Fantastic Ignorance

2011-06-08T00:09:00.000-07:00

I'd love some kind of video mashup playing in the background when I have to write the boring kind of code. I want high res video from cool scenes around the world -- like crashing waves, or underwater footage, or even webcam views of different locations. I don't want people talking in the videos or even sound because I can't code and do talking at the same time. Just something to make me feel more connected to the world. Being in a text editor is a bland, isolating experience.

2011-03-27T17:57:00.000-07:00

I was incredulous at this This American Life episode about a drug court judge in Georgia and indignant enough to send judge Amanda Williams and the court my thoughts on the matter.

2011-03-20T20:04:00.000-07:00

It's fraudulent for an author to write a book about how to be financially successful if a large portion of their net worth came from sales of the book. Legal, yes, but wrong.

(Rich Dad, Poor Dad comes to mind -- and what a confused mess of lessons he tries to impart. It struck me that he didn't really understand what he wanted to teach.)

2011-03-18T22:55:00.000-07:00

Panic at the Disco was streaming their new album for free on facebook, the catch was that I had to click "Like" on their facebook page to listen to the whole thing. I wouldn't click on it because I didn't know if the new album is good or not, so I left the page without listening to any more. I don't think they understand how facebook really works: If I say I like something, I'm putting my credibility on the line. My friends trust that I won't sell out my opinion or sell their information for a reward/bribe from some company.

2011-03-12T02:18:00.000-08:00

This algorithm does an f'ing gorgeous job of calculating normal vectors. Ignore the wacky URL.

2011-03-10T14:31:00.000-08:00

Would a judge ever reduce a sentence if he thought there was a 97% chance a person was guilty and maybe 3% that he was innocent? (Like for having mercy on this guy?)

Our justice system seems to be predicated on an all or nothing mentality, either 100% guilty with a penalty of 100%, or else innocent.

2011-03-09T22:56:00.000-08:00

I subscribed to this guy's high frequency trading programming blog, but I have only mild curiosity about how it works. Imagine that you did succeed in writing software that could purchase a security 10 microseconds before another guy: the time spent writing software to shave off microseconds could have gone to creating something beautiful or useful or entertaining for people. And if the purpose of trading securities is to allocate capital to companies that make stuff society wants, it's hard to argue that a company would be harmed by getting its money 10 microseconds later.

2011-02-21T17:01:00.000-08:00

You have to willfully not follow the logic to disbelieve evolution.

Good IRL UI

2011-02-14T00:15:00.000-08:00

The telephone poles in the sidewalks on my run to the park in Fountain Valley are placed closer to the road than the wall. It makes me choose the side furthest from the road to avoid the narrow width of sidewalk next to the street and so takes away the chance of a stumble onto the road as a car comes by. I want to believe that someone planned this out on purpose.

2011-02-07T00:44:00.000-08:00

An interesting question for people who don't support universal health care is at what cost they would support it. If it was $10 per American per year to get universal coverage for everyone, I hope you'd have near 100% support. Of course it gets trickier to decide this as the sums get higher, but I get the sense there are some that see having to pay for others as a moral issue.

Beautiful quote

2011-01-20T14:56:00.000-08:00

"At some point, self-confidence turns into a learning disorder."
--Lamentations on Chemistry

2011-01-10T01:47:00.000-08:00

One reason Tron Legacy was not a good movie was because the world didn't have consistent rules. You couldn't tell what the limits of the characters were and so it felt like the characters could pull arbitrary super powers out of their asses when they needed to move the story along (e.g. the old guy suddenly causing a tornado at the end).

I always felt cheated at the end of DragonLance and Stephen King books for the same reason.

2010-11-16T13:53:00.000-08:00

It would be cool if our planet was at the outermost edge of the galaxy, and that galaxy was at the edge of the universe, so all we'd see is blackness on one side of the sky but stars on the other.

2010-11-12T00:53:00.000-08:00

Fox News and Comedy Central should make a deal to give Jon Stewart a half hour slot right after Glenn Beck's show and give Glenn the half hour slot after The Daily Show. Jon could use the time to rebut what Glenn just said and vice versa. It sucks that an entire channel can be a homogenous block of one ideology.

Hypothesis

2010-11-05T18:01:00.000-07:00

Mountaineers that pose like badasses in their pictures are more likely to die.

