The Token Republicans

2004-03-23T21:44:00.000-05:00

The Jacksonville PBS pulled out all the stops for the pledge drive. Coming at you live from the Portuguese Synagogue in Amsterdam, Cantors: A Faith In Song.

Lastly, Jews in India.
And Jews in Space.

2004-03-04T17:43:00.000-05:00

So the question obviously becomes this: why weren't you here? Had you been there, then you could have seen page 45 of this, which is perhaps the most amazing set of data in the world. I mean, if this isn't your homepage, I mean: whatever. You probably couldn't have completed the following: "Water, race and . . . " BEWARE: There be .pdfs here!

2004-03-03T12:47:00.000-05:00

I make no comment on the content of this analysis, but on average, I find myself much more effectively swayed by its style of argument than what I usually see today. Unfortunately for me, I suspect I am in the minority.

Come on over with me to the Backpage and whisper some more of these in my ear, won't you?

2004-02-10T15:37:00.000-05:00

A teacup is a doughnut, some Krispy Kreme-snatching topologist will have you believe, but is a simply connected closed three-manifold a three-sphere?

According to this gem of mathematical correspondence, it very will might be:
----- Forwarded message from Grigory Perelman -----
Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2002 11:46:49 +0300 (MSK)
From: Grigory Perelman
Reply-To: Grigory Perelman
Subject: Re: geometrization
To: Vitali Kapovitch

That's correct.
Grisha

On Tue, 19 Nov 2002, Vitali Kapovitch wrote:

> Hi Grisha,
> Sorry to bother you but a lot of people are asking me about your preprint
> "The entropy formula for the Ricci...". Do I understand it correctly
> that while you can not yet do all the steps in the Hamilton program
> you can do enough so that using some collapsing results you can prove
> geometrization?
> Vitali
>

----- End forwarded message -----

That's Grisha Perelman who will claim one million dollars if he has indeed proven the Poincare Conjecture.

While I might not know much about topology, this is starting to look like the real deal, so you'll understand if you see me sitting on our roof with a shotgun to ward off white-board looters. I only hope that Gainesville PD will take a page from Chicago's playbook:

"Math hooligans are the worst," said a Chicago Police Department spokesman. "But the city learned from the Bieberbach riots. We were ready for them this time."

I say give 'em mounted police and tear gas, damn punks.

2004-02-04T10:54:00.000-05:00

Recipe blogging! (Many thanks to Aditee who first introduced us to this lovely dish.)

Kheera Ka Raita (Cucumber in Spiced Yogurt)

2 large cucumbers, peeled, finely grated
1 green chile, finely chopped
2 teaspoons finely chopped cilantro leaves, plus a sprig of cilantro for garnish
4 teaspoons sugar
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup plain yogurt

Remove excess juice from cucumbers by straining through vegetable strainer or use your hands as strainer. Set aside.

In medium bowl, mix green chile, cilantro, sugar and salt with yogurt. Add cucumber and mix well. Garnish with fresh sprig of cilantro leaves. Serve chilled. Makes 1 1/2 cups or enough for 4 to 5 servings.

Note: Fat-free yogurt can be substituted for plain yogurt. Artificial sweetener can also be substituted for sugar, if needed.

2004-02-03T19:13:00.000-05:00

RE: previous post. Actually, we can't run a logit. What I'm sure is due to secrecy laws, CNN is not allowing us to see the actual records. But we could conjecture one, which would be just as fun.

2004-02-03T19:09:00.000-05:00

Labor economists have taken over the CNN Primary Exit Poll pages. Check out the big MO. Now everyone can run a logit. We're not just inv(X'X)X'Y anymore!

Also, if you're following the numbers as a time trend/VAR-cum-VMA, I highly recommend the following Matlab commands to help you deal with all of the lagnomial nastiness: this and that.

2004-02-02T08:21:00.000-05:00

That presidential futures market is one unpredictable... market.

Frontline consistently delivers superlative television quality. Now they direct me toward this (fake) presidential futures market.

This is such a lovely, innovative, and satisfying idea of late. It pained me greatly when public backlash stoped DARPA's terrorism futures market.

However, the University of Iowa seems to operate something with real money. After yesterday's poker performance, I'm not about to start trading.

2004-01-22T14:12:00.000-05:00

From last Sunday's Booknotes, I bring you the story of James K. Polk and a complete lack of regard for my readers' lunches.

My good friend and visionary engine of this site, said in a recent newsletter regarding Martin Luther King, Jr.:
It's difficult to picture great leaders of the past interacting with this very intrusive and dehumanizing 21st century mass culture.

To this, I have a one-word response: "Gorget."

5. (Surg.) (a) A cutting instrument used in lithotomy. (b) A grooved instrunent used in performing various operations; -- called also blunt gorget. --Dunglison.

I similarly find it difficult to picture great leaders of the past interacting with this very intrusive and dehumanizing 19th century tool of medicine. So I hope you'll forgive me for working through this difficulty by sharing some cringe-ific history about James K. Polk.

