Brad DeLong: Immigration is a good thing

Ok, I'm not trying to reopen a debate I had with BuddhaMouse about immigration, but I came across Brad's Morning Coffee series on Google Video, and can't help pointing it out.

The entire series is very much worth watching (each video is only about 5 minutes long, so it's not a big time sink) by the way, and I didn't really become a Google Video fan until this series of videos, along with the Google EngEDU series were posted.

Lisa's Laptop

We considered Dell, where we had coupons and an employee purchase plan discount. But Dell's site is annoying and irritating, and you can't easily compare prices because they sell different models to different customers, all ending up with the equivalent price. That alone was enough to annoy me into trying different venues.

Fortunately, Buy.com had pretty good deals on the Acer Aspire 5670 series of laptops. After digging around and finding a coupon in my mailbox, we ended up with an after-tax-and-shipping price of $980 for a 1GB machine with a dual-core CPU, a DVD burner, a built-in camera, 100GB of disk space, and a very nice remote (much nicer than the one that comes with the Mac Mini). Sure, it's not as cute as the Mac Mini, but it comes with a very nice screen, an excellent graphics card, and all the same extras for about $100 less than what Apple sells its entry-model machine for. The only advantage the Mac has over the Acer is that the Mac will have 2GB of memory (which is admittedly very expensive right now).

MacOS X is a nice operating system, but I'm pretty sure if I tried really hard I could probably boot Linux on the Acer. I guess we'll see what the reliability is like, but my guess is that the Mac and the Acer will be comparable.

A dead Mac

After speculating about the Macintosh's reliability, my fears are confirmed. My Mac Mini CDROM drive, after a mere week of service, has given up the ghost. To add insult to injury, it took a physical visit to an Apple store and a verification by an Apple Genius before Apple would agree to RMA the product. Even then, they want me to drop off the machine to Fedex before they'll ship me a new one.

By contrast, my brother tells me that Dell would ship me a new machine as soon as they agree to RMA an old machine, so that I'd never be without a computer.

Lisa's 5 year old Dell laptop just recently gave up the ghost (yes, I've been suffering a rash of hardware failures), and after seeing the reliability problems with the Intel Mac Mini, she's decided that her next laptop will also be a Dell.

This new issue of I-bonds might be a good buy

The financial press that mentions I bonds at all (a scant few, admittedly) is complaining that the rates that got reset this month were low at a 2.41% are really low compared with prevailing interest rates of 4.5% or more. What they are ignoring is that the real rate went up from 1% to 1.4%. In the long run, the real rate is what you care about, since the inflation adjusted rate will fluctuated with CPI. This series of I bonds are a really good buy if you believe that inflation is going up in the long run (which I think is a good bet). If I hadn't already loaded up on them this year, I'd be buying more. In fact, this might indeed be motivation for me to go down to the local bank and buy paper I bonds. The rate resets again in October.

There is no such thing as talent

This New York Times article (registration required) says that people who are good at something spend a lot of time practicing and becoming good at it. The conclusion being that when it comes to choosing a life path, you should do what you love — because if you don't love it, you are unlikely to work hard enough to get very good. There are many interpretations of this, of course, but it accounts for a lot of the difference in performance in Math between Asians and Americans (as seen in how badly American kids do badly when on average). When an Asian kid complains about how hard Math is and how she doesn't like it, her parents are very likely to push her, find a different tutor, anything to make her better. It's not unusual to hear Americans saying "I have no talent for it" instead.

The same thing was described in unlocking the clubhouse, a description of CMU's effort to increase its proportion of female students in Computer Science. In it, there was a section describing how women students from Asia tended to stay in Computer Science rather than the non-Asians. The reason wasn't because the women were mysteriously more talented, it was that they didn't feel that they had a choice --- dropping out would have meant a loss in face or a return to a society they had worked so hard to leave.

