Look Both Ways

Milton Friedman on the Teevee

2006-10-15T23:54:00.000-04:00

So yes, my blog really is just a sad parrotting of other things that Jeff puts up on 2nd Glance... It is worth repeating though, especially if you find yourself in frequent discussions over the proper size of government (as I often do). Watch this! I am still hopeful that I can add some value eventually, and my first step may just be this entertaining/creepy video of the Milton Friedman Choir...

Surprise Utility Vehicle

2006-05-08T13:03:00.000-04:00

Apparently Hondas are full of nifty features that I would have heard about if I hadn't told the salesman to just shut up and sell me the car. I had already decided I wanted the car before the sales pitch; it was just a matter of pricing. As for the BS the salesman was trying to get me to ooh and ahh over, Jeff puts it eloquently: "I ascribe non-zero value to these features, yet did not calculate them into my offer price and so I essentially didn't pay for them."

Finding these little easter eggs after the fact, however, can make my day! On the highway today I noticed that the "PASSENGER AIRBAG OFF" light was still glowing long after it should have normally turned off. Grrrrrrrrreat I thought, my brand new car needs service already. Eventually I realized that I had left my bag of textbooks on the passenger seat, and neglected to buckle it in :-P Apparently the car has a weight sensor to prevent the passenger from being decapitated by the air bag when not wearing a safety belt. I wonder what other marvels lie in store as I get better acquainted with my car...

A very special deal

2006-04-20T14:27:00.000-04:00

The wonders of specialization and increasing returns to scale never cease to amaze me.

Yesterday, at my local grocery store, I purchased a loofah sponge for one dollar!!!!!!!!! Not impressed? Hmm. Well maybe thinking about what a dollar is really worth would help. It's easy to think of it in terms of what you can trade for one dollar (a pack of gum, parking for half an hour...?), but one of the best ways is to think about trading your labor. Even if you earn as little as $6 an hour, one dollar is worth just 10 minutes of your applied effort. We can assume that whatever magical force (let's call it the market) provided this loofah to me was willing to exchange it for the equivalent of 10 minutes of my time. How foolish! Suppose I asked you to provide me with a loofah, without using this pesky "market," in 10 minutes...

How are you going to grow it? Did I mention that the loofah is native to tropical Africa and Asia? What? You don't have any seeds and you don't own land on another continent? I guess you'd better get cracking. Oh and I don't want you to just bring back any old gourd. It has to be processed and dried to make the web of fibers that make it good for scrubbing. And yeah, you should probably pull the seeds out, too. Then I want you to do some research and write a clever blurb about how to use a loofah and, I suppose, write it in painstaking calligraphy on a label. A pretty seaside picture would be nice as well. I hope you've got watercolors. Then I want you to wrap the loofah in a lightweight, waterproof, transparent material (plastic would work; boy I bet you wish you owned a refinery) and figure out for yourself how to make an adhesive to attach the label. Bring it back to me in the U.S., and I'll consider this a fair deal. You have 10 minutes. Ready? Go.

A living wage?

2006-04-16T21:54:00.000-04:00

Nope, this has nothing to do with UVA's living wage campaign; rather, it stems from a project I'm working on for my International Trade class on microfinance. Grameen Phone, a partnership between microlender Grameen Bank, and Norwegian telecom leader Telenor, provides cell phones to poor Bangladeshi women by extending loans, providing reduced rate calling minutes, and allowing the women to repay the loans with profits they make from "renting" the phones to other villagers on a call-by-call basis. Long story short, while fleshing out a specific factors model, I found that Grameen Phone's introduction of cell phones actually decreased the wages of "cell phone ladies;" however, empirical evidence obviously shows that they are better off with the phones; their total income is four times the per-capita average. The catch? Although the wage which the model ascribes to labor decreases, the cell phone ladies are also small-scale capitalists! The returns they gain from their capital (the cell phone) far outweigh the decreased wage. The lesson seems to be that if you are an entrepreneur, and want to increase your wealth, it may "pay" to decrease your wage!

P.S. Wow, I'm a horrible person. This is my first post in 4 months!

Are obese children more likely to play video games?

2005-12-15T07:27:00.000-05:00

Notice I didn't ask "Are children who play video games more likely to be obese?" The conventional wisdom answer to this question is yes, but both of my college roommates are glaring counterexamples.

Is it possible that children who are obese are more likely to play video games? Video games provide a sense of escape (fantasy) and empowerment (control of a superhuman character, or an entire army) that may appeal to someone whose physical situation is less than ideal. On a more basic level, video games may be a substitute for more physical play, such as sports. An obese child likely gains less utility from soccer, swimming, or tag than a fitter child would, making the video game alternative more appealing. Even if both children initially prefer the video game, diminishing marginal utility will lead them to tire of it and pursue something else. While the child of average weight may decide to go play a game of tag, the obese child may not consider this option to be as appealing as even the stale video game, and may continue playing.

I have no data to support this, but it's a different look at obesity (and the ever-demonized video game). Note that you never see studies correllating studying or reading with obesity making the news, even though the physical effects on the body are similar.

Liters of fun

2005-12-13T15:10:00.000-05:00

Cabfare to and from Garota de Gávea: R$23,00
Dinner that I didn't order: R$25,00
19 liters of beer: R$161,50

Waking up the next morning without a hangover to hike to the top of Corcovado with two marmosets following you for half of the trail: priceless.

