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(By guest blogger Philip)

I was just reading F.A. Hayek’s speech upon receiving the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1974 and he mentioned a book called Limits to Growth as a current (to 1974) mistake in the application of seemingly scientific method to complex economic phenomena. It led me to read about this book on Wikipedia and then, via Google, to a paper by Matthew R. Simmons called Club of Rome Revisited in which he attempts to rehabilitate the Club of Rome (widely panned in the years since) by showing how misguided its critics were and how correct its predictions were. I started to be more interested when I then browsed to Matthew Simmons’ site and found that he is a big proponent of Peak Oil. In fact he wrote a book I had heard plenty of but whose author’s name never stuck: Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy. It is referenced a lot by a certain type of paranoiac on the market bear boards I frequent (don’t ask what that says about me).
It was crazy to read an intelligent man, Matthew Simmons, summarizing the gloom and doom predictions for the future and saying “jeez! they were right! look how good their math was!” When in fact, whether or not their predictions were right, what Hayek so eloquently debunked was their math. It was a bullet-proof debunking. They tried to apply simple math to complex social phenomena to get any sort of prediction. Can’t be done. Wait, I am wrong. It can and is done all the time. It can’t be done accurately or with any hope of scientific validity. Read Hayek’s paper if you want an eloquent explanation of why. What amazes me is that this man, Simmons, is not ignorant of Malthus. In the intro to his paper he strenuously distanced himself from the blindspots and errors of Malthus. He then did his best to channel Malthus. I’d say if his Peak Oil scam doesn’t work out he should set up a scam as a medium because I’d have been willing to believe he was communicating directly with the long-dead British doomsayer.
I suppose it is mean to call it a scam since he is a victim of the scam before he is a perpetrator. Malthus is already serving an eternal sentence in the Halls of Shame for popularizing it. But just because the Club of Rome used an early supercomputer to distance themselves from the bad math doesn’t make their results any less shamefully unscientific and inaccurate. And just because Simmons noted that their predictions of the world population in 2000 were pretty accurate doesn’t get him off the hook for failing to note that everything else they predicted was way off. But more importantly, the accuracy of their predictions does not in anyway validate the methods used to generate them! If an accurate prediction is based on flawed analysis is the prediction still correct? Only in the most useless sense or to your balance with your bookie. The limit of what is knowable regarding the state of mind of the (accurately predicted) billions of individual actors in the world prevent math from being a tool to accurately predict the future of the world. As a phenomenon of organized complexity (see complex systems in Wikipedia) it is immune to this treatment. The complexity of human genius has allowed us to make a mockery of Malthus’ predictions of doom and exhaustion (though not his population numbers) and further to laugh at the well-intentioned but blinded-by-misapplied-science Club of Rome and now I suspect that Peak Oil is the third act in Malthus’ original play “Oh My God We’re DOOMED! or How I Misapplied Science to Scare the Children.” It continues to embarass the Keynesian central banks of the world and force senseless double speak from politicians and economists as they explain why their policies fail, their predictions are useless, and the unintended consequences of their actions dominate the intended ones. It just isn’t that kind of science. In closing, I hate you John Maynard Keynes =) =p

Adobe does not like people using their product names as verbs, specifically, “photoshopping” is not allowed.

Trademarks are not verbs.
CORRECT: The image was enhanced using Adobe® Photoshop® software.
INCORRECT: The image was photoshopped.

(emphasis not mine)

Over the years I’ve grown to hate the bloated, often-crashing, slow going, Acrobat Reader. When my system (or browser) is slow, or not responding, the first thing I try is to kill the Acrobat process. That usually does the trick. It’s a poor product, to say the least.

So it occurred to me that as a response to their prohibition of the verbing of their product names, I’ll start using “Acrobat” in all sorts of new ways, like so:

“This product is a piece of Acrobat®!”
“I just Acrobatted myself. Acrobat®!”
“This plum tastes like Acrobat®.”
“He’s got Acrobats® for a brains.”
“Get out of here, you Acrobatting® piece of Acrobat®”
“I Acrobat® you not!”

