead of being only hapless objects of natural selection.<br />
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It won’t be easy, transcending your genetics. Everyone reacts more strongly to inheritance tax than income tax. I bet you did too. Why? It’s the same reason the binding of Isaac churns our guts: we’re far more ready to bear some burden ourselves than harm our progeny. It is evolution’s greatest mandate.<br />
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Yet this sacrifice for the common good is precisely what we need to do and it’s not hard. Your advanced monkey brain can calculate that $5 million is a nice inheritance, but your lizard brain can’t do math and acknowledges no limit to how much you should be allowed to get your kids ahead of everybody else. This is the instinct that's wrong in a world of law and inheritable property. Some may say we shouldn't try to transcend this survival of the fittest to which I answer, we already have! Consider the mobility statistic. That is the degree to which YOUR blood sweat and tears are irrelevant in comparison to your family's historical advantage or disadvantage. It's hardly a measure of fitness! We must restore mobility to really be a land of opportunity. That's tautological. We cannot accept both our gut instinct of limitless inheritance and still “hold it to be self evident, that all men are created equal.” It’s time to live up to our constitution. We SAY we want initiative, drive, boldness and perseverance to be what distinguishes winners so let’s prove it by leveling the playing field. If we can do that, if we transcend our cave-man programming, (just a little bit!) then we will really enable people to succeed or fail on their own merits, and that will be a just society.<br />
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Much of conservative politics is founded on a sense of injustice derived from slackers taking advantage,yet the structure of inheritance creates the greatest freeloader class of all. This is hypocrisy; living a lie. Instead, we should all work hard to reconcile that in ourselves, not by justifying it, but through action to square the accounts. Let’s change the system to make it more fair. People should definitely get what they deserve in life, but they should also deserve what they get.<br />
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An effective and fair method to do that would be to cap inheritance.</div>
Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02749591528183545498noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5675321287029568423.post-4468528564846928262017-02-05T16:41:00.001-07:002019-05-23T08:56:36.045-06:00Best Fonts!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Best Fonts are Glider, Papyrus, Sarcsm, Annie use your telescope, Schoolbell Mountains of Christmas and Architect's Daughter. I'm just not gonna be shamed for any of that. Part of my point here is to post for posterity, the most awesome sarcasm font, as used here on Narjsberk for titles.<br />
...now it's later, and I see my font is LOST. I must go find sarcasm again. It was like Dr. Seuss for web pages.<br />
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Ok, <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/10Rk1qawKkfCMRvjnf_EhkAvIZJmpWjCO/view?usp=sharing" target="_blank">here it is</a>.</div>
Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02749591528183545498noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5675321287029568423.post-64240938074052324662016-11-13T12:12:00.002-07:002017-02-05T16:37:52.674-07:00Eulogy for Jay / Tired of this Damn Shit.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /><br />As a boy I was surrounded by admirable men. They were brave and generous and I was happy. I grew older taking it all for granted and one day one of them died. I miss him, and felt lost and alone. It dawned that, following through all of my life the great trail of history blazed by people gentler and stronger than I, and with all of the future pressing from behind, I now found myself alone in the van, with nothing to do but find my courage, and pick up the spear, and go forward. Because, when heroes fall, they don’t leave a vacuum, they leave YOU, and the responsibility for the future. <br /><br />So be it. I will try my best to be worthy of the giants I've followed. Now, Mitch McConnell, and Donald Trump, it is my joy to find you here victorious, opposing me, because I am the very point of the spear, baby, and I’m going through you like paper-mâché.</span></div>
Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02749591528183545498noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5675321287029568423.post-41928655626468133992013-07-08T14:15:00.001-06:002013-07-08T14:15:07.734-06:00Stuck<p>One mile from <u>shore</u></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlJWTocr8maG7MO9mPOg4ueXZxK01iXNgnXehyEzkE8E-S4SeYSAGImCx1i9DbcJGn9PXpVy0l9rn6w81b6-cs8AyHL-9SYG9yjWpgTHlDTpFLzvbBq96p7_51DeMrUnNpsbzQMIbL-E2K/s1600/DSC_0047.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlJWTocr8maG7MO9mPOg4ueXZxK01iXNgnXehyEzkE8E-S4SeYSAGImCx1i9DbcJGn9PXpVy0l9rn6w81b6-cs8AyHL-9SYG9yjWpgTHlDTpFLzvbBq96p7_51DeMrUnNpsbzQMIbL-E2K/s640/DSC_0047.jpg"> </a> </div>Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02749591528183545498noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5675321287029568423.post-84157564190175861992013-04-18T17:36:00.002-06:002013-04-18T17:37:17.115-06:00Gun solution?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
My car is insured for half a million bucks against the chance that it hurts someone.<br /><br />How about a similar bond held against the chance that a gun does the same? Levied as a use tax at the point of sale, and returned upon transferal, it would spread liability across the appropriate population, compensate victims, and motivate owners to guard carefully against "theft and loss."</div>
Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02749591528183545498noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5675321287029568423.post-21302310842939753432013-01-17T06:15:00.001-07:002013-01-17T06:16:05.901-07:00Christmas picture<div><br/><img src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpTVoJIPmRQ1zBuPF37k9BPbt3fsUmSzXaa31o8caKcjFwU2A5HODUrJe0kd3Q_3_mQmlzjIC-BLwKJPX-2C8PtVBf_OAiifY5cIFd2sNOk5RxFQ3YNylU-yCEJ9qOZTeq39vVK3zxPUOu/' /></div>Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02749591528183545498noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5675321287029568423.post-51770918526918295922012-11-25T16:16:00.004-07:002012-11-25T16:32:53.593-07:00Kaigun: Steampunk Chapter 7<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;">Making Steam</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Andrei Michal found Sergei's dried up little corpse rolled in blankets, only a little mouse-eaten. He looked satisfied, as though he'd died on a full stomach with all the kids married and next year's barley crop safely in the ground. Andrei hoped it was true, but he doubted it. He couldn't spent too much time worrying about that though, because of the wonderful machine! After running back, shouting to wake everyone up and tell them about the body, and the museum, and the things he'd seen, he had mostly been shushed. They dragged out the old curator ("because nobody wants to sleep with a dead man") and mostly went back to sleep. One of the girls, Anjin, seemed a little bit interested in all the little books and the shiny control panels, and Dmitri was roused enough to at least look around, though he found the aircraft more interesting.