Well, I’m back down to inbox zero again. I’ve been at inbox 2 for several months, mainly because of trouble-tickets I opened (and were quickly fixed) for stuff related to moving Kim’s email from Dreamhost (our web host) to Google Apps for Domains as part of her shutdown. They were mainly placeholders to remind me to do something technical as soon as Kim pulled the trigger to finalize shutting things down. Yeah, yeah, yeah–hardcore inbox zero folks will complain that they should have been moved out of there and put on a TODO list, but I’m sometimes lazy like that. At any rate, they’re gone now and I’m back to zero. It’s the little achievements in life, ya’ know?

In regards to my Remember the Milk query the other day, I think I’m just going to stick with a good ol’ pen and paper Hipster PDA. There’s just too much overhead with RTM for it to work for me.

I generally hate posting meme/quiz/test results, but thought this one was worth it…

I had to guess on the Ruby, Fortran, and COBOL, but am confident I got the rest correct.

I am no longer syndicating my blog over to MySpace. The WordPress plugin I have for that is just too problematic–often working successfully, but reporting error, causing my editing software to completely freak out. It is still being syndicated over to the LiveJournal feed brianenigma_rss and Facebook.

As always, the best way to read it is by visiting or subscribing to the feed at netninja.com.

The other day, I heard about people who made some computer models of the financial system a few years back that more-or-less, somewhat, kind of sort of, predicted the current state of affairs–but not exactly. Throughout history, people have been keen on trying to do the same thing. If you successfully predict with enough detail which stocks are going to go up and which are going to go down, you effectively have a time machine that can peek into the future and tell you tomorrow’s winning lottery numbers.

The general problem with such systems is that there is too much chaos–in the classic mathematical sense–for them to work reliably. There are way too many input variables and way too many possible outcomes. Weather cannot currently be predicted for much the same reason. The flap of a butterfly’s wings in once place can affect something a little larger that can affect something a little larger, that can cause a monsoon half-way around the world (as the popular saying goes.) The number of people driving in two neighboring cities on any given day can cause differences in smog, which cause differences in temperature, which can cause air movement and wind, which can help pull or push passing storm clouds into or away from a third neighboring city. In the financial markets, you have so many people making so many individual decisions. Families decide to buy or sell a house. CEOs decide to expand their company, downsize it, encroach a neighboring industry. Traders see trends and buy or sell accordingly. Someone in power embezzles a sizable chunk of change. Someone with a vast fortune gives a sizable chunk to charity. A game-changing or disruptive technology gets sudden popularity. And so on. While these types of influences can perhaps be predicted with enough computing power, I don’t expect we’ll see anything like that for several centuries; certainly not in our lifetime.

My specific problem with these sorts of prediction engines is entirely different and sort of passes through the technical and into the philosophical. Let’s say that a few hundred years pass and that computers get exponentially more and more capable. Let’s say that some garage hacker invents a SimFinance application that does a reasonably good job at predicting the markets. Working isolated, outside of the system, from his garage he’s able to lotto-jackpot a lot of money. But this isn’t the likely scenario. The more likely scenario is that such a system will be made by a team of Ph.D.s. Maybe they come from academia, maybe from the commercial sector. At any rate, this will be a fairly public project with published results. It’s going to work really well for a time–maybe a few weeks, maybe a few months, but then it will stop working. Why? Ask Heisenberg. The models are designed to take a look at the system from the outside and predict its behavior. The predictions come from all of the available data up to that point. But suddenly, there is one more piece of data available: the results of the machine’s predictions itself. There will be many people who will be making decisions not based on what they know and feel, but by what the models predict. The models are not just observing from outside of the system anymore, but have become an active participant in the system. The financial models have to take themselves into account–in a way, they have to be self-aware. Not only are market factors and world events affecting the prices of stocks, but the predictions themselves are. People are going to do things that are outside of what they would ordinarily do because the model’s predictions.

All of this reminds me that I need to go back and re-read some of Asimov’s Foundation series, which features the predictive science of “psychohistory.” I’ve forgotten more of those stores than I remember of them.

Kim: Did the timer go off?

Me: I didn’t hear it.

Kim: You didn’t hear it?

Timer: *brrrrrring*

Me: The timer went off.

In other news, Ebenezer–the nekkid cat–has reaffirmed some of his quirks. He is the only cat I know that is indifferent toward catnip, yet loves bleach. Kim is mopping the floor and we are having difficulty keeping him away. He likes to roll around on the wet floor.

Does anyone have experience with Remember The Milk? Does it work well for you? What do you like/dislike about it? How do you integrate it into your day-to-day life?

I really like Evernote and its online/offline/desktop/web/iPhone integration. I really like my 3×5 cards, but find that certain tasks don’t work too well with them (e.g. recurring tasks, tasks with a due date somewhere between ASAP and “some day.”) Remember The Milk seems to come highly rated from people that know that sort of thing and it looks like the Evernote-type model applied to todo lists. I just don’t know that it’s going to work for me.

