Curt Doolittle

Source: Facebook

  • WANT ONE (Hat tip to Josh Brantley) General argument is that no one will build a

    http://www.autoblog.com/2012/11/16/mercedes-benz-ener-g-force-concept-is-a-g-class-for-the-future/I WANT ONE

    (Hat tip to Josh Brantley)

    General argument is that no one will build anything for popular consumption with tires that large. Because it means a larger axle, larger breaks, higher center of gravity, and very expensive wheels and tires. The Jeep Forty concept has met with the same criticism from the factory: no one will build it because even as an option it will be priced out of the market. Although, given what a G-wagon costs, I don’t think that’s a good argument for a mercedes. And given that it could be released in a military version, I think it’s worth building.

    Keep hope alive.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-11-17 02:59:00 UTC

  • TWINKIES DISAPPEAR FROM THE FACE OF THE EARTH Personally I like snowballs better

    http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/national-international/NATL-Twinkies-Maker-Hostess-Going-Out-of-Business-179643161.htmlCRISIS: TWINKIES DISAPPEAR FROM THE FACE OF THE EARTH

    Personally I like snowballs better than TWINKIES.

    But this means the era of late night twinkies and pepsi from the office vending machine is forever gone. Along with green screens.

    The halcyon days of youth.

    😉

    Source date (UTC): 2012-11-16 10:47:00 UTC

  • THE ERROR IN ROTHBARDS PRAXEOLOGY TO INTRANITIVE PREFERENCES Priceless post. Pre

    http://fensel.net/2012/11/16/intransitive-preferences-and-the-money-pump-argument/TYING THE ERROR IN ROTHBARDS PRAXEOLOGY TO INTRANITIVE PREFERENCES

    Priceless post.

    Preferences are a network – a map, a graph – not a hierarchy or a stack.

    Moreover, when preferences are cleared, the network is satisfied, not the node. Even though we only have visibility into the preference exposed by the physical exchange.

    This is the fundamental problem with praxeological thought that equates the simplicity of commodities for which the network consists of little more than price, with consumer goods that at least within any price range consist largely of signals. And signals consist in no small part, of contributions both supportive and competitive to norms.

    Preferences are not linear, they are sets of values on a graph. And as such, those that appear intransitive are so only because the label that we give to them represents only one item in the (large) set. We make a logical error when we attribute linearity to the label or name, which is only a subset of the values of the set of values that constitute any preference. This confuses the convenience of the label with the inconvenient and often opaque contents of the set.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-11-16 00:46:00 UTC

  • NO ONE KNOWS WHERE THE ECONOMY IS GOING Well. Less so than usual. It’s easy to l

    NO ONE KNOWS WHERE THE ECONOMY IS GOING

    Well. Less so than usual. It’s easy to look smart during a boom. The arrow is in flight. We only need to watch its arc.

    But Europe fell back into recession and its confirmed as of today. And I don’t see why the USA won’t as well. I thought that we’d stimulate like hell but I can’t see any sings that the status quo will change in congress or the fed.

    But I’m not following the numbers. I’m following the people that follow the numbers. And they are quiet and clueless still.

    I was pretty wrong on china. Late on the euro. Early on the states. And right on housing prices. So my record is now mixed.

    But I think I’ll be proven right about structural unemployment. Every contradictory paper I can find presupposes that demand will cause us to sop up people. And I agree a bit. I just don’t agree it’s meaningful. This unemployment will be with us I think.

    When I said 2014 at the earliest followed by the demographic cliff in 2017-2020 I sounded nuts. But it looks pretty rational now. Economics in the end, all other things being equal, is reducible to demographics.

    I stopped fussing with data and started focusing exclusively on political theory about a year ago. And the reason is that I don’t see that anything interesting will occur to get us out of this scenario for a couple of years.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-11-15 20:09:00 UTC

  • DESPITE ITS INFLUENCE, THE FACEBOOK USER INTERFACE DOES NOT GRACEFULLY COLLAPSE

    DESPITE ITS INFLUENCE, THE FACEBOOK USER INTERFACE DOES NOT GRACEFULLY COLLAPSE ONTO PHONES AND TABLETS – AND THE SOLUTION?

    We all know this of course. We also know that this presents a terrible problem for companies that seek to make their revenue from advertising – which decidedly doesn’t work well on phones.

    But then again, the windowed desktop UI model doesn’t work that well any longer either – even on the desktop – and it certainly doesn’t collapse to handheld devices. The web v1 and v2 UI model doesn’t collapse that well either. The newer reflexive UI model, with iPhone controls collapses fairly well – that is, until you try to do anything terribly complicated. Because it’s pretty hard to convey a lot of context, when we’re used to space consuming navigation controls providing all that context, and we don’t have space to work with.

