Yesterday Morning the Redwood Took Revenge on my Axe

As I was cleaning up fallen branches after our recent storm, a chunk of my hatchet got stuck in the heart of a solid redwood log. It was not a small chip either, but a nice big bite.

The hatchet was an old one and no big loss. It has, over the years, cut up a lot of redwood, and I was impressed with how thoroughly the wood got back at it.

The Wonders and Dangers of Emotional Thinking

Here is another great grook entitled A Psychological Tip:

Whenever you're called on to make up your mind, and you're hampered by not having any,
the best way to solve the dilemma, you'll find, is simply by spinning a penny.
No -- not so that chance shall decide the affair while you're passively standing there moping;
but the moment the penny is up in the air, you suddenly know what
you're hoping.

This is an example of emotional thinking. I find it particularly useful in dating. I can go on a date with a woman, and she can be smart, funny, pretty and at ease with herself. When I tell her I am going to call her again, I probably mean it at the time, but if a week or two passes, and I have not felt like calling her, we both have the answer we need.

Do not confuse my use of the term emotional thinking with emotional intelligence. The latter is the ability to identify emotions and their causes, in yourself and in others. Emtional thinking is when you use your feelings to make a decision or conclusion.

The danger with emotional thinking is that it is useless when abstractions of any kind are involved. Abstractions can invoke emotion, but those emotions are much weaker than those invoked by specifics. To make matters worse, large numbers are abstract, at least to most of us.

This is why relief organizations use pictures of a single child, and stories of individuals, to solicit contributions. The appeal, "Abebi is a three-year old, starving Nigerian girl" is more powerful than "A quarter million Nigerian children are starving." It is a bit absurd, but very true.

Emotional thinking is an important tool in our personal lives, but it is unfortunate when people let it guide their input to discussions about social issues, or at least, when it is the overriding guide.

Nosedive on Nosedive

I just got back from a few days of skiing at Lake Tahoe.

The last night and day, it was snowing steadily and I got to ski in a few inches of fresh powder. That is always a treat.

I spent one day cross-country skiing at Royal Gorge. They have an aptly named hill called "Nose Dive," which I worked a few times and indeed did take a nosedive or three. I busted my lip pretty good, but nobody has remarked on it, so it cannot be as bad as it feels.

View from Lola's Lookout, compromised by the gray weather but still gorgeous, and Henri enjoying the sunset, tired after a full day of x-country.

Betrand Russell on Asia

In 1945, Bertrand Russell wrote this about European vs. Asian culture.

Our use of the phrase the "Dark Ages" to cover the period from 600 to 1000
marks our undue concentraion on Western Europe. In China, this period
includes the time of the Tang dynasty, the greatest age of Chinese
poetry[...]. What was lost to Christendom at this time was not lost to
civilization, but quite the contrary. No one could have guessed that
Europe would later become dominant, both in power and in culture. [...]

Our superiority since the Renaissance is due partly to science and
scientific technique, partly to political institutions slowly built up
during the Middle Ages. There is no reason, in the nature of things, why
this superiority should continue. [...] It seems not unlikely that,
during the next few centuries, civilization, if it survives, will have
greater diversity than it has had since the Renaissance. There is an
imperialism of culture that is harder to overcome than the imperialism of
power. Long after the Western Empire fell, [...] all European culture
retained a tincture of Roman imperialism. [...] I think that, if we are to
feel at home in the world after the present war, we shall have to admit Asia
to equality of thoughts, not only politically, but culturally. What changes
this will bring about, I do not know, but I am convinced that they will be
profound and of the greatest importance.

This already sounds prescient, and it looks like the 21st century will prove Russell right on the mark.

Alpha Dog

You should see Alpha Dog, despite its flaws. It slows down in many places with scenes and characters unrelated to the storyline. Some of the acting is a little over the top. On the plus side, there is a scene with a heart-broken, decrepit Sharon Stone doing a terrific soliloquy, and it is almost worth watching the movie just for that.

I am interested in kidnapping stories, I think because I am interested in freedom, and kidnapping is a personal, severe abridger of freedom.

Unlike many movies that say they are based on true events, the events inspiring this story did happen. Look up Jesse James Hollywood, the real-life culprit.

Red Rocks, 2009

In October, Bill and I rock-climbed a few days at Red Rocks as an alternative after heavy snow-fall discouraged us from doing the Rae Lakes loop.

Climbing Johnny Vegas. The balanced rock on the left is pretty cool. If you look closely, you can see the V of a rappel anchor.

We had views all the way to Las Vegas city every day. Behind Bill snacking, I could see the Vegas skyline, though it is not visible in the picture.

Henri Rappelling off "Head Case," and Bill enjoying the wind tunnel in Panamint Valley. There were a couple of jet pilots playing around in their tin cans, but it was hard to get a picture.

Defensive Keynesians

It has been interesting to watch the economics debate during the recent crisis. What I have noticed is that a Keynesian approach is used as a matter of course by the Federal government, which is depressing, but also that this time around, Keynesians have been in need of defending their ideas, which is encouraging.

One knee-jerk Keynesian is Jim Jubak, who writes for MSN Money. There are parallels between Jubak and Keynes. Like Keynes, Jubak is a successful investor. Like Keynes, Jubak is not an economist. Like Keynes, this does not stop him from making economics commentary.

