Ketan.org

Epoch second 1234567890

noreply@blogger.com (Ketan) — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 04:09:00 +0000

February 13, 2009, at 5:31:30 pm GMT, or 11:31:30 CST. I'll have to come up with something appropriate to mark the occasion.

Sound perceptions

noreply@blogger.com (Ketan) — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 18:44:00 +0000

You must try this.

Financial responsibility

noreply@blogger.com (Ketan) — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 14:10:00 +0000

I saw a flashing sign at the Austin Telco Federal Credit Union advertising: "Get away with a vacation loan!"

Wow. Just.... wow. Silly me, I assumed credit unions were good and places like check cashers were rapacious villains. Turns out I had it backwards.

Celebrity comment-spotting

noreply@blogger.com (Ketan) — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 19:21:00 +0000

This comment on my last post suggests a way to get attention from Internet celebrities. Put the names of the people whose attention you want in your blog post and hope they have a search alert set up on their own name. Just make sure that it's an uncommon name. Like mine. Or Paul Tyma's. I know, most people wouldn't consider Paul Tyma a celebrity, but he is in my world.

Hey Paul, here I am again. I'll stop using your name in vain now.

Memo-inator

noreply@blogger.com (Ketan) — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 16:50:00 +0000

Call a number. Start talking. Everything that you say gets recorded and plopped as a WAV/MP3 file on a website. Use it for notes to yourself, surreptitiously recording a conversation with a police officer, or whatever. I'm gonna email Paul Tyma (Mr. Mailinator).

Fundamental vocations

noreply@blogger.com (Ketan) — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 14:27:00 +0000

I've taken tests before that purport to help you find a career. I thought they were useless because they didn't ask the right question. It recently occurred to me that there are certain fundamental aspects of jobs that exist over all fields and specific jobs. These come down to the fundamental roles that exist in varying degrees in different jobs, and that have varying degrees of appeal to different people. Thus far, I've identified (hoping they don't sound too AD&D or like the Hindu Trinity):

Arbitrator/Judge

Artist

Builder

Caretaker

Checker

Destroyer

Discoverer

Fighter

Fixer

Guardian

Leader/Motivator/Coach
Negotiator/Deal-maker

Organizer (of people)

Persuader

Teacher

Thinker

A software developer is 3 parts Builder, 5 parts Fixer, 1 part Discoverer, and 1 part Artist (all depending on the particular job, of course). An accountant is a mix of Checker, Custodian, and Guardian, with a forensic accountant also adding a shot of Discoverer to the mix. A plumber is mostly a Fixer and partly a Builder, and, on a bad day, Discoverer. A nurse or doctor is Caretaker, Checker, Fixer, and occasionally Discoverer. A police officer is an Arbitrator/Judge, a Fighter, a Guardian, a Persuader.

I'm sure I'm missing a few fundamental roles. I'm also not completely satisfied with the ones that I have. Leader/Motivator/Coach either is poorly named or is asking to be split up. How does that role square with Organizer and Persuader, not to mention Negotiator/Deal-maker?

Presidential miscellaneous

noreply@blogger.com (Ketan) — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 13:41:00 +0000

I am so so so glad that Rudy Giuliani went down in flames in the primaries. Man, what a terrible President he would have been. The New McCain ain't much better (and the old one was no picnic), but Giuliani gave me chills. It was a huge relief that he was wiped out early.

Barack Obama has goofy ears.

Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State? Two in a box with Bill...

It would be pretty funny if Michael Bloomberg got his term limit law change through and then ran off to be Treasury Secretary. We certainly need someone of his caliber.

I would love to see Russell Feingold as Secretary of Homeland Security.

John McCain would be a disaster as President. I predict Barack Obama will be merely a disappointment. Part of it is that we have no real idea what he'll do; what he's said he'll do isn't something I think is worth a lot. What's more significant is that the problems are huge. It may be the America has peaked, and the best he can do is to slow the decline. People tend to over-estimate what the President can do*, and this next President is going to be severely hamstrung by broader forces.

