Arach Tchoupani

Nationalization is a hard sell politically. Small government, free-market types naturally have a problem with the Feds coming in and taking over stuff. But counterintuitive though it may be, overt nationalization is more consistent with the principles of a free market than covert government subsidy. Real capitalists nationalize.

Most of all, I don't think we are paying enough attention to the placebo idea. It is well known in the medical literature that sometimes placebos work as well as the drugs themselves.

This was also interesting: “when we are at our best it’s when we don’t give a fuck (sic) about what anyone thinks…if they are experts at it, they should be doing it themselves”

Reminds me of Henry Ford’s quote: “If I had asked my customers what they wanted,” Ford said, “they would have said a faster horse.”

I'm playing with fire Posterousing a Tumblr post. But “when we are at our best it’s when we don’t give a fuck (sic) about what anyone thinks…"

+1

Job Losses as a percentage decline of the 6 last recession. I must say, it's much better looking than the last one I saw which only had the last 3 and had job losses using raw numbers.

The chart looks terrible, but not insanely terrible.

Tomorrow is Obamagasm day (AndySwan ism), or the day the blue line goes back up :)

We have a product, and we’re working on it, Williams said, with more than a hint of exasperation. The money will come.

This is a recurring theme it seems with people making great stuff. Even if they may have some financial aspirations, they never obsess about money.

That's Evan Williams from Twitter and it will come.

I remember getting the same vibe from old Steve Jobs interviews. Focus on a product and a vision and trust that a business will emerge.

Smith said his trick for crying scenes was actually to try to hold back his tears on camera.

"When you're trying not to cry it's much more painful for the audience than when you watch someone who's trying to cry," he said.

"It's very rare in life that you're actually trying to cry," he said. "The fight of trying not to cry is what looks powerful on screen."

Amazing image editing suite! For all my difficulty getting Photoshop, I think these people will be coming up with something that fits my brain!

This is obviously a web based editor (flash, but it totally makes sense at this point).

After Paradise - Contemporary Art in Iran

October 21st, 2008 1 comment or link to (permalink)

A documentary about Iran’s nascent contemporary art scene which started to re-emerge 20 years after the revolution. This was largely due to Iran’s baby boomers growing up, creating one of the youngest adult populations on Earth.

Until recently, Soros was considered a maverick, at least academically, proposing that the economy was an open system regulated by events which are provably unpredictable, if deterministic. The alternative and wideley accepted system of economics that people like Greenspan practiced was based on the idea of economics as a closed system which would tend to equilibrium in a free market. It assumed that turbulence was the result of external impediments to smooth free market influences.

When I found out that this was the case, I nearly fell off my chair. It meant that the economy was being run based upon scientific ideas that come from the age of steam engines.

The economy is an open system with a scale free system of interconnected attractors. It means, among other things that the current crisis was a statistically innevitable event and that another crash crash capable event is just as likely to happen tomorrow (just like having thrown a six in a dice throw does not reduce the chances of throwing a six again). This counterintuitive notion, is the same for earthquakes which were found to follow a pattern which was not the result of the release of built up tension and suggests that the economy is similarly susceptabe to events which are removed from simplistic chains of direct cause and effect.

Understanding these phenomena are crucial to our survival as a species, so we shouldn’t waste time even listening to people who are unaware of them. People like Greenspan or many other practitioners of economics, the dismal pseudo science. Soros, on the other hand, has economics ideas that are at least based on science which is less than 100 years old. Here he is at Davos, where James Bond villains hang out and decide how to run the world.

Last line is magic :)