So while the general conclusion the New York Times might draw is that you should choose to do what you love, because that way you'll be willing and happy to work hard at it, an Asian parent might, upon seeing these results, conclude that there isn't an excuse for poor results at school --- that simply means you aren't working hard enough. While the former approach might result in happier lives (though I do recall Malcolm Gladwell talking at Google about stellar performers not necessarily leading very happy lives because they're so driven), the latter is what causes Americans to lag behind in Math and Science education. The rest of the world sees in Math and Science an opportunity to lift themselves out of poverty, what I'm seeing is that more and more Americans seem to deem Math and Science as a necessary evil, not very highly prized and easily jettisoned whenever it conflicts with religion.

[Thanks to Greg Mankiw for the pointer.]

Review: Everything Bad is Good For You

This is a quick read, mostly because the content can really be summarized really quickly: current and new TV shows and video games are becoming more and more complex, with the result that they provide a cognitive load that's surprisingly large and capable of providing intellectual stimulation and teaching problem solving skills that are useful in many other aspects of life.

The possible expense, Johnson points out, is that we've become a frentic, soundbite society that's incapable of pondering long range problems and goals. But that's always been true throughout human history (a read of Collapse will provide sufficient proof of that), so common lamentations about how kids are wasting their time playing video games are largely irrelevant.

One study at the University of Rochester asked subjects to perform a series of quick visual recogniation tests... Regular gamers consistently outperformed non-gamers on all the skills measured by the study... Games were literaly making them perceive the world more clearly... the gaming population turned out to be consistently more social, more confident, and more comfortable solving problems creatively. They also showed no evidence of reduced attention spans compared with non-gamers.

Is Mandantory Financial Education A Solution?

Earlier in our conversation, Buddha Mouse suggested that a mandantory program of financial lessons might be implemented in school for most folks.

While I won't oppose such an idea, I think that this will not have as great an effect on poverty as she might hope becaues:

1. To be able to save, you must have enough money to eat, pay rent, and pay for clothing. If you're making below the national poverty level, it's quite likely that you'll have trouble saving.
2. Most people are surprisingly bad investors. Many folks I know either aren't interested in the subject of financial planning (in which case, they'll get Cs or Ds) in the class, or even when they know what the right thing to do is, they're not emotionally capable of doing it. I have a very smart and intelligent friend who can't bring himself to buy I-bonds, because the electronic product is too intangible.
3. Financial planning is suprisingly hard! Even people like me take more than an hour to rebalance a relatively simple portfolio. If you're short on time, or don't enjoy it, you're simply not likely to do it.

I think the best chance of getting people to save is to have a national savings plan that's matched at lower to middle income levels, and professionally managed (in a balanced portfolio) in a low cost manner (similar to what federal employees get). The economies of scale by doing this nationally is huge, and the progressive savings matching will get more people to save, regardless of them knowing what they're doing. By setting up the investment plan automatically, people have a harder time making poor decisions. The fact that lower incomes are matched also means that younger workers develop the habit of saving while they are relatively early in their careers, when their investments have the most opportunity to grow.

This idea was proposed in Gene Sperling's book , and I think it has a lot of merit. The chances of it happening in our pro-wealthy Republican Congress, Senate, and White House are effectively nil. But the reason I'm pissed at Democrats as well is that not one of the forty-something senators in the Senate have had the guts to even propose something like this. If the Democrats continue not proposing and trying to get through such good ideas, they're going to keep losing elections.

New Computer

After my last computer died, I bought a Mac Mini. The computer took about a week to get to me: 2 days for the customization (I ordered 2GB of RAM), and another 3 days in shipping, and then 1 day while it got misdirected.

After having it for a few days, here are my first impressions:

