Sunday’s readers were treated to a NYTimes Editorial Board Grand Pontification. The news that atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, the most important global warming gas, have hit 400 parts per million for the first time in millions of years increases the pressure on President Obama to deliver on his pledges to limit this country’s greenhouse gas emissions. Really?! – done in the style of Saturday…
In the Coursera class Behavioral Economics taught by Duke Professor Dan Ariely, all the students had to write a mid-term essay in which they described the ideas of Behavioral Economics and how the methods of the discipline could be used to solve an economic problem. Despite the fact, that most of the methods in the class to date applied to individual economic decision making, the…
On Google Plus, one can find circles and communities where it is possible to have civil discussions. Here is an example. The card to the left was posted and got 10 +clicks and 3 repostings. One of the comments was notable. I am ambiguous about this notion – and it is fundamental. Are there enough jobs to go around? If you are over 55 the…
Brett Arends has a very interesting post on MarketWatch - Why the NewsMedia is Worse Than You Think. He states his case succinctly: There have been the high profile goofs — by CNN, in its coverage of the Boston bombings, and by Howard Kurtz, the famous media “critic,” in a blog post about gay athlete Jason Collins. The Tribune Company faces a potential takeover by…
I have been taking Coursera’s Irrational Behaviour taught by Duke Professor Dan Ariely. The course concentrates on individual decision making and how decision methods depart from traditional rational and economic utility models. There are compelling experimental and neuroscience proofs that a)individuals use different model or methods of decision making depending on circumstances[ the Kahneman and Tversky fast versus slow methods] and b)many, often non-intuitive factors such as…
Image from Streetlog For the past five years, the GOP has been able to marshall block votes against most Democratic critical legislation in Congress. Given the continued exploitation of the filibuster rule in the Senate where a 60-40 vote is required to pass any legislation that Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell cares to oppose. Because the GOP has 46 Senators and leader McConnell can rely…
WhatNowCartoons The GOP has been attacking President Obama for all the Wrong Reasons: Benghazi Libyan embassy fight when the GOP had previously cut the State Departments defense funding. Or No New Taxes when there is general consensus that tax revenues have dried up and tax reform is way overdue. Or the constant return to Obama’s birth certificate. Yet for the past four years, the Obama administration…
Only in the USA could a majority vote for Gun Reform be turned upside down in the US Senate. This is on Universal Gun Buyer Background checks which currently have majority popular support reaching as high as 91% of the US electorate in over a half dozen polls. No matter how you ask the question, a majority of the Public supports background checks. But because it…
Three weeks ago this blog presented Moores Law is Alive and Well. But reader reaction was mixed because the post emphasized growth in computing power rather than number of transistors per chip. But really Moores Law has two meanings in electronics. The strict original circuit design definition was that the number of transistors on a 2D integrated circuit chip would double in number for the same cost about every 18-24 months.How…
The NYTimes had a recent story, The Infinite Pool of Executive Pay. It is a little hit and miss. The report comes down on the increase of 18.7% percent in corporate perks. But then we also learn that overall median pay for the top 100 CEOs increased by just 2.8%. However, I had a devil of a time resolving this with the following direct quote:…
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Captain Jack Aubrey and Spymaster Stephen Maturin are the matching pieces in this historical novel. It is remarkable that English literature has two series, Horatio Hornblower and Aubrey + Maturin both set in the same era and of such great quality. Desolation Island tells you why the era of the dawning Enlightenment, European Wars and Industrial Revolution was so tempestuous... and on a prison ship voyage to Australia. Such drama!