Advancing Civilization

Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them.

Alfred North Whitehead

Inflating away debt only works when the obligations are in fixed dollar amounts, like a mortgage. But essentially, all of our long-term fiscal problems are entitlement commitments that grow (are “indexed”) with inflation. When inflation rises, spending on Social Security and Medicare rise at the same rate. So the debt-inflation relationship is the opposite of the get-out-of-jail-free card some envision. Debt still goes up in real dollar terms, creating even more of a death spiral.

Why the U.S. Can’t Inflate Its Way Out of Debt

Don’t click the link unless the following sentence sounds interesting to you.

Assume that a restaurant has N dishes on its menu that are rated from worst to best, 1 to N

Feynman’s Restaurant Problem

Don’t write this off because it came from The Daily Show. When someone’s right, admit they are right. Fox News is crazy.

Last year we saw, in one instance, how sound-bite reporting can go wrong. Among the 12,830 words in the annual letter was this sentence: “We are certain, for example, that the economy will be in shambles throughout 2009 – and probably well beyond – but that conclusion does not tell us whether the market will rise or fall.” Many news organizations reported – indeed, blared – the first part of the sentence while making no mention whatsoever of its ending. I regard this as terrible journalism: Misinformed readers or viewers may well have thought that Charlie and I were forecasting bad things for the stock market, though we had not only in that sentence, but also elsewhere, made it clear we weren’t predicting the market at all. Any investors who were misled by the sensationalists paid a big price: The Dow closed the day of the letter at 7,063 and finished the year at 10,428.

2009 Berkshire Hathaway Letter to Shareholders

Don’t trust outrageous claims from anyone.

I want to go to the Devil’s Swimming Pool at the top of Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe.

Stelvio Pass. Worth a drive.

Even better is the Transfăgărăşan

This isn’t really a *do*, but I came across it while looking at Snopes. The Chaiten Volcano in Chile erupted, and lightning came out of it. Here are bigger pictures of the lightning volcano.

In its current incarnation, conservatism has taken on an angry crankiness. It is caught up in a pseudo-populism that true conservatism should mistrust — what on Earth would Bill Buckley have made of “death panels”? The creed is caught up in a suspicion of all reform that conservatives of the Edmund Burke stripe have always warned against.

…

First, conservatives are suspicious of innovation and therefore subject all grand plans to merciless interrogation. Their core question goes something like this: Maybe you think this new health (or education or environmental) plan is a great idea, Mr. Liberal, but will it really work?

What are its unintended consequences? Can our governmental institutions carry it off? Not all progressive ideas pass the test. In the health care debate, conservatives were at their best when they shelved the demagoguery and asked practical, focused questions.

Three points for conservatives

I really like this article. Conservatives should be playing Devil’s Advocate to Progressive ideas. Political party fighting is crap. Focused, insightful, and thoughtful questioning of another’s ideas is a compliment. “I take you seriously enough to consider your ideas”

Synchronization in the brain is influenced by “theta waves” which are associated with relaxation, daydreaming and drowsiness, but also with learning and memory formation, the scientists explained in the study in the journal Nature.

While scientists already know that relaxed minds are better at receiving new information, this study pinpoints a mechanism by which relaxation neurons work together to improve memory.

“Our research shows that when memory-related neurons are well coordinated to theta waves during the learning process, memories are stronger,” said Adam Mamelak, a neurosurgeon at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.

Scientists find how relaxed minds remember better

I don’t want you to confuse being happy with being soft. One can be both happy and hard-nosed at the same time. In fact, I like to consider myself a happy warrior. I love life and relish in the entreprenurial adventure, but yet I am (or try to be) ruthless in how I judge and execute that which is important around me and my baby.

How I Judge Investors

In their study, participants (students) were shown a flyer complimenting them for being stylish and chic and were asked to imagine that it had come from a clothing store. The participants knew perfectly well the compliment wasn’t aimed specifically at them, and the ulterior motive was plain — the leaflet contained a message asking them to shop at the store. There was nothing subtle about the attempt to flatter — its obviousness was “over the top,” Sengupta says.

On a conscious level, the students discounted the value of the compliment because of its impersonal nature and the ulterior motive. But careful assessment of their implicit attitudes revealed that they felt more positively about the store than participants who hadn’t seen the flyer. These positive feelings could have an impact on a company’s bottom line, the researchers found: Given a choice, participants were more likely to choose a coupon from a store that had complimented them than from one that hadn’t.

Why Flattery is Effective