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Not Andrei. He knew what he was looking at was just right, just modern enough to be potent, just archaic enough to be operable in the current sorry state of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Those fancy fighter jets would never fly again, never even find the exotic fuel for their finicky bellies, or a pilot with training to know which button to push but this thing, this "Sovietski Kaigun," this was obvious in the same way a blunt instrument advertised it's purpose. A rolling fire-powered monster intended to fight old wars against moldering foes no longer ominous, it could be run by a starving band of villagers, he knew it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">"And this," thought Andrei Michal, patting the 14 foot long steam rifle, "this is obvious too. It is a chicken gun."</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Andrei curled up not so far from where he'd found the old curator, and fell asleep alternately wondering how to awaken the somnolent Kaigun, and imagining the stupendous pot of soup he would make afterwards. Where would they get enough onions?</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The next day, there was some interest, peaking after Dmitri happened across the wine cache, and tapering rapidly thereafter as people, despite the best intent to ration, drank rather more than they should on empty bellies, and after so many weeks without any liquor to stay in practice. Still, Russian peasants (and they now thought of themselves as that, though only privately) are nothing if not good drinkers, and by late afternoon, an earnest if raucous committee deigned to stand around the Kaigun, poking at levers, smearing the protective </span><span style="font-size: large;">red</span><span style="font-size: large;"> grease, and thumbing the manuals. Everyone considered the monster, a museum piece after all, to be surely disabled, and if by imperceptible means, well, it was plainly complicated enough to have had a key valve removed, concrete poured in some essential plumbing, or a critical cotter pin pulled, even if nonesuch could be found by a band of mere vagabonds.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Then Anjin found the precise accountant's inventory of projectiles, and it's obvious discrepancy, and then tiny scratches around the otherwise factory-perfect muzzle of the starboard rifle, itself elevated a couple of degrees out of it's caging mechanism, and someone noticed the Kaigun was aimed bodily at two wide rolling hangar doors, padlocked and rusting now. Every attitude changed.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Outside, beyond the doors, across a road and a dilapidated park was an ancient sculpture, Soviet in style, abstract and curved, welded steel evoking the flag's hammer and sickle. ...with a two foot hole blown through the sickle's decimeter blade as though by some monstrous torch. Nothing much could be found of the supposed "bolt" but standing in the notch of a collapsed cinderblock wall another 20 meters beyond the sculpture, one could look back, through the melted hole and watch the hangar door rolling slowly open (the locks having been opened with keys from the curator's breast pocket) and unveiling the rifle's maw as it did.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Now, people were interested, galvanized. Plans were laid, Andrei congratulated, more wine drunk, vengeance plotted, threats trumpeted into the sunset, Andrei carried around the museum in triumph, dancing, even and yet more drinking and then sleep with headaches sure to follow.</span></div>
Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02749591528183545498noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5675321287029568423.post-55244203070537166662012-11-12T07:43:00.002-07:002012-11-16T02:23:04.409-07:00Cosmology & Einstein<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-size: large;">First, here's the link to my first post, talking about time vs speed of light. <a href="http://narjsberk.blogspot.com/2009/11/this-is-going-to-be-cosmology-post.html" target="_blank">THE Horizon.</a></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Next, here are some neat facts.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"> Here's the <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Av_3riPd0ZrwdHF0cENrdzUyVjV5MEY1VUlpUDFNaUE#gid=0" target="_blank">spreadsheet of cool facts</a> from Brian <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enSXh4YY9Ws&feature=watch-vrec" target="_blank">Cox's lecture</a> right before they found Higgs. That lecture had in it the following. First, everything's either the standard model or relativity and we can't tie them together yet. Then a divergence into the universe, introducing the Hubble constant, which is 1/13.4billion yrs, so that's roughly when everything was simultaneously here, i.e. the age of the universe. It's derived from known brightness of some supernovae. (distance) and red shifts (velocity) of everything we see. Assuming the redshift of the CMB is on that line, it's 13.4 billion years old. BTW, CMB is uwave frequency now, was literally red at first. After H0, Cox talked about particles. up,down, neutrino, electron being all you need. Two more columns of heavier versions, then photon & other force carriers. Nothing for gravity. Higgs field posited, the particle being very heavy & thus requiring high energy to make. After the switch to gravity & Einstein, he noted the light clock & Lorentz contraction as a consequence.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Well, that's just a lot of notes from the show. Then I started reading about relativity a bit, simultaneity & constancy of c. The first question is, what about a light-speed game of ping-pong, where the table is aligned with the velocity? The metaphor's imperfect (air hockey would be better) because there's no hypotenuse here. Instead just imagine the balls going straight back and forth. In the light clock meanwhile, photons go up and down between mirrors, perpendicular to v,"tick, tock." Onboard a speeding train, let's say the clock (tic,toc) and the game (ping pong) are perfectly synchronized, one second travel each way for both the pendulum and pingpong ball. That's my view aboard the train. What about to you, standing by the tracks?</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I've got 3 things to discuss and quite difficult without pictures but here goes...</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">First, the standard light clock explanation. To you, the clock photons travel a diagonal, the hypotenuse of a triangle. (For ease of computation, say v =c/2 and a light-second's worth of distance is d, henceforward.) That lets you calculate, based on the root(5)* distance traveled after a tick and a tock, "the clocks on that train must be running slow if they think that's a second!" From the ratio of sqrt(5) to 2 you calculate the ratio of time slowing aboard the train.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;">{*This last is wrong, t' = t/sqrt(1-v^2/c^2), says many sources. I didn't immediately see my error, but it calculates to 15%, not 12% so I'll use that below. Update: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilation" target="_blank">wikipedia </a>clarifies the answer, which is that the base leg is shortened because it's t', the quicker-ticking observer's clock from which frame we make this measurement, while the beat that determines the distance traveled is at the slower moving clock rate. Anyway, it complicates the algebra slightly.