The Hanover Collaboration

K. Anthony Appiah is my new best friend:

I start with two problems. One is most evident with humanities majors: Many of them don’t know how to evaluate mathematical models or statistical arguments. And I think that makes you incompetent to participate in many discussions of public policy.

“Most people probably don’t even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?”, Sony-BMG’s President of Global Digital Busness, Thomas Hessa, on All Things Considered, commenting on hidden malware installed by some of his company’s CDs, purportedly to “prevent piracy”.

Apple released a major OS update a couple days ago. At first my computer seemed unusually snappy and responsive. Right now, however, I’m sitting through my second 20+ minute Finder beach ball (pinwheel, spinning pizza, etc) attack. Last time only RealPlayer survived. It happily continued to feed me NPR while the rest of my computer only let me move windows around. This time, only Safari seems to have survived.

Also, Safari has crashed 3 times on me since the upgrade. Two of those times it was in the background, or otherwise not being used.

I just thought I’d post in case anyone waiting on installing the upgrade, or would like to share similar problems.

The sword thats been hanging over my head for 5 months falls in 5 minutes.

I’ll let you know where it lands…

Edit: It misses! I pass the oral exams and my prize is 3 more years of Grad. School! Sweet!!!

Here’s a funny article on computer security. I’ve been trying for about a week now to think of something meaningful to add to the article, but now I think I should just let it stand on it’s own. Expect some thoughtful discussion in the comments.

JS: Dudley, I don’t get it. These Shakers were always making their tables with 3 legs. I’m not sure how you rig things to cut those 60 degree angles, but I bet it is a huge pain in the ass. Why didn’t they just do things the intuitive way, and make tables with 4 legs?

DW: Well, Jon, that’s an interesting question. The thing is, the Shakers didn’t have very good floors. Their floors were always warped and wavey.

JS: I get it. And if their tables have 3 legs then they’re always guaranteed to be stable. They’d never wobble.

DW: Yeah. That, and they really aren’t that hard to make.

André Martin, a physicist a CERN, has proved that any wobbly table with 4 legs in a square configuration can be made stable by pure rotation.

Neat discovery, but it looks ripe for Generalization to me. It really sucks when you get Generalized.

Here’s an excerpt on an email I got from Juliana a few weeks ago, that I’ve been meaning to post. Incase anyone doesn’t know him, Robbie is a ‘00 from Concord MA, and a former cycling collegiate national champion. He’s a great guy, and also the toughest man I’ve ever met. His Stryker unit left in August for Mosul.

1 Lt. Dapice, Rob
A/4-23 IN, 172 SBCT
APO AE 09319

If you have been mailing to the previous address, he
is getting your mail, but this address is better.
Please keep the letters coming! He says he is getting
lots of letters and packages and appreciates it all
tremendously. Robbie apologizes for not having time
to write back to everyone individually and thank you,
but please know it all gets to him and is greatly
appreciated. For now at least he rarely has internet
access and will sometimes go for a couple of weeks
without getting to a computer, so letters are
preferable to e-mails

Many of you have asked about what to send to Robbie.
Most of all he loves to get letters-even a short
postcard or newspaper clippings that will remind him
of (one of his) homes. He does NOT need any personal
care/hygiene items, or much else either. He does say
that snacks, energy bars and homemade cookies are
making it there fine and are a real treat.

One of the best things to send is Beanie Babies, or
similar small stuffed toys or dolls for Robbie to hand
out to Iraqi children. As you may know, many Iraqi
children have absolutely nothing. When Robbie is in
town, on patrol and hands a child a small, colorful
stuffed animal their faces light up, which in turn
provides great joy for Robbie. He says at times they
have hoards of children crowded around their Stryker
in hopes of getting a treat from the American
soldiers. That said, if you know of anyone who has a
beanie baby collection they are trying to get rid of,
or see them at yard sales-please know Robbie is taking
donations to distribute. They certainly do not need
to be new and I don’t think he can get too many.

