https://rapportive.com/IF YOU USE GMAIL…. Get Rapportive
I love seeing profiles of the real human beings that I’m having an email exchange with. Just today, a salesperson from Regus sent me a followup email. And when her profile appeared next to the email, in my subconscious, she became a real person. Good for her. Good for me.
Making the world a little more personal again.
Source date (UTC): 2013-03-05 08:44:00 UTC
THE FUTURE ECONOMY
“…From 1780 to 1840, output per worker rose 46% and the real wage index rose by only about 12%, noting that none of these numbers are close to exact. … The significant real wage gains come after 1840 and — in my view — even more after 1870. After 1830 TFP is growing at the higher rate of about 1% a year, still not impressive by the standards of the early 20th century however.
During the early 19th century, there is much creative ferment, but much less in terms of products which translate into gains in living standards for the average person.
…
Eventually all of the creative ferment of the industrial revolution pays off in a big “whoosh,” but it takes many decades, depending on where you draw the starting line of course. A look at the early 19th century is sobering, or should be, for anyone doing fiscal budgeting today. But it is also optimistic in terms of the larger picture facing humanity over the longer run.”. – Tyler Cowen
Source date (UTC): 2013-03-04 15:50:00 UTC
LIFE LESSONS
1) Make very few commitments.
2) If you make a commitment, then hold to it.
3) If you do commit to anything, never within a definite time frame. All costs are opportunity costs. Fulfill any opportunity at the highest discount.
4) Search for every possible opportunity.
4) Failure indebts you.
Source date (UTC): 2013-03-03 11:50:00 UTC
REAL MEN
For posterity
Source date (UTC): 2013-03-03 07:33:00 UTC
Happy birthday! Thanks for making the lives of your friends better by being you. 🙂
Source date (UTC): 2013-03-03 07:29:00 UTC
Western (protestant christian) values are aristocratic values. (Aristocratic egalitarian values).
The western male did not adopt aristocratic values because he desired them. He adopted them because they were to his advantage.
They were to his advantage because they were the values of the land holding aristocracy. He had to have them if he wanted to join the economy.
These values are minority values. THey will always be minority values.
And we are a minority in the country were we were once the majority.
Source date (UTC): 2013-03-02 18:51:00 UTC
http://blogs.seattletimes.com/fyi-guy/2013/02/28/suffering-for-fashion-not-in-seattle/THE REASONS FOR CASUAL DRESS IN SEATTLE
From; http://blogs.seattletimes.com/fyi-guy/2013/02/28/suffering-for-fashion-not-in-seattle/
There are some pretty understandable reasons why Seattle dresses casually.
a) Scandinavian heritage – we don’t signal ostentatiously.
b) When we do signal, we do so with sport or fitness. This signals that we are ‘locals’, not ‘those uncouth people.’
c) Because we signal with sport or fitness we wear clothes that signal recreation.
d) It’s changing, but it used to be that when you asked someone what they did, they replied with their form of recreatoin, not their job.
e) We have a tradition of rebelling against the ‘east’ and clothing was one of those ways of demonstrating our special-ness.
f) We imported a lot of engineers directly out of college and often attracted them with persisting the college lifestyle.
g) The hippie movement that drove population into the northwest, with more communal to portland and more work oriented to seattle, perpetuated our natural biases toward comfortable clothes.
h) people around the world generally signal with clothing if they have taste but less money. In the USA we signal with cars and houses. In the northwest we signal our effeteness with casualness.
i) Our young professionals are largely from the middle class already and they work in the suburbs and drive cars, instead of walking in the city where signaling with fashion often grants you access to dating opportunities..
j) In general, white (protestant) people signal with complexity (intellectual expression) rather than more base emotions – and seattle is the whitest large city in America.
k) Fashion dress (street fashion) is a preoccupation of the lower middle and upper proletarian classes (most consumers.) Seattle doesn’t have an old aspiring working class looking to demonstrate their fitness for inclusion.
l) in the attached map of the states, you’ll notice that high style over comfort areas are hispanic, and high comfort over style areas are anglo-germanic.
