Oh history

The history of histories and the reality of reality.

Sure

I’m going here.

Wet robots

Or maybe we aren’t even afforded that. The likelihood that we are “real,” in our sense of the word, is pretty slim.

“Atheists say God doesn’t exist. I say atheists don’t exist.”

Another installment of…

“Blank” on ice! This go round it is peeing. How exciting! Honestly, it is a hoot. In some of the fancier establishments in the VN big blocks of ice are put into urinals, sorry ladies, so that the smell in the bathroom is lessened.

So cool! Especially when you get to make nifty patterns and selectively melt the ice. This has my money for becoming the next olympic sport.

Hmm

Normally, when looking at a population density map, it is hard to tell political boundaries. People live in areas and flow over borders. Well, look at SE Asia.

Laos.

Functional geography

Nifty.

Allo?

Another note on cell phones here. Professors gladly answer their phones whilst giving lectures. Ridiculous!

What to say about

Religion. Specifically, Buddhism. Although it may have some cool, visually pleasing elements to it, it is still just like other religions. The ridiculousness of dogmatic practices is astounding. Get this, the only way to travel to important pagodas and religious sites is by river. Not only that, the boat must be powered by a human. That’s right, no motor whatsoever. This means that although there are thousands upon thousands of people visiting the same site, they will all have to be transported by another human being. That is there job. Row, row, row your boat. The saddening fact is that this will not change. Actually, it can only get worse with time. Good going, folks.

The reason for all of this, of course, is it is more sacred if it is carried out in this manner. The experience of riding in a boat powered by a human is superhuman. How, I have no idea. I felt less than human, actually, when I did it. Supposedly the way to Nirvana is by boat, so this whole process mimicks that. Great! What if getting to Nirvana meant actually holding to the principles of the religion and not to austere backwardness? That’d be cool, wouldn’t it?

The worst of it all is how this religious experience just happens to bring out the worst in people, and most of them don’t even realize it. Lame. Old grandmas and grandpas, using canes and sometimes barefoot, endure an entire day’s journey in the heat and under the harsh sun to go pray to family at a cave up in the mountains. One man was carrying his mother piggyback up the hill. Jesus! Or should I say Buddha? Sure, the scenery is pretty, but most of it is lost in the sea of humanity. Shit, piss, trash, odor, pushing, shoving, slipping, eating, yelling, and more. It’s not exactly pleasant.

The entire trip up there are booths where you can rest or buy the most simplistic, oddball, wacky souvenirs you can imagine.  I’m all for business and progress, but sometimes it’s necessary to truly reflect and say “Wait a minute, is this helping the situation any?” No. Indeed it is not. If you cannot make this journey in one fell swoop, you should not be going up at all. And as for those souvenirs, they are just gaudy. It’d be like hiking in Yosemite, a thoroughly enjoyable experience, only to have terrible country music being blasted from countless shops, Space Dots being sold every step along the way, and naked baby posters and figurines crowding your space. Again, not a pretty picture.

Up in the cave it is so dense that people have suffocated. That should not happen. Ever. The beauty of lines escapes the Viet Namese conscious  at the moment, at their own peril. Not only is it frustrating to be in a mass of people grabbing you, it is unsafe and unnecessary. Instead of bringing Choco Pies, beers, those naked baby photos, and other tacky ornaments as offerings, maybe these folks should be praying for something else. I, myself, will be praying for the best.

Edumacation

It’s vastly important. Human capital is not the end all be all for growth, but is a huge component in many different ways. Alan Greenspan has noted before that the reason why OECD countries growth rates are around 2 or 3% is because there are strains on human capital. This should not be taken as a sign to give up, for 3% compounded growth is still very impressive and can shake the world given enough time. It is vastly better than 1 or even 2% growth, anyhow. America has seen its level of educated people attaining tertiary degrees and beyond, the ones that give skill specific and specialized training, decrease as the years have passed.

Clive Crook examines some new charts. Russia led the way yesteryear, back in the days when it didn’t much matter because of communism, but has expanded its lead on the US by a big margin. Reasons to be wary of the data, though, follow in the comments. The US has awesome immigration and many workers get their degrees midcareer, which may in fact be more useful and powerful than going straight from high school to attaining a PhD.

No news is good news?

From those blokes over at Free Exchange:

“Consumers demand sensational stories that resonate with their view of the world. Consumer choice is supposed to improve welfare, but should people be able to choose the news they want to hear? As the market grows, it appears that spin and sensationalism will only become more prevalent. But there is a way that the market does ultimately reward accuracy. In such a large market, reputation becomes important; saying things that are flat out wrong incurs a penalty. If you become known as someone who peddles unreliable information, consumers will go elsewhere. Your competitors have an incentive to monitor your analysis and catch your mistakes.  Of course, it then depends on how your viewers define wrong!”

