fling93's journal

up and down burn

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 19:22:51 GMT

I will write more later, but I figure I'd repost what I wrote for my Flickr set, a set of photos that will be fairly small, unfortunately.

It was an up and down burn for me this year, and I haven't yet figured out what to make of it all.

I had grandiose plans that did not come to fruition. I felt more connected at times and less connected at others. I had some great experiences and some trying ones. I did some things I've long wanted to do, some things I've been avoiding, and in the doing, I learned a lot about myself.

And I lost a lot of stuff. Like, a lot. None hurt as much as losing my first memory card which had over 500 Burning Man photos, about two-thirds of the total that I took there. But among other things, I also lost my toy WALL*E, the bone that I used to hit the flaming gong at Camp Liminal two years ago, my lightsabers, most of the clothing I brought (including costumes and my Cato softball t-shirt), my wallet, cell phone, my point-and-shoot camera, tent, keys, and car. Yes, I had to hitch a ride back to California and then hire a locksmith to get back into my place.

But I also gained an appreciation of myself and my ability to handle a difficult situation, as well as renewed faith in humanity due to all the help I received.

But dammit, I want my photos back. :(

I still have my Digital Rebel camera, but I've promised it to somebody and will be mailing it off shortly. I don't know when or if I'll replace it.

the staring contest

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 04:55:39 GMT

While there may be a myriad of methods to alleviate boredom, it's hard to think of a more effective one than sheer depression. Although they say time flies by when you're having fun, nothing makes the hours fly right by quite like the utter and indifferent numbness to time itself.

Still, while effective, it is hardly efficient (assuming one measures efficiency in the traditional economic sense of productivity over time), for it is equally hard to think of a more effective filter of potential creativity. Every idea becomes idiotic, not worth the perfectly good ink or paper it would take to write it down. Every image becomes clichéd, a waste of even the virtual and endlessly recyclable pixels that it would take to capture it.

Even the time that usually spawns ideas simply drips through the drain as you stand in the shower, oblivious to the water striking your back even as it begins to sting with red streaks. The hours flee wordlessly from the awesome destructive power of self-doubt and apathy. You react to every tiny setback with a panicky retreat to the dark solitude of the bedroom, where you lie in bed, gazing at where the window would be if you hadn't so frantically covered it up in a pique of destructive productivity.

And perhaps the only entity in the world capable of winning a blank staring contest against a depressed person... is the blank page.

But today? Today it was the page that blinked.

how I got my act together

Wed, 21 May 2008 06:52:37 GMT

Early this semester, when talking to Prof. Ortega, the chair of SJSU's economics department, it became apparent to her that I wasn't the same confident person she'd spoken to a few semesters ago. That guy was so sure where he wanted to be, had a good idea what he needed to do, and knew he had what it took to get there. But here I was now, plagued with serious doubts about my ability to make decisions and to even make a difference in this world.

So she offered me the teaching job in the fall mostly because she could tell I needed to buy some time to get my head on straight and figure things out. But above that, she gave me some unusual advice on how to clear out issues. I was rather dubious about it, so I didn't immediately give it a try. But about a month and a half ago, I was at the end of my rope, becoming self-destructive to the point where I was starting to physically harm myself. So I gave it a try. And it worked. It worked so amazingly well that I just had to share it.

There are two parts. One part tells you what you do and do not believe, and is useful to discover irrational beliefs that are holding you back. The other part clears them. The first part involves holding your thumb and ring finger together as tightly as you can. Then say something you know to be true, and try to pry apart your thumb and finger with your other hand. Then say something you know to be false, and try it again. It should require noticeably less force to pry them apart. Make a mental note of how much force it took for each, and then try it again with things that you should believe (e.g. "I am smart" or "I am beautiful") or things that you shouldn't believe (e.g. "I am mediocre" or "I am unlovable" or "cookies are not yummy").