Bank of America blows for personal banking, but I’ve got to give them some props for this idea. Called “Keep the Change” it rounds up your debit card purchases to the nearest dollar, and puts the amount of the round up (the “change”, if you will) in your savings account. Cute. They’ll even “match” 5% of the money you save this way.

Why would they do this? First, it is a clever idea and good marketing. Second, it encourages people to use their debit on small purchases, rather than a credit card. Debit card transactions cost much less to process than credit card transactions, and banks have much less legal liability for fraudulent transactions. And finally, to sign up for this program you need to have Bank of America’s “Regular” Savings account, which without looking I assumed was so bad that I almost called it “Super-Shitty Savings” as joke for our 7th grade demographic. Now that I have looked I see that it is so shitty that someone ought to be thrown in jail for fraud. The annual return (APY) is 0.5%! If you followed my advice from here you’d have 8 times that return right now.

That said, I’m moments away from signing up. They match 100% of your change for the first 3 months. As soon as I got my card I would drive to the Co-Op and make 250 purchases of something that costs $1.01, like 5 packs of Maruchan. Then I’d close my accounts before they could rape me with fees.

That would be 1250 packs of ramen for $5. I’d eat like a king.

that OS X.4 comes with software that can do this

and this

?

You know how every so often someone comes up with a begging scheme so novel that it works big time? Even though, really, it is just begging for money. Here’s one, called $1 Pixels

That guy didn’t win my hilarious rating. The guy who bought space and linked it to 20 Cent Pixels did.

[Update] That’s not even the end of it…

Corporate Lawyer: “Because of Sarbanes-Oxley it’s pretty much impossible to have an IPO these days.”

Michael Mandel: “Sarbanes-Oxley is a pretty gross over reaction. ... I would never even think about being an officer at a public company these days.”

Other Corporate Lawyer: “To be safe you’re going to have to go with one of the big four accounting firms, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, KPMG, or PwC…”

Are you kidding me? All of those firms have recently been involved in scandals. KPMG just signed a $450 million dollar settlement for “tax shelters” last month!

How do these guys think we should deal with corporate malfeasance?

I’ve been hunting a (computer) bug for two days straight. It was driving me nuts, and then, boom it’s right there in front of me. I don’t even have to run the change to be sure. That’s it, right there, and it’s obvious, and I just couldn’t see it.

This situation should be infuriating. I should feel like I’m an idiot, and I’ve wasted two days. The thing is, in those two days I’ve fixed a dozen other bugs I had never noticed before, and might never have noticed…

So instead, I feel like a champion. Just kidding, I still feel like an idiot.

[Update: Double psych out! That wasn’t “the bug” after all.]

Last year I set out on a quest for Optimized Personal Finance. With the help of The Motley Fool, Bankrate, and Marketplace: Money I have arrived at the solution. I’m posting it here, on the Internet, as a service to the world.

Checking / Short term savings: Everyone should have [their monthly income * 3-6 months] in cash on hand, you know, just in case. Right now the best place to keep this is Bank of Internet USA “Freedom Checking” account. This account requires a $1000 minimum balance, but gets you 3.10% interest and $7 a month in reimbersed out-of-network ATM fees in addition to all of the normal online banking perks. The fee for going bellow the $1000 minimum balance is pretty low.

I think online banking is the way to go. I almost never need to go to a bank in person, and I don’t know why so many other people do. If your bank has buildings, then you are paying to staff, power, and heat those buildings. You might be paying in the form of lower interest rates and higher fees, but you’re paying.

I’m moving over to Bank of Internet (I know the name sounds sketchy, but they’re legit) from E*Trade Bank. E*Trade’s checking plan is almost as good, but I’ve recently had a spat with them over fees, and so they’re being punished.

Downside: Occasionally, you may need a special bank service, like a Medallion Signature, and every local bank will turn their nose up at you. This has never happened to me, but it might happen to some people. Also, Bank of Internet, as far as I can tell, doesn’t operate any ATMs itself, so to remain optimal you’ve got to limit your ATM withdrawals to the $7 fee / month reimbursement max. That’s not such a big deal.