Now about those beers. They came from a "serpentina," an icy tap in the center of our table. This made for a highly entertaining evening (and I'm sure a highly profitable one for the bar owner as well). Beer from the tap was metered with a digital gauge and billed at the rate of R$8,50 per liter. I'm not complaining. By American standards, this is cheap; however, it turns out that a 400ml glass of that same beer, taken from a tap at the bar and delivered to your table by a waiter costs R$3,30 (R$8,25 per liter). My "anything in bulk is bound to be cheaper" mentality fell through on this one, but the utility gained from watching 5 Americans, a Turk, and a Brazilian serve their own draft beer was well worth the extra 25 centavos per liter, and the bar gets away with a smaller waitstaff, less glasses to wash, and more beer revenue. Not bad.

"Why Cars are Great" or "How Not to Take a Hike"

2005-12-04T09:24:00.000-05:00

Say what you want about the marvelous benefits of large metropolitan areas and public transit, but when it comes to getting away from it all, the frontier-craving American in me still needs a car. I made plans with my Rio roommate and our gringo friend "João," to go on a hike today, the origin of which was to be my our Copacabana apartment. The logistics of reaching our destination, normally a simple matter of get-in-car-pick-up-friends-GO, have become a multi-modal nightmare.

João needs to get to our apartment in Copa, which will require a theoretically simple trip on the Metro. Once he arrives at our apartment, our best option seems to be walking about a mile to the end of the beach to take another bus which will bring us (after making a multitude of stops) to another neighborhood, where we will again walk through the city a ways before commencing our actual "hike."

Public transit seems to be great at getting large numbers of people moved between heavily trafficked areas, but when you're on a schedule (we need to get out there, up the mountain, and back down before the sun sets and the crazies come out) it does a lousy job.

Estimated start time of hike: 12noon
Our Hike-
Total distance Hiked: 2 miles
Total Hiking Time: 4 hours
Elevation Change: 770 meters
Miles per Hour: 1/2

Arriving by Public Transit-
João's distance traveled: 7 miles
Transit Time: 3 hours
Elevation Change: 0 meters
Miles per Hour: 2 1/3

The current time is 12:45pm, I'm sitting here blogging, and I'm not hiking.
I miss my car...

Addendum
The hike never happened. We arrived where the bus was supposed to stop and it never came. When asking someone at a gas station about the bus, he said he had never heard of it. Awesome. On the bright side, the beach was a nice satisficing move on our part.

An infinite number of ways to "Two"

2005-11-19T11:09:00.000-05:00

This post started as a comment to one of Jeff's, but it grew out of control so I won't clog his airspace with it...

It's a bunch of those limit theory mathematical "lies" again... Mathematical concepts that get fuzzy when people try to use them in "real" life. Zeno's Paradox is another one that often gets taken out of context.

Take a step half the distance between you and the door, then another dividing the distance in half and so on and you can never leave the room. In fact, you will "arrive" (after/during?) an infinite number of steps at the "limit" of the room; for the sake of argument, let's call it the door. It's brilliant in that it illustrates the infinite divisibility of space, but it's an idiotic way to try to leave a room. If you really wanted to leave, there's no paradox at all: just take a few, finite, human-sized steps.

The beautiful thing is that it's an elegant, if somewhat laborious and inefficient, way of defining the location of the door itself. If your limit is the door (or the number 2), then taking two large steps to the door defines its location neatly, but painfully; if the door is closed, you'll end up with a bruised and bloodied nose. However, if you take one big step (the number 1) and then subsequent steps that are each 9/10ths of the remaining distance to the door (0.999...) then you will approach the door gently and still have a definition of exactly where it is: in the short run, you're always heading for a spot "9/10ths" of the way to the door, but in the long run, your only possible destination is the door itself.

You can describe the concept of two in many ways:
"1+1", "1+0.5+0.5," "1+0.5+0.25+0.25," etc. always breaking down the last term into smaller and smaller pieces (and thanks to Zeno, we know this will never stop, but we also know where it is headed).

In short: I have no idea what I'm talking about. I'm an engineering and economics student, and I prefer the standard "2" or occaisionally "two," but the idea that the concept can be expressed in a variety of ways is at the heart of the manipulations that allow mathematical computations, and taken to the limit (har har) it's pretty interesting.

I'd file this one under "Things I agree with but don't make sense." ;o)

That's not a bus stop...

2005-11-15T21:56:00.000-05:00

It's a "ClearChannel Adshell!" I thought ClearChannel Communications was just the corporate amoeba committed to homogenizing all of Virginia's radio stations, but there's more! They're also here in Rio de Janerio providing both a pleasant shelter for those waiting for one of the city's countless "Ônibuses," and, of course, entertaining material to peruse while they wait. This seems to me the perfect pairing of a service provided at zero monetary cost, and also providing benefit to the service provider. Most of the billboards, tastefully located on only one end of the bus stop without obscuring the queuee's (? is there a better word for "one who waits") view of oncoming busses, hawk new movies, concerts, and cultural events, all information which I actually appreciate receiving while I'm waiting in a catatonic stupor for my bus to come into view.

Other advertisement media seem hard-pressed to achieve this same harmonious balance. Television and radio ads take away from time spent experiencing the actual media. Newspaper and magazine ads often break up an interesting article, or even masquerade as special features (although many "lifestyle" magazines are arguably improved by displaying ads of trendy merchandise).