In simple terms, we view ‘trying hard’ at style to be ‘gauche’. For all the reasons above.
Source date (UTC): 2013-03-01 02:42:00 UTC
http://www.mendeley.com/research/human-rights-popular-sovereignty-liberal-republican-versions/
Source date (UTC): 2013-02-27 02:29:00 UTC
Status? What’s that? Panic? 🙂
THE TOUGH
A) I’m behind on getting the Propertarian Institute off the ground. I wanted to do it in January, but it’s the end of february already. (Apologies to my friends that this is affecting.)
B) We are refactoring Oversing’s code to reflect the UI model we’ve adopted. And the development team has caught up to me again, meaning that I”m behind designing the UI again. Sigh. The problem is that the part I’m designing is one of the hardest feature sets in the product.
C) We’re having a conflict with our vendor here in Kiev because of space and network quality. We’ve taken our own office. (Which is walking distance from all sorts of good things.) And so I have to get an office together on short notice.
D) I am trying to put two web sites together for two companies (which is fun really – I love positioning and marketing.)
E) I am burning more money per month than I wanted to. And being the cheap b_____ that I am, it really bothers me. 🙂
F) The guys developed a xlat (multi-language) function set and it’s all implemented. But I found a commercial bit of code that does the job perfectly with fewer requests and less labor and it’s just got to be put in, and the other code pulled. This will get us every language we could possibly want. Saving us months of time, and lots of money.
G) There is a Libertarian ‘conference’ next month. Ukraine doesn’t want me going in and out of the country without my residency permit. So my lawyer is sprinting to get it done.
H) The post-soviet government stuff here is simply impossible. It doesn’t matter that the politicians are corrupt – they actually pass good laws. The problem is that the bureaucracy self-perpetuates silly soviet process orientation (blame avoidance really) and the judges don’t enforce the rule of law. So literally, the bureaucracy and the judiciary has to literally die off before these people can get out of the hole. And that means that I have to be in this hole with them.
GOOD STUFF
A) Steven is designing the system reports and they are amazing. Seriously. I was blown away this morning when I read his spec. No one in the world has this kind of business intelligence combined with this kind of ‘social engineering of the organization’. No one. It’s … amazing.
B) Integrating with accounting systems is easier than we thought.
C) Max and I had a brilliant conversation about document stores. I am adamant that I want all docs to be stored by mail, so that anything can be cc’d to an account or project and no other steps are necessary. It should just be a simple inbox list. That’s it. Max fought with me and got me to see how we could use existing stores. He was right.
D) The software looks awesome. 🙂 And the code is both fast and elegant. Really. Every other product will look two or three generations behind. We’re right in-trend.
E) The weather is changing – it’s becoming spring. 🙂
Source date (UTC): 2013-02-27 01:50:00 UTC
METAPHYSICS
I am pretty convinced that all the evidence available to us today confirms that we experience the material universe correspondingly.
That our perception can be extended to both micro and macro scales through devices.
That our perception of causal relations can be extended through recording information at micro, normal, and macro scales and then replaying these recordings at higher speed so that patterns emerge within our visible perceptions.
That our perception of such causal relations is limited by the very small number of axis of causality we can cognitively identify.
That our ability to improve this process of causal analysis is limited by our current concept of mathematics.
That our deductive capabilities are jaundiced by our various cognitive biases.
That our particular human preferences limit our ability to reason clearly.
That the variation in human ability and rationality limit our collective accomplishment.
And that superior intelligence, memory, and perception would only increase the rate at which we comprehend these relations
That superior distributions of knowledge and intelligence would further improve that rate.
And that different biases and preferences would do little more than impede that understanding in different ways.
But there is little if any evidence that the vast metaphysical and epistemological distraction enthralling the philosophical profession has produced insight or value.
Humans must act. All else is entertainment.
Source date (UTC): 2013-02-26 05:58:00 UTC