In a recent article, Jubak blamed a reduction in Federal spending for the recession of 1937. He claimed that Federal spending decreased by 18% in 1937. This did not sound right, so I looked it up. I collected data for receipts (Recs), outlays (outs), spending change (inc), GDP, GDP Increase (GInc) and spending as percent of GDP (S/GDP) for the years 1935-1939:

Year	Recs	Outs	Inc	GDP	GInc	S/GDP
1935	3,609	6,412	-1.97%	$73.30	11.06%	8.75%
1936	3,923	8,228	28.32%	$83.80	14.32%	9.82%
1937	5,387	7,580	-7.88%	$91.90	9.67%	8.25%
1938	6,751	6,840	-9.76%	$86.10	-6.31%	7.94%
1939	6,295	9,141	33.64%	$92.20	7.08%	9.91%

Federal spending shrank 8% in 1937, not 18% as Jubak claims in his article. There are also several items he omits from his account. In 1935, when Federal spending was first cut since 1927, the economy grew by 11%. In the period he describes, 1937 and 1938, while spending slowed, receipts grew dramatically (37% and 25%), representing a large, effective tax increase. Lastly, the economy grew an impressive 10% in 1937, so while there was a recession later in the year, a better understanding of how the growth and the spending were aligned in time is necessary.

Dear Economist Column

I did not know this: Tim Harford has a "Dear Economist" column. It is much better than the "Dear Aunt" type columns it mimics, by being both more entertaining and more useful.

Not only that, but Tim Harford gets more interactive by allowing readers to respond. The last exchange (June 14) is particularly funny.

Digital Vandalism

I have in the past resisted security software (read: anti-virus packages), and relied instead on caution and manual system monitoring to ward against malware. Within the last couple of years, either Windows got too complicated, the malware got too sophisticated, or I became too rusty. I got infected by several viruses.

One of the reasons I am reluctant to use security software is that they typically install several services, an email plugin, browser plugins, and some of them even mini-port drivers. It would take a pretty nasty virus to have worse impact on your system! (Of course, security software do not propagate aggressively). I wish there was a passive security package I could run only whenever I choose.

I installed Free avg, then deactivated the extraneous services, drivers and plugins, thereby getting almost what I wanted. Yet, after several scans, deletions, and reboots, I still had a problem that the viruses had introduced, which was that I could not start certain programs or processes, such as procexp.exe, regedit.exe or even the anti-virus scanner and update programs.

At first, I thought that avg had missed a virus. I tried to deactivate or kill different processes that might host a virus, but still I had the problem. I could run the programs after I renamed them -- for instance, I could not run "procexp.exe," but I could run the same program renamed to "sysinternals_procx.exe." Thinking that there must be a malware system-hook running in one of the Windows processes, I checked each one and searched its image for 'procexp.exe,' still without finding it.

Searching the registry instead, I found that the virus had added the programs I could not start to this key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File Execution Options

Each program had a "Debugger" subkey, with the "ntsd -d" options. 'ntsd' is the debugger (NT Symbolic Debugger), and -d tells it to attach to the kernel debugger -- which typically will not be present, thus failing the launch altogether.

I wrote this up in case you have, or get, the same problem. If so, just delete the 'Debugger' subkey under each program found at the registry key indicated above.

Since I am on the subject: Reading about convictions against black hats in the news, I have several times been disappointed at their light sentences. I looked it up for this post, and according to the Cybercrime watch list, it seems as if courts are issuing punishments more in line with the severity of the crimes now. The author of "Melissa" was caught and convicted, the damage was estimated to US$80M, and the perpetrator got 20 months in jail and a $5,000 fine.

I think the damage is underestimated, though. They have to account for all the money and time we spent in prevention. Symantec makes $6 billion a year (mostly) selling anti-virus software. A big portion of that is a dead-weight loss we spend in protection against the digital vandals.

Red and Blue Conspiracy Theories

I mostly find partisan bickering entertaining, except for the end result. A fellow blogger made an interesting comparison between the 'Obama is not American' and '9/11 was an inside job' conspiracies. Interesting reading.

Read in Economist

The Economist is my favorite news-magazine. It is fact- and reason-based, with a broad scope, and best of all, the editors have a sense of humor.

Here's a quote from a letter they published in the current issue:

When I considered taking a degree in economics almost 50 years ago, I
was told that the exam questions would be the same from year to year, but that
the correct answers would differ each year.

The Art of Waitering

I have alluded before to the passive style of Asian waitering. It can mess with your experience. Say, for instance, you misunderstand the menu and order a plain steak with no sides. A Chinese waiter will happily serve it, no comments. One of those friendly American waitresses would no doubt say something like: "just so you know, the steak doesn't come with anything." A Danish waiter would say: "Det giver sgu da ikke nogen mening, prøv nu lige at tage dig sammen."

Today I experienced some world-class dining in San Francisco, with professionally trained waiters. Though I prefer Asian to European food, I think the European tradition has the waitering art down. Food was served, cups were filled, plates removed, etc, with no interruption in conversations and you barely even noticed. With the best service, you don't have to flag, your needs are anticipated.

I once saw a movie about a young man tending hospitality school somewhere in Switzerland. He was doing well, but his friend had been there for years and failed several exams. By the time our hero takes the exam himself, he is doing it with the laggard friend. The referee poses the question: to which side should wine be served. They both agree that wine should be served to the right of the guest. The referee then asks if there are any exceptions. The laggard cannot think of any, but our hero says that you can serve wine to the left of the guest, if he or she is leaning to the right in conversation. Our hero passes and the laggard fails again.

It is a fictional movie with a dramatic story, but I believe they correctly showed the expected attention to detail in the high-end waiting profession.