your not-so-humble narrator

Kerry endorses Obama for 2008

2008-01-11T16:22:42Z

Edwards endorses Obama for 2004

The Hill-A-Copter

2007-12-16T19:58:17Z

Today, Hillary Clinton begins her Hill-A-Copter “Every County Counts Tour” across Iowa’s 99 counties.

http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/politics/blog/2007/12/hillary_clinton_set_to_whir_ac.html

Could this be another echo of Nixon? Below excerpted from http://www.extrememortman.com/category/kennedy/

Here’s [Nixon's] speech accepting the nomination at the July 28, 1960 Republican convention in Chicago:

I announce to you tonight, and I pledge to you, that I, personally, will carry this campaign into every one of the 50 states of this nation between now and November the 8th.

And what were the practical implications of Nixon’s pledge? Let’s let historian Richard Norton Smith tell the rest of the story:

He wanted to call attention to the fact that Alaska and Hawaii had come into the union during the Eisenhower presidency. In practical term, that meant on the Saturday before the election, when he should have been in Illinois or Texas, he was on a plane headed for Alaska, which in those days, that was a lot more remote a destination than it is today. He paid a high price on Election Day.

Nixon's pledge is a card in the boardgame 1960: The Making of the President, along with just about every other event of that campaign.

Settlers of Catan

2007-12-15T23:44:50Z

Play Settlers of Catan (probably the most popular of the new German games) last night with patriciahrh.

Here is Sandra Oh discussing Settlers, starting at around 5:25 in

Unforgettable experiences

2007-12-08T23:33:49Z

An LJ-friend of Lupo's angel_boi is going to Iraq to work as a contractor. People are warning him to be careful, but applauding his sense of adventure. But if he really wants an adventure he'll remember for the rest of his life, all he has to do is enter this competition from [Redacted] Airlines:

Don't Miss Your Chance To Win One Of Five Unforgettable Experiences

[...]

First Class & Football in London
A Pilot Simulator Experience
Membership, Money & Half A Million Miles
The Ultimate Island Escape
Hoops & Hockey in Dallas

A basketball game *and* a hockey game! In Dallas! That would indeed be unforgettable.

Is the forever stamp a good investment?

2007-11-30T14:40:50Z

http://www.mattbors.com/archives/316.html claims yes.

Historical postage rates and discussion at http://www.akdart.com/postrate.html

http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2007/May/03/bz/FP705030317.html says: "The [Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act] requires that postal rate increases be tied to the rate of inflation, as measured by the government's Consumer Price Index".

Immigrant objects to immigration

2007-11-29T21:16:08Z

Morrissey is to sue the [UK music magazine] NME after it failed to apologise for an article focusing on his views on immigration.

...

The magazine quoted Morrissey allegedly saying: "Although I don't have anything against people from other countries, the higher the influx into England the more the British identity disappears. So the price is enormous."

"If you travel to Germany, it's still absolutely Germany. If you travel to Sweden, it still has a Swedish identity.

"But travel to England and you have no idea where you are," the singer is reported to have said.

The 48-year-old, who has spent the last decade in Rome and Los Angeles, was apparently responding to a question about whether he would return to live in the UK.

In a follow-up interview concerning his comments, the NME reported that Morrissey had said: "It could be construed that the reason I wouldn't wish to live in England is the immigration explosion. And that's not true at all."

"There are other reasons why I would find England very difficult, such as the expense and the pressure," he said.

He is alleged to have added that he did not think his comments were inflammatory, but were "a statement of fact".

Excerpted from BBC at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7118412.stm

Funnily enough, Morrissey's parents were immigrants from Ireland.

EU far-right parliamentary block collapses

2007-11-22T06:05:09Z

Xenophobes surprised to realise other xenophobes hate them.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7094861.stm

Mubarak joke, via NYT

2007-11-01T17:05:42Z

President Mubarak [of Egypt] is on his deathbed when an aide comes to his side and says, “Mr. President, aren’t you going to give a farewell speech to the people?” The president opens his eyes and replies: “Really? Why? Where are the people going?”