Once you've discovered an issue you need to clear, there are multiple ways to clear them, like positive affirmations, or carrying the absurd belief to an illogical extreme so that you laugh at it. But failing that, here's a clearing method that works, and works immediately. You hold your breath and repeat to yourself the irrational belief over and over again. It's important that you repeat the belief you want to let go of and NOT what you want to believe! Keep holding your breath and repeating the absurd belief ("I am stupid, I am stupid, I am stupid...") until you reach the point where your body starts involuntarily panicking at the lack of oxygen.

After that, retest whether you still have the belief using part one (well, before that, you can go ahead and start breathing again, of course). The irrational belief should be gone. If you like, reword it to be the positive belief you want to hold (e.g. "I am stupid" becomes "I am smart" and "I am mediocre" becomes "I am special") and retest it again. Retest yourself periodically in the future to make sure it holds (and reaffirming the positive version should help reinforce it). But really, that's it!

Why does it work? She tried explaining it to me, but it was really more something that her sister does, which I think she calls theta therapy. Part one has something to do with your body's physiological response to what it believes to be true, kinda like for lie detectors. Part two is something to do with your body believing it needs to make a choice between the absurd belief and surviving. I'm not exactly sure. Regardless, it works. At least, it worked for me. I don't think I would've done nearly as well as I did on those recent interviews without using it.

And for perhaps the first time in years, I'm truly happy. I no longer tie my happiness to external validation or make it conditional upon certain things happening. I'm just happy, and several of my friends have noticed this (and before I told them about the above technique). So anyway, if you feel that something is holding you back, give it a try. I hope it helps. And of course, it's a powerful tool, so be careful with it.

career update

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 20:52:38 GMT

Okay, as I've mentioned, I'll get my Master's in Economics from SJSU in August. This is assuming I pass Section II of the comps, but I have an A+ so far in the class which that section covers, so that should be no problem (as long as I study). What comes afterwards?

I had mentioned one option was to teach a couple of classes at SJSU in the fall. That option became a lot more official this week when I received the fall course listings and an order form for the textbooks I would use for the class! Yes, I am so nerdy that I took a photo of the former. The thought of teaching both excites and frightens me. On the one hand, I am totally geeking out to how I would design the class and picturing myself teaching it. On the other hand, I'm not much one for public speaking, although I am more comfortable doing it than I was a few years ago. But as everyone has told me, it gets easier with practice, so I'm not too concerned. If I am meant to teach, I think it will be through my writing, not in the classroom. But I don't know enough to make that call, and either way this would be valuable experience. I have gotten used to talking to econ majors and grad students and libertarians, and I want to be able to reach beyond that.

As for the Koch Associates Program (KAP), I found out this week that I have a phone interview for Saturday morning! Wish me luck, cuz A) I found out that a couple of friends of mine heard back that they didn't get into KAP, and B) the latest IHS newsletter says that they've received more and better applicants this year for the Koch Fellowship (no word on the Associates, but I would presume a similar trend). So that 14% acceptance rate from last year might be on the high side. Still, I believe I have a strong application with a lot more real-world work experience than most, and that should also help me in the interview (along with my natural charm -- people have told me that I have this, for what it's worth).

Should I not get into KAP, I'll attend a few IHS and FEE seminars and take a summer course or two (probably Social Psychology, as it's a field I'm considering for further study). Maybe travel. Maybe just reflect on my future. Maybe I'll go back to Burning Man this year. I dunno. I'll hear back from the Koch Foundation at least by May 1st. I probably shouldn't do too much planning until then. And if I do get into KAP, I will need to figure out what to do with my place. I'm leaning towards renting it out at least for a while as I decide whether a policy career and DC living is for me (and also giving me a chance to better explore the neighborhoods before I commit to anything). So if you might be interested in a place in Sunnyvale (off of Fair Oaks, near 101), one might be available in June. Although Rachel T. gets first dibs.

contemplating a tattoo

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 21:12:02 GMT

For the longest time, I've wanted to get a tattoo but couldn't decide what to get. Something that permanent ought to say something about me, and as I'd gone through a lot of changes in the past few years, I wasn't really sure what would be right. Most of my ideas involved fish, like maybe in a Pisces or Yin Yang arrangement.

