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Humans Tend Toward Bubbles
One sentence in particular stuck out in this Crooked Timber entry about predictions of the economic crisis: "The big problem for the Cassandras (and we were certainly both correct and disregarded) was that it was easy to see that the bubble could not continue and much harder to foresee how it would end - it's one thing to say that dark matter must exist and another to work out what it is really like."
As Virginia Postrel pointed out in the Atlantic recently, there is a human tendency towards bubbles. In the article she talks about a very interesting experiment: "take a bunch of volunteers, usually undergraduates but sometimes businesspeople or graduate students; divide them into experimental groups of roughly a dozen; give each person money and shares to trade with; and pay dividends of 24 cents at the end of each of 15 rounds, each lasting a few minutes." It's an "efficient market" where everyone knows the same as everyone else and they all know exactly how much the securities are worth. However, every experiment turns up the same thing: "the trading price runs up way above fundamental value. Then, as the 15th round nears, it crashes." Bubbles, it seems, are a fundamental part of who we are as people.
Tags: bubbles, culture, economics //
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Architecture's Ten Best of 2008
Paul Goldberger, architecture critic over at the New Yorker lists his top ten buildings of 2008. Out of curiosity, I collected links to pictures/descriptions of all of them: Herzog and de Meuron's extraordinary Olympic Stadium, Norman Foster's Beijing Airport, the headquarters of CCTV, the Chinese television network, by Rem Koolhaas and Ole Scheeren (the official CCTV writeup with renderings), the California Academy of Sciences, in San Francisco, by Renzo Piano, the New Museum, on the Bowery in New York, by SANAA Architecture, Art Gallery of Ontario, the new Cathedral of Christ the Light, in Oakland, by Skidmore partner Craig Hartman, Paul Rudolph's Art and Architecture Building, at Yale (now renamed Paul Rudolph Hall), by Gwathmey Siegel, the Eldridge Street Synagogue, on the Lower East Side, by Walter Sedovic and Olafur Eliasson's extraordinary New York Waterfalls Project.
I think my personal favorites are the Birds Nest and the new Cathedral of Christ the Light, neither of which I had seen before reading this.
via kottke.org //
Tags: architecture, bestof2008 //
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A brief history of moral panics
An interesting thesis from Momus: "Only a medium which is seen as 'realistic' can inspire moral panics -- in other words, that moral panics correlate to the perceived power of a medium to represent." He then proceeds to go through panics in television, video, music and video games, making a pretty good case for his thesis that moral panic doesn't come along until the medium is a real "threat" for the masses.
I'll let Momus wrap it up: "Ambitious young media turks take note -- don't waste your time dabbling with Daddy's toxins. No moral panic, no credibility. Not inappropriate? Not appropriate."
via tecznotes //
Tags: culture, media //
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Food and Economics
One of my favorite ways of telling that a link or idea is really worthwhile is that I find myself mentioning it fairly frequently after reading it. This has happened with Tyler Cowen's Ethnic Dining Guide entry "General Remarks" where he goes over the basics of what makes a good ethnic restaurant. It includes simple economic rationales for how to choose the best ethnic dining like, "The best ethnic restaurants are often found in suburban strip malls, where rents are lower and the degree of feasible experimentation is greater. Small and cheap ethnic restaurants are often better than large ones." It's worth a read wherever you live (but especially if you're in DC which is where it's focused).
(Also on the food and economics tip, Paul Krugman and Stephen Dubner explore why food isn't so good in the UK.)
Tags: economics, food //
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Permission to Spy
I've been watching The Wire (currently halfway through season 3) and the thing that I've been thinking about most is how amazing it is that the police department gets the amount of information they do. In this way, the show seems a lot more accurate than the other cop dramas on TV which go around finding clues on their own (I assume at least). Basically, these cops just walk into a bunch of places (stores, phone companies, etc.) and ask for info on people. If any of these spots were to turn them down (which, to my knowledge, they're fully in their right to do) they'd be shit out of luck.
Now it's easy to find this valuable on the show where they're using the information to bust drug dealers and the such, but it's also quite frightening to imagine it happening to you or I. If we were suspected of something how quickly would the services we trust (phone company, email provider, etc.) turn over all their records. I know there was a hubub about this a few years ago with Yahoo!/Google, but I guess I never thought of it in these terms.
Tags: police, privacy, thewire //
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Why Twitter?
Most people who have used Twitter have received the question/statement, "why would anyone ever use it? No one cares what I ate for lunch today." I particularly liked this answer for Crooked Timber, "By the way, if you neither like nor understand Twitter, that's perfectly OK: no-one is making you follow anyone."
Basically, who cares who cares if you care? Or, in a slightly less cryptic way, what's the difference if anyone is listening or not you're enjoying yourself?
Anyway, I've said this before when asked if I had advice for grasping what's going on online: Go screw around. If you don't like what's happening, that's totally cool, at least you've got your own opinion. I think it's a much better way to be.
Tags: internet, twitter //
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Economic Indicators
Last week I bought the domain econdicator.com (economic + indicator) for the express reason of creating a site for cataloging all the economic indicators I keep reading about. I haven't gotten around to it yet (and may not), but I quite enjoyed this roundup of 15 indicators from sex to NASCAR. In summary: An economic crisis has brought more sex and babies, less lipstick, more pantyhose, more beer, smaller college endowments, a bankrupt but more tourist-friendly Iceland, fewer divorces, more people eating spam, less recylcling, fewer company holiday parties, more people buying used cars, cheaper sports tickets, higher paid free agents, more psychic predictions, fewer NASCAR advertisers and less plastic surgery. (Oh, and as I mentioned on Twitter last week, more stubble.)
via MetaFilter //
Tags: culture, economics //
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What's Wrong with Google Blog Search?
[Editor's Note: This is really geeky and non-bloggers probably won't care about it. Feel free to ignore and move on.]
Very happy to finally read someone complaining about Google's blog search RSS feeds. As of a few months ago, they started updating every time someone who linked anywhere on their homepage added an entry. What this means for us bloggers is that you get an update every time someone who has you in their blogroll writes a new entry. I know it must sound like a dumb complain, but it's actually super annoying.
For those of you feeling the pain, this seems to be the only Google response: "We do expect to fix the problem you're seeing. We'll use the full page content, but exclude the content that isn't really part of the post. I'm not sure if we'll be able to make the change before the end of the year, but we are working on it and are pretty confident that it can be solved." (Apologies again for all who found this boring, will get back to more interesting topics ASAP.)
via Daring Fireball //
Tags: blogs, google, search //
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December 31, 2008 |
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