A dead end on the Internet

The Economic Recovery Program

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 03:36:09 GMT

Last night I spent at least half the night involved in some sort of re-structuring of the world economy. It really didn't make a lot of sense, and so I didn't really bother trying to remember any of the details. All I remember now was the last part, where everything had been accomplished. I went next door to see my neighbors from my childhood, and their house had been turned into this big giant mall. I greeted them as they walked by, but apparently they didn't have time to talk, so I went and looked at all the shops while I was waiting. My mother wandered by, and I asked her if her house had been turned into a mall too. She said that everybody's house had been turned into a mall or shopping center as part of the economic recovery program. The great part, she said, was that she got to pick what shops went in her mall, so she picked shops that sold stuff she would normally buy anyway, so now she got a big discount whenever she bought anything. And as an added bonus, she was really saving gas since she didn't have to leave her house.

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 03:28:19 GMT

Someone in my apartment complex is exercising their dog on the treadmill in the fitness center. Pretty funny, I like that!

How to reduce global warming

Sat, 20 Sep 2008 22:55:58 GMT

1. Grow lots of trees (in the tropics where the albedo change won't actually increase warming)
2. Harvest the trees and turn them into paper.
3. Spread the paper out across the desert.

This will have two effects:
1. Paper is white, therefore the albedo of the area covered with it will be increased. Hence more light will be reflected back into space instead of being absorbed to heat up the earth.
2. After the paper decomposes it will return to the soil, essentially sequestering it across a wide area. This will reduce the amount of CO2 in the air.

An Experiment

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 01:13:42 GMT

Well I've spent a fun day analyzing numbers, and here are my predictions for the price of oil, with an estimated likelihood of 55%:

First, I predict that the price won't drop much further from the current price of around $104/barrel, and will be in the range of $100-$125/barrel until roughly until mid October give or take a week. Then I predict a brief rise to $135/barrel, followed by drop to around $90/barrel by mid-November where it will stay until the start of December.

Hopefully I'm interpreting the results of this formula correctly... :-)

Update: Ok I see the problem with my calculation... the correlation function is not constant, and is dominated by the recent collapse in the price of oil. Although before the drop there was an intriguing third order inflection point still visible...

Silly MS Paint

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 01:22:42 GMT

Different applications fail differently under extreme circumstances.

I created a panorama image that is about 45000x4800 pixels in size. Preview claims it is corrupt and won't open it. GIMP crashes trying to open it. Oddly enough MS Paint opened it, no problem. I did a selection and then tried to make it bigger (because for some reason MS Paint won't scroll to let you select more then what is visible at the time, but it didn't work. So I tried to give up and close MS Paint.

MS Paint won't close. It says:
---------------------------
Paint
---------------------------
There is not enough memory or resources to complete operation.
Close some programs, and then try again.
---------------------------
OK
---------------------------

Oh ha ha, MS Paint. Ha! Ha!

Writer's Block: Six-Word Story

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 01:33:47 GMT

Hemingway was once challenged to write a story in only six words. His response? “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” He is believed to have called it his greatest literary work ever. Can you write a story in six words?

Submitted By femspectre

View 506 Answers

Not again. This time different. Please!

Proverbs for the 21st Century

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 01:26:35 GMT

Haste makes things get done faster
Penny wise pounds inflation to dust
Count your chickens before they hatch, while they are still not moving
If at first you don't succeed, there is no "try".

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 21:48:11 GMT

visited 35 states (70%)
Create your own visited map of The United States or determine the next president

simplifying my diet

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 02:12:11 GMT

I've had good results with the following mix:

1 cup raw peanuts
1 cup raw sunflower seeds
1 cup raisins
1 cup rolled oats or barley
1 cup chocolate chips
1/4 cup shredded coconut (*)
1 cup pitted prunes (*)
1/2 cup dried pineapple (*)
1/2 cup carob powder (*)
1/8 cup flax seeds (*)

The items marked (*) are optional, and I have experimented with altering the ratios of the remaining items by up to +1/2 cup of any one item. The resulting mix is stirred until everything is as homogenous as possible. This is not easy, since the seeds and oats seem to want to fall to the bottom while the larger items rise to the top. Next, the mixture is fed through my Green Star juicer (with only the gears and the blank installed). The result is a delicious brown nutritious candy/cookie with a curious shape that immediately goes into the freezer. Although the blending process produces enough heat to make the entire mix come out warm, I still feel better freezing it due to the fact that the oils and what not will not keep terribly long unless frozen.