1. I thought that 2GB might be overkill. Turns out that this is not true. My typical working set under Mac OS X appears to be about 1.2GB, just enough to cause my machine to swap if I had bought a 1GB machine.
2. A few things aren't as intuitive as you might imagine. For instance, I had to edit a Samba mount to share an external (USB) drive.
3. Mac OS X is a bit of a disk hog. The 80GB that came with the machine are going to go really fast, especially if you intend to dual boot the machine into Windows.
4. If your favorite environment is Emacs, you're going to have to use special instructions for building GNU Emacs v22 for Mac.
5. A few things still feel a bit sluggish. I think the extra special effects contribute to the feel. Things fade in and out instead of just snapping in and out like I'm used to.
6. Having UNIX interface underneath is really really nice.
7. The text edit fields in the web browsers seem really slow. I'm running the Universal Binary version of firefox, so it's got nothing to do with the binary.
8. The machine is much louder than expected. When it's in sleep mode or when not much is happening, it's dead silent. But rip a CD or two, compile Emacs, and the fan kicks up and you can hear it from across the room. Fortunately, like most engineers, I spend most of my time editing text and reading.
9. Despite the much vaunted UI that's not supposed to go wrong, I already managed to screw up the registry equivalent once by installing two versions of Microsoft Office.
10. 2 CPU cores are really nice too. Even when compiling, using web browsers or other apps don't bog down at all.
11. Now I have a more powerful machine at home than I have at work (my work machine is about 3 years old).

I'm still slowly warming up to the UI, so we'll see how I feel a bit later. In particular, I'm going to start running Windows XP (both as a bootcamp'd partition for games, and as a virtualized machine for quicken and possibly photoshop, which isn't going to have a universal binary version for awhile).

It's easier to rig an election than to fool a slot machine

Is it likely that the Republicans rigged the 2004 elections? Probably not. Is it likely that the companies which produced the voting machines (most of which were owned by Republicans) rigged the machines? That's not out of the question. What surprises me is that the press hasn't covered this story at all. But then again, a glance at Delong's blog will convince you that our press corps are know-nothings. English and Journalism majors are simply too incompetent at complex issues to do a proper job of covering our world today.

California Poppies at Morro Bay State Park

 

My next desktop....

Yes, I've picked the Intel Mac Mini. The runner up was the Lenovo Thinkpad X60s, which is two generations later than my work laptop, which is an X31. The Thinkpad X series have absolutely amazing battery life, fantastic keyboards (much better than the Mac laptop keyboards, which I find detestable),and very good performance and has proven very reliable.

The Mac Mini with 2GB of RAM, however, with a suitable discount (thanks to a good friend who works at Apple), was a good $1000 cheaper than an equivalently tricked out X60s, which only has 1GB of RAM, but a much faster processor, and of course, comes with its own screen. A surprisingly big contributor to the cost is the cost of the MiniDock, since the laptop does not come with a DVI connector, and obviously doesn't have slots so I could install one.

Of course, I've heard horror stories about the Mac's reliability (one of my office mates had a broken Powerbook screen, and another colleague had a bad hard drive soon after he bought a new Powerbook as well), and lack of Intel-native software is a liability (especially stuff like Photoshop, which is the only reason you'd want to trick out a Mac Mini with 2GB of RAM). Fortunately, with Boot Camp, I can turn it into a Windows XP box and run my 5 year old copy of Photoshop 6 (and it'll still run circles around MacBooks or Intel iMacs running MacOS photoshops), as well as any of my old software.

A suitably tricked out Dell, by the way, cost about the same as the Intel Mac Mini, but came with a much larger form factor (and admittedly, more expandability). I've avoided Apple products in the past mostly because of their insanely high cost, but with the iPod and the Mac Mini, they've proven themselves capable of competing with commodity products.

My Home Computer is Dead

Hard and fast on the heels of last month's data disaster, my home computer today refused to power on. It's about 5 years old (an AMD 1.8GHz machine with 512MB of RAM), so it was about time, but...

If you've been sending me e-mail or otherwise corresponding with me, I might be as fast as you're used to on the response. But I'll use this opportunity to poll my friends: What should I get as a replacement? An Intel Mac Mini (fully loaded, of course) that dual boots Windows XP? Or an IBM Thinkpad X60 laptop? The laptop is much more portable, and I definitely love my X31 which is my work machine, but the Mac Mini has a delicious S-Video out, so I can plug it into my receiver for video playback.

Good thing my old machine was backed up this time...

Marooned in Realtime

This was the book that introduced the Vingian Singularity. Being the kind of writer he is, Vinge manages to side-step the topic and deals with a group of survivors who "bobbled" through the Singularity event (which is described as something way to similar to the "rapture" event in Christian literature) struggling to gather enough of humanity to rebuild a civilization (and hopefully not miss the next singularity).