2010-10-19T00:12:00.000-07:00

I sometimes think about this homeless man I've seen watching cars on the freeway in the evening. When he was young and in school was he excited about the future? Did he have a crush on anyone? Did some girl have a crush on him? Where did he lose the friends he had and wasn't able to pick up new ones anymore?

2010-10-13T12:54:00.000-07:00

At the end of a long day of hiking some months back, when I walked by I somehow startled a cow grazing by the side of the road and it took a bad step and then crashed down on its side. The last thing I wanted to do was touch its filthy body, but I manned up and put my hands under it and pushed. It started to move its legs wildly but the thing that stuck with me was the look in its eye, you could see the panic. Its fear felt way too human to me and it disturbed me.

I wasn't even close to being able to lift it and it snowed that night. I left a note on a rancher's trailer with the cow's serial number on it, but I don't know what happened.

A rule of thumb

2010-10-11T15:52:00.000-07:00

Every website that purports to tell you the "truth" about some health supplement or a political candidate makes me expect the opposite, that their analysis will be biased towards what they want to believe and incomplete. When they use truth with a capital T it's doubly worse.

2010-10-06T16:15:00.000-07:00

Evolution is a Sherlock Holmes mystery where clues are lying around in large piles and crunch under your feet in every direction and the murderer periodically jumps out of the bushes and waves his arms at you frantically.

2010-10-04T18:33:00.000-07:00

It's weird that your body produces beneficial molecules like BDNF in sufficient quantities only when you perform a certain action (like exercise). All the molecular machinery is there already with enough raw materials, so why wouldn't the body just do the right thing automatically?

Better UI for math

2010-09-30T23:53:00.000-07:00

It's much too easy to miss the difference between the numbers 1000000 and 10000000000, so it's hard for me to blame people too much when adding 3 easy-to-miss numbers creates a number 1000 times larger (or perhaps 10000. :)

Scientific notation is also shitty at making the most important number prominent; for example, in the number 6 x 10^32, the 32 is by far the most important part of the number but is typically written in very small type, and the 10 should be written in small type or even just implied.

Poem with unknown name, for an unknown man

2010-09-30T00:19:00.000-07:00

Goodbye stranger
I say goodbye

On the road to nowhere
To the final country where everyone is welcomed in
Where nothing needn't know your origin

Farewell sir
Without papers, without identity
What were you looking for?
How much did you lose along the way?
Who stares through the empty window
Waits
Nameless men wait
While I speak and entrust my empty words to this empty room
I am too late
You, I never knew
Who heard the voice calling out for you
To come on home'n
To your final haven
Amsterdam

--from a funeral for an unknown man in Amsterdam
Audio from the BBC documentary The Lonely Funeral, poem begins at 11:39

How to know if your opinions are worth a damn

2010-09-27T09:06:00.001-07:00

http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/09/opinion-warning-signs.html

Utopia incoming

2010-09-20T20:05:00.000-07:00

In 20 years, we should see the average IQ go up a fat chunk. I think it will be harder to be ignorant about a given subject because there will be many chances to be exposed to high quality ideas due to the sheer number of links a person will have clicked on by the time they're an adult.

2010-09-19T20:02:00.000-07:00

I inherited body parts I did not ask for, like a tooth that aches enough to wake me from sleep.

2010-09-17T15:46:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I was walking outside really late, around midnight, and I see a homeless man coming down a bridge over the freeway towards me. When he saw me I could tell I scared him a little (me with a shaved head, walking fast and maybe aggressively toward him). He tried not to show it, but his pace hesitated several times, but he kept walking forward. At that moment, he reminded me of me about 20 years ago, when I was just a small kid that hadn't hit puberty yet and had glasses, and there were kids at my new school that were going to hit me, only because I was small and scared of them (seriously, how fucked is that?)

When I got closer to him I gave him a little nod and a look that tried let him know I wasn't going to do anything to him. (He looks like Zach Galifianakis with an even crazier beard.) I've seen him sitting on that bridge looking over the 405 once before at sunset, I'm gonna try and talk to him next time (well, next time it's not midnight).

The Problem of Evil

2010-09-17T15:23:00.000-07:00

Yesterday when I paid for gas on the credit card terminal outside, it asked me if I wanted a carwash; the icky part was that it only displayed a Yes option. Only after several seconds did it add a No option.

What do ya say, can we all make an effort to not be subhuman? Are you with me?

To Apple

2010-09-10T23:43:00.001-07:00

The only thing you need to add to the iPod is wireless sync, it doesn't need to get any tinier.