But no, I think I know what I want. In blood red, "Perfectly Good Ink." I'm not sure what font, but given that it's from the Milton Friedman quote, "Only government can take perfectly good paper, cover it with perfectly good ink and make the combination worthless," I think one of the fonts on the dollar bill ought to do quite nicely.

For me, of course, the strongest connotation of ink would be my love of writing (which, I know, hasn't been all that apparent here as of late), which I do think is perfectly good. But it can be interpreted many different ways. Now, at first I thought maybe it wouldn't be a good idea, because it'd be associating myself with worthlessness, but no. Friedman is talking about public ink on public paper. This would be private ink on a private person, and thus that it has a much more valuable outcome is part of the point.

As you might recall, I chose perfectlyGoodInk as an alternate username to fling93 a while back, and as somebody commented that it made them think of tattoos, I figure the name would fit even better if I made it into a tattoo. And I think it would be cool.

Well, a libertarian-econ-nerdy sort of cool.

Thoughts? Tattoo artist suggestions?

And to get a little libertarian-econ-nerdy, yes, the quote is a slam on fiat currency. I'm not exactly a gold standard proponent (and neither was Friedman, who advocated rules-based central banking policy). I am sympathetic to the gold standard as something that would better control inflation and not exacerbate business cycles, but I think I lean more towards free banking. Not that I'm an expert on the topic by any means.

a poem about free markets

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 00:19:30 GMT

As I may have mentioned, this will be my last semester of coursework at SJSU (although I won't get the degree itself until August, due to paperwork issues). So I'm faced with the question of what I should do afterwards, as I am still rather undecided between policy and academia. One of the policy options is the Koch Associates program, which is kind of like a year-long internship program, but instead of a stipend, you get paid a salary commensurate with your experience (some of which is covered by the Charles G. Koch foundation) plus benefits. It's very competitive (they had a 14% acceptance rate last year), so my other main option at this point is to teach a couple of economics principles classes at San Jose State in the fall while I prepare to apply to Ph.D. programs. Alternately, I may just look for a policy job.

The Koch Associates application was interesting. In addition to a resume, they asked several short essay questions... plus a poem relating to free markets that begins with the words, "Roses are Red..." As you might have guessed, I had quite a bit of fun with that one. For those of you well versed with the libertarian movement, you can probably skip down to the poem. For the rest of you, it requires a little bit of backstory (like some of my previous poems did -- note, that post is friends-locked).

Most of you probably know my first exposure to both economics and libertarian ideas was through Nobel-prize winner Milton Friedman. He's a pragmatic moderate libertarian, and so some of the more anarchist folks here at SJSU consider him (and me) to be somewhat of a statist, as he does believe in a role for the government, just a limited one. But for the most part, he is beloved in the movement, and the econ department's conference room prominently features a photograph of when he visited the school (alas, this was before I started there).

Some other prominent libertarian thinkers I've been introduced to in the past few years include Ronald Coase, who is probably most famous for the Coase Theorem. Many economists argue for government intervention to address market failures, such as externalities, which are cases where there are costs or benefits not borne by either the buyer or seller (the classic example is pollution). Coase instead argued that, as long as transaction costs were low enough, the affected parties would transact with the buyers and/or sellers to handle externalities themselves (although note that pollution is generally a case where the transaction costs would be high).

And then there's Frederic Bastiat, a writer who was able to convey several economic concepts, including opportunity costs, to the masses in his excellent essay, "That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen". For example, most people think breaking a window helps the economy because it provides work for the window-maker -- but that ignores what people could have spent their money on instead of fixing the window! He also wrote a cool satire about candle-makers lobbying against the sun. I would say that Friedman and Bastiat form the ideal model of the public intellectual that I would like to be someday.