The story focuses around W.W. Bierson, who was an apparently well accomplished policeman and detective. Bierson was the victim of a stasis attack which caused him to lose his family and most of human civilization. While in stasis, his surviving son writes a series of detective novels starring him, which causes the rest of his compatriots to regard him with awe.

So when a murder of one of the co-founders of the remaining civilization occurs, who else would be called in to investigate but Bierson? However, during this investigation, Bierson uncovers not only the perpetrator of his own stasis, but also a plot to subjugate the remnants of humanity.

The mystery is well-done, with sufficient clues that the reader doesn't feel cheated. The characterization is also very well done, and the motives and people quite believable. I'm not a believer of the Vingian singularity (as previous posts show, and the bobble technology seems really questionable to me, but other than that, the book comes highly recommended.

The apology is for the unrealistically slow rate of technological growth predicted... I show artificial intelligence and inteligence amplification proceeding at what I suspect is a snail's pace...
From the Author's afterword, 1985

Being ill...

I recovered from a strep infection two weeks ago, but am still coughing, which annoys me to no end and still keeps me from my bike. It's also partly why I haven't been posting much and have actually watched some TV.

The other reason I haven't been posting much is that I've been carrying on a conversation in one of the post pages with BhuddhaMouse, whose questions and comments are well-informed, interesting, and very much worth reading and responding to. Anyone who lists one of her favorite books as Zen And The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance clearly has taste! Please feel free to add to that conversation if you have the time to think and write in.

Review: Metropolitan Transportation Commission

This is a great book, and it's free! Did you know that there were 7 fatal car-bike collisions in Santa Clara County in 2004? Did you know that there were 650 injury crashes there? And that despite there being fewer pedestrain injuries (504), there were 3 times more pedestrain fatalities (21)?

OK, you're a dyed-in-the-wool driver and refuse to walk or ride a bicycle: Did you know that the commuting time from San Mateo to Ellis street in Santa Clara county could be redued by 14 minutes if you car-pooled?

All these statistics and more, including the state of the Bay Area's roads are free, either for download or if you send them e-mail asking for a copy. It's great reading, and worth learning about.

Review: Alan Moore's Writing for Comics

Make no mistake: I'm a big Alan Moore fanboy. I consider him the best comic book writer ever, dead or alive. Better than Neil Gaiman, better than Frank Miller, Warren Ellis, Miyazaki, etc.

This book, which is really an essay on writing, was written by Moore in 1985, back when Moore was still writing The Swamp Thing for DC. His V for Vendetta
was still being serialized, and comics were starting to become respectable again, largely because of his efforts.

It is of no surprise, then, that Moore's words on writing in a few short pages are much more succint, entertaining, and relevant than any of the big books about writing I have read. His dissection of movies versus comics and their relative strengths are cogent and more insightful than Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics. Moore emphasizes ideas, story-telling, and pacing over plot, but it is very clear early on that he also did far more research and worked harder on world-building than most other writiers did. He was capable of taking an idea, and working through all of its consequences and taking the story to the ultimate end, as in
The Watchmen.

This edition of the book has an afterword by Alan Moore 15 years after he wrote the essay, disparaging it by calling it, "not that bad." It's an entertaining read to see how Moore says his approach has changed in 15 years (and for me at least, it's not always been for the better), and how maturity has made him a better human being, if not a better writer.

My only complaint about this edition is that the art in the book is completely irrelevant to Moore's essay, and it's quite obvious that the illustrator just drew random pictures as opposed to reading Moore's essay to see what might complement his work.

Finally, if you want to be a truly great writer, it is perhaps worth remembering that even in this, it is more important to be a good human being than it is to be a good writer. The artists...writers, painters, musicians...whose voices speak loudest to us across the centuries are those that turned out to have the most profound souls, those who turned out to actually have somtehing to say that was of lasting human value.

Head to Head: Montebell Trekking Umbrella versus Go-Lite Dome Umbrella

It was raining today, so Lisa & I got a chance to test the GoLite Dome Umbrella head-to-head against the Montbell UL Trekking Umbrella in real weather conditions.

