The Old Sycamore Tree

That he was a younger son, had nearly no dowry, and at nearly six and twenty, was practically on the shelf, affected his hopes that someday a woman might take an interest in him not at all. After all, look what he’d already accomplished despite his family’s station in life – a Sergeant in the Royal Welsh Constabulary in Cardiff. Which is not to say that he was complacent when he was sent out to look into the matter of a boy having wandered off – as if there were something unusual about boys wandering off – though to be sure, the disappearance of a tree was something new.

Though the Witch Chief Superintendent was of marriageable age, she felt no immediate need to do so, she had plenty of time to manage the three or four children a woman of her station might expect to have and there was certainly no shortage of eligible men about. Still, the boy had vanished and preliminary reports suggested the influence of Elvish magic.

It was his birthday, and for some reason his parents wanted him home, and then he wasn't.

Can a Soda Tax Save Us From Ourselves?

In a New York Times article "Can a Soda Tax Save Us From Ourselves?" By N. GREGORY MANKIW
Published: June 4, 2010
He comments that
"Even as adults, we sometimes wish for parents to be looking over our shoulders and guiding us to the right decisions. The question is, do you trust the government enough to appoint it your guardian?"
What he's really saying is:
"trust me, just forget about politics - all that business of talking to other people."

Sunstein on Conspiracy Theories

Sunstein's paper on Conspiracy Theories
Is this a Trojan horse?

"We will ask whether judges do more good than harm by invoking statutes such as the Freedom of Information Act to force government to disclose facts that would rebut conspiracy theories. Our conclusions are generally skeptical: there is little reason to believe that judges can improve on administrative choices in these situations."

And then this bit of disinformation, at least as far as it lacks even a supporting footnote?

"The widespread belief that U.S. officials knowingly allowed 9/11 to happen or even brought it about may have hampered the government’s efforts to mobilize social resources and political support for measures against future terrorist attacks."

Not directly connected perhaps but, I think, relevant given his mode of reference is that I find references to 'government' to be implausible on the face of it. Large governments in particular are made up of people and are inherently factionalized.
--- a point he does mention later in section C though I regard his explacation as self serving and he mentions not at all the role of courts in simply getting a government agency to justify its stance, that is, the court provides an external review that is unlikely to be influenced by internal informational cascades.

2. Which audience?
... "Under pluralistic ignorance, the perverse result may actually be to spread the conspiracy theory further."

Most of the section seemed reasonable to me but then it descended into functional incoherence.

On the whole, it seems to me, that Sunstein pays too much deference to the good judgement of bureaucrats, a la Hayek i am disposed to think that more input into decisions is better than less.
Also, the paper would have benifited from a style editor.

What Can Biologists Solve

Just finished an old piece of the same name by SE Luria from the NYReview of Books(feb 1974) and his bit on language made me think that, just maybe, the proper explanation of it should focus on its use in promoting feed back loops.

Old notes

Blog
20100518
While reading "out of our heads" by Alva Noe:
Noe's screed about the 'scientific' view of consciousness made me think that, in fact, science is exactly the opposite of solipcism in that it presumes a natural world and, at least since Einstein, presumes that the laws that locally apply globally. Thus, science, forces you to take for granted the consciousness in others that you recognize in yourself.

20100430
a piece by Vivek Wadhwa who thinks that all the gov. activity in Boulder is unrelated to the tech firms that startup there.

20100407
from nytimes/20100406
"In an experiment published last year, Dutch researchers had 46 students at Leiden University pair off for a three-minute interaction with a fellow student who was either lying or telling the truth about a donation to charity. Those students told not to mimic the expressions of their conversation partner were significantly better at determining who was telling the truth than students told to mimic, or given no instructions. “Mimicry, whether spontaneous or the product of instruction, hinders observers in objectively assessing” people’s true feelings."


20100327
reading BusinessWeek
Another downside to the Reagen revolution, regulators can also be paid with prestige but first society has to believe they are doing something worthwhile.

from NYTimes/20100325
"Heading Off the Next Financial Crisis"
By DAVID LEONHARDT
Published: March 22, 2010

" In the more competitive new system, borrowing costs fell. Credit cards, debit cards, A.T.M.’s and online banking brought convenience to consumers."

By and large this is not true. Credit cards and ATM existed before deregulation and certainly online banking would have arrived with the Internet anyway.

20100325
from NYTimes -
In Health Bill, Obama Attacks Wealth Inequality
By DAVID LEONHARDT
Published: March 23, 2010

"The laissez-faire revolution that Mr. Reagan started did not cause these trends. But its policies — tax cuts, light regulation, a patchwork safety net — have contributed to them."
On what grounds does he maker this claim?

20100318
Do children in traditional village societies display these attachment disorders

20100313
but Singer's case is itself the wrong one. The actual case is one of seeing a child drowning whose mother is waiting for you to rescue it before she throws in another.
In other words, I have gone for the second case

20100310
In the tit for tat simulation, how about a modification that allows a player to take note of nearby defections.

20100307
A train of thought
A mom tells her little boy that something is hydraulic
I wonder how 'hyrdraulic' can be a meaningful word to him, which reminds me that I had a thought last might that I wanted to remember but the content of which I've forgotten - though I believe it was something economic -- It was about tenure. Would we even have the Chicago School of economics if Friedman and his ilk had been subject to employement at will?

20100228

From nytimes 20100227:
Ben Aldern, 20, of Berkeley, Calif., went to Target recently to shop for headphones. “I was ready to spend whatever I needed,” he said, but on a hunch, he fired up RedLaser — and found the same model for less at Amazon, the online merchant.

--- Ben aldern, a jerk to avoid

Blogging from an iPhone

That's all it is, checking out BlogWriter I stead of taking notes, or making them as case may be. The larger point being that it would be nice to be able to search that kind of thing.

Reading "The Language of Thought" by Steven Pinker I find that I have reservations about specific examples. It seems to me that "Lift him the box" is a perfectly reasonable command, that "Pedro threw him the ball" is fine, at least until you add the clause that implies that the ball didn't get there, and that classing "fine" as a malefactive is an example of a libertarian agenda. Last, for the moment, but not least, "The egg boiled" is not a construction I would have imagined anyone using.
However, the main problem I'm having with him so far is simply that everything is confined to English without even a reference to other languages.
Finally, a thought that occurred to me after the foregoing reservations; social scientists who write books not available as commentable e-books seem to me unlikely to be trustworthy.

Thought for the day, economics, one of the sycophantic arts.

a reminder

To remind myself,  I read Ayaan Hirsi Ali's review of The Suicide of Reason by Lee Harris today on the bus home from the park.  Blind Faiths was published on Jan. 6, 2008 in The New York Times  and it is one of those rare pieces that I felt was wholly reasonable, including other pieces I have read by her, particularly in its reservations on the value of Romanticism.  I think this may have been the more forceful for having been to the San Francisco Symphony performance of Beethoven's 4th last night.  While MTT talked about the work's emotional impact, mostly what I thought about was how much more I enjoy Vivaldi, Haydn, and Mozart.