Quotulatiousness

April 30, 2015

When Dungeons and Dragons met LEGO

Filed under: Gaming, Media — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 05:00

A picture really can convey a thousand words:

Lego version of 1977 D and D box

I’ve often contend that three of the most significant influences on my adolescent years were: LEGO building, computer programming, and playing Dungeons & Dragons. With this latest mosaic project, I more or less bring all of those things together (the LEGO and D&D are obvious, while behind the scenes I have the software program I wrote to help me map out the whole mural).

For those not quite as nerdy as myself, here’s the background on this image. It is the cover to the boxed set of the 1977 version on the game Dungeons & Dragons. This was the first version of the game released as the “Basic” set. It was the first set that my brother and I owned and played with. Obviously, the countless hours I spent reading the rulebook and perusing the illustrations made a pretty big impression on me. In fact, I still run a Basic D&D campaign semi-regularly using this very set.

Elasticity of Supply

Filed under: Economics — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Published on 27 Jan 2015

When is a supply curve considered elastic? What are determinants of elasticity of supply? Let’s compare Picasso paintings and toothpicks. Which has an elastic or inelastic supply? For which good could you increase production at a low cost? We also go over how to calculate the elasticity of supply, including using the midpoint formula.

The rise of “administrative law” in the United States

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Law, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In City Journal, Myron Magnet reviews a new book by Philip Hamburger on the rise and rise of the regulatory state:

We conservatives like to complain about overregulation and point to this or that destructive rule, but few of us go so far as Philip Hamburger does in his immensely important Is Administrative Law Unlawful?, published last year. A Columbia law professor, Hamburger indicts the entire structure of executive-agency rulemaking as illegitimate. It’s not just the regulations that have to go but the regulators as well, since their job is to fling down the Constitution and dance on it.

For over 400 pages of a 511-page, doorstopper-weight text, Hamburger counts the ways in which the slithery Medusa’s head of executive-branch agencies — from the Interstate Commerce Commission and the National Labor Relations Board to the Environmental Protection Agency and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, all spitting out the venom of administrative law — constitutes a flagrant affront to the Constitution. For starters, the Constitution lodges all legislative power in Congress, which therefore cannot delegate its lawmaking function. So it’s forbidden for Congress to pass a law creating an executive-branch agency that writes rules legally binding on citizens — for example, to set up an agency charged with making a clean environment and then to let it make rules with the force of law to accomplish that end as it sees fit. “The power of the legislative,” as the Founding Fathers’ tutelary political philosopher, John Locke, wrote, is “only to make laws and not to make legislators.” And if Congress can’t delegate the legislative power that the Constitution gives it, it certainly cannot delegate power that the Constitution doesn’t give it — namely, the power to hand out selective exemptions from its laws, which is what agencies do when they grant waivers.

Second, Constitution architect James Madison, following political theorist Baron de Montesquieu, saw the separation of powers as an essential bulwark of American liberty. But administrative agencies, which make rules, carry them out, and adjudge and punish infractions of them, blend together legislative, executive, and judicial powers in one giant anti-constitutional Cuisinart. Moreover, judicial power is as undelegatable as legislative power, since the Constitution lodges all of it in the judicial branch. So third, while administrative judges may look “just like real judges,” says Hamburger, they are no such thing — and not only because the Constitution makes it impossible for them to be so but also because, unlike real judges, their sole duty, rather than using their independent and expert judgment to carry out the law of the land, is to carry out the policy of their agency, as set and overseen by their department chief or the relevant cabinet secretary who in turn oversees him. As Justice William Howard Taft pronounced, an administrative tribunal is “miscalled a court.”

Organic wines as mere marketing buzz and gimickry

Filed under: Business, Health, Science, Wine — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

At VinePair, Kathleen Willcox explains why the “organic” label on your wine may be little more than a marketing ploy:

A lot of the buzz and imagery about organics appears to be just that – empty sound bites and gimmicks created by folks eager to cash in on the increasingly lucrative organic market. Where does that leave us? Not in an easy place.