Anyway, I think that's enough econ geek talk for now. Here's the damn poem. One of the folks at the Institute for Humane Studies did tell me that part of the reason they ask for the poem is to see if you're capable of not taking yourself too seriously. But I may have gone a little overboard in silliness. We'll see.

Roses are red, and the violets are blue.
Statism stinks like a bucket of poo.
Fresh poo, no less, cuz the stench is quite strong.
But strength is no use when ideas are all wrong.

Roses are red, and the violets are too.
Stained with the blood of the innocents who
Died at the hands of the socialist scums.
Who shoved central planning up all of their bums.

Violets are blue and the roses are red.
Lovers of gummint are sick in the head.
Why can't they listen to Milty or Coase?
Instead of those "thinkers" who're simply verbose.

Violets have faded and roses are wilt.
Do not be proud of the state they have built.
No one knows what kind of things might have been
As Bastiat says, don't forget the unseen!

The flowers have died and are starting to rot.
We're left with a mess and a war to be fought.
It's tough to see what could be done by this bloke...
Unless I get funding from Charles G. Koch!

Writer's Block: Love This Artist

Mon, 04 Feb 2008 19:32:44 GMT

Who is your favorite artist?

View other answers

Wassily Kandinsky, of course.

what I've been up to

Wed, 16 Jan 2008 23:12:49 GMT

Sorry that I've been remiss. Here's a quick recap.

Semester done. Grades in. 2 A's and 2 A-'s. Very pleased, as I was expecting a B or B+ in Advanced Microeconomics. The professor of that class only covered math problems and glossed or completely skipped over the material I found interesting, like the psychology and game theory. The other A- was in Sociology and was because I blew off a paper to study for the comprehensive exams. Which brings us to:

The comps. SJSU's master's program in econ is capped by comprehensive exams instead of a master's thesis. You have three attempts to pass it, there are three sections, and you only need to retake sections that you didn't pass in previous attempts. This was my first attempt, and I was concentrating on passing Section 1. Well, I was quite glad to find that I passed both Section 1 and Section 3. I hadn't yet taken the class covered by Section 2, Advanced Macro, and will be taking it this spring, so things are lined up pretty well and I should still finish school in May.

I finally quit my job as a part-time software engineer. My heart just wasn't in it for so long, and I'm sure this was becoming obvious to everybody. I have plenty of savings, so money shouldn't be an issue as long as I budget a little better. Not sure what I'll do with the extra time. I'd mentioned to the econ chair that I'd be interested in tutoring, as I was kinda pitching in for free a lot last semester, but I just heard (as in five minutes ago) that the slots were full.

She had both bad news and good news. Although the tutoring slots were full, she'd asked the Koch Foundation a while back to help fund some students, including me. I'm getting a grant from the Koch Foundation! Holy crap. That's pretty dang timely.

Anyway, things continue to go swimmingly with Erin. My family and friends seem to like her. The concerns I'd had going into this thing have pretty much been allayed. So I'm feeling good about this. I'm not keen on even thinking about moving in together until after she's experienced living on her own (she lives with her parents right now), and she knows this, so I think it'll be a while before this gets really serious. But we love and respect each other and are happy together (and the sex is awesome!), so that's enough for now.

I've also been watching a lot more football as of late, and not just because my beloved New York football Giants are in the playoffs. I've actually watched every single playoff game, and this is not something I usually do (indeed, I almost completely stopped watching the sport altogether in recent years). And I've really enjoyed almost all of the games. I've really missed football. This is a topic I hope to explore in more detail later.