Super Bowl commericals come pretty close to this symbiotic relationship, providing the non-sports inclined with bursts of witty humor throughout the game while promoting the product. It seems like the ideal setup for ads of this type are to find places where your target audience is bored out of its mind, and willing to read or listen to anything, even if it is commercial propaganda. For example, when I get stuck in the doctor's examining room with nothing but a 1993 issue of Golf Digest and a promotional brochure on Viagra, I'd rather have a good giggle over the adverse effects of artificially extended sexual stimulation than page through 30 articles on the size of the sweet spot on various drivers.

I'm sure execs everywhere have thought this over thoroughly, but anyone have other ideas about incredibly boring situations where ads could provide entertainment and revenue? (If a marketer could figure out how to stream commercials into my Statistics class, I think she'd be rich...)

Blogorrhea

2005-11-12T17:57:00.000-05:00

n. Excessive and/or verbose blogging.

Derived from logorrhea (which, incidentally, I feel should by used by all those who are tempted to say "diarrhea of the mouth." That's just disgusting. )

"I built me a bomb"

2005-11-12T17:46:00.000-05:00

As of November 15th I will be officially unable to leave my apartment, thanks to Civilization IV (I've been spared for the past few weeks by the fact that the game was released in the US and Europe before coming to Brazil).

Although I'm not usually a violent player, I found this hilarious. Enjoy, and good luck with your worldly responsibilities.

Addendum: I was sadly mistaken; the game won't be released in Brazil until November 30th.

Elogy, History, or Logorrhea?

2005-11-12T16:37:00.000-05:00

While attending Petrobras' First Ergonomics Symposium this week I was treated to my first listening of the Brazilian national anthem, mated with some lovely footage of pristine rainforest followed by those of petroleum refining facilities (apparently trying to form pleasant links in the viewers' minds among national pride, environmentalism, and the petrochemical industry). And then I was treated some more. And then just when I thought we had reached the climax: another verse! The anthem has more than 3 times as many words as the Star Spangled Banner, and also contains instrumental interludes, which significantly lengthen the experience (although I learned that the US anthem has other verses which are not regularly sung).

Second only to the length of the song, the content is what caught my attention; while the US anthem focuses on a single event, the Brittish attack on Fort Henry, while the Brazilian anthem extols the virtues of its people and beauty of its land.

Taking a short-term dabble in national anthems I found other countries' anthems have their own unique characters:

France - 357 words over 7 verses! Highlights include: "Let impure blood water our furrows" and "All these tigers who pitilessly are ripping open their mothers' breasts!" Yikes.
United Kingdom - 155 words in 5 verses, the majority of which are preoccupied with the Queen. With 6 savings of the Queen, and only one saving devoted to "us all," it's clear that Britain's monarchy is alive and kicking.
Qatar - Until 1996, this anthem contained only 11 measures, and included no singing at all.
Germany - The Nazis brought troublesome misinterpretation to this anthem's "Germany above all" lyrics, which were composed before the party gained power, and have now fallen out of use. The current lyrics emphasize "Unity, Right and Freedom," (It's a shame the former lyrics "German women, German fidelity,German wine and German song" didn't make the cut).
I'll forego commentary on Japan's Haiku-esque anthem and just post it here:

May thy peaceful reign last long!
May it last for thousands of years,
Until this tiny stone will grow into a massive rock
And the moss will cover it all deep and thick.

Although the Japanese have a knack for miniaturization (their anthem is pleasantly compact), and their technology is impressive, I have difficulty believing they're really going to cover their nation all deep and thick with moss.

And I thought Micromachines were cool...

2005-10-30T09:34:00.000-05:00

You have to admit they were pretty great toys, especially if you had the city that folded up into a briefcase-sized carrying case. Imagine that the toy streets are paved with gold and the car's wheelbase is only 1/20,000th the width of a human hair and you'll get an idea of the fun scientists at Rice University are having with their new nanocar.

The entire vehicle is a single molecule, and while they haven't yet developed a mechanical engine (it's currently compelled to roll along the gold surface by the tip of a Scanning Tunneling Microscope), they do have a prototype nanotruck, capable of carrying small molecules, and a light-driven motorized nanocar. Solar power? Environmentalists rejoice! Why not use gasoline? The space occupied by a single droplet of mist in a fuel injection engine could hold over 4 billion nanocars.

If you think this sounds like a silly toy, think again. There's plenty of speculation on the future consequences and opportunities of nanotechnology, along with valuable guidelines for development of this technology. Here's a transcript of Richard Feynman's landmark talk, which arguably set the nano-revolution in motion.

How do you get a woman back in the kitchen?

2005-10-25T08:07:00.000-04:00

My apologies for the crass title, but it turns out the answer is to artificially inflate her wages in the workplace! You can read Tim Leonard's interesting paper or get a quick rundown from MR. Minimum wage laws create unemployment, and turn of the (20th) century progressives saw minimum wages as a way to limit the number of women leaving the home and thereby promote the progressive "ideals" of paternalism, moralism, maternalism, and eugenics.

That's right: especially in the early days of women leaving home for factories and offices, those in favor of women entering the workplace and those clammoring for equal payment for men and women were arguing for two different things.

Philip Wicksteed understood that "To enact a living wage, then, as a legal minimum, is to enact that every man's services shall enable him to live a full human life -- or if not that he shall receive no wage at all." In other words, fewer people will be employed at the new higher minimum wage, and those who would have been employed at a lower wage will now be unemployed. Substitute "him" for "her," and she ends up back in the kitchen.

