Author: VD

Failing the stupid test

It’s not quite as dumb as buying a lottery ticket, but I’d be disinclined to hire someone who went and got a master’s degree instead of working because it reveals both a lack of foresight and an inability to understand basic economics:

I advise my own students, employees and relations to think carefully before signing up for expensive masters’ degrees. Most of the successful journalists, NGO leaders and authors I run across don’t have masters’ degrees and when the subject comes up they don’t recommend them to young people interested in these fields. There are exceptions where top teachers who are also leading people in a given field can become your mentor and help you enter a challenging and rewarding profession, but you have to look hard to find these.

I’m sure there must be some published authors with fancy literary degrees, but the strange thing is that barely any of the actual authors I know studied any form of writing in college whereas none of the English majors with advanced degrees I know have actually published anything.

And of the hundreds of guys I know in the game industry, I can’t think of a single one who has one of those ridiculous game development-related degrees.

Then there is this: “About one-third of people with master’s degrees make less money on average than a typical bachelor’s degree holder, said Stephen J. Rose, a labor economist with Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce, citing U.S. Census data.”

America prepares

Amidst all the terrible news, there is the occasional silver lining:

This year’s Black Friday gun sales broke a record set in 2008 by nearly a third, and while fears about President Obama outlawing some types of firearms are thought to be behind 2008’s record, analysts say this year’s surge in sales is part of a long-term trend. Gun ownership was “politically incorrect” five years ago, but “what seems to be changing is social acceptance,” an analyst at investment firm Avondale Partners tells MSNBC. “I think there might be a changing view of firearms.”

Every state except Illinois now allows residents to carry concealed weapons, and a recent Gallup poll found that 47% of American households own a gun, up from 41% just a year ago.

Between the rapid growth of homeschooling and the rapid growth of gun ownership, Americans appear to stand a reasonable chance of preventing whatever plans their would-be masters have in mind for them. I think the concerns about FEMA camps and the use of the military are somewhat overblown now, especially in light of the proven inability of the US military to deal effectively with insurgencies even in much smaller, more open countries.

From the perspective of a life-long wargamer, I would certainly quail before the challenge of trying to suppress the heavily armed American people, especially since even in the elite, one never truly knows where another’s sympathy lies. The shooting of the police officer at Virginia Tech is a reminder that there are only 800,000 state, local, and federal law enforcement officers in the entire country. They could be wiped out in a week by a population that lives right next door to nearly all of them.

If I were an evil utopian mastermind willing to break as many eggs as needed in order to build a New Society, I’d be looking into biological weapons to counteract the outnumbered and outgunned authorities; one wonders if the zombie craze is yet another example of media programming. One thing that is clear is that not even the “gun-buyers are sick and crazy people” theme as was featured on House this season is convincing anyone.

But Christmas is coming, so do your part and bump that percentage up over 50 percent.

David Cameron finds his spine

It’s not enough. He still needs to give the British people their promised referendum on the Fourth Reich. But it is a start:

After a marathon meeting that started at dinner time on Thursday evening and finished at 6am on Friday, eurozone member states agreed to create an intergovernmental treaty to forge stricter budgetary controls for the group’s member states. Britain has opted to remain out of the treaty.

“I said before coming to Brussels, that if I could not get adequate safeguards for Britain in a new European treaty, then I would not agree to it,” David Cameron said.

“What is on offer is not in Britain’s interest, so I didn’t agree to it. Let me explain why this matters, of course we want the eurozone countries to come together and to solve their problems, but we should only allow that to open inside the European Union treaties, if there are proper protections for the single market and for other British key interests. Without those safeguards it is better not to have a treaty, but to have those countries make their arrangements separately. That is now what is going to happen.”

Frankly, I am astonished. I assumed Cameron was going to sell Britain out, as Thatcher, Major, Blair, and Brown all did before him. It doesn’t mean he won’t eventually do so, but then again, Britain has always been extraordinarily tardy about recognizing continental threats to its existence. This is a good sign, as it represents the first material cracks that will eventually break apart the third great attempt to subjugate Europe under an unaccountable and authoritarian regime.

Britain has no more to fear from being out of the European Union than it had from its refusal to join Napoleon’s Greater France or Hitler’s Greater Germany. David Cameron would do well to reflect upon which historical British leaders are revered today, the Wellingtons and Churchills or the Chamberlains and Blairs.

One more try

As you’ve probably noticed, I’m going to give Disqus another try. We’ll see how it goes; if it turns out to be more annoying than CoComment, we’ll simply go back to that.

UPDATE: No way. Disqus is far more annoying than CoComment can manage at its most quixotic. All the new comment systems require a move to the newer Blogger interface to work properly, which significantly reduces one’s ability to control the layout of the blog.

UPDATE 2: Part of that may have been my fault. I may give it another whirl later. But it’s not promising that the Disqus Appearance Settings page gives you two options: Preview and Cancel… the SAVE option is conspicuously lacking.