Another religious loophole

2007-10-26T15:48:30Z

In a modern economy, many old rules can be bent.

The Israeli Supreme Court stepped into a religious dispute on Wednesday, ordering the chief rabbinate not to allow local rabbis to decide for themselves whether to authorize produce from Jewish land to be sold during this sabbatical year.

The case centered on a loophole in religious law used to allow Jewish-owned farms to grow and sell kosher produce every seventh year, when the Bible says that Jewish land in Israel should be left fallow. The Biblical injunction about the sabbatical, or “shmita” year, is taken literally by many ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel, who refuse to buy or consume produce unless it is grown by non-Jews on land not owned by Jews.

In the past, the chief rabbinate, which controls kosher regulations in Israel, accepted a compromise or loophole called “heter mechira,” or sale permit. The permit allows Jewish farmers and businesses to “sell” their land formally and temporarily to non-Jews during shmita years, enabling the land to be worked as usual.

But with the increased influence of ultra-Orthodox Jews on the chief rabbinate, this year the policy changed. The rabbinate authorized heter mechira, as in the past, but then said that local rabbinical councils could decide for themselves whether to accept it.

In cities like Jerusalem, where the ultra-Orthodox make up almost a third of the total population, and a much larger proportion of the Jewish population, heter mechira was not allowed, and prices for produce were rising while Jewish agribusiness was suffering.

Tzohar, a group of Zionist Orthodox rabbis, had challenged the ruling and said that its members would authorize heter mechira produce in cities where the local rabbis would not, an obvious threat to the authority of the chief rabbinate.

In its ruling on Wednesday, the court said the chief rabbinate would not be allowed to provide local autonomy to rabbis because such a practice could cause significant harm to Israel’s farmers and the public at large.

Usury in the middle ages

2007-10-25T05:51:41Z

While the Catholic church formally adhered to the doctrine against usury throughout the middle ages, ingenious theologians showed that most types of interest payment were actually nonusurous. By the late middle ages, the following exceptions ... were all well accepted:

profits of partnership (as long as each partner took the risks, returns were allowed on capital directly invested in an enterprise)

rent charges (perpetual loans secured by real estate were allowed)

life annuities (permissible since the amount of the payment was uncertain)

foregone profits (compensation was allowed for profits foregone in making a loan)

exchange risk premium (a premium on a loan was permissible if it was made in one currency and repaid in another, to cover the exchange rate risk).

The prohibition on usury was thus extremely limited. Since there was still a demand for such loans this was met in two ways. The first was by allowing Jews, as non-Christians, to engage in such lending. The second was by simply ignoring the church rules when it proved convenient to the rich and powerful.

Islamic societies similarly found ingenious ways to circumvent the usury ban. The primary one was the double sale. In this transaction, the borrower would get, for example, both 100 dinars cash and a small piece of cloth valued at the absurdly high price of 15 dinars. In a year he would have to pay back 100 dinars for the loan of the cash and 15 for the cloth. These debts were upheld by Sharia courts. A study of Islamic court records in the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century found, even more blatantly, literally thousands of debt contracts being enforced by the courts.

Games Day

2007-10-21T03:16:16Z

Down to Games Day in Los Altos.

Play Pacific Northwest Rails, California, and Igel Argern (Hedgehogs in a Hurry).

More detailed reviews available at spotlightongames.com, or boardgamegeek.com. PNR is a railroad game involving playing the stock market and running routes. Interesting if unforgiving design - your stock holdings are taxed at an increasing rate throughout the game. In our game, this sent most of us into penury, and we would all have done better just to save our money and not buy any stock at all. Actually, this might not be unrealistic.

California is a fun and light game - you play interior decorators furnishing an apartment, trying to attract people to come to it. The components are very nice and well-themed - each person is interested in different types of furniture - the aerobics instructor wants a swimming pool, the student wants video games etc.