* With the exception of George W. Bush. Say what you will about Bush (and I will, oh will I), the man's "imperial presidency" was a thing unlike any other.

If Barack Obama is elected, I'm worried what that will do in combination with a strong Democratic majority in Congress. On the other hand, maybe some things will be more likely to happen. Maybe only a strong Democratic majority can touch Social Security. The easiest, simplest way to defer its financial problems is to push the retirement age back to 67 or 68. Maybe there will be a large turnout of younger voters, making politicians a little more likely to buck the AARP legions. Also, I want a pony.

My wishes are a lot more elaborate

noreply@blogger.com (Ketan) — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 00:36:00 +0000

I guess I'm doomed to disappointment.

Ice cream blandwiches

noreply@blogger.com (Ketan) — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 01:56:00 +0000

I'm surprised there isn't a big market for ice cream sandwiches that are made out of something other than vanilla ice cream and chocolate biscuit. I know I'd eat fancier flavors.

Design of a Dutch commemorative 5 Euro coin

noreply@blogger.com (Ketan) — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 15:52:00 +0000

The Dutch Ministry of Finance held a design competition for a commemorative 5 Euro coin celebrating Dutch architecture. The winning artist described his design. It's very creative and clever. Much more interesting than Old Abe.

The superficial polyglot

noreply@blogger.com (Ketan) — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 13:54:00 +0000

Thanks to Dora (whom I loathe), Uma now understands that there's English and there's Spanish. I was telling her the other day that there were other languages, and giving her examples of words I knew from them. I realized I actually know words from a lot of languages. I know at least one word from each of the following:

Arabic

Chinese

English

French

German

Greek (ancient)

Greek (modern)

Hebrew

Hindi

Italian

Japanese

Korean

Latin

Marathi

Mongol

Portuguese

Russian

Spanish

Swahili

Swedish

Thai

Turkish

Actually, given that many Indian languages use similar words for things like chick peas, I could probably add another 5 or 8 languages to the list. That seems like cheating, though. Restricting it to non-food words would make that list a lot shorter, as would needing to know, say, 5 words. Still, it surprised me. How many do you think you know?

Optimism: On the 10,000th try there was light.

noreply@blogger.com (Ketan) — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 13:37:00 +0000

I've seen this billboard from the Foundation For a Better Life, an organization that I find vaguely suspicious for no discernible reason. This billboard is historically inaccurate, or at least misleading. It implies that it took Thomas Edison by himself 10,000 attempts before he made a working light bulb. If that were true, it would be stupid. Only an idiot would keep trying after 5,000 complete failures.

Incorrect implication the first: Edison didn't invent the light bulb. The light bulb was actually invented in 1802, decades before Edison was even born. It just wasn't a practical one. Just getting light out of an incandescent bulb wasn't hard. What was difficult was making it bright and durable.

Incorrect implication the second: Edison worked alone. Edison had an army of (underappreciated) assistants doing much of the work (as described in the biography The Wizard of Menlo Park). He also built on the work of others (as detailed in the afore-linked Wikipedia article), including the key innovations of the evacuated glass bulb and the carbon filament.

What Edison and his team of assistants managed to do in the late 1870s was to perfect the state of the art in electrical lighting. It was a valuable effort, but it isn't nearly the grand leap the billboard implies. I'm not even convinced they really did try 10,000 different types of filaments. Even a thousand seems unlikely, but I don't have a better number. Regardless, the billboard is deceptive.

Test Your Knowledge: The electromagnetic spectrum

noreply@blogger.com (Ketan) — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 11:40:00 +0000

Name the 7 main components of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Test Your Knowledge: Presidential Surnames

noreply@blogger.com (Ketan) — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 13:17:00 +0000

A little sneakier and harder: how many distinct Presidential surnames have there been?

The NY Times demonstrates my rule

noreply@blogger.com (Ketan) — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 01:17:00 +0000

"The victory was the third straight for the Longhorns against a team in the top 11 of the Associated Press poll."

Top 11? Because the previous win was against then #11 Missouri.