Falling for marketers’ ploys is practically a full-time occupation in America (I’m not the only one who’s bought multiple cartons of fat-free ice cream hoping, this time, to finally find “creamy fat-free vanilla bliss” right?). Consumers’ perception of what organic agriculture is vs. the reality, and the halo of virtue with which it is bequeathed (and conventional agriculture’s implicit pair of devil’s horns) is, arguably, one of the biggest boondoggles in our culture today. More than half of Americans (55%) go organic because they believe it’s healthier. Meanwhile, there is really no evidence to back that assumption up. And even organic farmers use pesticides (sorry random lady at the bar). They just happen to be “natural.”

It’s never been a better time for organic marketers and companies. The market for organic food and beverages worldwide was estimated to be $80.4 billion in 2013 and is set to reach $161.5 billion in 2018, a compound annual growth rate of 15% per year. North America has the biggest market share, and will be responsible for roughly $66.2 billion by 2018.

But in the rush to get organic products out the door (and fulfill the public’s desire for healthier, more environmentally responsible products), some producers are often doing little more than following the letter of the USDA law to earn the “organic” label, consequences to the environment and our overall health be damned. In fact, from what producers and studies revealed, it may actually be worse for the environment and your body to buy organic wine from a large manufacturer instead of buying wine produced from grapes on a smaller vineyard sprayed judiciously with synthetic pesticides by a hands-on farmer.

QotD: Righteous indignation

Filed under: Humour, Quotations — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Those who irritate us and give us grounds for righteous indignation are our secret benefactors, for there are few states of mind more gratifying than that of righteous indignation.

Theodore Dalrymple, “A Miasma of Untruth”, Taki’s Magazine, 2014-06-29.

April 29, 2015

How did Propaganda Change After the First Months of World War 1? I OUT OF THE TRENCHES

Filed under: Europe, History, Military, WW1 — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 10:07

Published on 27 Apr 2015

Indy takes place in the chair of wisdom again to answer your questions. This week we deal with the outer ends of the Western Front, changes in propaganda and the logistics in the Carpathians.

A simple, four-step plan to assist African-Americans

Filed under: Education, Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

At Coyote Blog, Warren Meyer lays out his simple but effective plan to help African-Americans:

  • Legalize drugs. This would reduce the rents that attract the poor into dealing, would keep people out of jail, and reduce a lot of violent crime associated with narcotics traffic that kills investment and business creation in black neighborhoods. It would also reduce the main excuse for petty harassment by police that falls disproportionately on young black men. No its not a good thing to have people addicted to strong narcotics but it is worse to be putting them in jail and having them shooting at each other.
  • Bring real accountability to police forces. When I see stories of folks absurdly abused by police forces, I can almost always guess the race of the victim in advance. I used to be a law-and-order Conservative that blindly trusted police statements about every encounter. The advent of cell-phone video has proven this to be supremely naive.
  • Eliminate the minimum wage (compromise: eliminate the minimum wage before 25). Originally passed for racist reasons, it still (if unintentionally) keeps young blacks from entering the work force. Dropping out of high school does not hurt employment because kids learn job skills in high school (they don’t); it hurts because finishing high school is a marker of responsibility and other desirable job traits. Kids who drop out can overcome this, but only if they get a job where they can demonstrate these traits. No one is going to take that chance at $10 or $15 an hour**
  • Voucherize education. It’s not the middle class that is primarily the victim of awful public schools, it is poor blacks. Middle and upper class parents have the political pull to get accountability. It is no coincidence the best public schools are generally in middle and upper class neighborhoods. Programs such as the one in DC that used to allow urban poor to escape failing schools need to be promoted.

You could argue that decriminalizing drugs is somehow wrong … but if you’re looking at the harm inflicted by drug abuse and comparing it to the harm to African-American communities in particular, you would have to admit that it’s significantly worse with drug prohibition than it would be under a legal drug-use scenario. Reforming the police? Check what kinds of stuff show up in my Militarization-tagged posts — if that doesn’t convince you, you can’t be convinced.