Wicksteed's less open-minded colleagues latched onto the idea and, although their ostensible reasons for raising wages and limiting hours were to protect the weaker sex "because they are women," the real goal was to keep the women at home: by keeping women out of the workplace, they are better able to select fitter men for marriage and raise fitter children.

Gun Ban in Brasil?

2005-10-22T12:41:00.000-04:00

Tomorrow, Brazilians aged 18 to 70 will be forced by law (is mandatory democracy really a democracy?) to vote on a referendum to ban the sales of all guns to civilians in Brazil. Here are some facts I picked up from Veja magazine:

Brasil has roughly 17 million guns: 9,000 guns per 100k people
The U.S. has roughly 240 million guns: 81,000 guns per 100k people

And...

Brasil has nearly 40,000 gun deaths per year (the most in the world):21.5 per 100k
Veja says the U.S. has 1/3 the gun deaths, making under 5 deaths per 100k

***70% of gun-related trials in Brazil are dropped due to insufficient investigation and only 1% of those accused are ever convicted.

The hypothesis: Regardless of opinions on gun contol, it seems pretty obvious that effective law inforcement and judiciary system, not quantity of guns, drives this equation.

P.S. Can anyone offer me good arguments for why WE don't hold our elections on Saturdays or, as Brasil, Sundays?

Addendum:
As of yesterday, Brasilians can still buy guns.

Free Wi-Fi: Wi and Wi not?

2005-10-21T16:25:00.000-04:00

San Francisco wants to grant free, wireless Internet access across the entire city (Google has submitted a bid). Sounds like a party! But first let's get some things straight:

1. A civil rights issue:

It is to me a fundamental right to have access universally to information.
(Mayor Gavin Newsom)

Nonsense. Internet access is not a fundamental right. However you choose to interpret "access universally to information," it is not your mom's right to look at my bank statements, nor do I have the inalienable right to check my email on the top of Denali. As far as I can remember I've got life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Take my Internet and I will probably bite you, but my lack of free Wi-Fi doesn't violate my rights.

2. A free lunch?

Only if you're willing to swallow Googleburgers, Googlefries, and a Googleshake with that. I'm not sure of the details of Google's plan to finance the project; with $7bn in cash, they could probably chalk it up to R&D expenses, but odds are that Google will find a way to "steer" traffic or use wireless screenspace for ads. Might people be willing to pay for wide-access Wi-Fi without these hindrances? With VOIP services growing rapidly, will people swap a cell phone bill for a wireless Internet bill? I'm ready and willing.

3. Google and Government will be watching you.

Maybe not directly. There is speculation that one of the services Google is anxious to test is a geographically-linked search system whereby users who are in a given neighborhood could search for coffeeshops or bookstores and would receive directions to nearby recommendations. Who's doing the recommending (Paid google advertisers?) and who can see who's asking for advice? You can't print anything without being traceable anymore, and financial institutions can track credit card and other electronic purchases (is it paranoid to wonder if ATMs link serial numbers on dispensed bills to cardholders who make withdrawals?) What's a would-be pamphlet-writing civil disobedient to do? At least our government is not that oppressive...

I think the private sector can better blanket our country with Wi-Fi, but all this being said... I want ubiquitous Internet access NOW! Bring it on! Crank out those waves!

Ants, Culture, and Economics

2005-10-20T16:19:00.000-04:00

At the risk of going way out there on this one, I'm going to bring some (possibly flawed, but not attributed to me) biology, anthropology and economics together. Weird things happen when listening to Broken Social Scene while reading about cognition. I'll post anyway and put up the "hey what do you think?" flag. Comments would be appreciated:

...let us be anthropologists and move in and watch a community of ants over weeks and months. Let us assume that we arrive just after a storm, when the beach is a tabula rasa for the ants. Generations of ants comb the beach. They leave behind them short-lived chemical trails, and where they go they inadvertently move grains of sand as they pass. Over months, paths to likely food sources develop as they are visited again and again by ants following first the short-lived chemical trails of their fellows and later the longer-lived roads produced by a history of heavy and traffic. After months of watching, we decide to follow a particular ant on an outing. We may be impressed by how cleverly it visits every high-likelihood food location. This ant seems to work so much more efficiently than did its ancestors of weeks ago. Is this a smart ant? Is it perhaps smarter than its ancestors? No, it is just the same dumb sort of ant, reacting to its environment in the same way its ancestors did. But the environment is not the same. It is a cultural environment. Generations of ants have left their marks on the beach, and now a dumb ant has been made to appear smart through its simple interaction with the residua of the history of its ancestor's actions.

The conclusion?

Humans create their cognitive powers by creating the environments in which they exercise those powers.

This lengthy quotation from Edwin Hutchins' Cognition in the Wild (which is actually about the non-laboratory "wild" of military vessel navigation, not ants) strikes a number of chords with me.

