Not perfect but best efforts include: Firefox + NoScript alt:NoScript + BetterPrivacy alt:BetterPrivacy + RequestPolicy alt:RequestPolicy + HTTPS Everywhere + HTTPS Finder alt:HTTPS Finder
I’ve found AdBlock plus to be totally unnecessary if NoScript and RequestPolicy are setup restrictively.
Others have recommended but I have not used personally: Ghostery alt:Ghostery
Taj Mahal, Agra, India
By Yann; edited by King of Hearts (Edited version of File:Taj Mahal, Agra, India.jpg) [CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 or GFDL], via Wikimedia Commons
Schwappender Wein
By Stefan Krause, Germany (Own work) [CC-BY-3.0-de], via Wikimedia Commons
Marienburg Castle in Malbork, Żuławy region, Poland
By DerHexer; derivate work: Carschten (Own work) [GFDL or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0], via Wikimedia Commons
A couple of Ruddy Shelduck
By Michael Gäbler (Own work) [CC-BY-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons
Eruption at Fimmvörðuháls at dusk
By Boaworm (Own work) [CC-BY-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons
Ceiling of the Maccabees Chapel, Saint-Pierre Cathedral, Geneva, Switzerland
By Yann (Own work) [GFDL or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0], via Wikimedia Commons
Château de Belœil at Night
By Luc Viatour [GFDL or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0], via Wikimedia Commons
All of these pictures are from the Wikimedia Commons.
See more great pictures at the Commons Picture of the Year Page.
Or more at the Commons Picture of the Day Page.
Even more at the Commons Featured Pictures Page.
Keith Hennessey explains the most logically consistent approach I’ve seen to the USA’s federal debt limit for fiscal conservatives at the National Review:
A parent gives his irresponsible child a credit card. That child maxes out the card by paying only the first month’s installment of an incredibly expensive annual subscription.
The parent confiscates the credit card to prevent new irresponsible spending. He must still, however, pay the existing credit-card debt. He must also honor the remainder of the contract his child has signed, even if doing so means he must incur more credit-card debt and ask for an increase in his credit-card limit. Unless he is willing to risk bankruptcy or a lawsuit, he must honor the financial obligations his family member incurred.
The parent has control only over new spending commitments, and he must now severely cut back on those. He places his child on a strict allowance and cuts spending throughout the family budget.
Congress must raise the debt limit. Not doing so would eventually lead to defaulting on Treasury bonds, a potentially catastrophic event. Along with that debt limit, Congress should impose a statutory cap on all non-interest spending.
The president and his allies will demand a clean bill or weaker reforms. Republicans should allow them to try to pass such a bill. They should vote no but not filibuster. When it becomes clear that such a bill lacks even the simple majority needed to pass the House and the Senate, Republicans will have a stronger hand in negotiations.
— Keith Hennessey has served as senior White House economic adviser and deputy director of the National Economic Council. He is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and blogs at KeithHennessey.com.
Of course a government often has the option that many families do not (at least in the short term). A government can increase it’s income by raising taxes. But there is a limit to maximum tax revenue that can be collected over any period of time. It is also likely more efficient to limit tax revenues below that maximum limit. So Hennessey’s argument is also valid for anyone less concerned about the federal budget’s size and the national debt and projected deficits.
One particular part of a story about the teaching experience of a graduate student in math at Dartmouth College in the fall of 1996 resonated with me. It articulated something that I had only an intuitive but often a skeptical understanding of; when you learn something as opposed to simply memorizing a pattern or algorithm, you don’t need to study it again to remember what you learned.
…I was lucky enough to talk to some of my students about the experience a few months later. The general consensus was that the material really stuck. Furthermore nobody studied for the final. No joke. As one girl said, “I tried studying because I thought I should, but I gave up after a half-hour because I already knew it all.” That is how I think it should be – if you study properly through the course, then you won’t need to study for the final. Because you’ve already learned it. And you’ll have a leg up on the next course because you still remember the material that everyone else has forgotten.