Got some more?

This was a great idea and a great interview. People are amazing. It is a shame the process of growing older tends to blunt so much of our ability. It makes you think everything might not be as bad as it sometimes seems if we could just expand our ideas.

http://www.greenstar.org/butterflies/Hole-in-the-Wall.htm

Summary: An Indian entrepeneur exposes Indian slum residents to a free PC and internet connection with no training. The results are described and an interview with the entrepeneur follows. About 5 minutes reading.

(By guest blogger Philip)

Should stupidity be legal? What about laziness? In the news today NY City and Chicago are working to ban trans-fatty acids. We are far too dumb to determine whether or not we should be eating a particular fat. While they are at it perhaps they should ban indolence. Oh, and how about a ban on not trying hard in school! That is surely bad for your prospects in life. Maybe a ban on headphones that will output volumes that are unsafe for your long-term hearing. You know, this banning stuff is fun and easy! I might be a natural for government. Think of all the lives I could save. Let me see… A ban on driving without a seat belt! Wait, they already got that one. Bike helmets? Already been discussed on this very forum. Alcohol! No more than one drink per customer a night at bars. Afterall that is the healthful limit. A ban on stressfull work. A ban on long nights sleep, as it turns out it isn’t good for you. Sleeping too much puts you at risk for heart attack, parkinson’s, and diabetes. A ban on sunbathing (skin cancer kills plenty). Maybe even a ban on red meat and dairy, prostate cancer and natural TSAs, you know? Think of the good I could do for man kind. After a life of helping my fellow man in this manner, when I die (though not of anything preventable) they will put on my tombstone “Here lies Philip, good riddance you damned busy body.”

(By guest blogger Philip)

Or don’t. Probably better that way. I wondered about what I would write my first blog post of all time. But NPR answered that question for me when Michael Krasny decided to discuss the possible future secretary general of the U.N. candidates this morning. If there is one thing I can’t sit through it is a bunch of socialists talking about their plans for the U.N. Enter the caller from Berkeley. He didn’t have anything topical (i.e. about the potential future candidates for SG) but he was absolutely certain what the world needed: a U.N. tax on all citizens of the whole entire world. Thank you, Berkeley. Now I remember why I don’t call on you much, though you sit at the front of the class and raise your hand constantly.

Increasing the power of the U.N. is an idea that is an affront to the entire accumulated knowledge of human kind as far as it applies to government. Doesn’t human history scream out that power is abused? That centralization leads to extreme power? That even the best-intentioned governments eventually fail into corruption and self service? So now we ought to take an absurdly undemocratic institution (Brunei has a monarchy with absolute power to the sultan who appoints the UN ambassador, who therefore essentially has a personal vote in the UN; India shares one vote amongst its whole democratic populace) that spans the whole world (the British Empire only got halfway) and give it money (is power) so that it doesn’t even have to answer to the only people it currently answers to at all (the governments who fund it). Then it would be sure to further all of the noble goals set forth by its unelected representatives (mostly appointees of countries who rule themselves poorly) and better the lives of all us oppressed folk who previously only had our own democratically elected goverments to look after us.

Now, like communism, world government has fatal flaws that will prevent it from ever really working. But also like communism that wouldn’t stop it from maiming or killing hundreds of millions trying.

Let’s keep the U.N. poor and small and focused entirely on international ambassadorship. Let’s channel our international charity through our own home grown institutions. Let’s not throw out every bit of fear of government we have earned over recorded history just because we all wish for world peace, prosperity, and health. The U.N. isn’t the way.

I am sure I’ve made lots of new friends in class today by kicking the big fuzzy teddy bear that is the U.N. Please leave your love notes in the comments section.

At one point or another we all fantasize about owning and/or operating a coffee-shop, restaurant, bar, pub, countryside inn and various other food/bev/service establishments. Everyone also thinks that they can do better than anything else out there. Fantasies are nice, but when you get down to the details, it ain’t so simple as it first appears. This short, insightful and well written article [slate.com] spills the beans (yes, intended) on what is the most likely outcome for you and your loved ones if you attempt at materializing this fantasy.