1. Output and quality of living (as measured by per capita GDP) are significantly higher in the United States than they are in Brasil, and most of the rest of the world. Is this because Americans are inherently more productive than their Brazilian counterparts? Clearly not. I've met plenty of bright, hard-working Brazilians, but many of my anecdotal findings suggest that Brasil is not the best environment for promoting productivity:

The beaches provide a pretty high opportunity cost to doing real work (haha)
Brazilian entrepreneurs must make some 23 tax payments totalling 147.9% of gross profit!
I waste two hours a day travelling to and from the university where I study. I do not live outside the city. If you thought Northern Virginia commutes were bad, think again.
Brazil Time is in full effect. A fixed meeting time will inevitably vary by 15-30 minutes. Occaisionally your contact will not even show up, or change meeting location with or without informing you.
Classes may be canceled without advanced notice, making planning extremely difficult.

All of America's seemingly uptight constructs of punctuality, committments, and inability to "leave the grid" create an environment which fosters trust, planning, and productivity. The path each Brazilian (and Brazilified American) makes in the sand by adhering to these social norms continues to entrench the idea in the environment.

2. Alternatively, culture plays a role. With my rigid American paradigms for "getting things done" I frequently find myself unable to succeed in this environment. I am missing my basic cultural infrastructure, my network of friends, and even simple things like the culturally and temporally acquired knowledge of which stores (and even which section of the store) to visit to find certain products.

3. However, the sword cuts both ways. People operating within a developed environment full of cognitive artifacts to support effective work can accomplish great things, but those operating on the frontier have the oportunity to make meaningful and memorable contributions. In Hutchins' ant example, the new generation of ants appears much smarter than the old, and indeed, Newton would have soiled himself if he could see the computations I can crunch through on Excel in a matter of seconds; to the contrary, much of what I'm capable of computing depends directly on his fundamental work in differential calculus. His ideas are part of my environment, but during his environment that infrastructure was not in place. Before the ants leave their chemicals and make their trails, one dumb ant has to stumble across the likely food source first (there's a dismal view on life).

I'm not sure where all this rambling was supposed to take me, or if anyone's even still reading at this point, but I'd like to think that by shedding my convenient American cognitive environment (mostly; at least I've still got the Internet) I'm opening myself up to new paths (and certainly some new food sources) along the way. I think this concept of the environment in cognition merits a lot more study, but I'll throw that out there for someone a lot more open to leaving the beaten path than I. Speaking of open: the comments are.

One bad Apple spoils the whole iPod

2005-10-08T12:24:00.000-04:00

Don't be fooled by Apple's corporate image as a user-friendly, interface innovator.

iTunes told me that I should update the software on my iPod (presumably to better serve the NPR podcasts to which I am now addicted) so I said ok, at which point I was directed to Apple's website where I had to once again opt-out of their news and propaganda programs and then download a separate installation file to my desktop. I then ran the file and after going through some install-shield garbage, ostensibly nothing happened; it wasn't until later that I noticed the iPod updater had been installed on my start menu. If Apple has the infrastructure within iTunes to support millions of file downloads every day, why can't they integrate the upgrade process with iTunes?

Of course, that small gripe would not be worth ranting about: after the upgrader had finished doing its thing, I was told to plug the iPod into the external power source to reflash the firmware. Heh. That's rich. If I can charge my iPod directly from my laptop, and use that same cable to do everything else I could possibly want with my iPod through that connection, why would I bring my bulky A/C adaptor to a country where most outlets aren't fully compatible with US plugs?

Becauuuse, maybe I'd want to upgrade to the new version of iPod software, after which my iPod will not do anything but show a picture of a US electric socket and the notably absent AC adapter joining in perfect harmony. That's right. I absolutely NEED the AC power adaptor to upgrade the software on my iPod or else it's just a pretty piece of metal and white plastic with a lovely LCD illustration of the one object needed to make it do anything else. I tried plugging it into various USB ports on various laptop power settings, resetting using the override button commands and even crafting a small voo-doo iPod which I repeatedly inserted into the Brazilian electrical outlet, generating some pretty sparks and an interesting hairstyle, but otherwise to no avail.

Sigh. Even the almighty Apple overlooks some pretty stupid things.

Save a Horse; Ride a Camel?

2005-10-08T11:44:00.000-04:00

Genipabu, Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil.

Beach, Dunes, DuneBuggy, Horseback Riding, Snorkeling, Surfing, Camels, SkiBunda, "ButtAerial."

Enough said.

Pictures are here and in the picture links in the bar at right.

Selling out isn't as easy as it sounds

2005-10-08T11:34:00.000-04:00

So I've submitted myself to the steamroller of internet media that is Google. I'm trying a (not-so-) "noble" experiment to see if it's actually possible to earn money off of a blog. More interestingly, Google promises that the ads will be "matched to the characteristics and interests of the visitors your content attracts," so in a roundabout way this is a sick, warped attempt to figure out exactly what this blog is "about." Maybe they really will add value to your information browsing supply chain, or some B.S. like that.

Unfortunately, it's not as simple as putting on my electronic hooker boots and throwing some ads up on the blog. Google is reviewing my "application" as we speak, and we'll see if they accept my schizo attempt at communication (aka Look Both Ways). In the event Google becomes my e-Pimp, I'll try to make the ads at least a bit more tasteful and less obnoxious than the rest of the muck I put up here.

P.S. - I'm not allowed to explicitly tell you to click on the ads but... you know what to do ;o)

The FED prints more than money...

2005-10-08T10:47:00.000-04:00

They also carry a wide range of comic-style educational materials on topics like monetary policy and consumer credit, complete with color illustrations and exceedingly corny humor. They even shipped them for free to my apartment in Rio, at an apparent postal cost of $6.35. I guess when you print the money you can afford just about anything you want. My apologies to everyone in the U.S. for inflating your money supply :oP

Média-Size me!