Sometimes, even a decade after I’ve last thought about an obscure topic, I’ll recall everything I’ve read about it including arcane details and problems I’ve work out and the reasoning that brought me to conclusions.
Canadian Economist, Frances Woolley sketched a diagram to estimate the possible value of unmediated information from economists to the general public. That is, why reading an explanation of economic analysis from an Economist is better than reading a journalist’s explanation.
I honestly think that most journalists wouldn’t know what this diagram means. Would they realize that Woolley’s diagram indicates that the average college graduate understands more about economics than an average journalist? (I don’t think so.) Is that a good assumption by Woolley? (I think so.) What does that say about business and economics journalist that are not Economists? (There are probably a lot of bad ones.) What does this imply about economic reports in popular media? (It is probably under reported and often poorly explained or incorrect.)
Canadian Economist, Frances Woolley sketched a diagram to estimate the possible value of unmediated information from economists to the general public. That is, why reading an explanation of economic analysis from an Economist is better than reading a journalist’s explanation.
http://worthwhile.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451688169e20147e3d50aef970b-pi
I honestly think that most journalists wouldn’t know what this diagram means. Would they realize that Woolley’s diagram indicates that the average college graduate understands more about economics than an average journalist? (I don’t think so.) Is that a good assumption by Woolley? (I think so.) What does that say about business and economics journalist that are not Economists? (There are probably a lot of bad ones.) What does this imply about economic reports in popular media? (It is probably under reported and often poorly explained or incorrect.)
Some sobering numbers about the Powerball lottery (other lotteries are in the same order of magnitude) from Christopher J. Mecklin and Robert G. Donnelly of Murray State University. ['Powerball, Expected Value, and the Law of (very) Large Numbers' in the Journal of Statistics Education Volume 13, Number 2 (2005)]
...to be at least 95% confident of winning money on the Powerball, even if we are disciplined enough to only play when the expected value is positive and fortunate enough to be the unique winner when we hit the jackpot, we will have to play hundreds of billions of times. This would require hundreds of billions of dollars (which we don’t have) and hundreds of billions of opportunities to play Powerball when the jackpot is high. Even if we buy hundreds or thousands or even millions of tickets when the expectation is positive, we will probably die long before we are ahead. If we lowered the confidence level to 50% or even 10%, we would still expect to need to play 10 to 20 billion times to realize a profit.
Even if we did have hundreds of billions of dollars at our disposal to play Powerball, we probably wouldn’t want to. Risking $200 billion for the chance to win a prize of even $200 million would be proportional to a person with a yearly income of $50,000 risking that entire salary on a game of chance for the opportunity to win a $50 prize.
They go on to show that your opportunities to play with a positive expected value is limited.
Table 5. Minimum Size of Powerball Jackpot Needed for a Positive Expected Value.
| Number of Players | Minimum Jackpot $ |
|---|---|
| 10,000,000 | $293,057,107 |
| 20,000,000 | $305,207,483 |
| 30,000,000 | $317,679,592 |
| 40,000,000 | $330,472,332 |
| 50,000,000 | $343,584,163 |
| 60,000,000 | $357,013,121 |
| 70,000,000 | $370,756,823 |
| 80,000,000 | $384,812,481 |
| 90,000,000 | $399,176,916 |
| 100,000,000 | $413,846,569 |
It is typical for the Powerball lottery to have about 10 to 20 million players for the smaller jackpots (i.e. drawings held after wins) but at least 50 million players when the jackpot has been built up after several successive drawings without a jackpot winner.
The math used in the paper is facinating. It's definitely worth a look.
For future reference:
Option 1 You only get one free pass (maybe) if you are going to order assuming everyone else is OK with subsidizing your binge drinking 40 year old single malt.
Uwe E. Reinhardt an economist at Princeton University, who normally focuses on healthcare economics, recently wrote two excellent articles on the limits of economic analysis. He argues that free trade policy is not solely an economic decision.