The minimum wage is one of those issues that seems beneficial to the poor, because it means they get a higher wage on the job than they might get otherwise — what isn’t seen is that this limits the number of jobs that a poor person may have access to. Our education system is not adequately equipping people for the working world, and the more we expect the schools to teach, the less they can teach in the way of life-skills. A bad school can negatively impact someone’s entire working life. In education especially, one size does not fit all. Having more varied educational offerings makes it much more likely that children will be able to get the kind of education they need to succeed in life.

I’d be delighted if this mock draft turns out to be close to reality

Filed under: Football — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Ryan Boser guest-posts a mock draft at Vikings Territory that would just bowl me over on draft weekend. It’s got a little bit of everything, and it’s based on the demonstrated draft tendencies of “Trader” Rick Spielman. It includes a higher-than-expected result from trading Adrian Peterson, along with movement up and down to accumulate more picks and sneak back into the bottom of the first round for that coveted fifth-year option:

The Vikings enter the draft with seven selections:

1(11)
2(45)
3(76)
4(110)
5(137)
7(228)
7(232)

This is not enough. We know Rick wants nine or 10 picks. He’s traded back one spot with Cleveland in two of his last three drafts, and they’re ripe for the picking again at No. 12. However, he’ll need to slide back a bit further to acquire requisite ammunition, and for a team with numerous needs, it’s a flatter tier—the value of pick 11 isn’t much different from the value of pick 16.

TRADE: Minnesota sends 1(11) to Houston for 1(16), 3(82) and 4(116)

[…]

TRADE: Minnesota sends Adrian Peterson to Arizona for 1(24)

I’ve long been of the belief that bridges have been burned, and this whole process has been another “we have no intent of trading Percy Harvin” dog and pony show. Thankfully, Rick is a master of creating trade markets out of thin air.

I don’t know if it’ll be Arizona, Dallas, or one of the longer shots. What I do know is that Rick’s still stacking his chips from the Harvin trade, while simultaneously playing the Peterson suitors against each other. I think he ultimately gets his R1 pick (maybe more?), and another standing ovation.

[…]

Hey, let’s make a pick!

1(16) Todd Gurley, RB, Georgia; 6’1”, 222

We know that Spielman is fearlessly aggressive with offensive weapons early in the draft. This dates back to his very first selection as VP of Player Personnel, when he took an “injury-prone” Adrian Peterson, despite urgent defensive needs and Chester Taylor coming off a 1,500-YFS season in Year 1 of a 4-year contract.

[…]

1(24) Marcus Peters, CB, Washington; 6’0”, 197

We know Spielman really values DBs, and he’ll get no argument from HC Mike Zimmer. Peters, who’s met privately with the Vikings, is widely believed to be the best cover corner in the draft. While he comes with some Harvin-esque character/authority issues, Zimmer has made lemonade out of worse (Pacman Jones and Vontaze Burfict, to name two). The team has also shown Pro Day interest in fellow CBs Byron Jones and Kevin Johnson. Depending on availability, one of the three would be the pick here, and would make a dreamy tandem with budding superstar Xavier Rhodes.

TRADE: Minnesota sends 2(45) and 3(76) to Indianapolis for 1(29) and 5(165)

You knew better than to go to sleep. Rick loves his fifth-year options, as he’s proven by trading back into the end of R1 in three straight drafts. He’s made seven R1 picks in the last three years (2, 3, 2), with only one coming from an original Vikings draft slot, so we’re right on trend here.

1(29) Eric Kendricks, LB, UCLA; 6’0”, 232

Kendricks is in play for the Packers at 30, so 29 is probably the necessary destination. Although the 2014 Butkus Award winner is a bit undersized, he’s extremely intelligent, instinctive and aggressive. Whether he remains inside or moves to WILL, Kendricks quenches the team’s most desperate thirst, and allows Zimmer full freedom to deploy his bazooka (Anthony Barr) however he pleases.