}</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Second, the train has to shrink. That's because the pingpong and the clock are synchronized. The forward travelling pingpong ball also takes 1 sec (onboard time) and being synchronized, 1.15sec, observer time to cross the table one way, from "ping" to "pong" so to speak. Unlike the pendulum, those ping-pong photons will not travel the whole hypotenuse so to stay synchronized with the "tic-toc" of the clock the vehicle must stretch or shrink along the velocity direction so that the pingpong ball hits the paddle just at the "tock." With v = c/2 the numbers work out nicely. In a second's time, the ball travels the distance of the table, but the train has meanwhile moved half a second ahead. It will take two seconds for a photon to hit the second paddle, one to cross the table, and one more to catch up to the train. Only, it will actually be 2x 1.15sec since we're working in observer time where I've already noted the train clock is running ~15% slow. Whoops, a paradox! ...it <b><i>can't </i></b>take that long because it's got to stay synchronized with the clock! It's got to get there in just one (dilated) second. This is why Einstein (or Lorentz) said the train has to shrink. From the observer's perspective, we calculate the unknown distance from known time and speeds, yielding that the length of the squished table d(squished) = (c-v)*1.118 which tells us the train has to shrink to just 18% more than <b><i>half </i></b>it's "real" (at-rest) length. Ok, fine. Mind bending, but I get it.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Now my third observation stumped me: it seems sure the return of the ping-pong ball back across the table will happen in an instant, since the train, and the "ping" paddle aboard it, is rushing forward to meet it. Remember the essence of this experiment is that the balls (being photons) travel at c w.r.t. all observers. Now the observer sees relative velocity between ball and paddle of 3c/2, and distance ~d/2, so elapsed t will be ~d/3c, or just 1/3 sec! (approximation 'cause I'm temporarily leaving out the 15% time dilation for easier calculating) How's <i>that </i>gonna synchronize with the tick-tock? Last night talking with Miles I convinced myself it was a consequence of the time when I make the observations, which time is itself obviously subject to lightspeed delays. Now, I'm just confused again. However, check this out:</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">In the second it takes from ping to pong, the train moves half a light second (d/2) down the tracks and so it will take an extra half second for the "pong" to reach us. Along the way, the second "ping" is added because after all the report of pong is a photon and the ball is just as fast, so "ppionngg" will arrive all at once. Since I know the train's moving I expect each successive second's data to arrive an extra half second late. All together I hear ppionngg every 2.3 seconds, one sec for travel time of the ball, + one second's further train "entfernung" (distancing itself from me); so I guess it does all work out.</span></div>
Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02749591528183545498noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5675321287029568423.post-18175511508228807972012-11-03T11:37:00.000-06:002012-11-08T02:43:24.024-07:00Last Thursday! ...and Other Abbreviations<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
This is just a place to collect cool abbreviations for arguments & whatnot. In cases where I've left out a reference it usually means I was just too lazy to add the link to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia" target="_blank">wikipedia</a>.<br />
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<b>WAP, SAP </b>The weak and strong anthropic principle, basically the universe has to be pretty special to have been friendly to human life. Strong version includes the mass of the universe, strength of gravity, all the other natural constants that make the universe "just so." There's Douglas Adams' beautiful comeback of the living puddle that wonderingly remarks how the universe fits it perfecty, "in fact it fits me staggeringly well." (Then the sun comes out and the puddle's custom designed universe inexplicably erases it's very reason for being: how could that BE?!) Neil Tyson answers this by talking about how much of the universe is actually hostile: stars sleeting radiation and vacuum and giant planets of frozen poison gas and so forth, but that seems more over-dramatic than on point.<br />
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<b>Explosion, or ECQ</b> is short for Latin: "ex contradictione quodlibet," meaning, "from contradiction, everything follows." Meaning the moon is made of cheese, etc. Chaos. It's a neat and logical argument that you can prove anything, if you let yourself begin with A and ~A.<br />
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<b>FOL:</b> First Order Logic constrains the domain of functional operations. This is tidy, avoids Russell's Paradox, implies his "types"?<br />
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<b>HOL:</b> Higher Order Logic allows recursion, at the expense of precluding mathematical completeness (see Goedel).<br />
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<b>Hard Problem</b> of consciousness is explaining why we have qualia. I think this is the same as asking "what am I?" meaning my sensation of self, vs just a bag of biological parts. Is this a, or maybe <b>the </b>non trivial example of emergence.<br />
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<b>Laplace's Demon:</b> is determinism, writ large. By knowing every particle's speed and position, the history could be predicted, forward and back through time. (No relation to Maxwell's demon, who reverses entropy by opening the thermos lid only when efficacious. (He works up a sweat though, so it's ok.))<br />
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<b>Last Thursday(ism)</b> is the assertion, common to creationists and solipsism, that "the earth's not really 6e9 years old, God put all those dinosaur bones there last Thursday" ...and similar invulnerable statements.<br />
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<b>NST:</b> (Cantor's) Naive Set Theory: any definable group is a set.<br />
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<b>Russell's Paradox:</b> The list of all lists that do not list themselves. You could make such a list, but whether adding itself to the contents or not, the title's untrue either way. BR's solution is to require the domain of f(x) be specified before f can be defined. By choosing x (and closing out the the membership) ahead of f, f is precluded as an argument. This led to Russell to hierarchies of sets, none including itself. It seems (to me) to preclude recursion. That seems silly. Obviously recursion works, but maybe it's not guaranteed to? This is said to be related to Goedel's incompleteness theorem & Cantor's diagonal proof. Turing, in the paper describing his famous machine intelligence test, makes reference to Goedel in describing a limit to computer behavior, saying it could not answer of its brethren, "Will this computer ever answer yes to any question?" I can't quite reason through that one. The interesting point is that the seemingly trivial "BS" sentence "this is false." has been related by plenty of luminaries to Goedel's incompleteness theorem. ...so it's perhaps oversimplified, but not bullshit.</div>