A sickly boy, who at seventeen had life-threatening surgery that probably left him sterile...

You're wondering why it left him sterile, aren't you, reader? It is as bad as you can imagine. You see pictured in at right the emminent physician Dr. Ephraim McDowell who weilded the gorget and now graces Statuary Hall in the Capitol.

In other unsightly political events, did anyone else watch the C-SPAN/WHO coverage of the Iowa caucus in Dubuque? While I don't understand the process completely, I got the distinct impression that the chair of this particular caucus read his secret code over national television. I believe this is the video and that he phones in the results, probably two to two and a half hours into it.

2004-01-21T17:07:00.000-05:00

YEEEAAAHHH!!! By way of Micky Kaus, some of the best sampling this side of Paul's (not Begala's) Boutique. Here and here. I would add a photo here, but the Dean campaign doesn't seem to have any photos up of their candidate shrieking like a lunatic.

Plus, I'd like to give a shout out to LaTeX and NASA. If they can't get a man on Mars, then at least they're helping me by this.

2004-01-12T08:04:00.000-05:00

I hope you will excuse me for this personal note: As the venerable Simpsons Archive lags the current episodes by a few seasons, I will bring you eye-witness accounts of this startling travesty via alt.tv.simpsons:

The Simpsons writers have stolen our cat's likeness.

A white cat pointedly not named "Snowball" (in the midst of Lisa's other Snowballs I-V), but rather named after a jazz musician of note? Sounds suspicious, dig? To paraphrase Marge, "What kind of person names their cat Coltrane?" I'll tell you, Marge: A theiving hack of a writer, that's who! We can only thank God that Lisa doesn't play the trumpet.

2004-01-08T08:32:00.000-05:00

Rabbi Ila'i said: A person is known by three things: his cup (by how he holds his wine), his pocket (by his generosity) and his anger.
-- Babylonian Talmud, Eruvin 65b

Maimonides, The Laws of Behavior 2:2:

...So too with anger which is an extremely destructive trait, and it is fitting that one should distance one's self from it to the most extreme, and train himself not to get angry, even at something at which it is appropriate to be angry. If he wishes to make a point with his family or his community, if he was a trustee, and he wishes to improve their ways, he should feign anger in front of them in order to impress them, but he should be in control of himself when he is feigning anger, for he should not truly be angry.

The sages stated: Anyone who becomes angry is like one who practices idolatry.

And they stated: Anyone who is angry--if he is wise, his wisdom flees from him. If he is a Prophet--his Prophecy flees from him. Those who live with rage, their lives aren't worth living, therefore, they commanded [us] to distance ourselves from anger to the point where we will not be sensitive to that which is worth being angry about. This is the best way, and the way of the righteous. They will take insults, but they will not insult others. They will heed their shame, and they will not respond. They only act out of love, and they are happy even in their affliction. It is written of them: "And those who love Him are like the sun that comes out when it is most mighty." (Judges 5:31)

2004-01-05T11:20:00.000-05:00

To celebrate the changing from 12/31 to 1/1, please enjoy the winning sonnet from Dr. Chris Small's Epsilon-Delta Poetry Competition.

I have beholden many sets of pairs
But never seen a function rich as thee;
Unlike them who take values without cares
Thou art one blessed with continuity:

Each epsilon that is but more than nought,
Thou meet'st with delta positive, bar none,
That near each value as we wish be brought,
An interval that grants this wish be found.

Thus on all intervals where thou art seen,
Thou honor'st bounds and thou dost both attain,
And thou assum'st all values in between
All pairings of thy values one may name.

To think that such fair traits would all be gone
Couldst thou not match one tiny epsilon!
--Matei Zaharia

2003-12-15T09:50:00.000-05:00

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said:-Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Damn it, damn it, damn it! It turns out that Lileks scooped me, and while I'm sure he's not alone, seeing it still hurts.

2003-12-12T14:50:00.000-05:00

To all of us in North America who use non-ISO paper sizes, Markus Kuhn delivers the internationally standardized bitchslap:
In the ISO paper size system, the height-to-width ratio of all pages is the square root of two (1.4142 : 1). This aspect ratio is especially convenient for a paper size. If you put two such pages next to each other, or equivalently cut one parallel to its shorter side into two equal pieces, then the resulting page will have again the same width/height ratio...

The United States and Canada are today the only industrialized nations in which the ISO standard paper sizes are not yet widely used. In U.S. office applications, the paper formats "Letter" (216 × 279 mm), "Legal" (216 × 356 mm), "Executive" (190 × 254 mm), and "Ledger/Tabloid" (279 × 432 mm) are widely used today.

While all ISO paper formats have consistently the same aspect ratio of sqrt(2)=1.414, the U.S. format series has two different alternating aspect ratios 17/11=1.545 and 22/17=1.294. Therefore you cannot reduce or magnify from one U.S. format to the next higher or lower without leaving an empty margin, which is rather inconvenient.