[…]

Your 2015 Minnesota Vikings Draft Class:

1(16)* HOU – Todd Gurley, RB
1(24)* ARI – Marcus Peters, CB
1(29)* IND – Eric Kendricks, LB
3(82)* HOU – Tre McBride, WR
4(110) – Ifo Ekpre-Olomu, DB
4(116)* HOU – Za’Darius Smith, DE
5(137) – Mitch Morse, G
5(165)* IND – Chaz Green, T
7(228) – Bryce Hager, LB
7(232) – Trevor Pardula, P

How do you get teens to understand the First World War? Digging trenches is a good start

Filed under: Cancon, Education, History, WW1 — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Leslie Waghorn talks about the history teacher who literally brought trench warfare to life for her and her classmates:

Mr. Barker-James had planned everything to be as accurate as possible. The students would dig the trenches over a series of months. We would sleep outside and we would only be allowed to take clothing and comforts with us that would have been allowed by our “side” at the time. We would eat what they ate, we would sleep on their schedules.

For two months, after school and during our spare periods, we went to Mr. Barker-James’ farm and hand dug trenches. I remember my hands being blistered and by mid-October being miserable with the choice to either wear gloves and not have a good enough grip on the shovel to break through the frost, or do it bare-handed. One day I remember throwing a 17-year-old’s hissy fit, which Mr. Barker-James stopped by reminding me that a mere 80 years before, boys my age had to do this in France, all day, without the luxury of gloves and wool hats, and snacks.

Point to Mr. Barker-James.

When the weekend of the trench warfare scenario came, I remember there were a handful of seniors on the Allied and Axis (my assignment) sides and we were over-run by sophomores who were ready for a weekend of camping. We were offered our first breakfast of a slice of bread, water and a cheese slice. Many decided not to eat it and instead marched the 8 kilometers to his farm on an empty stomach. By the time we arrived, the mood had gone from excitement to exhaustion.

We set up camp, laid out wooden weapons, and started our first patrols. At lunch we were offered what soldiers from our side would have eaten: Hard tack and bully beef. I remember cutting the roof of my mouth on the hard tack and dry heaving as I tried to swallow the fatty bully beef. I couldn’t get it down. I was very hungry, but I knew that was the point.

The first battle we recreated was the Somme. I remember being relieved because it was supposed to be easy for our side, the Germans. The Canadians would walk down the hill, in the trench at the base we would mow them down. At first our side was having fun, enjoying as the refs called their friends out as dead. The ‘dead’ students would then revive and move up to the top of the hill and come down again in the next wave, only to be killed by us again.

I remember a girl stopping at one point and saying, “this sucks.” I asked her why, this was the easy part for us. “We’re just killing them and killing them and killing them. It doesn’t stop. We have to do this for 45 more minutes. Just killing people. It’s depressing.” “That’s the point.” I said. I saw the same light go off in her eyes as it did when Mr. Barker-James had pointed out that my sore hands were nothing to complain about. By giving us the opportunity to be outside of the classroom, and gain a first-hand reflective experience of the actual impact of war (however minor), Mr. Barker-James acted as an educational mediator – not a teacher, and yet, higher ranked than any teacher could be. His lessons instilled critical thinking, reflection, curiosity, and a drive for us to understand, which is considered some of the best sort of teaching around.

H/T to BoingBoing for the link.

QotD: Dining out, Soviet style

Filed under: History, Quotations — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Nowadays, of course, there’s more to get away from than the cold, the monotonous food and the frustrations of life in a backward, bureaucratic, corrupt society. Obviously you can get falling-down drunk at home, but there are no bars that serve anything stronger than beer, except in Intourist hotels, reserved for foreigners and officials. If you want to be served vodka, or any other spirit, you have to go to a restaurant and order it with your meal, which in itself can take an hour or two. So sometimes you team up with a couple of fellows at work, form a troika. (A troika can be a three-horse carriage but it’s just three of anything, a threesome.) You get hold of a half litre of vodka and what’s probably harder to come by in a socialist country, three paper cups. Perhaps the grocer will let you stand in his shop, anyway you find some place where the wind isn’t blowing and you drink the vodka, quite fast I expect, and then you go home. And that’s your night out with the lads.