As seen on Slashdot today:
Our units of temporal measurement, from seconds on up to months, are so complicated, asymmetrical and disjunctive so as to make coherent mental reckoning in time all but impossible. Indeed, had some tyrannical god contrived to enslave our minds to time, to make it all but impossible for us to escape subjection to sodden routines and unpleasant surprises, he could hardly have done better than handing down our present system.
In his latest post titled “The President’s budget: whistling past the graveyard”, Keith Hennessey criticizes President Obama’s Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2012 with some bullet points of his “overall qualitative and strategic impressions”. I share his concerns with one minor quibble.
Mr. Hennessey writes:
- … With his State of the Union address and this budget, President Obama is trying to define a new problem to be solved. He thinks … our government isn’t spending enough on infrastructure, innovation, and education. Suppose you think he’s right (I don’t). Is this problem more urgent than restoring short-term economic growth? Is it more important than addressing unsustainable deficits and a federal government expansion that will leave fewer resources for the private sector? The President apparently thinks it is. I strongly disagree.
Mr. Hennessey gives no credit for the benefits that could accrue from proper spending on infrastructure and education. There is potential for this type of spending to raise our current and longer-run GDP and thus tax revenue to offset some of the deficit that needs to be addressed. I’m in no position to provide any sort of estimate on the potential returns from proper infrastructure and education spending. However, the budget’s focus on investments in infrastructure and education are reasonable. It just doesn’t constitute a complete solution to the short-run aggregate demand slump nor the long-run deficits our economy is facing.
Mr. Hennessey does provide a hypothesis for why a complete solution was not proposed:
The President is choosing both a policy path and a campaign strategy. He is betting that having no proposal to address the looming fiscal crisis is better for his reelection prospects than having one.
The President has made his strategic choice: we are headed toward a two year fiscal stalemate in a newly balanced Washington.
If true (and I think it quite likely is), I find this approach deplorable. The President’s duty is to serve his country and defend and uphold the constitution. Our current President seems to be choosing to defend his power and serve his own interests first. Much like every other politician I can think of at the moment.
A reddit.com user seeks advice from the Internet. The Internet responds.
Sample 1: “Try to picture us old fucks as the teenagers we used to be. Talk to that person.”
Sample 2: “sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind…the race is long, and in the end, it’s only with yourself.”
Sample 3: “People lie, a lot.”
Recurring Advice: “Don’t get fat.”
0100010001010011 on the incomprehensibility of law:
In some states, the age of consent and child porn statutes have the same age limits.
For instance, a quick read of NV law shows the AOC to be 16. Child porn is defined as sexually explicit blah blah blah involving a person under 16. Federal law makes it a crime with a person under 18, but there may be some state line/interstate commerce nexus that needs to be fulfilled.
I didn’t feel like looking at too many states, but found this same AOC/CP thing with NH-16/16.
Many states forbid distributing/exhibiting obscenity to people under 18, regardless of their AOC/CP statutes.
So, excluding the feds, it’s not a crime to have sex with a 16 year old or film it. But, she can’t watch the tape afterwards. It’s a crime to allow her 16 year old friend to watch the act as it occurs, but not a crime to have her join. Neither of them can smoke a cigarette or have a beer afterwards. If either one were to rob,beat,kill one of their fellow particpants, they would be tried as an adult in every state in the country.
Seen on Slashdot
“I try to keep an open mind, but not so open that my brains fall out.” – Judge Harold T. Stone
Seen on Slashdot
Amorymeltzer – I believe you mean “risky” not “dangerous.” The most dangerous item I own is probably a knife.
corsec67 – You don’t own a car? That is probably the “most dangerous” class of item that people own.
Anonymous Coward – I don’t own a car, but I do own a lightsaber. Not as clumsy or random as a car; an elegant weapon for a more civilized age.