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<b>Turtles, all the way down</b>. Hawkins popularizing somebody else popularizing William James making fun of early mystical arguments about the earth's place in the universe. Infinite regress or VIR (V for vicious) in DFW's lingo.<br />
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<b>Cantor's Diagonal Proof:</b> A function is defined that lets you create a new row in a matrix of integers (letters, reals, etc), however big the matrix is already. (The function is to make the new row of the above diagonal, with each element altered: incremented, negated or what-have you.)<br />
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<b>V:</b> Von Neuman Universe is the class of heriditary, well founded sets.<br />
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Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02749591528183545498noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5675321287029568423.post-25975762740665067812012-11-01T07:58:00.001-06:002012-11-03T02:55:25.310-06:00Help, I've fallen in a rat hole!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
With a double Americano and a <a href="http://www.rationallyspeakingpodcast.org/show/rs72-graham-priest-on-paradoxes-and-paraconsistent-logic.html" target="_blank">philosophy podcast</a>, I have had an introduction to paraconsistent logic. That, unfortunately, is exactly what it sounds like, either of the dictionary meanings "near" or "contrary" working just fine.<br />
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There was a discussion of<b><i> logics</i></b>, meaning multiple different schemas for understaning things logically, an implication that living within "one true logic" was a small minded way of living in a gated community where nasty complicated ideas were just carefully excluded so they wouldn't have to be faced. An analogy, poorly executed IMO, to various geometries (each individually consistent with it's axioms, I say) and various physics was made (Re: various physics, I feel there's just one, although there exist heirarchical layers of approximations, useful in greater degree as restrictions such as "for v << c" apply.) Poorly executed because the same limitations were not acknowledged in logic. Wikipedia does describe paraconsistent logics as a weaker subset rather than something entirely different, an idea that appeals to me.<br />
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Are these guys nuts, or am I? I know that I have a weakness, feel the seductive pull of the crazy, and I want to dive into these roiled waters & see where the waterfall goes. I know it's cool to be consistent and everything, so I'm embarrassed to like these word games. Often, I've felt they were nothing more, but today in the early dark, I'm not so sure... Hence the cry for help.<br />
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Kantor's work on infinity was cited in support of the need for paraconsistent logic, and the canonical example, the Lie Paradox, (the statement inside these parens is a lie) was ponderously explaned, like it was a computer program being iterated* and then cutely expanded into something different as follows: "this statement is either False, or Neither-true-nor-false." That's the "revenge paradox" cute not just for the name but because it is at least consistent to say that the statement is neither. I feel that the statement is just a wrapper within which the nut of the problem is hidden: is "neither T nor F" maybe nonsense? I think maybe so, in statements of fact.<br />
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*I like "iterated" here. That has saved me from the rabbit hole in the past, and may yet let me jumar my way out of it this time, too. In computer programming, we have very clear true (1) and false (0). Data and control systems make great use of self referential mathematics: that's the idea of feedback, signals (or ideas) looping around and affecting themselves. Coerced inexorably into what I call "reality" so they can be useful and implemented on rational things like computers, the programs simply throw an error if you try to code up a Lie Paradox, and I understand self referential math to involve either (a) a distinction in time, meaning the discrete interval prior to this one, the one after, and so forth (parenthetically the formal discrete time mathematics of <i>F(z)</i>) or (b) a derivative, meaning no instantaneous change but instead a rate, i.e. the <i>Laplace transform</i>. Those are a couple of pretty robust branches of math, which which I'm acquainted, and in which simultaneity of trud & false is just disallowed. The philosophers would say I've restricted my domain the the consistent one where things make sense for my pea brain. The podcast calls Wittgenstein's "inadequate diet of examples" humorously to bear, & it's certianly true: maybe I've just been living on a flat earth model so long that I intuitively grant premises that should be picked at more carefully.<br />
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Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02749591528183545498noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5675321287029568423.post-2170990304374246882012-11-01T07:39:00.000-06:002012-12-30T03:04:48.704-07:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/Consolidated_Statement_of_Condition_of_all_Federal_Reserve_Banks-ASSETS.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="242" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/Consolidated_Statement_of_Condition_of_all_Federal_Reserve_Banks-ASSETS.gif" width="400" /></a></div>
The Fed is acting. Just look at this plot. Never mind understanding it at first, just look. That's what the Fed owns. The big picture is "something's up!" I'm trying to understand what, in more detail. <br />
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First of all, there's a companion liability picture. That one, (they're both on wikipedia's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve_System#Budget" target="_blank">Fed. Budget page</a>) matches, so assets = liabilities. The new matching liabilities that paid for these things are owed exclusively to the Treasury and preponderantly to depository institutions. The Fed bought bad debt from big banks, with what money I'm not sure.</div>
Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02749591528183545498noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5675321287029568423.post-19889088436822525862012-10-06T14:01:00.001-06:002012-10-06T14:04:28.334-06:00Misty winter run<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02749591528183545498noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5675321287029568423.post-11193111300718920242012-10-05T09:09:00.002-06:002012-12-30T03:05:16.467-07:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Here's how you make money, Romney style:<br />
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You start with a little seed money, and a company you're going to buy for collateral,<br />
...you get a company sized loan,<br />
...pay the old CEO some hush money (get the $ from the loan)<br />