2005-09-01T21:25:00.000-04:00

Most pricing schemes in American fast-food restaurants are set to encourage mass consumption. I'm not an expert on the subject, but presumably the food is cheap enough that the restaurant would rather take a (slightly) smaller profit margin, and slightly more of your money overall. Thus, they price the fries and drinks with diminishing increases so that you get a bulk discount for guzzling your half-gallon of Coke.

The McDonald's here in brazil doesn't seem to follow this trend. Prices for "McFritas" are as follows:

Pequena - R$2.60
Média - R$2.95 (13% price increase)
Grande - R$3.15 (34% price increase)

Since the size increases are fairly linear, this pricing scheme seems to encourage consumption of the "Média" size fries, or at least discourage the purchase of the small. Maybe the jump to a large - or heaven forbid, a super-size - is too much for Brazilians to swallow (diminishing marginal utility strikes again!)

P.S. R$1 for a container of sauce? Better cut back on the Sweet and Sour...

Zero Sense

2005-09-01T14:48:00.000-04:00

President George W. Bush says there should be "zero-tolerance" for people breaking the law in hurricane-damaged areas. He says that goes for looting, price-gouging, insurance fraud, taking advantage of charity or otherwise exploiting the situation. Bush says he's told law officials to pursue lawbreakers. [link]

What constitutes "price-gouging?" Apparently there are laws about this sort of thing:

Florida is one of about 20 states that prohibit price gouging during emergencies. But the criteria for what constitutes price "gouging" vary widely. And in Florida it is in the eye of the beholder, specifically, the Attorney General, who can prosecute anyone charging a price he deems "unconscionable" in relation to prices in effect during the 30 days before the crisis. [link]

Unfortunately, these laws, (aside from being ridiculously arbitrary) foil the market's ability to effectively deal with the situation. Knowing that they are prohibited from selling their goods at higher prices (being denied their freedom to ingage in mutually beneficial trade), merchants will be unwilling to stock supplies sufficient for dealing with the emergency. The inevitable result: shortage, rationing, and/or mobs of unsatisfied customers.

If the market were allowed to distribute goods at a market clearing price (representing the value of what people are actually willing to pay in an emergency or pre-emergency situation), the merchants will have a strong incentive to stock more goods, thus providing more customers with the goods they desire (aiding in the shortage problem) and the increase in supply will help to alleviate the pressure on prices. Ultimately, you will help more people by charging more for the scarce products.

As Frank Bubb at The Objectivist Center puts it so eloquently, "Each person is ultimately working for his own livelihood and well-being, and does not exist to serve others. The fact that so many in our society serve others so well through mutual, voluntary transactions is a tribute to the vitality of a market economy."

My growing mob of fans...

2005-08-28T23:55:00.000-04:00

...now includes "Theresa Beck" from cleancreditfile.net, "low carb ketogenic diets" offering tv show downloads, and "Lonny" from the long island guide, offering me a link to the long island child museum. It saddens me to see that I have more spamposts than actual comments :o(

Maybe one day I'll have an army of blog-reading minions who will know how to unleash retaliatory spam attacks on xfactor@xfactormarketing.net or who would be devoted enough to go in person to Xfactor Marketing
5904 South Cooper Suite 104-148
Arlington, Texas 76017
and annoy anyone and everyone in the building until security removes them from the premises...

::ahem:: not that I'm suggesting that anyone annoy people at THAT specific address RIGHT NOW or anything...

Temper, Temper!

2005-08-28T23:38:00.000-04:00

I took the Keirsey Temperament Sorter II tonight, and it frustrated me before I even started taking it. "I can't answer these questions!" I can't tell you what I do at "a party" because I've been to more than one and I don't just repeat the same set of actions every time! That being said, the fact that I had to think for an apparent eternity before answering any of the questions is probably more of a testiment than any to my N(intuitive or introspective, depending on whom you ask) nature than any other. The interesting thing is, while I normally score INTJ on these tests, tonight I managed to come out ISTJ, S standing for Sensory (Observant). I think maybe constanty being on the lookout for topics for this darn blog is bringing out my S side. Either that or the need to be ever-vigilant in this zany country necessitates more observing. In any event, the other letters, I T and J were firmly in place, and the N/S "preference" score was a little more difficult to call (8vs12).
If you're interested in your own MBTI, I dug up an online version, just for you.

P.S. Justice or Mercy? Hah. Let me know when you figure that one out.

WikiWandering

2005-08-27T21:11:00.000-04:00

I'm addicted to reading the encyclopedia. Not just any encyclopedia, but the much ballyhooed Wikipedia. It's amazing how much time one can "waste" when starting out to research some legitimate topic, see a hyperlink of interest and follow a meandering trail of links deeper and deeper into one's demented imagination until one ends up reading an article about smegma (learning that a few other words which end in -gma are magma, bregma and zeugma) and forgets how one arrived there in the first place.

I'm hereby coining the term "WikiWandering," so you can all thank me later when it's a huge success. Unless, of course, someone already thought of it, in which case I won't pull an Al Gore. *It seems someone at Wikimedia is trying to start a travel site (possible names: Wikitravel and Wikiwandering) but I like my use better, so I'm sticking to it.

This post arose from the strange hyperlink trail of my roommate's research on BCG vaccines. Read his post here.