And the topic that's been plaguing me for the past week, the Ron Paul racist newsletter fiasco. I've been reading a lot about the whole thing, not so much because of Paul's campaign, but because it shocked me to learn about the paleo-libertarian wing of the movement (which split off from the Cato/Reason wing) that appears to actively pander to racists, neo-Confederates, anti-semites, homophobes, and other fringe elements. I and the Cato/Reason wing find these beliefs inherently unlibertarian, and as a Taiwanese-American who grew up on the East Coast being regularly called a "chink," this hits really close to home. In fact, it has me re-evaluating my career plans, because I'm not sure I could work for a libertarian movement that has (aside from Tom Palmer) remained so silent about the paleo wing's unsavory ties for so long. But Cato has always kept their distance from the Paul campaign (which mystified us interns at the time), which I suppose is something. Still, I'm reconsidering academia, as I may have ruled that out prematurely.

I have a lot more to say on this topic, but if you want to read more, I'll direct you to this reaction by David Boaz (the executive vice-president of Cato), this post by Steve Horwitz (an economics professor in the Austrian tradition who I saw lecture at FEE) and this excellent piece by Reason.

Why libertarians should care about campaign finance reform

Sat, 10 Nov 2007 18:08:55 GMT

For your edification, here's another work in progress. As some of you might recall, I used to volunteer a little for the California Clean Money Campaign. This is an issue where I'm still trying to figure out the best solution, and an issue where I am in opposition to most libertarians, who are in opposition to any spending limits because that would be a restriction on your freedom to transact.

Anyway, while interning at the Cato Institute, I had the honor of Roger Pilon giving us interns a seminar on Constitutional Law. After all, many of us libertarians believe the Founders intended for government to be much smaller than it is now, and the Interstate Commerce Clause in particular has been stretched ridiculously (the Gonzales v. Raich Supreme Court decision on medical marijuana is a prime example). During the question and answer afterwards, I asked him about campaign finance. I made the main point below, but in the back and forth, I think I got a bit repetitive. And since I hate it when others monopolize a discussion, I soon dropped it.

This David Weigel column on John Edwards at Reason Magazine repeats the point that I've often heard, which is that the solution to campaign finance is a smaller government with fewer favors to give. In response, I wrote this comment, which fleshes out my thinking on the topic:

I know I'm the rare libertarian who considers campaign finance reform to be a pet topic, but I don't think the answer to our campaign finance problems is a smaller government. I think one of the effects of our campaign finance problems is the big government that we have. When corporations lobby, they usually don't ask for less government, but ask for more government that tilts the market in their favor. Think tariffs, subsidies, tax-deductions, etc. Public-choice economists call this rent-seeking.

And no, money is not speech. If it were, bribery would be legal. That's spending money to get your message to a politician, after all. I made that point to Roger Pilon at Cato, and he acknowledged that money wasn't speech, but was used to buy speech, and said that bribery was handled by a politician's oath of office. I didn't find that convincing. You can argue that you are using your bribe to buy the politician's speech, as they will be arguing your point in their speeches and on the legislature floor.

Plus, this just highlights that rules matter. That oath could easily include not accepting lobbyist money. The reason we don't allow bribes is to prevent corruption. Democracy is most representative when it honors the principle of one person, one vote. If you allow bribery, you make a mockery out of the whole voting process, because one vote plus a bribe matters a lot more than a vote without one.

But if you think about it, allowing campaign contributions has pretty much same effect as allowing bribes. One vote plus a $3,000 campaign contribution matters a lot more than a vote without one. Furthermore, money is obviously fungible. If you give poor people food stamps to prevent them from buying drugs, they can merely decrease their spending on food and use the savings to buy those drugs. Likewise, if you give a candidate a campaign contribution, they can decrease their own personal spending on their campaign.

I am not sure what the solution is that doesn't exacerbate incumbent strength or allows crackpots to spend public campaign funds or narrows the field to mostly just rich white guys (well... never mind). But I think libertarians are fooling themselves if they think the solution is smaller government. Government gets bigger for a lot of reasons, and campaign contributions is one of them.