In its way I find the thought of that almost as depressing as anything to do with the Gulag or mental hospitals. Remember it when the juke box in the pub is too loud or they can’t do you a Harvey Wallbanger.

Kingsley Amis, Everyday Drinking: The Distilled Kingsley Amis, 2008.

April 28, 2015

Another misleading statistical quirk about US corporate profits

Filed under: Business, Economics, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 07:02

Earlier this month, Tim Worstall explained why the huffing and puffing over the increased share of corporate profits in the US GDP figures is misdirected:

There’s all sorts of Very Serious People running around shouting about how the capitalist plutocrats are taking ever greater shares of the US economy. This might even be true but one of the pieces of evidence that is relied upon is not actually telling us what people seem to be concluding it is. The reason is that we’re in an age of increased globalisation. This means that large American companies (we mostly think of the tech companies here, Apple, Google, Microsoft) are making large profits outside America. However, when we measure the profit share of the US economy we are measuring those offshore profits as being part of the US economy. But we’re not also measuring the labour income that goes along with the generation of those profits. It’s thus very misleading indeed to be using this profit share as an indication of the capitalist plutocrats rooking us all.

[…]

It’s possible that that rise in the profit share is actually nothing at all to do with the US domestic economy. If American corporations are now making much larger foreign profits than they used to then that could be the explanation. No, it makes no difference about whether they repatriate those profits, nor whether they pay tax on them: those foreign profits will be included in GNP either way. Note also that measuring the profit share this way is rather misleading. Yes, it does, obviously because this is the way we calculate it, mean that the profit share of GNP is rising. But we’re not including the labour income that goes along with the generation of those profits. That’s all off in the GNP (or GDP) of the countries where the sales and manufacturing are taking place. The only part of this economic activity that we’re including in US GNP is that profit margin.

[…]

Now to backpeddle a little bit. I do not in fact insist that this is the entire explanation of the increased profit share. It wouldn’t surprise me if it was but I don’t insist that it’s the entire explanation. I do however insist that it is part of the explanation. The sums being earned offshore by large American companies are large enough to show up as multiple percentage points of the US economy. So some of that change in the profit share is just because American companies are doing well elsewhere in the world. It’s got very little to almost no relevance to the American economy itself that they are. At least, not in the sense that it’s being used here, to talk about the declining labour share. Because these profits simply aren’t coming from the domestic American economy therefore they can’t have any influence upon the percentage of that American economy that labour gets.

This does, of course, have public policy implications. If the above is the whole and total reason for the fall in the labour share of GNP then obviously we can raise the labour share of GNP just by telling American companies not to make profits in foreign countries. Which would be a completely ridiculous thing to do of course. But given that that would indeed solve this perceived problem, and also that it’s a ridiculous thing to do, means that the worries over the problem itself are also ridiculous. So, we don’t actually need a public policy response to it.

Professor: New UK railway signalling system is hackable … while he’s also selling anti-hacking gear

Filed under: Britain, Railways, Technology — Tags: — Nicholas @ 04:00

At The Register, John Leyden offers a bit of doubt that Professor David Stupples can really be said to be an impartial observer:

The rollout of a next generation train signalling system across the UK could leave the network at greater risk of hack attacks, a university professor has claimed.

Prof David Stupples warns that plans to replace the existing (aging) signalling system with the new European Rail Traffic Management System (ERTMS) could open up the network to potential attacks, particularly from disgruntled employees or other rogue insiders.

ERTMS will manage how fast trains travel, so a hack attack might potentially cause trains to move too quickly. UK tests of the European Rail Traffic Management System have already begun ahead of the expected rollout.

By the 2020s the system will be in full control of trains on mainline routes. Other countries have already successfully rolled out the system and there are no reports, at least, of any meaningful cyber-attack to date.