P.S. A tie for my favorite zeugma:
"The kleptomaniac illusionist stole the show and my wallet." vs. "Are you getting fit or having one?"

McDia Feliz

2005-08-27T20:20:00.000-04:00

Give up now.

No matter how hard you try to fight it, even if you fly 4000 miles away from home to another continent, you will end up eating at a McDonalds. You will eventually tire of eating the same (albeit delicious) local delicacy, (in my case, picanha, left) and head to the inevitably proximate McDonalds for a Big Mac (below).

Ok, before you call me a culturally insensitive American imperialist, consider: thanks to our "melting pot" heritage, even a modest-sized city like Charlottesville offers more culinary variety than even Rio's 6 million plus (think NYC minus the Bronx) inhabitants can muster. Every restaurant in Rio seems to offer the same "pay per kilogram" buffet of salads, rice, beans and meat. McDonald's is doing the city a favor by bringing its "variety" (ha) of sandwiches into the mix.

My second defense rests in the fact that I was choking down my 47 grams of fat (which compared to 55 grams for the same meal in the US doesn't seem so bad) with scores of Brazilians who were all gathered to support the McDia Feliz, the day on which all proceeds from the sale of BigMacs goes to support cancer research and treatment institutions. The dining area facing the street became a veritable block party, complete with DJ, facepainting and balloons.

Once you see a mob of Brazilians (including the employees) dancing to Saturday Night Fever in a McDonald's restaurant in Copacabana, you can rest assured that American culture is not in danger of decline any time soon.

It is later than you think

2005-08-24T17:33:00.000-04:00

Given that the frequency of my posts here has gotten depressingly sparse, and taking these writing tips into consideration, I figured I'd put up this little blip to get the ball rolling again. For all you Wahoos going back to school today, maybe the advice will be more useful in spurring your productivity than it has been for mine.

Look, I'm Famous

2005-08-11T15:00:00.000-04:00

I'm on the web, in Brasil! Have fun with the português...

License to Cut

2005-08-07T14:46:00.000-04:00

"Com Licença!" or just "Licença" are commonly heard phrases here in Rio, meaning "with your license/permission" and roughly equating to "excuse me." I'm starting to get the feeling that this phrase is loosely interpreted by most cariocas. Today in the Pão de Açucar supermarket (about the closest thing I can find in Rio to Ukrop's... not that any store could ever compare) I was standing in line to check out and a woman came up to me with just one package of crackers saying "Licença," and explaining in rapid português that she was "only buying one item so she was going to just jump in front of me and check out if that was ok, ok?" Before I could muster the rudimentary language necessary to object, she had already reinforced her position by slamming down her crackers (I hope she broke every last one) on the conveyor.

Lines just don't cary the same institutional backing that they do in the U.S. Even at nightclubs, the best strategy seems to be to muscle your way to the front of the line while you dispatch your most attractive female counterpart to distract the bouncers and other would-be line cutters who are also trying to pull the same stunt. If grown adults are behaving like this, it must be an all-out brawl at an elementary school waterfountain...

Time for Change

2005-08-06T19:14:00.000-04:00

Another monetary gripe about Brasil, aside from the fact that right now my dollar's only worth 2.3 Brazilian Reais :o(, is the lack of change available at every retail establishment in Brasil! I wanted to buy some crackers and a drink (about R$5) from the convenience store down the street, but unfortunately I only had a R$50 bill. The lady suggested that I pool my purchase with my friend, and when I refused, she gave me all sorts of dirty looks to indicate that I had committed a grievous sin before finally agreeing to give me change.

I was lucky she even had the change available; most businesses, including the busses, have to scrape together all the coins in the register to make that kind of change. That's like not having change for a $20 in the U.S. The ATM I use only gives out fifties, so how am I supposed to patronize stores if they can't make change for me? It's a constant battle to make sure I have an assortment of small bills in my wallet.

The running theory is that everyone's afraid of getting ripped off in a robbery, but in the meantime, how can anyone conduct business like this? There have been times when I've thought customer service in the States was bad, but after my recent trip to Europe, and now here in Brasil, I know it can get much worse.

Rhymes with...

2005-08-05T22:52:00.000-04:00

Alex? No... then again, I guess not.

Skype me!

2005-08-05T21:54:00.000-04:00

I've been in Brasil for about a month now, and have finally gotten my Skype account up and running. As of today, it's only $0.022 per minute to call the US from anywhere in the world, so for me that's quite a sweet rate for me.

For most countries, it costs more to call to mobile phones; interestingly, calling a mobile in Greenland is cheaper than landline! I guess it must be hard to lay telephone cables across the 81% ice-capped, world's largest island (or so the CIA world factbook claims) from Nanortalik to Quaanaaq. I always thought Australia was bigger, but I guess those maps are deceiving...

No wait! That same source reports that Australia, with an area of 7,686,850 sq km dwarfs Greenland's puny 2,166,086 sq km. If this is the kind of "intelligence" we're relying on, we've got a lot of work to do (although last time I checked neither country is much of a threat). Do they just not consider Australia an island?

Also of note is the report that "there are no roads between towns" in Greenland. Hmm....