...and pocket a big chunk of the money (34% is what they like).<br />
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The company you see is responsible for the loan: they have the new loan payments to make.<br />
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Then for a while, you get to play CEO, do some firing, close some plants, see if you can make it go!<br />
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The company meanwhile has taken all the risk, and it's a body blow. They have a $100 loan to service, and $50 worth of capital. (or maybe it's $100 million: the numbers are just representative.) Suppose they just try to pay it off: they're $50 short! Thus the net outcome is a new debt for the company to make payments on, all of which was essentially awarded as a bonus to the new owners.<br />
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It's so immoral, it's almost psychopathic.<br />
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This was the plot of the 80's movie, "Pretty Woman."<br />
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Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02749591528183545498noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5675321287029568423.post-36879164684553341332012-10-02T05:13:00.001-06:002012-10-02T05:13:48.657-06:00At a lacrosse game.<div><p>.</p>
<br/><img src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB1k17Gb_WmRZ9kP5rDP18LADnOB9_9Fg2PPvchvujxHPe_KFfQY8Ze_0UntigmgiFl2GbGTB258YKb_WyUzPeYKB1u-ZIJ_04W-ACXvBY3WLjZaEl_ItuNGePUGmr93dDWOORjqy4Ps9f/' /></div>Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02749591528183545498noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5675321287029568423.post-83195863575042624292012-09-19T04:32:00.011-06:002012-12-30T03:05:35.559-07:00Econ: half baked, so far. Stay tuned.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Economics heats up in an election year. Here are MY thoughts.<br />
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(1) I believe the Fed is mostly a good thing, the gold standard is silly. Gold's a commodity like anything else, and pegging money to it creates volatility: a bad thing. It's just playing craps. What's the ideal money? One where prices are fixed: $1 for a hamburger, now and forever. That's oversimplistic of course, we should use some average (eg Consumer Price Index) but you get the picture. The way to do that is to adjust the money supply. For instance, money supply has to grow if the economy does, lest all the new people making all the additional hamburgers cause deflation! <br />
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The Fed goes beyond "pure" constancy, seeking a moderate (2%) inflation. It's important to note inflation is under control. I don't mean that in the sense of "it's low" but in the sense of literally responsive to stimulus in ways we understand and can affect. That's what a control "system" <b>is</b> and arguably the US inflation control system operates pretty well. We could argue all day about what the inflation rate Ought to be, and we should, but that's another topic.<br />
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Note the Fed can control inflation without impact on US Government debt. No one has to issue a T-bill for the Fed to buy one. Heck right now (QE3) they're buying ordinary assets: home loans. No debt is being created, just adjustment of the money supply.<br />
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One thing I'm ignorant of and interested in is the Fed motivations. What creates and ensures their altruism? Under what pressures are they to do the right thing and can those pressures become overweening? For instance, a lot of those mortgages they're buying under QE2 are going to turn out to be bad debts and the Fed will lose money on this deal. What are the consequences of losing money when you can just print more? None is my simpleton's answer. If somebody can offer a more nuanced explanation I'd like to hear it.<br />
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One thing that will surely happen is that the banks, like Katrina victims with a fat insurance check in their pockets, will go right back and build more houses with potentially unchanged risk aversion. That safety net aspect of selecting (possibly distressed) mortgage assets seems a questionable choice to me. If we're stepping away from t-bills, how about buying up windmill farms, or public schools or something else we really want to encourage?<br />
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(2) Gini The <a href="http://www.physics.ucla.edu/~chester/GINI/index.html" target="_blank">Gini coefficient</a> is a measure of income concentration and the US trend is pretty bad and getting worse: look at our cohort: we're in a dead heat with China, aiming to overtake Mexico any minute.<br />
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<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/01/Gini_since_WWII.svg/720px-Gini_since_WWII.svg.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="459" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/01/Gini_since_WWII.svg/720px-Gini_since_WWII.svg.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="text-align: left;">Mitigating this grim fact somewhat is our ageing population, which demographic skews the answers as they retire but (unlike worse off countries) live on. I'd like to see a Gini coefficient calculated based on wealth instead of income. Of course, it's a big internet, and so</span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_distribution_of_wealth" style="text-align: left;" target="_blank"> here it is!</a><span style="text-align: left;"> You can sort the list with a click and find the US is the WORST except for Namibia, Zimbabwe and Switzerland, though we have the highest per capita wealth except for city-states Hong Kong, Luxemburg. (It's $143k, if you care, but those are jiggered currency trying to normalize across all currencies.) In the US, you can see below that the </span><a href="http://www.faculty.fairfield.edu/faculty/hodgson/courses/so11/stratification/income&wealth.htm" style="text-align: left;" target="_blank">wealth gini</a><span style="text-align: left;"> exhibits much larger disparity than the income gini.</span> </div>
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I'm opposed to this oligarchy and thus in favor of high inheritance tax. I agree you should get to benefit from the fruits of your labor, but maybe not your parents'! You should get what you deserve not what They did eh? This explodes the hypocrisy of many. A similar argument leads me to capital gains taxes. (A sense of fairness says, you don't labor for your <b>capital </b>gains.) Perhaps most importantly, I feel tax policy is the lever to control Gini Coefficient, just as Fed monetary policy is the lever to control inflation. We should argue about Gini, just like inflation, and then act positively to affect it. Right now the concentration is high and increasing, so the tax code should be more progressive. This seems pretty cut and dried to me.</div>
Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02749591528183545498noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5675321287029568423.post-36824865040443278772012-09-02T07:32:00.000-06:002012-09-02T07:33:30.754-06:00<p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-7sIGtAkMfdf2r1MjK1x2m0k5EAlviS_a8QIaCRqGdnfQwo_7Dc5AArEHZGteAjHsy2DZumlZzfk2gFS7IfpFFR5ciCNs27zZ_S4Gqo-eTT_2QHIC-7CBtASuNa39u0prQQyRkfXKCbK4/s1600/09022012131-710754.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-7sIGtAkMfdf2r1MjK1x2m0k5EAlviS_a8QIaCRqGdnfQwo_7Dc5AArEHZGteAjHsy2DZumlZzfk2gFS7IfpFFR5ciCNs27zZ_S4Gqo-eTT_2QHIC-7CBtASuNa39u0prQQyRkfXKCbK4/s320/09022012131-710754.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5783572081335005874" /></a></p>Best spot to read! Can you name it?Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02749591528183545498noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5675321287029568423.post-74436338588440603122012-09-01T07:43:00.005-06:002012-09-01T07:52:09.456-06:00Hops!<div class="mobile-photo">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgS1EVBEzGAQIRXYQ8g9bmLllzZzqWZtAN_y0dMHSp7hOnwjKpX1DRWad-_Dkbfp29gGg2Ie75mMKTIfeYrqqptr2_HPrRXB0u383fNntu1nZwCp26fxX3sg8lLryZwUStkdoEFe9Z2iST/s1600/09012012126-729202.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" height="640" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5783203657149844034" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgS1EVBEzGAQIRXYQ8g9bmLllzZzqWZtAN_y0dMHSp7hOnwjKpX1DRWad-_Dkbfp29gGg2Ie75mMKTIfeYrqqptr2_HPrRXB0u383fNntu1nZwCp26fxX3sg8lLryZwUStkdoEFe9Z2iST/s640/09012012126-729202.jpg" width="480" /></a></div>
This is about 2/3 of the hops. It's the second year and they grew great. No aphid problem this year (I used a fertilizer treatment Jack recommended) but I did have a bunch of tiny caterpillars, that ate perhaps 15% of the leaves. This'll be enough for a batch though, so now all I need is a barley farm...<br />
<br />Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02749591528183545498noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5675321287029568423.post-13331359987563437692012-09-01T07:43:00.001-06:002012-09-01T07:52:56.472-06:00airplane<div class="mobile-photo">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4xPOK8i5i356BrPrTJSukRerPNgnxWTp_bZINQNAHODjE33GpMfkVBgY5uzbJuIjLblyWoFBTPGP0VbrsQuQwSPURTlAPE9b22tbi6UZZg8-7Bsy4o8CxXJrwWK1cKwnNlhN4K_1rSG9s/s1600/05012012105-709004.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5783203571623504690" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4xPOK8i5i356BrPrTJSukRerPNgnxWTp_bZINQNAHODjE33GpMfkVBgY5uzbJuIjLblyWoFBTPGP0VbrsQuQwSPURTlAPE9b22tbi6UZZg8-7Bsy4o8CxXJrwWK1cKwnNlhN4K_1rSG9s/s320/05012012105-709004.jpg" /></a></div>
Airplane from last spring. Idea is to have roll and yaw coupled correctly with the same command. It's like a ventral rudder, but doesn't get scraped off when you land.Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02749591528183545498noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5675321287029568423.post-8783953930083874562012-08-31T08:31:00.002-06:002012-09-01T23:14:54.783-06:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6819.Ghostwritten" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="Ghostwritten" border="0" src="http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1320415093m/6819.jpg" /></a><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6819.Ghostwritten">Ghostwritten</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4565.David_Mitchell">David Mitchell</a><br />
My rating: <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/399957047">4 of 5 stars</a><br /><br />
So cruising along in this book, somewhere near the end of the beginning, thinking, "hey, it's kinda like #9 dream" only more disjoint & hard to follow when, SUDDENLY, he blew my mind and tied everything together.<br /><br />...so cool. It's too much to ask that this twist isn't spoiled often in the reviews, so be careful how much you read online. I recommend against reading even the book jacket. Instead, just go get it.<br /><br />Oh BTW an epic movie on Cloud Atlas is coming (has somebody mentioned that already). It seems frankly too big to succeed, but I'll be sure to go.<br /><br />---<br /><br />Whew, 2/3 now and enjoying a burst of joy at the individual moves Mitchell makes. I want to say there's something very special about these books, but there's a middle missing. I don't much miss it, but it isn't there. It's plot of some kind. There's plenty of action but no particular thread of continuity. Not because Mitchell can't do it though. In fact, hiding behind the kaleidoscope is a Grand Strategy. It will all be revealed to hang together at once at the end, in a giant rogue wave of coherence. Along the way, you can see the web of cables gathering: it will be Check and Mate in one move after a midgame of mindless (seeming!) wandering. If he were a girl he'd have only a regular body, but the mind of a tiger and perfect skin. If he were a musician, it would be a grand symphony and each individual note played perfectly buy with only a barely perceptible melody. Which brings me to the notes.<br /><br />Lots of sentences are individually quotable. I'll give you one, <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/616834-beg-pardon-i-detected-large-deposits-of-vanity-vanity-is"> here, </a> where the present story's hero Marco has just encountered a conceited, biddable, beddable woman in a London falafel shop. The sentences are individually beautiful, sad, or maybe laugh out loud funny. They're so good that it would be possible to read the book over a year's time, just ingesting a page or two to adore the prose.<br /><br />So you can enjoy Mitchell with a microscope or a telescope. Right in front of your nose at normal magnification, in the mid-game, perhaps it's just ok, but each separate story is still interesting. This is what Italo Calvino was trying to do.<br />
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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/3355789-mark">View all my reviews</a><br />
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Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02749591528183545498noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5675321287029568423.post-43023262175626159672012-08-30T08:12:00.002-06:002012-08-30T08:16:57.107-06:00Magic!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Election time, when we all think about economics.<br />
I've posted on <a href="http://narjsberk.blogspot.com/2012/01/tribal-economy.html" target="_blank">Tribal Econom</a>y before & this is an amplification of that idea.<br />
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The thing is, I want to tell you that I've found this miraculous elixir of prosperity. It's potent, it's everywhere, it's abundant. Not infinite, no, but there's enough to go around. It's oil, stored sunlight. You can light the darkness. You can turn it into plastic, melt rocks to make iron, and maybe best of all, power tractors made from iron and grow a hundred times (I'm sure it's more than that) the crops you could otherwise. <br />
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So we have a largess, an inheritance, a trust fund to guarantee our leisure. If you accept that homo sapiens is a viable species, that we could build huts and dig for potatoes and worms, bring down the occasional buffalo, then we're well enough equipped to survive. With the great power amplifier that is energy (whether oil, solar, nuclear or wind, animal) coupled to our talents, we're sure to live easier than hunter-gatherers.<br />