2010-08-28T00:35:00.000-07:00

The problem with entrepreneurs is that they see themselves as this weird noble endangered species. It's ok to try starting a business, just try not to see yourself as a brave solitary soul struggling against the entire world and shitty employees. If you're in the US, you have access to credit markets, you have infrastructure like roads that aren't complete shit, you have access to an educated (and uneducated) workforce. You didn't do it alone, and remember that other people don't exist just to play a role in the movie of your life.

/end rant

2010-08-22T19:10:00.000-07:00

Facebook just put those "Leave a message for your deceased loved one, then pay to see the comments" websites out of business didn't it?

2010-08-21T01:13:00.000-07:00

Who was the first individual (and of what species) that realized that they were going to die someday?

a random anti-Hollywood moment

2010-06-28T19:32:00.000-07:00

I liked when the shy glasses-wearing kid in Tropic Thunder became more confident as the movie progressed, but I hated that they showed his transformation by removing his glasses. When they removed them, he wasn't likely to need the independence from opinion he had developed, because people were likely to treat him differently in the future simply because he no longer had those pieces of clear plastic on his face.

2010-05-28T11:43:00.000-07:00

The climate change debate is in a difficult place where the people arguing don't understand the details of what's happening (e.g. fluid dynamics, the reflectivity of clouds, etc.) so all of us uninformed folks have somehow made a decision on joining a side. I understand very little of the physics of climate change, but if lots of people are willing to spend their lives looking at a problem involving lots of painful math, that's a good indicator that climate change is a real effect.

Terrible phrase that should never be used

2010-05-05T16:26:00.000-07:00

To "wrap your head around" something as in, "It took me a while to wrap my head around that idea". I've used the phrase 3 or 4 times in my life, but it caused an increase in my Douchebag Factor, so I stopped. Please also consider stopping. It just sounds weird and pretentious.

2010-05-03T00:17:00.000-07:00

Since researchers have had such a hard time figuring out the causes of diseases from genetics so far, is there reason to believe that epigenetics will have more luck?

2010-05-01T11:50:00.000-07:00

"Some German guy is running around naked. Maybe someone should do something."

--note I saw on a trail register in the Henry Mountains in March

Debbie Downer thought of the day

2010-04-28T17:20:00.000-07:00

Evolution needed to reward us immensely for eating and fucking, but perhaps it also punishes those who think too much about evolution by making them feel depressed when they realize they can view the raison d'être of all lifeforms as just wanting to exist as long as possible and also make copies of themselves. So if we're bummed by that thought, we'll stop thinking about it because it sucks and go back to sex and chocolate.

2010-04-27T23:58:00.000-07:00

Once in a while I'll see someone smiling big at me on a commercial and then I'll remember that this person is lying to me for money and that's just one of the things people do with each other.

Cognitive enhancement

2010-04-08T15:54:00.000-07:00

I recently tried two supplements reported to enhance cognitive ability - piracetam and sulbutiamine. They didn't work for me, but even if they had there's an issue. If they had worked well and I could focus better and I wanted to take them every day - would that be an addiction?

Stopping piracetam and sulbutiamine was a no brainer since they didn't work for me, but in general if it's not found in nature, and there are no large placebo controlled trials for effectiveness and safety I think it's best to stay away. (Here's a cool balloon race of supplements and their trial results. All in-vitro and small trials thankfully excluded.)

atm, I'm currently testing out creatine -- for my brain, not my body. There is a mechanism for creatine in generating ATP quickly in the brain when the brain is fuel limited. (My working assumption is that more ATP equals better mental performance, but is that right?)

2010-03-15T10:43:00.000-07:00

It disturbs me when people don't realize how limited their knowledge is.

By the time your hair is that gray you should have a sense of the great mass of how little you know. More commentary at the NYT.

2010-03-14T14:48:00.000-07:00

I drove around camping and hiking in Utah last week and went a good distance down some fairly remote dirt roads and it was a pleasant surprise to see how many people would stop and ask if I was alright. (At what point do people start to get concerned? 10 miles on a poopy road and snow on the ground?) John Krakauer said in Eiger Dreams that once you got out far enough in the Icelandic countryside, if you happened to stumble across a home, it wouldn't be surprising to see the woman who lived there running down the driveway towards you with a pitcher of milk.

.

