Stremf in Numbers
Monday, April 18, 2011
Terrible things that I sometimes miss
- Syndicated, broadcast television in the late weekday afternoon. KNIN (LA) brought me enough Matlock reruns to kill lesser men.
- Knowing that an omniscient power was taking care of everything
- Believing that our outcomes were a result of how hard we were willing to work and plan
- Furr's Cafeteria
- The radio
- My grandma's pot roast
- A younger Jardon's conviction that everyone in the world wanted to be corrected, rather than be accepted
Labels: It means "peace be da journey"
¶ 7:09 AM 0 Comments
Friday, April 15, 2011
Stare Decisis, or there is nothing new under the sun
We might zig and zag, but dear reader please stay with me.
As a thought experiment today I wondered how long it would take me to write the 2011 US budget bill. An act of Congress is quite honestly an act of Congress. I wouldn't know where to begin, what language to use and, uh... how many stamps to attach to the envelope. A law is one hell of a complicated technical document, but really it's just substituting language in a previous template. And, any such work is a product of collaborative evolution. We take the work of those who came before us, copy it, and modify it slightly.
Advancement, whether it's a new law, a new invention or a new theory, is a process of absorbing the known, and then innovating with our own meager contributions. Even rapid or sudden inventions are an accelerated version of this process. Sometimes operating within this framework can dishearten the ambitious. If you want to build a better mousetrap you must first research the previous attempts. If you want to sell that you first go work for ACME Mouse Solutions, learn the business, then branch off.
There are very few exceptions to this formula. Even the wunderkinds of the 80s - 90s technology leap had VCs who financed, consultants who knew the marketing game, and Debbie the office manager who could schedule janitorial services.
This is only tangentially related: it is optimistic that we can use the advancements of our predecessors and peers to make neat things. If you want to build a house you first google "how to build a house", then call the architect, then the contractor, who calls the guy who pours the cement...
For some reason my thoughts, and consequently my writings, always drift towards the theme of humanity's drive and soaring achievement. I guess this essay will swerve down that road as well. I just returned from watching Hubble at the local IMAX theater. I can't remember the last time a movie made me cry. But, watching the shuttle lift off, watching the symbol of human ambition and curiosity slip the bonds of earth brought tears to my eyes. My God! What hath Hubble wrought?
We can now look inside the womb of the Universe and see the intimate star zygote. We can see the Red Giants take one last gasp before death. We can do all this through the efforts of those who came before us.
There may not be much new under the sun, but there is a lot under the sun.
As a thought experiment today I wondered how long it would take me to write the 2011 US budget bill. An act of Congress is quite honestly an act of Congress. I wouldn't know where to begin, what language to use and, uh... how many stamps to attach to the envelope. A law is one hell of a complicated technical document, but really it's just substituting language in a previous template. And, any such work is a product of collaborative evolution. We take the work of those who came before us, copy it, and modify it slightly.
Advancement, whether it's a new law, a new invention or a new theory, is a process of absorbing the known, and then innovating with our own meager contributions. Even rapid or sudden inventions are an accelerated version of this process. Sometimes operating within this framework can dishearten the ambitious. If you want to build a better mousetrap you must first research the previous attempts. If you want to sell that you first go work for ACME Mouse Solutions, learn the business, then branch off.
There are very few exceptions to this formula. Even the wunderkinds of the 80s - 90s technology leap had VCs who financed, consultants who knew the marketing game, and Debbie the office manager who could schedule janitorial services.
This is only tangentially related: it is optimistic that we can use the advancements of our predecessors and peers to make neat things. If you want to build a house you first google "how to build a house", then call the architect, then the contractor, who calls the guy who pours the cement...
For some reason my thoughts, and consequently my writings, always drift towards the theme of humanity's drive and soaring achievement. I guess this essay will swerve down that road as well. I just returned from watching Hubble at the local IMAX theater. I can't remember the last time a movie made me cry. But, watching the shuttle lift off, watching the symbol of human ambition and curiosity slip the bonds of earth brought tears to my eyes. My God! What hath Hubble wrought?
We can now look inside the womb of the Universe and see the intimate star zygote. We can see the Red Giants take one last gasp before death. We can do all this through the efforts of those who came before us.
There may not be much new under the sun, but there is a lot under the sun.
Labels: next latin legal term to misuse: amicus curiae
¶ 12:48 PM 0 Comments
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Assorted Links - Full Throttle Edition
http://listverse.com/2009/08/16/15-fastest-things-in-the-universe/ - The theoretical limit of a helicopters is 250 mph? Obviously, those scientists didn't watch Airwolf.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_train - The ability of a person to travel around the globe in 42 minutes would affect our lives. The ability to transport cargo that quickly would, literally, change everything. Think about how different food production would be and how short lead times for high technology products would be, just for starters. An interesting externality would be the continued accrual of advantages by "port" cities. Imagine the premium on a factory at a gravity train station.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ducati_916 - The prettiest bike ever made. Every Ducati dealership has one of these on a pedestal. It's a wonder they don't bring it back into production.
Labels: Not full throttle: My 1978 Pontiac Bonneville from HS
¶ 7:16 PM 0 Comments
Monday, April 11, 2011
Small steps
Think back to one of the happiest moments of your life. What about that moment made you happy, and are you pursuing anything in your life right now that would bring you any closer to those types of happiness?
Once, I rode in an elevator with a group of post-happy hour revelers on the way down from City Grill in Portland. They were locked in semi-coherent argument about what they would do if they could do whatever they want. The only woman in the group, who was much older than the others, weighed in that "We all do what we want, it's just a matter of how you hold it."