I have to admit that I overstated the fungible part of it, because that's only true of the contributions up to what the candidate would have spent. But whether those first contributions ought to be allowed is, in my mind, still up for debate.

Now, the discourse there up to then was not of very high quality, involving a lot of personal attacks (I imagine this is a reason that Cato has chosen not to open comments on their blogs -- I made my case for open comments to several policy people there, and almost all of them agreed with me but said the decision came from higher up). So my comment got only one response, which acknowledged my point on bribes but said that contributions also look like political speech (noting that making a posterboard sign still costs money), and argued that maybe a compromise solution would be disclosure. This was my response:

My point about bribes is not that campaign contributions should be illegal. It's that if you agree that bribery should be illegal, this means that money is not speech. Which makes sense on the face of it. What is protected is not the posterboard sign, but your right to say whatever you want ON that sign. Whether you are allowed to use a sign or a television ad is not a First Amendment issue, and thus is up for debate. Yes, whatever line we draw will seem arbitrary, but so is the line we have now between bribes and campaign contributions. Drawing lines is inevitable when seeking to strike a balance between liberty and democracy.

Once we realize that the "money is speech" line is dogmatic and untrue, then we can look for pragmatic solutions. Disclosure would be a start, but while necessary, hardly seems sufficient to do anything about rent-seeking. What we want is a solution where what you say is more important than how much you can spend to broadcast it. Look at the Internet and the blogosphere. Libertarian ideas are far more prevalent there than they are in the rest of public discourse. This is what happens when the strength of your ideas is given prominent importance. Now imagine a political landscape that mirrored that.

To get there, you need some sort of campaign finance reform, whether it be limits or public campaign financing (I'm rather fond of the Clean Money, Clean Elections proposal) or something else that the libertarian movement could come up with if they stopped ignoring the problem and looked for solutions.

Because the people who want big government have a lot more money than people who want small government. This means that the libertarian movement is doomed to remain a fringe player in our political landscape as long as money plays the role that it does.

To flesh out the point on why disclosure is not sufficient, note that we already know exactly who benefits from, say, the steel tariffs and agricultural subsidies. The root of the problem is not lack of knowledge, it's that these policies have concentrated benefits and diffuse costs. The steel tariffs help the steel producers greatly and hurt everybody else a little bit. Therefore, the steel producers have a strong incentive to lobby for the tariffs and nobody has a strong incentive to oppose them. Cato beat that point into our intern heads over the summer, but told us little about how to prevent such policies. Of course, I personally think campaign finance reform is the best bet.

I also had the pleasure of meeting David Weigel briefly at a couple of events. I didn't talk politics with him, mostly just the usual get-to-know-you chit chat. He's an associate editor at Reason, which I would read from time to time, mostly when somebody I read would link them. But I've been reading them more regularly since then, and have been thinking that maybe my skills might be a better fit at Reason than Cato. Assuming he doesn't hate me now.

anthropomorphizing corporations

Sat, 03 Nov 2007 20:34:05 GMT

This was a topic I'd been researching on and off (mostly off) for a long, long while (and indeed, I currently have the movie The Corporation rented out, which, although heavily biased to the left, makes some good points). The topic came up on an e-mail list among the SJSU econ folks regarding Google and China, and I sent a very truncated version of what I've been working on, so I figure I'd repost it here. I eventually hope to make it a blog post when I flesh out the main points, put in links, and change the intended audience to be more general than the econ crowd.

Maybe. Eventually. I'm pretty lazy-arse about that sorta thing nowadays, obviously. But I'll hopefully be continually editing this.

It's kinda long and probably not of interest to most of you, so it's below the fold:

On Sun, 2007-10-28 at 14:17 -0700, fling93 wrote:
> I think most people familiar with economics know better than to
> anthropomorphize firms. They are not people, do not behave like
> people, and thus cannot be judged as people.

