Quotulatiousness

January 4, 2018

“This is what you get when you touch the Orb”

Filed under: Humour, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Jonah Goldberg thinks he’s identified the moment our timeline went screwy, sorta:

Ever since Donald Trump touched the Orb, praise be upon it, I’ve been making “This is what you get when you touch the Orb” jokes.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I’ll tell you: On his trip to the Middle East in May, President Trump, along with the Saudi king and the president of Egypt, laid his hands on a glowing white orb for two minutes (which strikes me as a long time to touch an orb).

The image was like a mix of J.R.R. Tolkien and 1970s low-budget Canadian sci-fi. It looked like they were calling forth powerful eldritch energies from the chthonic depths or perhaps the forbidden zone.

Ever since then, when things have gotten weird, I’ve credited the Orb. For instance, when the Guardian reported that sex between Japanese snow monkeys and Sika deer may now constitute a new “behavioral tradition,” I tweeted, “the Orb has game, you can’t deny it.” When Roy Moore, the GOP Alabama Senate candidate, was plausibly accused of preying on teenagers and many evangelical leaders rallied to his defense, invoking biblical justifications for groping young girls, I admired the Orb’s cunning. And when the bunkered Moore decided to give one of his only interviews to a 12-year-old girl, I sat back and marveled at the Orb’s dark sense of humor.

But I know in my heart that it’s not the Orb’s fault things have gotten so weird, for the simple reason that rampant weirdness predates the Orb-touching by years.

I have a partial theory as to why, and it doesn’t begin with Trump. It begins with a failure of elites and the institutions they run.

Who Is More Rational? You or the Market?

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

Marginal Revolution University
Published on 6 Sep 2016

We mentioned before that it’s hard to beat the market. And you shouldn’t try. But what about market anomalies?

One anomaly is the Momentum Effect — where past stock performance predicts future performance, at least a bit. As an example, portfolios with past winners tend to outperform the market in the medium term. Why is that? The market sometimes under-responds to changes in information. Thus, some stocks can lag, even if rationally, they shouldn’t. This is why picking past winners can generate some profit, though the profit’s usually small.

There are also other anomalies, like the Monday Effect, where stocks fall more on Mondays. Or, there’s the January Effect, which says that stocks surge higher in that month. There’s been some evidence for these effects, but these anomalies don’t last.

Despite its flaws, the market is still more rational than you. Don’t forget, you’re probably like most individual traders. You may become overconfident. You may not calculate probabilities that well. And if the market crashes, you’re likely to act more emotionally than you should — just like everyone else.

But don’t just take our word for it — even Warren Buffett agrees! Don’t try to beat the market.

HMS Ocean to be sold to Brazil

Filed under: Americas, Britain, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In The Register, Gareth Corfield sums up reports on the disposition of the Royal Navy’s current flagship after a 20-year service life:

HMS Ocean at the Thames Barrier in 2012, being moved into position to support the Olympic Games in London.

The 22,000-tonne helicopter carrier, which returned from her last British deployment to the Caribbean just weeks ago, will be formally decommissioned from the RN in spring this year.

Although it was well known that Ocean was up for sale and that Brazil (as well as Turkey) were interested in buying the 20-year-old warship, confirmation of the deal and the purchase price were all “known unknowns” until now.

The news was broken by defence blog UK Defence Journal, citing a Brazilian journalist.

The Brazilian Navy’s end-of-year roundup statement, published on Christmas Eve 2017, also included the line: “Minister Raul Jungmann and the Brazilian Navy Commander Eduardo Bacellar Leal Ferreira took the opportunity to announce the purchase of the Royal Navy’s HMS Ocean multifunction vessel, valued at £84m sterling.”

A British Ministry of Defence spokesman told El Reg: “Discussions with Brazil over the long-planned sale of HMS Ocean are at an advanced stage, but no final decisions have been made. HMS Ocean has served admirably with us since 1998 and the revenue she generates will be reinvested in defence as we bolster our Royal Navy with two types of brand new frigates and two huge aircraft carriers.”