You can argue on the margins, but the kernel of truth is undeniable.
Take one small step today to bring yourself closer to memorable happiness.
Labels: One foot in front of the other
¶ 5:30 AM 0 Comments
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
C.Y.A.
During the morning commute, I listened to the Planet Money podcast about credit card agreements. The hosts trot out a couple lawyers to talk about why they are as long as they are, how they can be made better, etc. In one specific instance one of the lawyers mentions a question in a government form:
"Are you a terrorist?"
Of course that's a stupid question. Pieces like this tend to ignore the sociological dynamic that creates bloated agreements, reports and redundant (and sometimes stupid) questions.
It is very, very difficult for an organization to do anything less than everything they've done in the past, plus a little more. Passive aggressive carries the day in corporate America, and passive aggressive means you never take away from any defensive maneuver, you only add to it.
I spent several years fighting this, then resigned to it, and now I find myself adding in those silly, redundant elements because I know they'll be asked for later in the game anyway.
Labels: Can I get that in triplicate?
¶ 6:04 AM 0 Comments
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Cheap Tricks
If you're looking for ways to find undervalued advantages, a friend offers this advice "Look for the most disadvantaged person in any group, and see what their trick is." For examples, consider female executives, undersized athletes, minorities in underrepresented fields, etc.
The flipside of many of these "advantages" is that it requires you to do something unpleasant or uncool relative to what the prototypical successful person in your field is doing. Consider Phillip Seymour Hoffman, who had to develop his acting career by making "unlikable" characters sympathetic. No leading man would have picked his early roles.
Athletes, the ultimate field of cool, face these pressures even more acutely. A post by Henry Abbott, from TrueHoop, presents an interesting discussion of Shaq's unwillingness to consider a new trick when it comes to shooting free throws.
What advantages are you not giving yourself because you are trying to achieve an ideal of cool or conformity?
Personally, I think I try to hard to not surrender the initial gambit in a social setting. I don't have the physical allure that people will initiate conversation with me, and I'm usually unwilling to give the high ground in the conversation by initiating it.
Labels: Granny-style
¶ 7:04 AM 0 Comments
Monday, April 4, 2011
Idle (Worker) Musings
Here is a graph of labor force participation.
A layman's thoughts:
- Participation in the 20-24 bracket has declined throughout the decade, and the first reaction of many pundits is to blame higher college/graduate school enrollment. The quickest data I could find (from the Council of Graduate Schools) lists 463,000 students enrolled as of 2009. Some quick back of the envelope math (300 million people times 1/16th of the population between 20 and 24 = 18.8 million people in this cohort) shows that it would take a HUGE increase in the number of graduate students to have even a 5% effect on this number. Graduate school enrollment would have to increase by 200% to drive an effect this large.
- Teenagers have participated at a lower and lower rate. I don't have any good data to support this, but I don't think this decrease is a result of lower participation due to the disappearance of minimum wage jobs. I think this decrease is due to teenagers of upper-middle class families being disincentivized to work as minimum wage has decreased in real terms while top quartile incomes have continued to increase. Affluent parents are more able to fund their children's volunteer summer and science camps, and the academic arms race gives no value to a student's high school work experience.
- Americans in the prime of their working life continue to participate at almost exactly the same rate, which tells me that the "discouraged worker" profile is far more likely to be an older worker or a teenager.
- Finally, there is the rapid rise in the participation of older workers. Economists have proposed a number of reasons for this, but my own unsupported opinion is that boomers have not seen their investment portfolio grow in the last decade, and therefore have stayed in the workforce. Ignoring dividends, the DJI average has declined 17% in inflation-adjusted terms since 1996. There's a lot of liberal empathy for the aging janitor/construction worker who has to stay in the field to bridge the gap between working life and social security, but in my own family's experience, low wage workers don't see a very big marginal decline in their living standard after moving from a low-wage job to social security.
Labels: Waiting for our bosses to die
¶ 5:57 AM 0 Comments
Friday, April 1, 2011
Commutes and critiques
William Saletan wrote extensively about studies linking childlessness to higher levels of day to day happiness. His conclusion, that these studies are accurate but they discount the impact of transcendent moments on our happiness, is true of more than just children.
I'm not a big fan of living in NY, for a lot of reasons, laid out here and elsewhere. But, today I was listening to the Styrofoam remix of Drugs Or Me as I walked through the subway station, and for a few seconds, life felt like a music video. People were walking around as if in slow motion, steam was coming through the vents, and there was an absolute sense of beauty and timelessness that I've rarely experienced.
Cities, the wilderness, and music have all provided my life with transcendence, and made, this truly "the happiest life I ever could have lived".
Unrelated: Last night I watched Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World. It was great fun, but I had to take off my Gen Y hater's hat to truly enjoy it. SPvTW was the first movie I've watched in several years that was clearly intended for a younger demographic than 30-35 year old males. There were lots of nods to video game nostalgia, but the jokes, themes and general pacing were clearly aimed at a young'uns.
Stray observations:
- There has to be a logical end to how quickly and frequently movies can change camera angles, but we haven't reached it just yet. Watch a big studio movie from the 1970s and then watch this. Sheesh.
- There are some incredibly talented people in the world, and our efficiency in channeling those people into high visibility products pays dividends to everyone.
- (Pure speculation alert) I was left with a sense of how hopeful and fun the movie was. I think this is actually a general trend in arts. Maybe the upcoming generation has had enough of their parents Gen X nihilism. I support this movement.
Labels: Little things become big things
¶ 6:30 AM 0 Comments