I'll leave the clever "how many rods to the hogshead"-non-SI-units-bashing humor to the reader. He also gives some very useful (and slightly German) advice for publishing electronically.

2003-12-02T17:08:00.000-05:00

[Jesus follow-up] On turning the other cheek:
That being so, Jesus' advice to turn the other, or left, cheek to be struck is loaded with symbolic meaning. It is certainly not advice to be submissive to evil. It has at least two loaded meanings:
I deny that I am inferior to [you] and I demand you acknowledge me as your equal by striking me a forehand blow, and
as your equal, I have the right to strike you back.
Interesting, but I would find neither of these meanings satisfactory if I were facing Iron Mike. And I'm not sure if I buy it after reading Matthew 5:38-48.

2003-12-02T12:46:00.000-05:00

Hillel, Jesus, and Shammai

2003-12-01T16:49:00.000-05:00

Speaking of optimism: this.

2003-11-25T17:08:00.000-05:00

The Progress Paradox [From Publishers Weekly]:
Easterbrook sees a widespread case of cognitive dissonance in the West: according to Easterbrook, though the typical American's real income has doubled in the past 50 years, the percentage of Americans who describe themselves as "happy" remains where it was half a century ago (oddly, Easterbrook doesn't tell us what that percentage is). Why do so many of us remain discontented, he asks? Is it because now that even the middle classes can afford nearly every conceivable luxury, we have nothing left to look forward to? Easterbrook, a senior editor at the New Republic and contributing editor to the Atlantic, believes so. He also castigates modern psychology and the media for dwelling on minor problems without celebrating the broader, more upbeat context in which they exist. But his endless nagging about how Americans and Western Europeans should be more grateful for their standard of living leads him to overcompensate: for instance, he minimizes the harm done to Wal-Mart employees who were forced to work "off the clock" hours without pay because, after all, they're still living better than their ancestors, since stores like Wal-Mart sell necessities at such affordable prices. The book does confront some serious problems, like the health-care crisis, but suggests that they can be licked as effectively as we've fixed environmental, racial and other seemingly intractable problems. Sarcastic patter and a flair for catchphrases like "abundance denial" and "wealth porn," however, barely disguise a padded thesis and one easily argued against with an alternative set of statistics.

Curious that Amazon leads with a balanced review instead of a 500-megawatt glow-fest. I haven't read this and probably won't, but this speaks to my naive optimism.

2003-11-21T09:14:00.000-05:00

This is an amusing juxtaposition.

2003-11-19T17:29:00.000-05:00

Since someone mentioned credit cards, I figured it fair to suggest the viewing of the following things I've spent some recent time on. From my web page:

It's a Lorenz curve, roughly from Aiyagari (1994).
It's fake data, paramaterized roughly from the data. The blue is a AR1 process of growth, the red dots a Markov approximation of growth.

A more linked-through version can be found on my webpage.

2003-11-18T13:22:00.000-05:00

This isn't geopolitics, but I think the majority of the readers here may find it interesting...
Burrito Bros. now takes credit cards! Which means no more spare change for bums to beg for.
Oh, also, after I turn 21, I may start a Gainesville Dining Guide on the site, if Matt's offer for space still stands.

2003-11-17T15:57:00.000-05:00

China is exporting its manufacturing jobs overseas:
Sometimes when it was already very late at night, the figures of busy American managerial personnel still could be seen in the workshops. July 4 is the National Day of the United States, on which the whole nation is on holiday.

But on the afternoon of the National Day last year, an American workshop chief took the initiative to go to the factory to examine equipment and raw materials, making preparations for next day's production. "This simply could not occur in other American enterprises".

Indeed, it truly is the case that when East meets West, the laughs shift into high gear!

2003-11-13T14:54:00.000-05:00

You know it's time to subsidize household computational power in your model when . . .

[T]he agents in the model need to rationally think through all the consequences of different tax choices, and these consequences extend into the infinite future. (from Krusell and Rios-Rull, "On the Size of US Gov't: . . .", AER DEC 1999)

2003-11-12T16:33:00.000-05:00

On Charlie Rose tonight, Robert Shiller:

"Macro Securities Research will make untradable risks tradable": The problem is, when you ask people if they're interested in it, they say, ‘At what price?’ That's exactly what we can't tell them with any confidence because there's no market for it.

and

"The new financial order": Fundamental innovations will help us to deal with major risks to our livelihoods, our homes, our cities, and our nations, at a time of rapid change in the world economy.

I can't wait to get my hands on some hurricane futures! What will be the relative price between mold destroying houses in two weeks versus Mexico's economy growing by five percent in two years?

(Never did political theorists misunderstand the wisdom of their claim that states will determine the next millenium.)

NOTE: As I advance through my graduate cirriculum, I understand why Eric posts in the format he does. It makes sense, and so as I have before, I copy him.