Warning signs of junk science

ESR makes some excellent points here:

I’ve seen a lot of “scientific” panics ginned up from nonexistent or scanty evidence over the last several decades. There’s a pattern to these episodes, a characteristic stench that becomes recognizable after a while. I’ll describe some of the indicia, which I’ve culled from episodes like the Alar scare, the ozone-hole brouhaha, the AIDS panic (are you old enough to remember when it was predicted to become endemic among heterosexuals in the U.S.?), acid rain, and even the great global cooling flap of 1975.

So. Here is a non-exclusive list of seven eight symptoms to watch out for:

Science by press release. It’s never, ever a good sign when ‘scientists’ announce dramatic results before publishing in a peer-reviewed journal. When this happens, we generally find out later that they were either self-deluded or functioning as political animals rather than scientists. This generalizes a bit; one should also be suspicious of, for example, science first broadcast by congressional testimony or talk-show circuit.

Rhetoric that mixes science with the tropes of eschatological panic. When the argument for theory X slides from “theory X is supported by evidence” to “a terrible catastrophe looms over us if theory X is true, therefore we cannot risk disbelieving it”, you can be pretty sure that X is junk science. Consciously or unconsciously, advocates who say these sorts of things are trying to panic the herd into stampeding rather than focusing on the quality of the evidence for theory X.

Rhetoric that mixes science with the tropes of moral panic. When the argument for theory X slides from “theory X is supported by evidence” to “only bad/sinful/uncaring people disbelieve theory X”, you can be even more sure that theory X is junk science. Consciously or unconsciously, advocates who say these sorts of things are trying to induce a state of preference falsification in which people are peer-pressured to publicly affirm a belief in theory X in spite of private doubts.

Consignment of failed predictions to the memory hole. It’s a sign of sound science when advocates for theory X publicly acknowledge failed predictions and explain why they think they can now make better ones. Conversely, it’s a sign of junk science when they try to bury failed predictions and deny they ever made them.

AGW/CC was obviously bogus from the very start, which is why it has been so laughably easy to predict the failures of its models and anticipate its scandals. It is interesting to note how many other aspects of science are easily shown to be junk science this way, beginning with TE(p)NSBMGDaGF and including other notorious non-sciences such as string theory and macroeconomics.

This quote in the comments was particularly apt: “Prediction is everything, and it must work more than once. Explaining everything after the fact is merely making up complicated stories.”

The lawless society

I have been saying for years that there is no law in the USA, merely the pretense of law. Now the absence of justice in the so-called justice system is becoming readily apparent to everyone who is paying even casual attention:

Sarbanes-Oxley requires [John Corzine] as the CEO of a company to (1) guarantee that effective risk controls and rules are in place and (2) monitor their compliance. It renders failure to do so — that is, the old-fashioned “I didn’t know” defense that was routinely used after 2000-era failures in the Internet space — a felony.

Now of course Mr. Corzine is entitled to the presumption of innocence and he is entitled to a trial before being pronounced guilty, but the law on this point is clear: Executives, the CEO and CFO in particular, are required under Sarbanes-Oxley to factually know about matters such as this and they are required to attest to that knowledge — and the presence of appropriate and sufficient risk controls under penalty of felony indictment.

It appears that Mr. Corzine has admitted in front of a Congressional Committee that he does not know, and therefore this appears to be a prima-facie admission that he is in direct violation of this law.

If this is not dealt with on an expeditious fashion and the law is not enforced you have just seen proof on national television that there is no longer a rule of law in this nation of any substance.

The incredible thing is that the federal government is prosecuting and jailing hundreds of thousands of people for all sorts of drug “crimes”, but has no interest whatsoever in even arresting a man who admitted to stealing somewhere between $600 million and $1.2 billion dollars.

The USA may not be the most corrupt nation on Earth, but it is certainly among the most structurally corrupted. This is actually a more insidious form of corruption, because the law itself stands in open violation of Natural Law. We rightly condemn National Socialist Germany and Soviet Russia because their governments legalized murder, and while events haven’t yet reached that level of extremis, it should now be clear that the USA has legalized fraud and theft.

Yowzers

The European banks are seriously desperate for cheap credit:

The European Central Bank said demand for three-month dollar loans surged after it cut the cost of the financing almost in half in a coordinated action last week with five other central banks including the Federal Reserve.

The European Central Bank, based in Frankfurt, will lend $50.7 billion to 34 euro area banks on Thursday for 84 days at a fixed rate of 0.59 percent. That compares with the $395 million lent in the last three-month offering on Nov. 9 at a rate of 1.09 percent. The E.C.B. also lent five banks $1.6 billion in its regular weekly dollar operation, up from $352 million last week.

On an anecdotal note, I’ve observed of late that even firms in the European distribution chain are preferring to buy and sell in USD wherever possible. I was discussing a new product with someone today and they said we didn’t need to bother with EUR pricing… not even for the European customers.