    So it’s a lot of fun to take a few choice elements from FB’s edit-in-place document model, and incorporate them into a reflexive ‘box’ model, and then try to eliminate all the navigation that’s possible while retaining context. Then hopefully allow the graceful re-expansion of the user interface back to a rich desktop, adding just the right amount of context along with the information density.

    And in doing so, make what is essentially an enormous pile of financial software appear like it was downloaded from the Apple store on one hand, and forged in an accounting department on the other.

    When hiring the staff, I told them, “I really wish that I could tell you that we’re building something sexy like a social media music and dating site. But we’re not. We’re building a piece of business management software. And the only thing sexy about it, is that it doesn’t look like it was written in 1992, along with all the rest of financial management software.” And for some reason they still took the job. 🙂

    Somehow it all just works.

    🙂

    Source date (UTC): 2012-11-15 17:39:00 UTC

  • IT’S GREAT TO BE BUILDING A COMPANY AGAIN Building a team. Building a product. W

    IT’S GREAT TO BE BUILDING A COMPANY AGAIN

    Building a team. Building a product. Working fourteen hours a day… simply because you absolutely want to. Watching something beautiful begin to emerge from collective effort. The joy on people’s faces as they solve some problem or other. The comfort that comes from slowly beginning to understand something, and being a part of something.

    Entrepreneurship is tribal. It’s just faster than building a tribe the old fashioned way. 🙂

    Source date (UTC): 2012-11-15 17:12:00 UTC

  • TAXIOMA : AMAZING TAXI APP FOR KIEV. I can’t speak russian or Ukrainian. Taxioma

    TAXIOMA : AMAZING TAXI APP FOR KIEV.

    I can’t speak russian or Ukrainian. Taxioma for the iPhone and google translate and I can get a cheap cab in minutes easily.

    Google translate has a phonetic option that will display Russian in roman characters ( like the signage for the streets here do ). the dispatcher seems to understand it. And using the application, even with my disability seems to be faster that native speakers using the phone. 😉

    I

    Source date (UTC): 2012-11-15 14:05:00 UTC

  • QUESTION: ON IMPULSIVITY (TIME PREFERENCE) AND POPULATIONS What is the percentag

    QUESTION: ON IMPULSIVITY (TIME PREFERENCE) AND POPULATIONS

    What is the percentage of individuals with high time preference (high impulsivity) that will block the creation of norms, and therefore institutions, consisting of low time preference (low impulsivity)?

    I have been trying to get my arms around this problem for the past few years, and my travels lately, into a low trust, but low impulsivity society have helped me understand it a bit more clearly.

    Unless groups with low time preference have the right of exclusion (ostracization) then there is no defense against even ten percent of the population having a high time preference.

    I know that at something under ten percent, populations stop integrating and start seeking identity and political power. But at what point do populations of high time preference individuals, regardless of identity or power seeking (no elites to represent their interest) prevent the formation of low time preference norms and therefore low time preference institutions?

    Source date (UTC): 2012-11-15 13:06:00 UTC

  • PROPERTY, IN ALL ITS FORMS RENDERS ALL HUMAN ACTION MORALLY COMMENSURABLE. While

    PROPERTY, IN ALL ITS FORMS RENDERS ALL HUMAN ACTION MORALLY COMMENSURABLE.

    While PREFERENCES and SUBJECTIVE VALUE are not commensurable, that does not mean that moral actions in favor of, or against, NORMS are cannot be commensurable.

    Norms are a market. They are, perhaps, our first market. And our commercial market exists, as an analogistic response to it. This is somewhat supportable by comparing the normative economies, political economies, and commercial economies of different civilizations.

    If I can distill the significance of propertarianism down to something I can communicate this simply, then it will serve a function that we have been searching for, since the invention of politics.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-11-15 13:01:00 UTC

  • HEALTH UPDATE : DRINKING? OK. I can apparently drink like a fish now without han

    HEALTH UPDATE : DRINKING?

    OK. I can apparently drink like a fish now without hangover or other nefarious repercussions. I still have a lower tolerance than most people but I’m no longer afraid of going out on the town with Max Romanenko and ending up in the hospital.

    A close friend has always teased me that normal people, when they have a bad day, just have a drink and are done with it. And I had to invent more creative means of getting to a cerebral reset.

    Thankfully, as a side effect of surgery, I’ve joined the club of ethanol tolerance.

    I feel a little guilty commenting on this topic so frequently, but as my body adapts I feel like an alien transported to a worldly garden of Eden where everything is no longer poisonous, where I can breathe without effort most of the time, and where the autistic reactions that took a week to vent, can be shut down with a class of scotch and a cup of coffee in thirty minutes.

    Source date (UTC): 2012-11-15 10:53:00 UTC