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Olde Tyme economic policy held that there "should" be full employment because of this. I can produce more than I need, so my production lifts us all, and why wouldn't we want that: some equitable arrangement is surely possible. Keynes said it's a complex dynamic system and can get stuck in miserly caution where the positive feedback of productivity needs a kick-start. (Hayek said, "watch out it's too complicated so don't meddle.") So where do we come down on the argument? This year's election is sometimes cast as a referendum on that question. I think it's a little different; it's not about a kick start.<br />
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I say the essential point is whether somebody, anybody, wants me to work or not. Of course that want is expressed indirectly through desire for what I could produce. Well, what about satiety? What if nobody wants anything. Somebody's already running the tractor so we've got 99 slackers and the farmer ain't one. So what is the problem? We started with me wanting work. Presumably I'm no just dedicated to watercolors because I'm not part of the tractor deal. Maybe a few guys have formed a tractor collective and they won't share the fruits of their labor: "We've got 5 of us, that's enough to drive this thing full time, so go looking elsewhere."<br />
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But what will they do with 95 unneeded rations? That's none of your beeswax. "Store it up for the kids, maybe. Or make likker, or iPhones, who knows? We'll think of something and the point is, it's ours."<br />
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So <i>ownership </i>has altered situation on the ground hugely away from the mathematical average. Plainly it's a critical factor. Before you all jump to the conclusion that I'm gonna go all commie on you, I'll say I agree the guys who built and drive the tractor need to get something for it, to motivate them to do that work. We can't all lay in the hammock or nobody eats. I get that. However, if they get it all, all the crops, then I'll still be a hunter-gatherer, elevated only very slightly by virtue of sometimes selling them a bit of pottery in exchange for a rare fine dinner. Alternately, we could ALL work, just as hard as we used to farm, and create more value for everyone, but if just a few have all the wealth, and are sated, then the elixir of prosperity's bottled up and can't get out into the economy.<br />
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This is my nutshell argument for high capital taxes. Not capital gains, well those too, sure, but capital itself is what I'm after, perhaps through the mechanism of inheritance tax. We need to reward work, but we also need to get value out there, coursing through the economy. Our presupposition of ownership is just that, a premise. It doesn't have any natural reason to be the baseline. "Check your premise" is a phrase bandied glibly: I'll adopt it.<br />
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In an age long gone when power flowed from the strength of your arm, it was awarded blindly by genetics, perhaps unjust but ephemeral as life. In an age of property ascendant, power is similarly unjust but indefatigable. Even I at first said "law" there instead of "property," falling prey myself to the pervasive bias that property is a God given right. I say this part of the constitution is too strong. We need to engineer enough turmoil into the system to make it possible for anyone to climb the mountain, and untenable to stand casually there forever without toil.<br />
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So I don't want a kick start, a jolt, an encouragement, a troubled asset relief program. I want a fundamental change in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angle_of_repose" target="_blank">angle of repose</a> that controls how steeply wealth can be piled. I think that can be found in IP law, capital gains and inheritance taxes. We need to turn those knobs, a little, and for a long time. That will control the system to a new and more broadly joyful setpoint.</div>
Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02749591528183545498noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5675321287029568423.post-38551349125625489092012-08-29T06:18:00.001-06:002012-08-29T06:24:54.075-06:00I need to write more. Looking back I remember being frightened with Miles in the car, afraid he was very sick, I have so much political frustration, making beer with Bernardo, watching William run the mile, my job change. These are all things worthy of at least a note or something! I got started on the topic thinking of a hut trip and some of the pictures people took, and the ephemeral and fading nature those pictures seem to have on Facebook, a site I simultaneously don't even like much, and yet have become dependent upon to archive my very life! So that's triggered some scrapbooking gene, no doubt temporarily.<br />
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For this summer at least, the singular item going unrecorded so far, is pain. OTOH I expect everybody "gets" to suffer their own probably substantial dose of emotional and physical pain. So I won't dwell on this: it's not special or remarkable. Putting up with it as everybody does is something between heroic and just plain old necessary, or maybe both at the same time. I'll try not to be too whiny...<br />
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Anyway, this post is mostly a note to self to write more. Not that it'll be here, but in a journal or something. I'll try to keep this blog more sporadic, & hopefully thus less irrelevant, than a diary.<br />
<br />Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02749591528183545498noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5675321287029568423.post-16934649849244055642012-03-05T02:44:00.055-07:002012-03-12T08:19:40.798-06:00FFT(just about everything)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Listening to <a href="http://academicearth.org/lectures/matlab" target="_blank">Brad Osgood</a> on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourier_series" target="_blank">Fourier Series,</a> and kinda reading at the <a href="https://ccnet.stanford.edu/ee261/" target="_blank">notes</a>.<br />
In the first lecture, his main point was that periodicity comes from the circle (eg sin, cos) and that frequency and wavelength have reciprocal relationship. Right away, I'm challenged by the limited formatting that exists (or that I know how to apply) to this blog. In no time I'm going to need integrals, and Mathcad beckons. Maybe I can get the ideas down in English! That's more challenging but might make me understand better.<br />
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In the notes, there's a concept of the series of functions periodic on an interval, and finding a coefficient as an integral of the product of exp(n*i*pi) across the interval. The why is cool: first, the deal is that all periodic functions can be made from a sum of sines & cosines (with integer frequency multiples) and if you multiply that sum by the negative frequency component you're interested in, it isolates one coefficient because for that term, the exponent of e adds to zero and so the e terms cancel and c drops out of the integral. Meanwhile, integrating each of the other terms across the interval yields zero every time. That's the orthogonality of the set of functions I think. I'm happy with that description! On to the second lecture. It seems easy so far but I'm getting the value from the notes, and when I dropped in in the middle of the class I was lost, so I'm taking this more ponderous approach, for now.<br />