2010-02-23T19:24:00.000-08:00

A while back I transferred nearly all of my savings from Bank of America to another bank when they started charging me fees to transfer out. I left $13 in the account but I didn't close it down. Somehow they decided to move that money to a money market savings account (without my consent) and charge me $10.00 monthly for the privilege of making 1 cent per month. Yeah.

2009-12-17T00:50:00.000-08:00

I can think of no more flimsy basis for a relationship than physical beauty. And women enjoy being noticed for the insanely random multitudes of coinflips that happened at conception (well, men too). I don't know what happened to me because I wasn't like this even 3 years ago, but I cringe a little whenever someone mentions how beautiful his wife is. (The first question you inevitably hear when seeing someone is "Is she pretty?")

If you were God, it would not have been hard to make a more egalitarian world.

(But in sympathy for my fellow human beings, I understand why evolution made physical attraction so powerful. But I don't understand why evolution gave me the ability to countermand that attraction with thought.)

Haha, that awful Nsync song God Must Have Spent a Little More Time On You just came to mind. :)

Or maybe I just need to drink this and become a man again.

Stress and neurodegeneration

2009-11-28T14:19:00.000-08:00

Terribly compelling video (unfortunately) on how stress makes glucocorticoids and glucocorticoids destroy your neurons + other nastiness. Seems like a downer until the end. (The takeaway here is take care of your mental/emotional life otherwise bad things happen chemistry-wise in your body.) Interesting throughout.

online dating for all the womens out there

2009-11-02T13:00:00.000-08:00

If you're a woman on a dating site (and more of you should be, it's a mistake for your life not to be), please fill out your profile with something I can start a conversation about. I need a hook to start a real conversation and for some reason I really dislike starting out with "Hey, how are you?" or "u r hawt, wut's up?"

Give me little bits of something that may be interesting, never that:
1) you like to laugh,
2) your friend is making you do this (we know you're lonely, just like the rest of the human race)
3) you're laid back,
4) you're happy going out or staying in

And listing 40 bands on your profile is a mistake, it's too much text and I skip it.

2009-11-01T00:27:00.000-07:00

Both young women and middle aged men are punished for their sexuality. And conversely, older women and young men are encouraged.

Exercise vs. Antioxidants

2009-10-26T20:30:00.000-07:00

This is pretty crazy but exercise and antioxidants seem to work against each other.

2009-10-26T20:18:00.000-07:00

I've been learning about what chemical compounds make food healthy, such as the catechins in green tea. But it's only good to think about health up to a point, since a car could run into me and necrotize all the cells in my legs, and no chemical element would fix that.

2009-10-26T01:34:00.000-07:00

It's weird to think that every single atom that makes up me came from somewhere else on the Earth and that my body has just gathered them all up for the moment. And some days from now, those atoms will all be changed out for new ones.

2009-10-18T22:23:00.000-07:00

This event reminds me of a case in Russia, when a man brought his wife to hospital and was made to wait as the staff expected a bribe. The wife died, the man went home, took a gun, shot down each one of the staff that refused to treat his wife, and killed himself.

Wow.

2009-10-15T23:31:00.000-07:00

Censorship will be enforced. There will be no talk of shamans, of yoga classes, nutritional values, herbal teas, discovering your Boundaries, and Inner Growth.

-- Werner Herzog, about his Rogue Film School

2009-10-13T00:32:00.000-07:00

The book of my enemy has been remaindered
And I am pleased.

--Clive James

2009-10-09T18:25:00.001-07:00

Bank of America/Countrywide is now charging me fees to transfer my own money to other accounts. Fantastic. In retribution I'm transferring everything I have with them out.

Less bank consolidation, more competition please.

2009-09-24T13:42:00.000-07:00

Incredibly eloquent writing by C.S. Lewis on money and power.

The motives of anyone who desires power over others needs to be questioned. Corruption is not "out there", the seed and the weakness is in all of us, in all moments, but it is possible to guard against its expression. My favorite example of defending against this is the fictional character Maximus in the movie Gladiator. When asked to become emperor of Rome, he is troubled because he dreams of returning home to his wife and child.

I can hear you dying Myspace

2009-09-18T10:23:00.000-07:00

I finally added a filter to remove all of MySpace's annoying, desperate emails to "see what my friends are up to."

Build something good, and do not try to monetize your customers for the maximum amount with a screen full of ads. So much of life is about restraint...in comedy and love for two. Business for another.

