Le Grand Content examines the omnipresent Powerpoint-culture in search for its philosophical potential. Intersections and diagrams are assembled to form a grand 'association-chain-massacre'. which challenges itself to answer all questions of the universe and some more. Of course, it totally fails this assignment, but in its failure it still manages to produce some magical nuance and shades between the great topics death, cable TV, emotions and hamsters.
Urban economists understand housing prices with a spatial equilibrium approach that assumes people must be indifferent across locations. Since the spatial no arbitrage condition is inherently imprecise, other economists have turned to different no arbitrage conditions, such as the prediction that individuals must be indifferent between owning and renting. This paper argues the predictions from these non-spatial, financial no arbitrage conditions are also quite imprecise. Owned homes are extremely different from rental units and owners are quite different from renters. The unobserved costs of home owning such as maintenance are also quite large. Furthermore, risk aversion and the high volatility of housing prices compromise short-term attempts to arbitrage by delaying home buying. We conclude that housing cannot be understood with a narrowly financial approach that ignores space any more than it can be understood with a narrowly spatial approach that ignores asset markets.
The Euro May over the Next 15 Years Surpass the Dollar as Leading International Currency
Topic: International Relations
6:28 am EDT, Mar 24, 2008
The euro has arisen as a credible eventual competitor to the dollar as leading international currency, much as the dollar rose to challenge the pound 70 years ago. This paper uses econometrically-estimated determinants of the shares of major currencies in the reserve holdings of the world’s central banks. Significant factors include: size of the home country, rate of return, and liquidity in the relevant home financial center (as measured by the turnover in its foreign exchange market). There is a tipping phenomenon, but changes are felt only with a long lag (we estimate a weight on the preceding year’s currency share around .9). The equation correctly predicts out-of-sample a (small) narrowing in the gap between the dollar and euro over the period 1999-2007. This paper updates calculations regarding possible scenarios for the future. We exclude the scenario where the United Kingdom joins euroland. But we do take into account of the fact that London has nonetheless become the de facto financial center of the euro, more so than Frankfurt. We also assume that the dollar continues in the future to depreciate at the trend rate that it has shown on average over the last 20 years. The conclusion is that the euro may surpass the dollar as leading international reserve currency as early as 2025.
Border Searches of Laptops and Other Electronic Storage Devices
Topic: Politics and Law
6:28 am EDT, Mar 24, 2008
A report of the Congressional Research Service:
The Fourth Amendment generally requires a warrant to support most searches and seizures conducted by the government. Federal courts have long recognized that there are many exceptions to this general presumption, one of which is the border search exception. The border search exception permits government officials, in most “routine” circumstances, to conduct searches with no suspicion of wrongdoing whatsoever. On the other hand, in some “non-routine” and particularly invasive situations, customs officials are required to have “reasonable suspicion” in order to conduct a search. Several federal courts have recently applied the border search exception to situations in which customs officials conducted searches of laptops and other electronic storage devices at the border. Though the federal courts have universally held that the border search exception applies to laptop searches conducted at the border, the degree of cause required to support the search has not been established. Though some federal appellate courts do not appear to require any degree of suspicion to justify a search, one federal district court stated categorically that all laptop searches conducted at the border require at least reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing.
The Long-Term Implications of Current Defense Plans: Detailed Update for Fiscal Year 2008
Topic: Politics and Law
6:28 am EDT, Mar 24, 2008
This presentation updates the analysis of current defense plans contained in the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO’s) April 2007 Web document The Long-Term Implications of Current Defense Plans: Detailed Update for Fiscal Year 2007 to account for changes incorporated in the President’s budget for fiscal year 2008 and in the 2008 Future Years Defense Program (FYDP).
The presentation provides additional data not found in CBO’s December 2007 publication The Long-Term Implications of Current Defense Plans: Summary Update for Fiscal Year 2008. Both of those documents respond to standing requests from the Senate Budget Committee.
This presentation does not incorporate changes to the FYDP resulting from Congressional action on the President’s 2008 budget request.
Charts in this detailed update use the concepts “steady state” and “half-life” for the Department of Defense’s (DoD’s) investment plans and weapon systems. Those concepts and how CBO estimates their values are explained more fully in Appendix A at the end of the presentation.
The updated displays in this presentation differ in some instances from those in previous presentations. In some cases, CBO has altered the display format to include additional historical data; in other cases, it has revised its historical database of procurement quantities and funding, as well as its projections of the inventories of weapon systems that the military services plan to sustain. CBO also, in some instances, departs from previous presentations by using different color schemes for the displays.
All budgetary projections in this presentation are in billions of 2008 dollars of total obligational authority, and all years are federal fiscal years. Numbers in the text may not sum to totals because of rounding. See Appendix B at the end of the presentation for an explanation of selected acronyms and abbreviations.
The text accompanying the charts composing this Web document assumes that the reader is familiar with DoD programs and their content.
I, Cringely . The Pulpit . War of the Worlds | PBS
Topic: Society
6:28 am EDT, Mar 24, 2008
Here, buried in my sixth paragraph, is the most important nugget: we've reached the point in our (disparate) cultural adaptation to computing and communication technology that the younger technical generations are so empowered they are impatient and ready to jettison institutions most of the rest of us tend to think of as essential, central, even immortal. They are ready to dump our schools.
I am sure I am not the only one in this year of Einstein who receives calls from journalists asking, "Why is there no new Einstein?" While we have ready answers, there is still the disquieting worry that perhaps a lesson might be learned from the fact that this one person, who was initially unable to find an academic job, did more to advance physics than most of the rest of us put together have since.
Two from the archive:
Paul Graham:
It will always suck to work for large organizations, and the larger the organization, the more it will suck.
Richard Hamming:
I finally adopted what I called "Great Thoughts Time." When I went to lunch Friday noon, I would only discuss great thoughts after that. By great thoughts I mean ones like: "What will be the role of computers in all of AT&T?", "How will computers change science?" For example, I came up with the observation at that time that nine out of ten experiments were done in the lab and one in ten on the computer. I made a remark to the vice presidents one time, that it would be reversed, i.e. nine out of ten experiments would be done on the computer and one in ten in the lab. They knew I was a crazy mathematician and had no sense of reality. I knew they were wrong and they've been proved wrong while I have been proved right. They built laboratories when they didn't need them. I saw that computers were transforming science because I spent a lot of time asking "What will be the impact of computers on science and how can I change it?" I asked myself, "How is it going to change Bell Labs?" I remarked one time, in the same address, that more than one-half of the people at Bell Labs will be interacting closely with computing machines before I leave. Well, you all have terminals now. I thought hard about where was my field going, where were the opportunities, and what were the important things to do. Let me go there so there is a chance I can do important things.
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