Hedgehogs is pretty simple but entertaining. You are racing hedgehogs across the board, in rows from 1-6. Each turn you roll a number and move one hedgehog in that row along the board. You can also move one of your hedgehogs sideways, but be sure to avoid the tar pits, which trap hedgehogs until everyone else has passed. Quick, light and fun.

Also have a quick look at 1960: The Making of the President, a 2-player game on the Nixon/Kennedy election. Components look good, good reviews on the geek, and from one of the designers of Twilight Struggle, an int'g game on the Cold War. (Loyal readers will recall this from an entry a long while ago). So might be worth taking more of a look at. Whatever the flaws of the Electoral College, it does make for a better game than a straight majority vote system.

The limitations of protest, in comic strip form

2007-09-28T14:21:30Z

http://www.bigfatwhale.com/archives/bfw_324.html

Ancient secrets of game design

2007-09-25T14:46:29Z

Only of interest to boardgame geeks.
http://chimeramag.com/features/tenpoints.html

erehweb @ 2007-09-20T09:40:00

2007-09-20T16:45:19Z

Yo estudio español. Patriciahrh estuida español.

What will the Fed's interest rate policy mean to you?

2007-09-17T15:32:11Z

Cut of 50 basis points or mote. Economic boom leads to hyperinflation, but stability is restored when China purchases the U.S. for $50 Billion Trillion (4.3 Yuan). Unemployment falls to zero as the population gets jobs in several factories efficiently run by the People's Liberation Army.

Recommended investment: Mandarin phrase book

No cut in rates: Lack of consumer confidence leads to recession, then depression, then complete economic collapse. Bandits and packs of wild dogs roam the streets.

Recommended investments: Canned goods, AK-47, kibble

Cut of 25 basis points: Nothing economically significant happens. Ever again. Until the heat death of the universe.

Recommended investments: Very long duration natural gas futures, blankets.

Cross-temporal effects of pricing on consumer utility

2007-09-06T19:08:14Z

Original non-redacted at

http://www.xoverboard.com/blogarchive/week_2007_09_02.html#002287

Why I Hate Apple

So three weeks- one week longer than the return policy- after I had to go to the Apple Store and buy a new 30GB iPod to replace my previous one that died- Apple announced that they'll just start selling the 80GB one at the exact same price. This is something that, apparently, no one at the Apple Store thought might be interesting for me to know.

$#!& you, Apple. $#!& you with a 12-inch spiked dildo dipped in small pox.

Update: Oh, and it has search functions and a sturdier case too. Well isn't that nice. Chug bleach and die in a fire, you bastards.

Internet Math

2007-08-31T19:17:20Z

Worried about the analytical quality of your work? At least you are doing a better job than Mary Meeker.
From Henry Blodget at www.internetoutsider.com

Morgan Stanley's Internet analyst Mary Meeker was a good deal more optimistic than we and most others about the revenue impact of YouTube's new overlay ads. Specifically, Mary concluded that the overlays could immediately add $4.8 billion of gross revenue and $720 million of net revenue to Google's annual results. This compared to the tiny $12 million to $360 million of gross revenue that we projected.

Well, we were baffled at how Mary could be so amazingly bullish, so, on a tip from a reader, we checked her numbers. And, Mary, it may be time to scream at yet another research assistant. Why? Because, in advertising lingo, "CPM" means "Cost Per Thousand" not "Cost Per One." When Mary updates her model to divide by 1,000, therefore, we expect she will wish to revise her conclusions.

What happens to Mary's estimates when you do the math right? Well, that $4.8 billion of gross revenue becomes $4.8 million, and the $720 million of net revenue becomes $720 thousand. So if, as Mary suggests, Google can float ads on top of 20 million streams a month, secure a $20 CPM, and keep 15% of the gross revenue, the overall impact will actually be, as we suggested yesterday, immaterial.