2009-09-03T21:16:00.000-07:00

The downside of Amazon becoming profitable is that their prices have been creeping up over the years. But you can download a badass little plugin for Firefox named InvisibleHand that will check for lower prices of the item on other sites and display a notification if it finds a better price. Well done.

2009-09-01T23:38:00.000-07:00

Blizzard should release numbers on the total development and maintenance budget of WoW in order to deter competitors from making their own MMOs. (Unless the budget happened to be extraordinarily low.) But there would still be entrepreneurs spouting "if we only captured 2% of the market we'd be rich, yada yada."

2009-08-31T15:42:00.000-07:00

If we understand little of the absurd complexity of the components of our own bodies, if we are components in the body of God, how much of itself does God understand?

Repeat after me: the world is unfair and I am a piece of shit

2009-08-30T01:27:00.000-07:00

Slavery was just outlawed in Mauritania in 2007(!)

(You'll have to listen to this BBC story to understand the title of this post.) I get so angry when I think about stuff like this. On the other hand, I think about whether some girl in a Chinese factory working 14 hours a day so I can have cheap electronics or a migrant worker from Mexico picking strawberries for below US minimum wage is right. I think what makes it not worth worrying about for most people is that the information about working conditions has been lost (e.g. I don't know that my $2.99 strawberries were picked by someone getting paid $2.50 an hour). Recovering this information and exposing it (along with making it easy for people paying below minimum wage to head to prison for a year would do some good).

I love me some good ol' cognitive dissonance.

2009-08-28T09:54:00.000-07:00

I never knew about this, I may actually have to think next time I see someone use a statistic.

2009-08-27T21:33:00.000-07:00

I feel for the guy who wrote this post. I'm sure he recommends making a special effort not to get on the wrong side of an entity with deep pockets and little regard for the welfare of others.

Restraint is hugely important in many areas of life -- humor for one, relationships for another. I have a low opinion of those who protect their status quo by all means at their disposal. It's weakness.

2009-08-27T10:32:00.000-07:00

Short and good article on finance's function in our economy and how well it's doing the job -- and at what cost.

2009-08-21T01:22:00.000-07:00

I noticed in my grocery store that the Coinstar machine no longer displays that they take a cut of 8.9%. (I bet a law has been changed, and there is no longer regulation mandating this.) Every time I see someone use one I cringe since someone taking 8.9% off an investment would just be insane. They don't even make sense from an evil economist robot point of view since you're exchanging perfectly good legal tender for less legal tender.

I wish I could legally shake the next person I see using one...and then also lecture them on starting a 401k (and make sure that expense ratio is where it should be).

2009-08-18T21:52:00.001-07:00

"attempt what is not certain. Certainty may or may not come later. It may then be a valuable delusion."

—Richard Diebenkorn, from “Notes to myself on beginning a painting”

Tiny random factoid

2009-08-18T09:55:00.000-07:00

In Indonesia, you could send 1500 text messages for the cost of sending one in the US.

2009-08-17T01:48:00.000-07:00

I routinely come across articles mentioning a corrupt politician or salesman, but I've never come across a soul in my life who would consider themselves corrupt. And I bet even those rare few people who have been convicted for the offense do not see themselves as corrupt, or at least no more than any other person.

Maybe everyone deep down knows they have that weakness in them, but they cannot stand the thought of themselves being weak or mildly evil?

2009-08-15T22:28:00.000-07:00

I started meditating regularly this year and it still surprises me how good I can feel when I do it well.

2009-08-11T13:03:00.000-07:00

"I ain't never been lost, but I've been in some mighty strange country for two or three days."

--Daniel Boone (supposedly, at least)

2009-08-10T14:49:00.001-07:00

Facebook has probably done more for digital camera sales than anything else I can imagine.

2009-08-10T00:45:00.000-07:00

"Do not lose your desire to walk; every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness; I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it."

--Mr. Soren Kierkegaard

2009-08-05T01:41:00.001-07:00

The nights have been beautiful here lately in San Juan Capo. I've been sitting outside and watching the stars and moon the past few nights. Lovely.

2009-08-04T00:08:00.001-07:00

Psychoanalytic doctrine reveals the pig in man, a pig saddled with a conscience; the disastrous result is that the pig is uncomfortable beneath that pious rider, and the rider fares no better in the situation, since his endeavor is not only to tame the pig but also to render it invisible.