Unelectable redefined

Many people are under the impression that “unelectable” means “insufficiently popular with the electorate. That clearly isn’t true:

[I]n that campaign discussion on Twitter, one candidate has fared better than anyone else. Congressman Ron Paul has enjoyed the most favorable tone on Twitter of all candidates examined. From May through November, fully 55% of the assertions about the Texas Republican on Twitter have been positive-the highest of any candidate-while 15% have been negative-the lowest percentage of any candidate. That is a differential for Paul of 40 points on the positive side.

Paul is also the most favorably discussed candidate in blogs. While he trails significantly in the polls, and has received less coverage than every Republican candidate except Rick Santorum from news outlets, Paul seems to have struck a chord with some cohort in social media.

This treatment of Paul stands in contrast to that of most of the GOP field, for whom Twitter has been a tough neighborhood. Five of Paul’s seven GOP rivals have had negative opinions on Twitter outstrip positive ones by roughly 2-1 or more.

What “unelectable” actually means is “insufficiently popular with the mainstream media”. Or more precisely, “insufficiently subservient to the banking industry”.

Suicide bankers

Bank of America arranges for mutually assured financial destruction:

Recently Bank of America transferred a bunch of derivatives into their banking arm. “A bunch” means somewhere around $80 trillion worth. Now pay very careful attention, because part of the bankruptcy “reform” law in 2005 placed derivative claims in front of depositors in a business failure – including a bank failure.

What JP Morgan is claiming in the MF Global case is that the derivative trade (which is exactly what a “Repo to Maturity” trade is – it’s a derivative) is entitled to preference in the case of MF Global over those who had cash there for safekeeping either as a margin deposit or just as free cash as you would hold free cash in a bank.

If a major bank blows up this very same claim, supported in existing Bankruptcy Law with the changes signed by George Bush in 2005, will be used to steal the entirety of your bank account, and if you detect the impending blowup shortly before it happens — say, 90 days before — you’re still exposed to the risk through clawback!

There is a fairly cogent argument to be made that what BofA did is tantamount to intentionally placing an armed financial nuclear device in the center of the board room table and then daring anyone — including the government — to come tamper with it and risk setting it off, knowing full well that if it explodes it is utterly impossible to contain the damage to our economy and financial system.

Translation: your FDIC guarantees won’t matter if you’re a BoA depositor. Whatever can be salvaged from the mass destruction will go towards paying back its derivative bookie, most likely Goldman Sachs. This sounds rather as if BoA’s executives are planning to abandon ship.

And notice that it was that conservative Republican, George W. Bush, who signed that law into place, again confirming that Republicans are part of the problem, and therefore cannot be part of the solution.

Choosing collapse

This is a rather timely poll, following as it does my recent column on the subject. It makes it very clear that there is no point looking to the Republicans to save the nation. John Hawkins polls the nominal right-wing blogosphere about the Republican primary:

If you had to pick a 2012 GOP contender today, which of the following candidates would you select?

7) Jon Huntsman: 2.5% (2 votes)
6) Rick Santorum: 5.1% (4 votes)
5) Michele Bachmann: 6.3% (5 votes)
4) Ron Paul: 7.6% (6 votes)
3) Mitt Romney: 12.7% (10 votes)
2) Rick Perry: 26.6% (21 votes)
1) Newt Gingrich: 39.2% (31 votes)

Which candidate would you LEAST like to see as the GOP nominee in 2012?

7) Rick Santorum: 1.3% (1 votes)
6) Rick Perry: 1.3% (1 votes)
5) Newt Gingrich: 3.8% (3 votes)
4) Jon Huntsman: 9% (7 votes)
3) Michele Bachmann: 11.5% (9 votes)
2) Mitt Romney: 25.6% (20 votes)
1) Ron Paul: 47.4% (37 votes)

If your top choice couldn’t get the nomination, which candidate would be your second choice?

7) Ron Paul: 3.8% (3 votes)
6) Jon Huntsman: 6.4% (5 votes)
5) Michele Bachmann: 10.3% (8 votes)
4) Mitt Romney: 14.1% (11 votes)
3) Rick Santorum: 15.4% (12 votes)
2) Newt Gingrich: 19.2% (15 votes)
1) Rick Perry: 30.8% (24 votes)

This is why I have absolutely no sympathy for Americans whatsoever, especially not Republicans who claim to be so distraught over what “the Democrats” are supposedly doing to the country. They are revealing themselves to be EVERY BIT as stupid and clueless as the “Hope and Change” Obama Democrats. They are an integral part of the problem, not the potential solution they imagine themselves to be.

I find it particularly telling that Ron Paul is the Republican for whom they harbor the most distaste. No one likes the man who tells you that you aren’t a beautiful snowflake whose every action is justified, much less the one who tells you that the good times are not going to continue rolling and happy days are not here again.