On 10/31/07, Joanna wrote:
> Does that mean that one can do anything and avoid moral censure simply by incorporating?

No, because you are still a person who cares about what society thinks about you, regardless of whether you incorporate. Which highlights one of the reasons we can and should not expect corporations to behave like human beings. Unlike people, corporations are not social creatures and thus are not influenced by social mores. And also note that the limited liability that you have from your corporation's actions does cause its behavior to diverge from what you would personally do.

Of course, I was talking more about corporations made up of many people, like Google. In addition to the tendency to anthropomorphize everything, there is also a tendency to forget that we are talking about phenomena with emergent properties, where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Molecules do not behave like sums of individual atoms, and thus we need chemistry in addition to physics. People do not behave like sums of organs, and thus we need psychology in addition to biology. Notice that each layer you move up gets even more and more complex to analyze.

Which is exactly why we have so many social sciences. Despite what a radical individualist might tell you, groups of people do not behave anything like sums of individual people. As anybody who has ever been in a meeting probably knows, the decision-making process of a group is drastically impacted by the fact that each person is influenced by other people (ala Tipping Point) and the fact that responsibility is diffuse (think Kitty Genovese). This results in effects like groupthink.

Furthermore, people are very powerfully affected by the expectations placed upon them by others and in the roles that they fill, as exhibited by the Stanford Prison Experiment and the Milgram experiment. Combine all that with the legal requirements of corporations to prioritize shareholder interests above all else, and you have entities that, despite being made up of people, behave nothing like them. Any corporate officer or boardmember can easily rationalize any decision that they make as just part of doing their job, as a decision that somebody else would make if they weren't there, and as a decision that must be okay since other people in the company signed off on it.

This doesn't mean one shouldn't criticize corporations. PR affects their bottom line, after all. But a lot of criticism of corporations (particularly from the left) seems to make the mistake of expecting corporations to behave like people. You cannot expect Google or any corporation to put societal gain above profits any more than you can expect a Felix to pass up a free cookie. As we all know, incentives matter, and for firms, they are all that matters.

Now, one *might* make a case for reforming our laws of corporate governance to make corporations behave more like people. But I'm not sure whether or not that would be a good thing or whether it's even possible without unexpected side effects (for one thing, all those cost curves we learned about in 101 go out the window and get replaced by something a good deal more complicated). After all, firms were presumably designed this way because that is how we get allocative efficiency. On the other hand, you could also make the case that firms should thus not be treated like people by the law and/or allowed to influence the government as much as they do, but that's a whole other can of worms.

Update 11/5/07:

Note, I do intend to develop the thought of that last sentence. Also, this does mark one key point where I diverge from the Austrian school, which is the one favored by a good deal of the econ faculty at SJSU. The Austrians stress the importance of human action and often point out that that groups don't make decisions, the individuals within the groups do, and one of the professors responded to make that point.

My response:

Well, sometimes it's useful to think of a person as its own entity and not the sum of individual cells, organs, systems, etc. And sometimes it's useful to look inside at those component parts. But typically, this is only when something goes wrong. Most of the time, it just isn't that useful to think of a person's decisions as made by their collective neurons, etc. You typically only look at that if they are making odd decisions to figure out if it's due to a medical problem or psychological issue or social pressures.

Personally, when it comes to dealing with most actions of firms, I personally think it's fine to use the simplifying assumption of mainstream economics and treat it as a profit-maximizing entity. Only when a firm fails to maximize profits would it be useful to look at its internal makeup. But that wasn't the case with Google's actions here.

I hope to write a real update of my life soon, but the short version is that everything's good. I'm doing well in all my classes and still expect to finish in May. I'm having an awesome time with Erin. None of my family or friends were harmed in the SoCal fires. And Miette continues to meow a lot.

xkcd - Dating Pools

Mon, 10 Sep 2007 05:32:49 GMT

Um, yeah. I guess I've long established that I will unabashedly shatter that creepiness rule. I imagine this will probably change after I finish school? Or maybe until I can no longer pass for someone in their mid-20s?