--Stanislaw Lem, His Master's Voice

2009-07-30T11:20:00.000-07:00

I always think it's weird when I see someone who was overweight go on a talk show and show their new self off. I saw a guy say "I don't even recognize the old me" with disdain. And the audience clapped after that statement, and it was a normal clap, but it was also confused and uneasy.

There is something sad about not accepting yourself as you are.

Feynman's Messenger lectures

2009-07-15T12:45:00.000-07:00

Bill Gates has purchased Richard Feynman's messenger lectures with his own cash and made them available for everyone. Richard Feynman is one of those rare heroes of mine.

2009-06-24T12:05:00.000-07:00

I went online to try and buy the only deodorant I like but my Citi credit card rewards no longer allows me to choose the amazon.com gift certificates I love. Now instead I can purchase the same items from Citi's rewards site and they'll be fulfilled by amazon. The only problem is that I can pay $17 for a 6-pack with the gift certs, but on Citi's site they now want to charge me the equivalent of $39 (at a "special price" down from $44!) for the exact item, and shipped from the same company! The audacity would be amazing if it wasn't so disgusting.

Capitalizing maliciously on people's ignorance is one of the things I find disgusting about human beings. (But I am also an investor in Citi since Citi is a member of the S&P 500...ugh.)

Wesley's law

2009-06-22T20:23:00.000-07:00

The number of exclamation marks used in a facebook status update is inversely proportional to how exciting the status update actually is.

2009-06-08T22:37:00.000-07:00

Rest now, Vivian.

Sleepsong - Secret Garden, Bre...

2009-05-28T03:47:00.000-07:00

Frontline: Storm over Everest is phenomenal. Those tents just shake. You can stream the whole thing from Netflix.

2009-05-28T00:54:00.000-07:00

It's amusing that you cannot legally discriminate in a workplace, but on dating sites you just check a box that says, "I don't want to talk to black people" and that's completely acceptable. I wonder if there's a checkbox on Indian dating sites for only dating members of certain castes. Or maybe there are few Untouchables that have computers right now, I don't know.

And it's also weird that paying people for sex is illegal, but paying people to have sex if a video camera is there is kosher.

2009-05-25T01:02:00.000-07:00

I picture Ben Bernanke having a recurring nightmare where he realizes he still lacks the crucial information on the cause of the Great Depression, but he is pulled into a plane, into a complicated cockpit, and he sits down and discovers that the knob he needs to turn, the mechanism that will fix everything doesn't exist.

2009-05-20T23:45:00.000-07:00

2 months ago I went for a solo hike up to San Gorgonio to practice my ice axe skills. I was hiking for a good while and felt quite alone (it was a weekday), until I came across an older hiker coming down. This was bad timing, but just after I noticed him and before I consciously realized how it would look, I was reaching to unsheathe my ice axe from my backpack. I'm fairly certain it looked like I was going to murder him. (Dude hasn't spoken a word and now he's reaching menacingly for a rather sadistic looking tool.) I realized what I'd done by then, but I couldn't put the axe back, or it would've looked weird. And I couldn't say, "I swear I'm not going to kill you." cuz also weird.

But the hike was good, even though I couldn't make it to the top, even with a full day's walking. But when I turned around, I could see the sun set on the ocean, 90 miles away through OC's haze.

2009-05-15T22:17:00.001-07:00

I should have written this earlier, but rest in peace David Foster Wallace. You are missed, even by those who did not know you.

2009-04-30T14:48:00.000-07:00

New Video Game Technology Finally Allows Rendering Of Smaller Breasts

2009-04-20T22:05:00.000-07:00

If I can keep this blog for 50 years, it will be interesting to see the evolution of my thoughts. I also wonder if the future me will think the me now is a dumbass.

2009-04-13T23:25:00.000-07:00

It's a mistake to measure investments from peak to trough, it makes the losses feel much worse than they will be. I like to think of the numbers on my 401k as imaginary made up things with no substance until I convert to cash. Another trick I do is to only look at my 401k once or twice a year.

2009-04-08T00:11:00.000-07:00

When I bought my car, the dealer was trying to get me to buy a LoJack for $800. I kept refusing, but I did it in a polite way, and I was firm. After I refused to buy any extras, he looked at me apologetically and said something like "I hope you don't think I'm a bad guy." I shook my head and said no, and he seemed slightly relieved and slightly ashamed and almost approving, like I made the right choices. Like his soul was a little eaten up having to persuade people to do what wasn't in their best interest.