Nonetheless, Prof Stupples is concerned that hacks against the system could cause “major disruption” or even a “nasty accident”.

ERTMS is designed to make networks safer by safeguarding against driver mistakes, a significant factor historically in rail accidents. Yet these benefits are offset by the risk of hackers manipulating control systems, Prof Stupples, of City University London, warned.

Fever dream meets DOOM

Filed under: Gaming — Tags: — Nicholas @ 03:00

Ever have one of those fever dreams where you’re moving through the terrain of a video game? Want to recreate that experience for some reason? You’ll want to download Doomdream:

doomdream

Ever play a video game so often that it shows up in your dreams?

That’s the idea behind Doomdream, an interactive experience created by Ian MacLarty to simulate what his own dreams look like after he’s been playing the classic 1993 shooter Doom all day.

Although there are no enemies, no combat or really any plot, it generates a labyrinth of pixelated gray tunnels and bloody stalagmites for you to wander in forever, recreating the nightmare of so many players who got lost in the purgatory of Doom‘s looping levels, searching fruitlessly for an exit sign.

H/T to BoingBoing for the image and story.

Tax credits that benefit almost nobody

Filed under: Business, Government, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Last week, Michael Geist pointed out that the tax credits and other inducements offered by state and provincial governments to attract TV and movie business are a bad deal for everyone except the media companies:

The widespread use of film and television production tax subsidies dates back more than two decades as states and provinces used them to lure productions with the promise of new jobs and increased economic activity. The proliferation of subsidies and tax credits created a race to the bottom, where ever-increasing incentives were required to distinguish one province or state from the other.

In recent years, governments have begun to rethink the strategy. States such as Arizona, Michigan, New Mexico, and Iowa suspended or capped their programs. Louisiana found that it lost $170 million in tax revenue in a single year. In Canada, the Quebec government’s taxation review committee recently admitted that its provincial film production tax credit was not profitable and that numerous studies find that there is little economic spinoff activity.

But the most notable Canadian study on the issue has never been publicly released and is rarely discussed. The Ontario government’s Ministry of Finance conducted a detailed review of the issue in 2011, delivering a sharply negative verdict on the benefits associated with spending hundreds of millions of dollars each year in tax credits. It recommended eliminating a 25 per cent tax credit for foreign and non-certified domestic productions that would have saved $155 million per year.

QotD: Pursuit of truth

Filed under: History, Humour, Quotations, Science — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Truth, indeed, is something that is believed in completely only by persons who have never tried personally to pursue it to its fastnesses and grab it by the tail. It is the adoration of second-rate men — men who always receive it at second-hand. Pedagogues believe in immutable truths and spend their lives trying to determine them and propagate them; the intellectual progress of man consists largely of a concerted effort to block and destroy their enterprise. Nine times out of ten, in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered; there is only error to be exposed. In whole departments of human inquiry it seems to me quite unlikely that the truth ever will be discovered. Nevertheless, the rubber-stamp thinking of the world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with the discovery of the truth — that error and truth are simple opposites. They are nothing of the sort. What the world turns to, when it has been cured of one error, is usually simply another error, and maybe one worse than the first one. This is the whole history of the intellect in brief. The average man of to-day does not believe in precisely the same imbecilities that the Greek of the fourth century before Christ believed in, but the things that he does believe in are often quite as idiotic. Perhaps this statement is a bit too sweeping. There is, year by year, a gradual accumulation of what may be called, provisionally, truths — there is a slow accretion of ideas that somehow manage to meet all practicable human tests, and so survive. But even so, it is risky to call them absolute truths. All that one may safely say of them is that no one, as yet, has demonstrated that they are errors. Soon or late, if experience teaches us anything, they are likely to succumb too. The profoundest truths of the Middle Ages are now laughed at by schoolboys. The profoundest truths of democracy will be laughed at, a few centuries hence, even by school-teachers.

H.L. Mencken, “Footnote on Criticism”, Prejudices, Third Series, 1922.

Older Posts »

Powered by WordPress