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Second lecture: "periodicity." It's very tempting to complain about his lecture and chalkboard style! Maybe, people in glass houses... "Here's a secred of the universe, comin' your way." Now, that's a joke that deserves a laugh, but he got nothing.<br />
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Functions with limited time frame of interest can be matched over that interval only, and you just pretend it was periodic, repeating just that interval. Sin(2pi*t) has period = 1. That restriction is useful for analysis. Model generic signals by using 2pi*n*t. Over that one period, you can stuff in many frequencies in harmonics of the "base" (longest) signal. Remember frequency w (omega) = 2pi*n. Sum a bunch of these and period is still 1 - it's limited by the lowest frequency being represented. Besides different frequencies, we can modify amplitudes and phase of each term, to model different signals. What about frequency 2pi*1.5? That's not an integral multiple, not periodic over the interval 1, probably not legal to use.<br />
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Writing them down, he noted sin(2pi*k*t + p) = sin(2pik)cos(p) + cos(2pik)sin(p). (p's the phase). I mention it because in thinking about the angle sum formula, I realized how complex numbers can be used to derive this formula. Think of p as the rotation angle in a direction cosine matrix. So we have sin(A+p) and the A part is spinning vector and the p is the fixed phase offset of the sin wave out of the real plane. Our question is "what part of this imaginary wave projects on the real axis, and for the answer you just multiply the signal by the DCM. QED. Back to Osgood's point, the fixed values, sin(p) & cos(p) can be thought of as coefficients, and then an arbitrary function is made of sines and cosines with various coefficients and the phase of the net wave is buried in those coefficients, instead of explicitly calling out a phase angle, and using only sine.<br />
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Complex notation: csubk* exp(i*2pi*k*t + p) is the way to write it in complex form. To get coefficients c, isolate them again (as noted from the notes before) using the trick of multiplying the whole sum by the MINUS frequency of the coefficient you want. All the rest of the terms will sum to zero.<br />
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</div>Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02749591528183545498noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5675321287029568423.post-16728292435900879612012-03-05T02:31:00.003-07:002012-03-12T08:19:16.095-06:00Boring Archive of Notes on Philosophy Podcasts<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">This is strictly a memory aid for me. I'm going to write these up after listening to philosophy podcasts. So, for those few of you paying attention to this blog, it's probably best to go away & wait for the next post. This one's mostly just for me.<br />
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<a href="http://hw.libsyn.com/p/4/4/6/446346944c84176f/Frank_Jackson_on_What_Mary_Knew.mp3?sid=0efe51d6210a09f4cdcaa1022b25b888&l_sid=18828&l_eid=&l_mid=2696788&expiration=1330701114&hwt=6acf12b31df39c81e4949f03e8b68bad" target="_blank">What Mary </a>knew is a famous thought experiment. Australian Frank Jackson invented this to defend against materialists. (...who believe that only things that exist are physical.) Someone (Mary) who knew everything, but never had an experience of a fat red tomato, or perhaps a black & white limitation in their vision. However smart she is, analytically maybe knowing everything, won't she, upon being cured, suddenly feel she's learned something special and different? The word "qualia" describes the "feely side" of red that she would be now more vividly experiencing. I felt this was basically empty of meaning, and maybe so does Jackson, because sometime after making this famous argument, he changed his mind and became a materialist after all.<br />
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<a href="http://hw.libsyn.com/p/5/3/3/53350985e1a37c23/Philip_Pettit_on_Consequentialism.mp3?sid=c60b4ab0249f5139fa29bd4afaf96d17&l_sid=18828&l_eid=&l_mid=2713278&expiration=1330701996&hwt=fed7ea96071b45c428d405840b938a49" target="_blank">Consequentialism</a>: This theorizes we should act to produce the best consequences, ie the end justifies the means. Seems like utilitarianism, but Pettit says it's different only in the definition of utility: what yardstick is used to measure the good. There's a broad and meaningless argument about what "the goods" are. Non-consequentialism has more inflexible moral absolutes: "no kicking of puppies," for instance. What if the best outcome requires you to do that? Could you lose your integrity thereby? Famous example by Williams, sets us up with a scenario about to execute natives: but we could kill one to save 10, should you do it? Consequentialism says of course, shoot the one. Another objection is that maybe you as an agent should Never be required to treat other people "as means." Wild west example: sheriff stops the riot by scapegoat someone, hang the innocent, quell the population & save lives. These objections suggest there is value in living a life of character, even at some cost. Maybe the greater integrity has value exceeding even the very lives that would be saved by unfeeling consequentialist acts in those scenarios. So say absolutists. Another approach might ask, would not morality and honesty, ubiquitously applied by all, yield good? Perhaps, but that tack, if you take it, would be consequentialism! (choosing for the good.) A great example is Kant's case of the wild eyed axeman at your door, asking after your friend Flynn, who's lolling right over there in a hammock. Do you tell the truth because you're fundamentally in favor of doing so? "Flynn's right over there," may well get him killed! Red lights go on... (that's still consequentialism) Kant would have answered effectively, "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_justitia_ruat_caelum">Fiat justitia ruat caelum</a>" <span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span>This is just a counterexample where consequentialism makes sense. What about the other heartless ones? He's for them. How about torturing someone to find where the bomb's buried? That's ok, but you should have to be tried for it afterwards. After that he gets fuzzy.<br />
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<a href="http://philosophybites.com/2012/03/ronald-dworkin-on-the-unity-of-value.html" target="_blank">Unity of Value</a> is Ronald Dworkin's thesis that pluralism is wrong. Pluralism posits that different values are necessarily in tension, eg freedom vs respect (Consider, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_liberty" target="_blank">"freedom for the pike is death for the minnows!"</a>). The whole thing seemed half thought. Anybody who says "the way in which" too often is probably full of baloney. One phrase I particularly disliked boiled down to, "If you make your argument, somebody who disagrees is of course not going to believe you." (Isn't the point of engaging in argument to potentially change your mind: his presumption of lack of openness makes the whole field worthwhile.)</div>Markhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02749591528183545498noreply@blogger.com0