Source

Giant crystals in Mexico

noreply@blogger.com (Ketan) — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 18:52:00 +0000

Amazing pictures of enormous crystals found in an underground mine in Mexico. It looks like Superman's Fortress of Solitude. You can read some words, too. If you're into that.

Availability cascade

noreply@blogger.com (Ketan) — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 15:40:00 +0000

What an interesting concept, and a great name for it:

An availability cascade is a self-reinforcing process of collective belief formation by which an expressed perception triggers a chain reaction that gives the perception of increasing plausibility through its rising availability in public discourse. The driving mechanism involves a combination of informational and reputational motives: Individuals endorse the perception partly by learning from the apparent beliefs of others and partly by distorting their public responses in the interest of maintaining social acceptance. Availability entrepreneurs - activists who manipulate the content of public discourse - strive to trigger availability cascades likely to advance their agendas. Their availability campaigns may yield social benefits, but sometimes they bring harm, which suggests a need for safeguards. Focusing on the role of mass pressures in the regulation of risks associated with production, consumption, and the environment, Professor Timur Kuran and Cass R. Sunstein analyze availability cascades and suggest reforms to alleviate their potential hazards. Their proposals include new governmental structures designed to give civil servants better insulation against mass demands for regulatory change and an easily accessible scientific database to reduce people's dependence on popular (mis)perceptions.

Source (yeah, I only read the abstract)

Panic vs. capitulation

noreply@blogger.com (Ketan) — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 13:21:00 +0000

Is it over yet? Probably not.

Time to buy a fuel-efficient car?

noreply@blogger.com (Ketan) — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 13:11:00 +0000

Heading into a recession, with auto loans increasingly hard to get, and (temporary?) relief at the pump, it seems to me that auto dealers are going to be motivated over the next few months. Maybe especially in the first quarter of the year, usually the economic doldrums.

What does it say about me that the car that inspires the most acquisitive materialism in me is the Honda Fit?

My protest vote

noreply@blogger.com (Ketan) — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 00:53:00 +0000

I wrote in "Ron Paul."

Baby food idea

noreply@blogger.com (Ketan) — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 02:59:00 +0000

One of the baby food books we have suggests one odd possible food for 8-month old babies: cooked parsley. Can you imagine the look on a baby's face after getting a mouthful of parsley? I mean, what the...

Whither the speculators?

noreply@blogger.com (Ketan) — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 22:16:00 +0000

Oddly, nobody's giving the speculators credit for halving the price of oil. You know, seeing as they're the ones who control the market and drove the price so high. More reasonable people can at least gloat that a bunch of them have probably lost a lot of money in the fall.

It's easy to call a bottom in the stock market...

noreply@blogger.com (Ketan) — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 19:14:00 +0000

... but what does that really mean?

Some days matter more than others

noreply@blogger.com (Ketan) — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 22:10:00 +0000

You've probably seen statements like "most of the gains on stocks in 2005 game on 4 days." No? Ok, then look here (it's in Part III). That's not the point of this post or that guy's post. Instead:

Guys, remember that time when you were 24 and you were on the subway, and you saw that girl with the glasses reading a book wearing a black leather coat, and you were obsessing over whether to go up to her or not but then your stop came, and you were like, screw it, she'll probably mace me, so you got off and went to the library to study for your chem exam?

You chose wrong.

Most days are like other days. A few days are different. Those days have the potential to be the best days of your life. You won't know when those days are coming, but after they happen, you'll recognize them. A chance encounter. A surprising conversation. Those few days can change your life, but you have to be ready for it. If you don't take chances, you won't take the chance that will change your life.

Working weekends at The Economist

noreply@blogger.com (Ketan) — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 21:59:00 +0000

I used to get issues of The Economist pretty regularly on Fridays. Now... not so much. I guess there's just too much that happens during the week for a Wednesday night/Thursday morning publishing deadline. Now, well, now I don't get it until Monday, sometimes even Tuesday. And since this crisis is 7 days a week, not 5, even that doesn't help, because the issue is often still obsolete by the time I get it. Those poor guys.