Calling the bubble

2009-04-07T23:06:00.000-07:00

Bank of America actually offered me $20,000 at 0% interest on my credit card that I was able to invest at 5.5% in an online savings account. I think I made maybe $800 dollars for doing nothing, for no risk. The puritan in me felt a little bit bad about doing it, because I was literally doing no work for the money. On the other hand, the Bank of America people were big boys and girls and no one forced them to lend me $20k. But when the proverbial free lunch actually appears (read: the world has gone insane), apparently shit's about to get fucked up.

2009-04-07T22:44:00.000-07:00

Tiny flying cameras the size of a fly would be a horrible privacy and surveillance concern, but it could also be a great force for human rights and eliminating sweatshop conditions. Imagine pulling up a website and seeing a live video feed of how workers around the world were being treated.

things facebook should do

2009-03-29T16:30:00.000-07:00

Why doesn't facebook let people not see status updates that contain obscenities if they don't want that?

Why doesn't facebook let me not show certain status updates to certain people in order to avoid some awkward moments?

2009-03-25T12:26:00.000-07:00

I read the Rolling Stone article on the financial mess and I decided I don't like people.

There are way too many people in the world who just want to get rich without creating something really worthwhile -- worthwhile enough to make them rich.

2009-03-24T23:13:00.001-07:00

It is so stereotypical, somehow I've started appreciating wine and finding all this emotion in classical music as I get older. I guess it's that yearning for meaning, to put a story on all the sorrows and hard work of life.

2009-03-21T10:48:00.001-07:00

I'm more concerned about the man I don't know about starving under a bridge somewhere in India than a beggar I see on the street, because the beggar has been able to survive until this moment, and so it's likely that he'll be able to survive in the future.

(I admit, thinking like this feels a little unnatural and economist-like.)

2009-03-21T10:43:00.000-07:00

I wonder how many of the people protesting the AIG bonuses would be able to turn it down if they were in the same position and a million dollars was on the line...especially if no one was paying attention.

2009-03-16T14:05:00.000-07:00

A year ago I found all the intricacies of finance interesting, but now I just feel vaguely disgusted by the whole system. I'm glad I can make a living creating something that people want, instead of allocating money to companies and trying to extract as much off the top as possible.

My private self colliding with the public

2009-03-02T00:43:00.001-08:00

I went hiking this weekend by myself and twice other hikers suddenly appeared on the trail in front of me while I was singing a really emotional love song, really getting into it. I saw other people infrequently enough that I would start to feel alone but when people would appear, my private self would be exposed and then I'd have to make a quick decision: I chose to pretend that they hadn't heard me and I'd hum quietly to myself as they walked by.

2009-02-26T10:53:00.000-08:00

We need the Marcus Aurelius of finance as Treasury Secretary. The man who doesn't care about reputation and what he'll be doing in 4 or 8 years when he must leave office.

Youtube vs. college

2009-02-25T15:34:00.000-08:00

There are math instructors on Youtube now that are better, more intuitive teachers than my professors in college.

2009-02-25T08:41:00.000-08:00

I feel like a robot controlled by my biology when I read about the ways women's brains are different from men's, and how that indicates that it's because men were out being hunter-gatherers, and how women act this way because it'll help them raise kids, blah blah. I don't want to hear that love is just a chemical meant to bring together a couple long enough to raise a kid together, or that sex is just our genes tricking us with immense pleasure into passing them on. Love, eating, sex - each of these things are worthwhile in themselves.

I need to read less speculative science because it doesn't make me happy, and most of it can only come to a limited, useless conclusion anyway.

Prediction

2009-02-23T13:35:00.000-08:00

Gold will not reach $2000 by the end of this year because people just watched the oil bubble pop and now know to fear when a price rises rapidly for some unknown reason. If gold does go that high, I'll consider selling it short somehow and trying to make some cash off the mass delusion.

Even with the economic shitstorm there is still a large pool of money that is not reaching the hands of the people that would best put it to use to make the future a neater place, and being wasted through stock buybacks and buying gold solely because you think a greater fool will want some in the future.

2009-02-23T11:52:00.000-08:00

iTunes makes a critical usability error by not always giving an immediate response when you click somewhere. The UI works mostly nicely but it needs to tell you that it did recognize that you did indeed try to do something, and that it is working on it, immediately. Don't wait half a second or 2 seconds, it makes the UI feel mushy.