Credit Card: This choice is difficult to optimize. I’m going to assume that you will use your credit card for convenience but not for credit, ie you will never carry a balance. With this assumption in place we can limit our optimization to rewards programs.

There are three types of rewards programs: cash, airline miles, and bonus points. If you assume that you would use every airline ticket you get from your credit card on an expensive flight, then miles can significantly outperform cash back. That said, miles are complicated and may have blackout dates or other limitations. Furthermore, airline miles are an unregulated currency. Currently they are an enormous outstanding liability for the struggling airline industry. If airlines decide tomorrow that it’s going to take 100,000,000 miles to get a free ticket instead of however many miles it currently takes (and I think they will), then you’re SOL.

Personally, I go for the cash back. Cash is like generalized airline miles. You can still use it to buy a plane ticket if you want, but you don’t have to. I haven’t seen any bonus points programs that out perform my cash back, but they might exist.

I use the Motley Fool branded MBNA Mastercard right now for 1% cash back on everything. Some cards, such as the Citi® Dividend Platinum Select® MasterCard® offer 5% back at gas stations and grocery stores, and 1% back everywhere else, but I’ve been rejected every time I’ve applied. The reason: no revolving balance. Oh well, they still might be worth your time, some of my friends had better luck.

Medium term savings: You should put aside money for large, foreseeable expenses you expect to incur in the next 2-10 years. Buying a new car, or making a down payment on a home, for example. This page at Bankrate lists the top 100 yielding savings and money market accounts in the country. For the past 6 months Emigrant Direct has been parked at the top, and I think they’re likely to stay there. They seem to have a powerful devotion to keeping costs low, and yields high.

The way Emigrant Direct works is interesting. They don’t have local branches, you don’t get checking privillages, and you can’t even mail them checks for deposit. The only way yo get money in and out is by Electronic Fund Transfer from another banking account. From my E*Trade account this procedure is pretty much trivial. I set things up so that some money gets transfered over every month, right after I get my stipend, in observance of the old “Pay yourself first” motto of saving.

Downside: ETF take a couple days to go through, so you don’t have immediate access to your savings. I don’t find this to be a problem, my checking account or credit limit has been big enough to float every expense that has less than 2 days lead time. Also, make sure your bank doesn’t charge for ETF. I’ve never had a bank that did, but I’ve also never banked with Bank of America.

Retirement savings: If your employer offers a contribution matching on their retirement plan, then you should max out their offer. Otherwise, start an IRA. There are two important types of IRAs, called Roth and Traditional. With a Traditional IRA you don’t pay income tax on the money you put in, but you do pay income tax on the money you take out when you’re retired. Roth IRAs work the other way, you pay full income tax on the money you put in, taking money out is entirely tax free. The math to determine which is optimal is woefully intractable, but Roth seems to be the popular choice, especially for those of us who are currently in the lower tax brackets.

My Roth IRA is in a Vanguard Target Retirement 2045 Fund. Vanguard specializes in index funds. This fund automatically adjusts its composition from aggressive/high risk to conservative/low risk as I get older.

From an article titled Living Memento at Slate:

According to studies published by the American Psychiatric Association, about 120,000 Americans receive shock therapy every year.

Background, Noah Rinner who gave some kind of speech at Convocation (apparently because he holds some kind of office?), upset the campus over his use of religious imagery.

Noah’s speech is a non-issue. I’m embarrassed Dartmouth has spilled so much ink over it.

If you have any objection the the religious references in his speech, then your an atheist-supremacist. On the other hand, if you would find it distasteful had the word “Jesus” been replaced with “satan”, “witches”, or “voodoo” in his speech, then you’re prejudice and a faith discriminator (which is no better than being a racist or homophobe).

Word Count: 1172
5 “Jesus”
10 “character” <— this is the thesis
2 “corrupt” (c.v. Tom Delay)

Line count: 69
Pertain to:
Jesus 19%
Character 19%
Corruption 16%

Definition of character: “ He knew the cost would be agonizing torture and death. He did it anyway. That’s character.”

If you’re upset about the speech, it’s your own fault for even going to Convocation.