Ingenuity

Scott Adams, always a thinker with a hint of humor, asks why we don’t reuse energy more often. It seems to be pretty simple. I’d add in some things with water, though other areas could be delved into as well.

Think of all the toilets in new high-rises, especially in Asia, and how much wasted energy goes into getting the water up there only to have it come back down without doing anything productive. What a waste. Speaking of waste, there would be added mass thanks to folks taking their urine and feces up when they took the elevator or stairs. That is usable energy! Oh, the things we have yet to learn.

Uhhuh

This is nothing new, but it is still amazing nonetheless. If you want to understand the world, there is no better way than to take an hour or so and click through this creative collection of maps.

Mo’ money, mo’ problems

Việt Nam, whoa buddy! Stock markets in huge decline, rampant inflation, rising trade deficit, soaring real-estate prices, and more. That is not a good mix. The press, though, looks to be chugging along pretty well in its critique of government policies. Good to know. All sound advice, too, in my opinion. It’s all about short-term versus long-term. I favor the long-term. Don’t get too carried away. Whoops:

“Several state-owned business groups and corporations were scrambling to set up banks and securities companies instead of focusing on their core businesses.”

In excess

Dorm-life is almost never pretty, even in America, but here it’s a lot worse. Typically there are eight students to a room that is half the size of most US rooms, though furniture and the like are hard to come by. Also, the lack of availability in general is astounding. The best university can only offer 25% housing. Yeesh. Add in the fact that the buildings are old, shoddy, falling apart, and face frequent brownouts and things don’t look rosy in the least.

Hair of the dog

The bar, Hair of the Dog, in Ha Noi is not all that great, though their 30,000d cocktails are a good draw. Their foosball table, though, is lackluster. That is beside the point, however.

The current mess in financial markets has everyone wondering what could have been done, and what should be done, to prevent such a thing from happening in the first place. Tough question, really. Innovation will always come about. If rules are put in place, folks will always think of some new, novel way to dodge it. Yay humans! Go us! Megan McArdle gives a brief analysis of what the Fed is up to these days. What is up with economists and drinking analogies anyhow?

“Taking away the punch bowl doesn’t do much good if the guests just drive to another bar.”

Love it or hate it

Behavioral economics gets a lot of heat and a lot of praise. For economists it is hard to grapple with the reality that human beings are not as rational as we would like to think. There are many reasons for this, but it is important to keep in mind that we are biologically contrived, meaning that we carry along many weird and unforeseen glitches.

We, as people, are affected by these historical developments, for better or worse. The mind is easily tricked. Dan Ariely writes about an experiment at MIT where students were asked to write the last two digits of their Social Security numbers down next to items and see if this action affected their willingness to pay for items. It did, in some cases up to 350% between the bottom and top quintiles. Eek. A quote:

“Social Security numbers were the anchor in this experiment only because we requested them. We could just as well have asked for the current temperature, or your shoe size. Any question, in fact, would have created the anchor. Does that seem rational? Of course not. But when we make one decision, even when it’s about an arbitrary number, we bring this history into our future decisions, and continue to make the same decisions over and over without going back and questioning their wisdom.”

Ah the beauty of heuristics!

Oh yeah!

I almost forgot that TED, one of the most entertaining, interesting, and hopeful things in existence was held not too long ago. Truly a treasure trove.

Enthralling

DMX came up in conversation the other day. Besides being a terrible artist, it looks like his personal standing isn’t much better. In fact, dare I say it, it may be worse. An excerpt:

“But it would be pretty big if we had a first Black president. That would be huge.
I mean, I guess…. What, they gon’ give a dog a bone? There you go. Ooh, we have a Black president now. They should’ve done that shit a long time ago, we wouldn’t be in the fuckin’ position we in now. With world war coming up right now. They done fucked this shit up then give it to the Black people, “Here you take it. Take my mess.”

Right, exactly.
It’s all a fuckin’ setup. It’s all a setup. All fuckin’ bullshit. All bullshit. I don’t give a fuck about none of that.”

Notes

So this is not very focused, but Ha Noi is somewhat the exact opposite of Sai Gon. Up here there are many lakes and parks, bridges going across the river, something that can almost be called an elevated highway, walkable sidewalks, and a police force that crackdown on things, including curfew in the backpackers’ district.

Sai Gon, though, has almost no bureaucratic taste to it, barely any bridges, no elevated highway at all, terrible sidewalks, hardly any police, and less cars. The city is nearly 800 years younger than Ha Noi, too.

Some unifying things going for them is expansions of infrastructure, including international terminals and metro lines. It’s an oddity that  both cities developed on only one side of their respective rivers. That will likely change, however, and for the better.

A sight to behold

What is better than a graph? A graph in motion! Here is some helpful information on banking, assets, and loans.