The items actually included depend on what items in the bulk section are on sale. I just recently experimented with adding dried pineapple as there was a great deal on them a couple weeks ago. I call my concoction "peanut butter chocolate chip oatmeal raisin no-bake sun cookies" and it is becoming a major part of my diet now. (Cookies and milk for dinner, yum!)

Today I tried a different experiment. I soaked a cup of cracked wheat in water, then drained off the excess, and then ran it through my juicer with the blank installed. Out came what looked a lot like lumpy dough. I spread the dough out on a plate and put it in the microwave for a minute, then let it cool and put it in the freezer. It tasted a little strange right after it was cooked, but after it came out of the freezer it actually tasted alright.

Force Majeure #13

Sun, 22 Jun 2008 05:14:51 GMT

Haven't posted these in a while. For some reason my hosting service disabled or deleted all my previous entries - apparently if I don't log in for a year they do that. Anyway, looking through my previous comics I noticed I wrote 12 of them but only posted 8, and I'm not sure which four I didn't post. If you can remember which ones I did post of the below, please leave a comment so I know which ones I need to post:
"Minor Planets"
"Sushi"
"Democracy"
"Life is Short"
"Lazy Cartoonists"
"Salvation Army"
"Sleep on It"

Anyway, here is this week's installment:

Update: Hmm, that's odd. Anybody else not see the comic from the main page but did see if from the entry page?

Reducing my fuel consumption

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 18:27:56 GMT

Ok, so I already get around mostly by bicycle and on foot, so my next attempt at reducing my fuel consumption is directed at reducing my electricity usage. Living in the desert the largest part of this usage is cooling, namely air conditioning and refrigeration. After reading about someone who has lived without a refrigerator for 30 years I decided to do some research and experimentation of my own.

So, this weekend I made my own Zeer Pot and decided to post a log of what I did in the hopes it might be interesting or useful to someone.

Here is what you need if you want to replicate my experiment:
16-inch unglazed clay pot and matching "saucer"
14-inch unglazed clay pot and matching "saucer"
one bag of sand
towel
water
indoor/outdoor thermometer to observe the results of the experiment

You can use larger or smaller pots if you like (I picked the largest two I could find), but it is very important that the pots are unglazed clay and not glazed clay or plastic, otherwise the experiment will fail!

You will need to find a location for the pot that has shade most of the day and gets an adequate amount of air movement (i.e. wind). If the air is calm you can also use a box fan. I would recommend an outdoor location such as a patio or deck. If it the air is not dry or the temperature is not hot then this experiment is probably not going to work for you.

The larger pot goes on top of its saucer. Put sand in the bottom of the pot until there is enough sand that when the smaller pot sits inside the larger that the top of both pots are even. Then fill the remaining space between the two pots with sand. The smaller saucer goes on top of the smaller pot like a lid. Next, pour water into the large saucer until it is full. Then pour water into the sand - you may find you need to add more sand as the water washes the looser sand down, but that is ok. I found that I needed about 2 quarts to fill the saucer and I put another quart and a half in the sand. If you put too much water in it will come through the hole of the smaller pot. Finally, get the towel fairly moist and sit it on top of the whole thing. The idea of the towel is to help shield the inside of the pot against the outside air.

To observe the results of the experiment you will need to put the outdoor sensor of the thermometer inside the pot. Then sit the indoor portion next to the pot. The "outdoor" reading will actually be the reading inside the pot and the "indoor" reading will actually be the outdoor temperature (assuming you are sitting the pot outdoors).

Note that as the experiment runs the visible surfaces of the pots will become damp; because of this the sides of the pot need to be kept clear of obstructions so that air can flow across the m. What is happening is that water is permeating through the pot where it evaporates on the exterior surface of the pot, drawing out more water and cooling the contents of the pot.