Opera explained on Minnesota Public Radio

2007-08-29T21:40:35Z

The soprano loves the tenor, but the baritone gets in the way.

Perfect play at checkers leads to draw

2007-07-21T07:54:03Z

While perfect play at Monopoly leads to murder

My girlfriend is a winner

2007-07-21T07:31:21Z

In a race against hundreds, with just a wristband and a dream, she is the first to get the HP at the B+N.

Plus, she managed to get a gift certificate from Foreign Cinema as compensation for poor service.

Geiz ist geil!

2007-07-17T04:45:59Z

Geiz ist geil: Wie geil sind Sie?

FRANKFURT — In 2001, the German electronics retailer Saturn introduced the advertising tagline “Stinginess is cool!” — in German, “Geiz ist geil!” — and soon found it summed up the nation’s mood with a slogan that left the advertising world and entered popular culture.

The new-economy bubble had burst, unemployment was rising and as consumers were reining in their spending, Saturn offered its customers some moral support. It assured Germans, in a campaign that ran the gamut from television to print media to leaflets, that searching for the lowest price was hardly shameful.

The notion gained a life of its own, and Germans embedded “Geiz ist geil!” in their everyday language as though it were an ancient proverb. Politicians even justified budget cuts with the line, turning Saturn — a 124-store division of the Metro Group — into the unwitting author of a maxim for a nation turned stingy.

But now, as a strong economic upswing in Germany slowly extinguishes the rationale behind the slogan, Saturn recently announced plans to wind down the campaign.

...

At the least, the slogan was very un-German by the country’s standards of consumerism, which have always emphasized paying for quality. A Mercedes-Benz or a BMW, the theory went, was well worth the hefty price tag because of its peerless engineering. But “Geiz ist geil” flipped that equation, and suddenly the price justified all else.

“It’s a terrible notion, but it has become a slogan for our culture,” said Alexander von Gizycki, chief executive of the Lueg Group, a large chain of auto dealers that sells premium brands like Mercedes. “In reality, it is a sign of our own poverty.”

But times are changing. Since last year, German consumers have kicked their spending into higher gear, as unemployment has dropped and their outlook has brightened.

“What we can tell now about customers is that they want to indulge themselves in a little more happiness,” said Holger Jung, a co-founder of Jung von Matt. “And when you do that via low prices, you’re never sure whether you got the best deal.”

Put another way, if encouraging consumers to be tightfisted six years ago was daring, these days it might be downright dumb. Saturn hooked legions of buyers with the campaign, but now that Germans have more money in their pockets, a new slogan will probably encourage people to quit fussing over price.

Libby-ration!

2007-07-03T00:36:27Z

There is honour among thieves.

The Traveler's Dilemma

2007-05-22T19:28:41Z

Lucy and Pete, returning from a remote Pacific island, find that the airline has damaged the identical antiques that each had purchased. An airline manager says that he is happy to compensate them but is handicapped by being clueless about the value of these strange objects. Simply asking the travelers for the price is hopeless, he figures, for they will inflate it.

Instead he devises a more complicated scheme. He asks each of them to write down the price of the antique as any dollar integer between 2 and 100 without conferring together. If both write the same number, he will take that to be the true price, and he will pay each of them that amount. But if they write different numbers, he will assume that the lower one is the actual price and that the person writing the higher number is cheating. In that case, he will pay both of them the lower number along with a bonus and a penalty--the person who wrote the lower number will get $2 more as a reward for honesty and the one who wrote the higher number will get $2 less as a punishment. For instance, if Lucy writes 46 and Pete writes 100, Lucy will get $48 and Pete will get $44.

What numbers will Lucy and Pete write? What number would you write?

From Scientific American - more there.

Bush Taps New 'War Czar' (from ABC News)

2007-05-15T21:41:10Z

Hopes to do better than last War Czar

A sound question

2007-05-15T17:51:29Z

In any classical music performance concert recording, there will be a cough or two. Do we have the technology to process the recording and seamlessly remove the coughs?