HMS Ocean at the 2005 International Fleet Review, showing Landing Craft on davits and Stern Ramp deployed.
Photo via Wikimedia.

At the Thin Pinstriped Line, Sir Humphrey explains why selling the ship now makes sense for the Royal Navy:

The big change to this requirement came in 2015, when the SDSR [Strategic Defence and Security Review]confirmed that the RN would keep both carriers in active service, and that neither would be CTOL [conventional take-off and landing]. Suddenly the RN found itself planning for a future where it would have two CVF available [the Queen Elizabeth class carriers], both of which would need to have manpower available to crew them. It also meant that the RN could make modifications to the ships to ensure that either of them could operate as an LPH [Landing Platform Helicopter] and carry helicopters and troops as well as a fixed wing airgroup.

This decision has had major ramifications for Ocean – suddenly the need for her to remain in service was gone. The LPH role that she would have done would now be filled by two newer and vastly more capable ships – the UK wasn’t losing capability but gaining it. In practical terms the RN actually would have more chance of an LPH being available without Ocean as CVF availability will be higher, both can role as an LPH (rather than CTOL which would not do this task) and with both platforms active, there is far less chance of the nightmare situation of both the CTOL carrier and the old LPH being stuck in refit at the same time.

From a capability perspective, the move to CVF makes a lot of sense. There are issues to be resolved (arguably the littoral manoeuvre capability offered by her landing craft, the vehicle issue and the question of what to do about afloat 1&2* command platforms and where to put them), but Ocean paying off is not going to remove the LPH capability from the UK toolkit.

The second problem has been that even if the RN wanted to run Ocean on, it has run out of manpower to do so. This year will see Queen Elizabeth at sea doing complex trials, drawing heavily on the Fleet Air Arm personnel to do so. As Prince of Wales (POW) stands up, more and more crew (usually very specialised engineers and the like) will be needed to bring her out of build. On the old plan this wouldn’t have been an issue – one would have gone straight into reserve. Now, the RN has to bring both carriers into service at roughly the same time (a helpful reminder of RN capability here is that it is the only navy in the world currently introducing two supercarriers into service at roughly the same time).

Ocean requires a lot of specialist crew who will be needed on QE and POW, and more importantly so will their reliefs. The manpower planners have not been working on the assumption of three carriers available and at sea (something the RN arguably has not done consistently for many years), and so the manpower structure is not designed to provide this. It could be changed, but would need many years to produce the right numbers of people in the right slots to deliver it without breaking manpower and causing retention challenges.

The Truth About The Tesla Semi-Truck

Filed under: Business, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Real Engineering
Published on 15 Dec 2017

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QotD: “[G]reedy corporations sacrifice human lives to increase their profits”

Filed under: Business, Economics, Quotations — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

The charge that sways juries and offends public sensitivities, and helps explain the large awards, is that greedy corporations sacrifice human lives to increase their profits.

Is this charge true? Of course it is. But this isn’t a criticism of corporations; rather it is a reflection of the proper functioning of a market economy. Corporations routinely sacrifice the lives of some of their customers to increase profits, and we are all better off because they do. That’s right, we are lucky to live in an economy that allows corporations to increase profits by intentionally selling products less safe than could be produced. The desirability of sacrificing lives for profits may not be as comforting as milk, cookies, and a bedtime story, but it follows directly from a reality we cannot wish away.

The reality is scarcity. There are limits to the desirable things that can be produced. If we want more of one thing, we have to do with less of other things. Those expressing outrage that safety is sacrificed for profit ignore this obvious point. For example, traffic fatalities could be reduced if cars were built like Sherman tanks. But the extra safety would come at the sacrifice of gas mileage, comfort, speed, and parking convenience, not to mention all the things you couldn’t buy after paying the extraordinarily high price of a Tankmobile. Long before we increased automotive safety to that of a Tankmobile, the marginal value of the additional life expectancy would be far less than the marginal value of what would be given up. It simply makes no sense to reduce traffic deaths as much as possible by making automobiles as safe as possible.

Dwight R. Lee, “Sacrificing Lives for Profits”, The Freeman, 2000-11.

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