Seen on Slashdot
Management starts offering deals like this:
Dec. 23 New Jersey Devils vs. New York Islanders Prudential Center – Newark 07:00 PM
or
Dec. 31 New Jersey Devils vs. Atlanta Thrashers Prudential Center – Newark 05:00 PM (New Year’s Eve Fireworks)
Get 2 – $59 tickets and 2 – $10 Food Cards for only $50 (a $138 value) – Mezzanine/balcony
Or
Get 2 – $85 tickets and 2 – $15 Food Cards for only $90 (a $200 value) – Lower Level
“Like most economists, I am personally obsessed with efficiency, and wasted resources offend me in an irrational way.” – R. Preston McAfee of Yahoo! Research and Caltech in Edifying Editing
Robert H. Frank reminds us what has been known for millennia Talent and hard work are neither necessary nor sufficient for economic success. Paramount to success is luck.
A great description of the European Central Bank’s (ECB) response to Ireland’s fiscal problems.
It’s as if we’re having the following dialogue: “Ireland really can’t afford to pay these debts.” “Here’s a credit line!” “No, really, we just can’t afford to pay.” “Here’s a credit line!” It really is like watching a car wreck.
New York, NY, September 28, 2001 — Debris on surrounding roofs at the site of the World Trade Center. Photo by Andrea Booher. Source: FEMA Photo Library
New Orleans, LA, September 7, 2005 – Neighborhoods and highways throughout the area remain flooded as a result of Hurricane Katrina. Photo by Jocelyn Augustino. Source: FEMA Photo Library](http://www.photolibrary.fema.gov/photolibrary/photo_details.do?id=19230)
Fun with Facebook My Favorite: Asteroid (even though the time line makes no sense).
For whatever reason, Motorola and Verizon has locked down the Android Operating System on the new Droid X phone. The Droid X is loaded up with crapware that can only be removed if you hack the phone to gain root access. The only known way to root the Droid X is to use Windows.
Thanks to Motorola an Verizon for taking one of the greatest advantages of the Android OS, it’s libre software, and making sure that all but a few never benefit from this advantage.
I never liked the term open source. I think it misses the point that
having control over modification and expansion of others' ideas has
value. The author substitutes the term "open source" software, the
ability to view source material, for "libre" software, the freedom to
use, modify, share, and learn from source material. The two are
overlapping concepts but they are not equivalent. Where the author
writes "open source" he really means "libre".
Its important to view macroeconomics from both a Keynesian, Monetarist, and Austrian views. They are not incompatible, they have varying degrees of influence under various situations. Although following an Austrian prescription of limiting leverage and credit creation during the economic boom may have prevented a severe downturn, Keynesian and Monetary responses limit the ill effects during a recovery.
Some Austrian and blended view readings:
From ROGER W. GARRISON:
Powerpoint Slides using comparing Keynesian Circular-Flow Analysis to Hayekian Means-Ends Analysis.
“The Limits of Macroeconomics,” Cato Journal, vol. 12, no. 1 (Spring/Summer), 1992, pp. 165-178.
Others Nouriel Roubini on How to Avoid a Double-Dip Global Recession
Simon Johnson on The Future of Finance: International Edition
Simon Johnson on the Kanjorski Amendment to the The Dodd-Frank Financial Reform Bill
973 60e
This number will forward your call to my land-line or cell phone as necessary.
Broadcasters will (mostly) do it for us:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gLmhHf6IuPyjsLErg_UBZusxFv_...
A must read for anyone not interested in the The 2010 FIFA World Cup starting in 10 days. The 2010 FIFA World Cup if USA sports franchises were substituted for national teams. or ( 2tu.us/26co )
BTW – If you don’t like soccer, you are going to puke if you watch anything on ESPN for the next month. They’ll be broadcasting every game from South Africa. or ( 2tu.us/26cp )
I’m not sure how often I’ll use URL Shorteners now that I’ve discovered markdown. But I’m sure I’ll use them occasionally. I found 2 shorteners than run on software licensed under the GPL (I’m not sure why the AGPL was not used).
TightURL Or use TightURL’s mirror: 2tu.us
The other site I found is ur1 Generator
I wonder if there is an easy way to use a personalized URL Shortener on your own server with a your own domain (e.g. link.glodime.com/1qaz).