Here is a log of temperature readings I took:

Time	Air Temp	Pot Temp	Comments
0930	81.2	79.5	Pot is cooler because it just came from inside
0944	81.8	79.7	Haven't added water to sand yet, only in bottom saucer
0956	81.2	78.1	Just added water to sand from top
1050	84.5	75.8
1137	86.2	71.8
1310	89.7	67.0
1626	97.3	71.6	pot partially in sun, wind died down
1652	99.9	71.8	moved pot out of sun, but still little wind
1800	101.3	73.6	still not very much air flow

At the end of the experiment around 10p.m. the air was still very calm so I put a box fan on the pot on low for about 10 minutes and the interior temperature dropped 1 degree in that short time period. So air flow is definitely important and even a low-power fan works if there is no natural air movement.

Conclusions:
1. It takes a 2-3 hours to get everything down to minimum temperature (there is a lot of water that is being cooled in the process) so plan ahead.
2. Minimum temperature that can be achieved is around 67F (19.44C). From my research this should be sufficient to keep raw vegetables fresh for a few days.
3. It looks like at least a 30 degree temperature differential can be maintained if there is enough air flow, though I will have to wait for higher temperatures to see what happens inside the pot if the outdoor temperature is 110 or 120F.
4. Still need to experiment with exactly how much water is needed, but preliminarily it seems to be less then what you would using taking an average length shower.

Mon, 26 May 2008 20:06:21 GMT

I've decided to put off procrastinating until later...

Found it!

Thu, 22 May 2008 03:16:28 GMT

The piece I was looking for is the Tocatta from Widor's Organ Symphony No.5 Op.42. Anybody else like music like this?

music search

Wed, 21 May 2008 02:51:56 GMT

So I've got this piece of music I'm trying to locate the name and composer for. Unfortunately it seems like I'll just have to sift through listening to lots of different pieces until I (hopefully) hear what I'm looking for.

It would be great if Google or some other search engine would let you search for music by entering a few notes. For instance, if I did a search for "C B A G F E D C" it would return "Joy to the World".

P.S. Anybody else have this problem where LiveJournal has some kind of hidden password field? My password manager popped up at least 5 times trying to post this...

The effect of perfect knowledge on security prices

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 02:35:28 GMT

Suppose you have two companies, A and B. Each company is formed at the same time by selling one million shares of common stock for $1/share. The money is then used to buy capital and resources to begin running a company. At the end of the start up period let us suppose that each company then has a value of $1,000,000 in terms of what money could be obtained if it was completely liquidated.

However now that each company is formed and begins to commence business operations let us suppose that each company is making money, and rather then paying dividends each company is re-investing to grow the company. Furthermore, let us suppose that it is possible to know in advance exactly what the future earnings of each company will be, so that for any time t in the future we also will know the liquidation value of company A which we can represent as A(t) and of company B represented as B(t).

What will the price of A and B be?

Interestingly enough, it is impossible to say, even if A and B have fixed grow rates for an unlimited amount of time, and we know those growth rates. Let us look at why.

Let A be the "better" company, which is going to make a 10% return on its capital every year, while B is the "lesser" company which will only make a 5% return every year. If both companies are selling for $1/share, which company would you invest your money in? Obviously you would not invest in B, because A will provide you with a higher return. The price of A will therefore rise until an equilibrium is reached, namely until your return on A would be equal to the return on B. (Alternately, the price of B could fall until the return on B equaled the return on A, but that can be normalized to the former case by only considering the ratio of the price of A to the price of B, so we will only consider the former case.)

But what price must A rise to for its return and that of B to be equal? Well let's look at the intrinsic value of each company per share immediately after start up is complete (t=0) and one year later:

Years	A	B
0	1.00	1.00
1	1.10	1.05

For A and B to have the same return, the appreciation of A over the year must be equal to that of B, which is 5%. So the equilibrium price of A must be 1.05.

But wait, that can't be the right price, because suppose I want to hold for two years. Then the above table becomes:

Years	A	B
0	1.00	1.00
1	1.10	1.05
2	1.21	1.10

To buy B over A over a two year period I must only be able to get a 10% return or less from A, so the equilibrium price of A must be 1.21 / 1.10 = 1.10.

But this can't be right either! Suppose I want to hold the stock for 9 years?

Years	A	B
0	1.00	1.00
1	1.10	1.05
2	1.21	1.10
3	1.33	1.16
4	1.46	1.22
5	1.61	1.28
6	1.77	1.34
7	1.95	1.41
8	2.14	1.48
9	2.36	1.55

Now, the equilibrium price of A must be 2.36 / 1.55 = 1.52

But we can see that for any time frame that we want to hold the stock, the equilibrium price is different, and furthermore there is no maximum: if our holding period is forever then the equilibrium price would be infinity. As our time frame increases, the equilibrium price increases exponentially.