Looking back, we (incredibly) should have heeded the advice of bad-boy chef Anthony Bourdain, who wrote our epitaph in Kitchen Confidential: “The most dangerous species of owner … is the one who gets into the business for love.”

Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a cold blooded killer 10 years ago in the center or Tel-Aviv. I remember exactly where I was when it happened and also the following day.

4/11/1995: I was in what is called an “after,” it’s a night-off from the service where you can go home and come back the next morning. I went to my girlfriend’s place in the vicinity of Tel-Aviv, fairly close to where the rally took place. We saw it unfold on TV. The thing I remember the most is Eitan Haber’s official announcement of Rabin’s death later that night. I remember the announcement and images but what is etched in my recollection of that night is the most chilling shriek from an unseen man crying “nooooooooo.”

To this day it is sad to recall what happened and why. It also makes me mad. People at the top say today that once that “killing-of-a-politician” barrier has been breached, more will follow. It’s a form of twisted legitimization or an elimination of a taboo.

Rabin wasn’t perfect, but he was a patriot who loved his country and defended (of fought for) it in any way he knew how from a very young age. He is missed.

UPDATE: You can see the announcement here.

The History Channel here in Israel had a “conspiracy theory weekend.” I’ve seen the ones on the assassination of Napoleon in St. Helen’s, Al-Qaeda and/or neo-nazi ties to Timothy McVeigh’s Oklahoma City bombing and the mind control of Sirhan Sirhan, the murderer of Robert Kennedy (search Google for more info.) A few days ago someone sent me a flash trailer for a new book claiming that not a plane hit the pentagon on 9/11, but a missile and describes the massive cover-up that ensued.

Conspircacy theories have charm because they are mysterious and appeal to our developed paranoia sense. For understandable reasons people are attracted to theories about government cover-ups. It is also hard for people to believe official — government sponsored — reasoning because they seem too simple. For example, Napoleon dying like a regular person from cancer, two unsophisticated southerners able to make a bomb out of acquirable chemicals to topple a 9 story building on its inhabitants and that JFK/RFK was killed by a lone gunman. Most defenders of the official story use this argument to debunk other theories; and sometimes they are pretty convincing.

I’d like to apply Occam’s Razor, but often, the contrary evidence make me believe the conspiracy theorists. I guess each theory needs to be evaluated on its own and we need to decide how plausible they seem. I learned long ago, from personal experience, that I will never know the truth, and what I know is very small portion of the truth. I’m not going to fight it or let it bother me as long as it doesn’t concern me directly.

Watch this movie and count the number of passes the white team makes (you’ll need java enabled and it’s a fairly large file.)

Once you have seen the clip and counted the passes, click on comments below; only AFTER you have a count. The answer will shock you!

I find that examining a techinical book’s index is the most effective and quickest way for evaluating its quality. When I am looking for a book on a certain topic in the bookstore or library, I immidiately go to the index. I rarely look at the contents or bibiliography sections. If the author or publisher skimmed on the index, I move to the next book. Sometimes you find books with very little entries in the index, and that is just unacceptable. There is no excuse for a skinny indexes; the publishing software does it for free. The books just become unusable as a reference. If the index is more substantial, I look for a few keywords that I am interested in; if they are not there, I move on.

I developed this method after using the index in “The Art of Electronics” by Horowitz and Hill. I fondly call it “The Bible” (Gods, please make a 3rd edition.) I refer to it several times a week, even though it is alomst 15 years old! It has the most extensive and useful index I have ever seen AND it is the best technical reference book I have laid my hands on. So there’s the connection: good index is the first clue for a good tech book!

However, don’t judge a book only by its index. For example, Howard Johnson’s and Martin Graham’s”High Speed Digital Design” is an excellent reference book but, sadly, with a mediocure index section.