The Go-Lite is the heavier of the two (by almost 50%), and does not pack down to a small handy size. However, it is by far the less finicky to shut and open. The design is simple, and the canopy is sufficiently large for one person, though not sufficient for a person with a decently sized backpack --- the backpack will get wet. The canopy material is made of nylon and seems thick enough to be sturdy under normal wear.

The Montbell packs into a little 6 inch stick (about the length of a toothbrush), and hence packs away very nicely (it comes with a tight little stuff sack), but the mechanical construction led me to be really wary, and the ballistic nylon material seems a bit thin. With a bit of practice, however, I found that I could open up the umbrella without undue worries, though stowing is still a bit of a tricky business and required a bit of care.

In practice, the 4 oz weight difference between the umbrellas is not really noticeable, even under heavy rain. The Go-Lite feels a little more solid, but the Montbell held up really well as well. The longer carrying stick of the Go-Lite makes it easy for you to rest the umbrella against your shoulder, but the light weight of the Mont-bell makes vertical carrying over a 3 hour hike a minor problem at worst, but I never did shake my feeling about how fragile the Montbell was.

My conclusion is that for a trip where lightweight is a premium, the Montbell is worth the extra $15 it costs, and for a trip where resupply is potentially a problem, the sturdier Go-Lite will provide better piece of mind. For our Coast-To-Coast walk, Lisa will carry the Go-Lite and I'll carry the Montbell. I'll try to remember to post the results when we come back from the trip.

Rainbow over San Antonio Park

Photo Credit: Lisa Wong 

The Ownership Society is not a good deal

Republicans like to talk a lot about the ownership society, one in which every person is responsiible for his fate and his ultimate outcomes. What most of them really mean is that they think they're smarter than everyone else and won't get hit by bad luck, poor choice of parents, or a lying, cheating CEO who took all the money and ran. What they forget is that we live in a country where most of the folks can barely be trusted to drive like a decent human being, and trusting those sorts of people to make financial decisions is like trusting me to know how to dress for a wedding: the outcome will not be good.

Now, the New York Times has reported a study that shows even top-achieving students in MBA programs cannot be trusted to make good decisions when it comes to allocating money to a selection of index funds! They chose on average, higher fee funds (i.e., got themselves cheated), and were easily fooled by carefully selected data. This is why privatizing social security is a bad idea, and why typical investors do extremely badly in their 401(k) plans, even assuming that they aren't just getting the shaft by their plan administrator.

The rational response, the professors argue, would have been to allocate all the money to the fund with the lowest fees. Yet fewer than 20 percent of either group of students did so. As a result, the hypothetical portfolios built by most of the students paid much higher fees than were necessary: 1.22 percentage points more, on average, among the undergraduates and 1.12 points higher among the M.B.A. students...

...if a sampling of elite students can't separate the wheat from the chaff in assessing mutual fund reports, most investors probably can't do so, either. (All the study participants were high academic achievers who had scored above average on a financial literacy test administered by the professors.)

In the other additional test, another group of 114 students was given a one-page sheet that, instead of reporting returns since inception, specifically compared the funds' fees. Students in this final group did, on average, construct portfolios with lower fees. Nevertheless, even this group came nowhere close to allocating its entire portfolio to the low-cost fund. More than half of these students, in fact, continued to allocate some money to the higher-cost index funds.

WHAT conclusions emerge from all these tests? Over all, the study said, the results do "not inspire optimism about the financial choices made by most households."

Book Review: The Man Who Folded Himself

David Gerrold, of course, wrote one of the most beloved Trek episodes ever: The Trouble with Tribbles. My recent bout of strep throat left me with sufficient time in bed to spend reading various books (and watching way too much TV).

This is a short novel about time travel. The protagonist is given a time-belt which enables him to travel back and forth in time at will, and soon figures out how to get fabulously rich, how to meet himself, and how to change time. Unfortunately, he soon discovers that every time he changes the timestream he hops to a different, alternate version of the universe.

The story ends with the story looping back to itself, which unfortunately, was highly predictable. A quick read, but not recommended. However, as a piece of juvenile fiction, it might very well be fun.