As Ariock and Addlepated pointed out in my previous blog post, that guy’s math was out of whack to the tune of three decimal places. I’M supposed to be the mathy one! Why didn’t I catch that it should have been $425 and not $425,000?! Good catch, guys! (Not to mention Steve pointing out that an extra quarter-mil in people’s pockets would undoubtedly cause some kind of hyper-inflation.)

It’s nice to dream of possibilities, but it’s also nice to fact-check that those possibilities are, in fact, possible. Oops.

I stole this from feedle, who appropriated it from birch_household…

Hi,

I’m against the $85,000,000,000.00 bailout of AIG.

Instead, I’m in favor of giving $85,000,000,000 to America in a We Deserve It Dividend.

To make the math simple, let’s assume there are 200,000,000 bonafide U.S. Citizens 18+.

Our population is about 301,000,000 +/- counting every man, woman and child.

So 200,000,000 might be a fair stab at adults 18 and up.

Divide 200 million adults 18+ into $85 billion that equals $425,000.00.

My plan is to give $425,000 to every person 18+ as a We Deserve It Dividend.

Of course, it would NOT be tax free.

So let’s assume a tax rate of 30%.

Every individual 18+ has to pay $127,500.00 in taxes.

That sends $25,500,000,000 right back to Uncle Sam.

But it means that every adult 18+ has $297,500.00 in their pocket.

A husband and wife team has $595,000.00.

What would you do with $297,500.00 to $595,000.00 in your family?

Pay off your mortgage - housing crisis solved.

Repay college loans - what a great boost to new grads

Put away money for college - it’ll be there

Save in a bank - create money to loan to entrepreneurs.

Buy a new car - create jobs

Invest in the market - capital drives growth

Pay for your parent’s medical insurance - health care improves

Enable Deadbeat Dads to come clean - or else

Remember this is for every adult U.S. Citizen 18+ including the folks who lost their jobs at Lehman Brothers and every other company that is cutting back. And, of course, for those serving in our Armed Forces.

If we’re going to re-distribute wealth let’s really do it…instead of trickling out a puny $1000.00 (”vote buy”) economic incentive that is being proposed by one of our candidates for President.

If we’re going to do an $85 billion bailout, let’s bail out every adult U.S. Citizen 18+!

As for AIG - liquidate it.

Sell off its parts.

Let American General go back to being American General.

Sell off the real estate.

Let the private sector bargain hunters cut it up and clean it up.

Here’s my rationale. We deserve it and AIG doesn’t.

Sure it’s a crazy idea that can “never work.”

But can you imagine the Coast-To-Coast Block Party!

How do you spell Economic Boom?

I trust my fellow adult Americans to know how to use the $85 Billion

We Deserve It Dividend more than do the geniuses at A IG or in Washington DC .

And remember, The Birk plan only really costs $59.5 Billion because $25.5 Billion is returned instantly in taxes to Uncle Sam.

Ahhh…I feel so much better getting that off my chest.

Kindest personal regards,

Birk

T. J. Birkenmeier, A Creative Guy & Citizen of the Republic

PS: Feel free to pass this along to your pals as it’s either good for a laugh or a tear or a very sobering thought on how to best use $85 Billion!!

So, it’s a bit late now that the bailout didn’t pass, but there is always the chance that they’ll try to push it through again.

A billion is a thousand million, or 1,000,000,000 or 1 x 10⁹.

Go outside tonight and look at the stars. Mathematically, that is $76 million dollars per star–although in reality it at least twice that dollar value because you can’t see the other hemisphere and probably have weather and light pollution affecting what you can see.

Or another way: if every living person on planet earth (including 3rd world countries) contributed $104, we’d be covered. Or if everyone who has ever lived had the foresight to put $7 into time capsule with the inscription “do not open until 2008,” then we’d be covered (not counting inflation and exchange rates, and all that.)

A great quote from Senator Bernie Sanders that I read on Daring Fireball the other day is this:

For years now, they’ve told us that we can’t afford — that the government providing healthcare to all people is just unimaginable; it can’t be done. We don’t have the money to rebuild our infrastructure. We don’t have the money to wipe out poverty. We can’t do it. But all of a sudden, yeah, we do have $700 billion for a bailout of Wall Street.

Three little pill bottles, lined up like soldiers.

• One is used to treat anthrax.
• Two cause nausea.
• One treats nausea.
• Three cause drowsiness.
• Two go with food.
• One goes with lots and lots of water.
• All three cause drowsiness.
• One is not to be combined with exposure to sunlight.
• One is not to be combined with alcohol.
• Three cause dizziness.
• Three cause drowsiness.