My Cent(avo)'s Worth

2005-08-04T20:03:00.000-04:00

My mother always warned me about being fooled by $x.99 pricing. "Just round up in your head; it's like you've practically already given them the extra cent." If only she knew how right she was. Here in Brasil, getting change can be a nightmare. If your total comes to x.09, x.49, etc., chances are you won't get that shiny centavo. If the total is x.99, just forget it: fork over the Real, because they're keeping your centavo anyway. Since tax is already included in the prices displayed, this 99 cent problem occurs frequently. If you press the cashier hard enough, you may be able to get your extra cent, or even luck out and they'll be lazy enough to hand you a 5 centavo piece instead of calling for the manager to bring more pennies (how embarassing).

I wonder if the company ends up with this money, or if the cashiers pocket a little cash by pulling the extra take from the registers before they're counted? Granted, one centavo is worth a little under $0.0044, but it's bound to add up eventually...

"Blog... Replace with: Bloc?"

2005-08-03T19:02:00.000-04:00

Ok. I'm not ashamed to admit it: I do use spellcheck. BLOGger.com, on the other hand, should be ashamed that its dictionary does not contain the word "Blog." Go figure.

Hot Air about Hot Water

2005-08-03T14:49:00.000-04:00

I have a whole backlog (a new alternate meaning of "blog?") of things to write about to blow your mind, but I've been too busy enjoying Brasil, and far too lazy, to write about them. Until I hit a stretch of cloudy days, I'll pick a topic at random with which to bore you in depth:

I was thinking (of all places, in the shower) about the various shower setups I've experienced. All have been significantly better than the once-a-year, boil-water-fill-a-small-tub-and-bathe setup of yore, but the relative merits of each are (possibly?) worth contemplating. I'll summarize here (details are below):

It seems to me that the large American-style hot water tank would have a more efficient heating mechanism than the smaller alternatives, but that it would be more wasteful in terms of keeping the water hot all day. On the other extreme of the spectrum, the instant-on hot water heater (here in Brasil and in some hotels in the States) seems to be a very inefficient way to heat the water, but wastes nothing on the storage problem.

My question: which model is more appropriate for a large hotel? If demand for hot water were clustered around key times, and the hoteliers could accurately predict the demand, the central, always hot boiler seems like a great idea. Some hotels offer the instant hot-water as a gimmicky perk: you can use it to make hot coffee or tea in your room without the need for a coffee machine. My hunch, however, is that people check in to hotels at all hours of the night, wake at all hours of the morning, return from the beach or exercise wanting a shower, etc. and we may may begin to see more small, instant hot-water heaters in hotels.

As for me, I think I'll stick with a nice big boiler, to heat my water (I take long showers) and for the radiant floor heating I want in my dream house. In the event I fail at life and have to become a woodland recluse, I guess there's always the hot water bag.

Oh the showers I've seen...

Camping - Hot Water Bag. Even in the wilderness, you can enjoy a hot shower (in the summer at least). Just fill this black rubberized pouch with water, and hang it from a tree well-exposed to sunshine. By early evening you have bath-temperature water for a brief shower before dinner and bed.
USA - Hot Water Tank. Usually heated by gas or electricity, this tank is kept warm all day for hot water whenever needed.

Pros: convenient, available
Cons: expensive, wasteful

Germany - Boiler. Automatically lit once in the morning, this large boiler generates enough hot water (theoretically) to last throughout the day. Also contributes to heating homes in cooler seasons.
Jersey - Small Boiler. Light shortly prior to use to heat a small tank of water for the purpose. Don't forget to turn it off again when you're done.
Brasil (and some hotels worldwide) - On-Demand Hot Water. Each bathroom has its own small gas burner to directly heat the water as it travels into the room. Turns on and off automatically with the running of the hot water.

Watch Out for That Bus

2005-08-01T21:58:00.000-04:00

Greetings, one and all! I'm in Brasil studying systems engineering in a cooperative project with Petrobras, the brasilian oil company, learning português, getting a tan, and dodging careening city busses. While waiting to head home from UFRJ, I actually saw a lady get hit by a bus. That's an understatement: my friend and I caught the lady after she got hit by the bus. It only snagged her arm, but the impact of the lady barreling into me, and the sound her massive handbag made as it hit the ground, were enough to put me into slo-mo. She seemed to shake it right off and hop on the next ônibus, but I was pretty rattled for the next short eternity. The moral of the day: Look Both Ways.

Anyway, I've been meaning to start this blog for about a week now, after my friend and roommate Jeff introduced me to Marginal Revolution, and started his own blog (and after being nagged by friends in the States to start a "LiveJournal," whatever that is...). After much debate over the name, I settled on... you guessed it, Look Both Ways. The idea is that I've found a lot of things in this crazy world that tickle my curiosity and I try to get whatever angle on them I can manage. In an ideal world, Look All Ways would more accurately reflect my outlook on posts, but a) that would be impossible, and b) it wouldn't make for a catchy URL that my adoring public could plug into their browsers every time they sit down to use a computer (just a humble suggestion). Interpret "Look Both Ways" as openly as possible: there's little that seems to be black and white, and even the greys can get confusing...

Please leave comments, challenge my thoughts and ideas, contribute crazy ponderings of your own, or write a topic-relevant haiku. Just be prepared to Look Both Ways. If you ever think you have me pegged, you may be right, but then again I'm probably just playing devil's advocate so you may never know. Feel free to leave obnoxious comments about the ignorance and myopia of my weltanschauung, but don't expect a witty reply; I'm kinda lazy when it comes to defending my e-honor.

Without further ado, (::cue Also Sprach Zarathustra::)

My Weblog.