This suggests some things:
1. It is not the rate of growth that governs price, it is the difference between the rate of growth and the best rate of growth.
2. The longer one's horizon, the higher the value of the faster growing security.
3. If the rate of change differs from year to year, it doesn't matter; we can still find an equilibrium price for a given time frame.
4. Since the price of A could go up, or the price of B could go down, we can't really infer anything about whether the overall market price will go up or down at present, even though we know what the overall value is now and in the future.

If we have this much trouble if future values are known, imaging how much trouble we have with uncertain future values! In effect, uncertainty is causing volatility. However, this is not the only possible source for volatility. In fact as is obvious from observation of all markets, prices do converge to a specific value at a specific time. In the case of our perfect knowledge companies above, the market price corresponds to the present marginal time frame for holders of the stock. Therefore prices would rise if the marginal time frame of all holders of the stock increases, and fall if the marginal time frame of all holders decreases.

This seems to say something very significant about the price of securities in general. Even if we eliminate all uncertainty about the performance of a stock or a market, we still cannot say anything about the future price of either, because at that point it is determined entirely by something unrelated to the performance of the underlying company or companies and is entirely determined by time preferences of market participants. A security is its own anti-derivative.

Anybody want to help me start an Investment Fund?

Sat, 08 Dec 2007 02:54:14 GMT

Why doesn't someone start a fund that only invests in one thing - the highest returning risk free investment? This would be CDs, savings accounts, and anything else that is FDIC insured and cannot lose value. What I don't understand is why anyone would want to invest in such a risk-free investment if it doesn't pay a rate at least close to the highest rate available.

For example, right now the best yielding 1 year CDs are paying close to 5.2% APR. Why is anybody putting money into CDs at the bottom of that list that are only yielding 4.2%? Or even worse, what possible reason would someone have to go to these jokers who are only paying 1.5-3.7%??? Do people not know that better rates exist?

It seems like a fund that invested only in the highest returning risk-free investments available at the time would do two important things. First, it would free up savers like me from having to constantly shop around for the best CD rate whenever a CD is about to mature. Second, as more funds flowed into this fund, it would eventually get large enough that it would start to "arbitrage" away some of the difference as funds were more efficiently allocated to banks. This would benefit those who did not even know about the fund.

Comet Holmes

Mon, 29 Oct 2007 05:38:34 GMT

Had a really hard time spotting it visually, due in part to a thin cloud layer that has been floating over the valley this evening. I also find it difficult to correlate stars I see to stars on a star chart, due to the fact that star charts typically display magnitude by size instead of actual brightness. So I decided the best approach would be to take some actual pictures and then correlate them. Here is what I got:

I believe Holmes is fuzzy spot in the lower-left...

how to make a peanut butter sandwich

Sun, 21 Oct 2007 02:55:02 GMT

soak two cups of raw spanish peanuts for a couple hours
(optional) soak one cup of raw sunflower seeds while the peanuts are soaking
remove all skins from peanuts
remove skins from sunflower seeds (this is harder, you don't have to get them all)
remove water from seeds and nuts
mix peanuts and sunflower seeds evenly
grind in a Green Star juicer into butter
apply peanut/sunflower butter liberally to every even slice of one loaf of frozen bread
press every odd slice to the butter on it's even slice
double-bag the loaf and put it back in the freezer
whenever you feel like a sandwich, take one from the freezer, optionally add honey, and enjoy!

note: the reason for keeping everything frozen is that raw nut butter oxides fairly rapidly (overnight) when exposed to air even at refrigerator temperature.

Pet Peeves

Tue, 11 Sep 2007 02:19:08 GMT

I had two items, so I went to the "9 items or less" line in the grocery store.

The person in front of me had 11 items.

The person behind me had 10.

Hmm.

I didn't say anything...

I bought something!