I upgraded to WP 1.5.
Suuuuuper easy.
For now, I am going to stick with the default theme, because I think it looks pretty good. If I was a better CSS hack, I’d change it to something like what this guy did… nice, isn’t it? Maybe I’ll personalize some graphics as I get more traffic :)

slashdot is a great thing; I monitor it daily because it really picks up on the worthwhile geek stuff (…that matters.) Typically, I follow up on 2-3 digests a day and read some of the comments which are in majority either insightful, cynical or hilarious.

Today (comments) it linked to Paul Graham’s “How to Start a Startup” version of a lecture he previously gave. It is insightful, well written and definately worth the read. I’ve always wanted a company of my own, and always knew that the right time will come. It will. Hopefully soon, I’m ready!

Anyone has an idea for a better mouse trap? call me.

Also, don’t miss Allen Morgan’s weblog where he chronicles the Ten Commandments for Entrepreneurs (he’s a VC… so it’s good to understand his perspective on things even if you disagree with it.) And, check out Steve Friedl’s So you want to be a consultant…?; great stuff.

Ever since I created my webpage www.saardrimer.com, I’ve been searching for my name on all the search engines to see if they “caught” the site and of course what rank I am getting. So I thought of creating a “search all” page where you enter the string only once and it opens a new window with the results for each of the search engines selected. Pretty simple, so give it a shot.

Oh, don’t forget to press CNTRL to disable your popup blocker… and, “HaKol” means “everything” in Hebrew. Enjoy.

I’ve started this weblog a few weeks ago knowing that only a handful of people would actually read it (after I condition my friendship to that, of course.) Then, I posted my previous remarks regarding the paris hilton “tragedy” and what do you know… got a considerable amount of traffic. Actually, if you search for “paris hilton contacts” on yahoo, I’m no. 12!
I’d really hate for my name to even be remotely associated with that airhead, but who cares, really?

So I learned a few things from this:
1. timing is everything. had I have written the post a day later, I would have gotten zip.
2. people do not leave comments (I got none); or alternatively, people saw that there are no steamy pictures or a list of celebrity contacts and left without reading a word. I prefer to think that they did read my witty post, so don’t burst my bubble.
3. celebrity bashing is fun. apparently,it’s very popular too.

btw, would it kill anyone to leave some comments?
arg.

Today was the second and final day of a class that was offered at Xilinx on “Asynchronous VLSI Design.” It was give by Dr. Ran Ginosar from the Technion in Israel. The class was excellent and I learned a lot (although it did start quite early, by my standards… but there were plenty of caffeinated drinks available.)
The topic got me thinking about life, is it asynch or synch? Obviously its asynch, but we must “synch-in” many times throughout the day. Actually, we synch every time we look at out watch, or any other clock; furthermore, we are synching to familiar timely events. For example, when I hear the cart of fresh coffee pass by my cube in the morning (contrary to what it may seem, I’m more of a tea drinker, but this was a good example.) However, our life is a continuous chain of random and asynch events.

Think of the new email popping into the mailbox, someone breaking on the way home or the surprise phone call informing you were just promoted. Most events in our life are asynch; even the whimsical decision to go bowling. So why do we need clocks for? To synchronize with other people.

Imagine a world comprised of a single person, would she need a watch? No. There’s really no point for a universal synch because she needs to synch only with herself; no one is waiting for her at 8am sharp for a seminar.

So our life is asynchronous, but we must universally synchronize it in order to live with others.

This is by far my favorite topic to read about or research. A nice article on the topic appeared on securityfocus.com. Unfortunately, it did not even mention the only book (that I know of) that deals solely with this issue in a serious manner. Anyway, I’m glad people are giving it some thought and that we’ll start thinking ahead to account for the unintended consequences.

OK. for some reason I tried to be a perfectionist with this weblog (I just hate the term ‘blog’) and it took me a while to get it right and to my satisfaction. I took a template from alexking.org’s template contest; I chose “gutenberg” and editted it a little. I also learned CSS in the process and did everything “by hand,” so that’s cool.

I hope you enjoy this weblog as long as it last…

cheers.