-These are two teams that will never give up. No matter what the odds or who scored the last goal, both teams will continue to give it all they’ve got until the last buzzer sounds.
The game was very physical as expected. But it was played very disciplined (and leniently officiated) resulting in fewer penalties than expected (all against Chicago). I expect more aggressive attempts to test the officiating by Philly as the series continues. Expect more contact with Niemi, more hooking, grabbing, roughing and after-the-whistle scrums until the referees start throwing people in the box.
Philly seemed to get progressively more tired as the game progressed. Is Chigago in better shape? Is philly relying to heavily on getting certain players (e.g. Chris Pronger) extensive playing time?
Both teams (coaches) have shown the ability to adapt to opposing teams' strategy and tactics between periods and games through the playoffs. (Philly likes to call their timeout at an opportune moment to adjust tactics mid-period rather than use it to rest players at the end of the game.)
Chicago was able to completely shut down Philly in the third period and sit on a one goal lead after giving up 5 goals in the first 2 periods. This was impressive. Their coach was confident enough to sit back on offense for over half of the third period and focus on defensive play. And it worked! If this is any indication of the rest of the series then Philly will be lucky to get to a game 5.
Philly and Chicago continue to adopting to each others tactics. But the more skilled Blackhawks will edge out the Flyers once again in Chicago. In Philly the Flyers take the first game but loose the second. The Flyers bring the series to 3 to 2 after game 5 in Chicago. The Blackhawks claim Lord Stanley’s Cup in Philly at the end of game 6.
Maybe, if Philly’s home ice advantage was stronger, they could pull this off. But Yahoo’s take on who has the greater home ice advantage says ChiTown’s home ice is a better place to play…
Game 2 of the Stanley Cup Finals is tonight but Yahoo seems to think
that it will be a repeat of game 1...
Now that I know about it. I’ll use markdown to format blog posts here and hopefully eliminate the odd formatting that has been present in prior posts.
“Markdown” is two things: (1) a plain text formatting syntax; and (2) a software tool, written in Perl, that converts the plain text formatting to HTML.
I take car of part (1), writing text with formatting syntax added.
Posterous takes care of part (2), converting what I write into HTML to create a new blog post formatted how I want it to look.
See Posterous' page on Markdown.
Or Check out the Official Markdown project at Daring Fireball.
BlackBerry version webpage:
http://www.pageonce.com/cell_minute_tracker_blackberry.html
Gratis BlackBerry version download page:
http://appworld.blackberry.com/webstore/content/2616
$2.99 Premium BlackBerry version download page:
http://appworld.blackberry.com/webstore/content/2617
(Includes - Exclusive personal pin number for extra security and
convenience; No Advertisements)
For non-Blackberry users you can use Pageonce's Personal Productivity
Assistant which has the Cell Minute Tracker features and more. But for a
proprietary software application, its features seem a bit creepy. Though
I can see why people might use it anyway.
There are versions available for:
iPhone BlackBerry Android Windows Mobile
See:
http://www.pageonce.com/home.html
Thanks to Consumer Reports Money and Shopping Blog for the link:
http://blogs.consumerreports.org/money/2010/05/7-ways-protect-cell-mobile-pho...
( or http://tinyurl.com/23tanh4 )
Subscribe to Consumer Reports Blogs:
http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/our-blogs/index.htm
Audio Book @ Audible:
http://tinyurl.com/yz6r9o8
Website: http://www.nurtureshock.com/
Blog on Newsweek: http://www.newsweek.com/blogs/nurture-shock.html
Article on Huffington Post: http://tinyurl.com/ybxfoou
Graphics:
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/refresh/graphics_ep1+shtml/143212.shtml?5-daynl
Wind Speed Probabilities:
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/text/refresh/MIAPWSEP1+shtml/291432.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbecue_in_the_United_States#Carolinas
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbecue_in_the_United_States#Carolinas