Thu, 23 Aug 2007 20:17:02 GMT

It's a Green Star GS-3000 juicer, and it arrived yesterday evening. It's the most awesome juicer I've ever seen. In addition to already trying it out on carrots, lettuce, and celery with great results, I also made some raw peanut/sunflower seed butter with it as well! It takes a bit longer to clean then my old piece of junk juicer, but it's worth it. It has a ton of attachments that eventually I'll figure out how to use, too.

help! i'm trapped in the matrix and... oh never mind

Sat, 18 Aug 2007 08:26:16 GMT

I was just going to drive the car up the road just a little bit, and then park it at the side and walk back. I don't remember why now. But when I got up the road a little but and was looking for a good place to park it, I noticed that the shoulder was separated by some kind of concrete road construction barrier under this bridge. However despite it looking a bit bumpy it looked safe enough to drive over so I continued over it and was going to pull over at a nice spot under the bridge. But for some reason the brakes weren't working very well, and the car continued to roll along the shoulder past the bridge and down a slight incline. Well this has happened to me before, a lot. So after pressing as hard as I could on the brakes without seeing any noticeable decrease in speed I decided that I had had it with these faulty breaks. On my right there was some kind of wall, either a concrete wall or it might have been stone road cuts. Either way, I decided to make a sharp right turn and crash into the wall and end this crazy brake problem once and for all. So I turned the wheel sharply and... well, you know those old arcade games racing games like Pole Position where you were pretty much forced to stay on the track, even if you tried to drive off and go somewhere else? Well the car seemed to turn to the right, but it still was continuing straight down the road, now moving sideways and faster then ever! That was the last straw. I decided to just jump out of the car. As I opened the door it appeared that the car was now moving backwards and had picked up quite a bit of speed. A large field of some kind was passing on my left as I swung out and hung effortlessly on the door. Letting go I felt nothing although it appeared that I was tumbling across the ground, kicking up dirt and grass in my wake. Then suddenly there seemed to be some kind of glass between me and the field, and then suddenly as I looked around me I found I was back in the car again, and it was going down the road as if nothing has happened. Well that was definitely not what I had in mind, and at that point I woke up.

And this experiment in dream land has given me a new insight on the meaning of certain kinds of dreams. Or rather the lack thereof. Faulty breaks don't represent anything! Dream cars (mine at least) apparently run on auto-pilot, or a pre-programmed sequence, a product of the scenery generation and world simulation part of my(?) brain, but for some reason the decision making part of my brain decided to assert itself and act outside the program, but was attempting to do so in an ineffective way: that is, rather then communicating directly with the former part of my brain it was instead attempting to interact directly with dream controls which weren't operative - I suppose due to a lack of anticipation that they would be needed or used? In contrast, last night I had a dream in which my legs were becoming ineffective and so decided to simply use the power of my mind to travel via levitation, which worked much better.

Of course there is still the question: where in the program would my car have wound up if I hadn't decided to stop?

At Heaven's Casino, there are no table limits, and your credit is always good

Thu, 16 Aug 2007 21:27:09 GMT

So I've been practicing playing poker (hold em) online a lot lately. Starting to get into the statistics, pot odds, and so forth. I'm convinced that any person with a keen statistical mind could be a professional poker player. I've also come to the conclusion that most of the people I've been playing suck (considering that in nearly ever session I've played I come out ahead, often 50-100% of my original stake, even winning only a couple hands!), so eventually I guess I should probably move to a site that is actually dedicated to poker and not games in general if I want to continue improving. :-)

"Selling yourself short"

Fri, 27 Apr 2007 05:00:06 GMT

Have you ever heard the expression "Don't sell yourself short"?

How can you "sell yourself short"?

In order to sell something short you first must borrow it from someone else.

Who are you borrowing yourself from? How did they get possession of you in the first place?

How is this accomplished?

The proceeds from short selling aren't yours to keep until you buy back to cover.

Who do you buy yourself back from?

Wouldn't you deliberately make your value go way down after you sold, allowing you to cover and make a large profit? Wouldn't this be considered insider trading and thus be illegal?

Wouldn't it be more interesting if you decided to sell yourself short naked?

Picture of the Day

Sun, 22 Apr 2007 17:26:40 GMT

I ran into this image on the web today and wondered what the people in the picture are thinking. Here is what I came up with. (Click for a larger view...)

Sun, 15 Apr 2007 15:57:40 GMT

Last night I dreamed that I wrote a C function that would calculate how long it would take the rest of the program to run. It was always accurate no matter what program I put it in. Unfortunately the reason it worked is that it was buggy and introduced heisenbugs into the system it was working on.