Do I get to claim an exemption cuz I didn't actually date until my mid-20s and essentially bailed on dating (via marriage) for most of my 30s?

more delaying tactics

Sun, 26 Aug 2007 03:41:17 GMT

I know many, many updates are overdue. Like my trip to Montreal and experience at Burning Man, I fear that I will never get everything down that I would like, which will paralyze me from getting very much written about the experience at all.

It's tough to sort out my feelings about my summer in DC. Don't get me wrong! I definitely had a lot of fun, and the summer flew right by, and on the whole, I loved it. Indeed, as I may have mentioned, I could see myself living there, at least for a while.

But hopes and expectations are forever my wretched enemy. To be sure, I had a worst-case scenario in my head (something about tripping over a computer and accidentally burning Cato to the ground). But it paled compared to the brilliant fantasy I had built up. For various things, not just the internship. And of course, the reality fell in between. Perhaps considerably closer to the best-case than the worst case, but still, a lot of the experience is colored with the disappointment. Unrealistic disappointment, I'm fully aware, but there it still is.

Perhaps I'll elaborate upon this shortly. Perhaps not. Either way, I did take plenty of pictures, and I will hopefully include an occasional story. Stay tuned to my Flickr for updates. Maybe I'll eventually try to tie everything together into some sort of coherent narrative someday after they're all uploaded (perhaps during the month of November, as I think earthdog suggested). But maybe not. After all, the fall semester has already begun and there will be new narratives to write. Hopefully.

much delayed DC update

Sun, 01 Jul 2007 22:29:18 GMT

Man, there's just so much to catch y'all up on. Lemme do my best. But in short, things are going pretty damn well!

I've pretty much settled into the internship housing. It's not cheap, but within my budget, and pretty cool! It's located just a couple of blocks from the Capitol Building, four blocks from the Capitol South Metro station. My commute isn't bad. About 30 minutes with one transfer and about 8 blocks of walking. There's a grocery store of sorts two blocks from here. It's more of a liquor store that also stocks groceries, so the selection and prices aren't so great, but it's convenient enough that I end up just going there most of the time. There are better places within an eight block walk, but I guess I'm too lazy to trudge bags of groceries that far. Some of my roommates choose to have Safeway deliver, but I'm not ordering enough groceries to make that worth it.

The roommates all seem pretty cool. It's three floors and twelve of us so far, six guys and six gals (the last guy just moved in today). It's been more than ten years since I've had roommates, so I was a little worried about the adjustment, but it's been fine. It's not too crowded, and I have my own bedroom. We all seem to mostly get along just fine. There are times when everybody seems to keep to themselves, and times when everybody starts socializing. Kinda fascinating from a sociological standpoint, actually. I am, of course, the oldest, but as always, my age doesn't seem to be an issue. And there is one other grad student. Plus there are four more ladies who live downstairs who sometimes pop by to visit. So far, we have a confirmed couple between one of the downstairs gals and one of our male roommates, but nothing else (yet -- the summer is still young).

I had the first week free to give me a chance to get my bearings and explore. Saturday I arrived in the evening and just settled in. I was somewhat annoyed to find that the bed was not twin, as WISH had told me when I specifically asked. I only paid about $15 for my twin sheets at Target, so this was not that big a deal, especially compared to the fact that I hadn't slept in a twin bed since my college days (many, many, many years ago). I also had a gift card to Macy's, so I just used that on Sunday to grab some decent full size sheets. So I just had to put up with one night of minor discomfort, and wasted $15. No big whup.

And Sunday, after I dropped off the stuff from Macy's, I finally met up with Rachel (yay!).

The next week I spent at various museums at the National Mall (all of which are free), as well as taking bunches of photos. I've uploaded a handful so far to my Flickr, but my main photo-processing machine is my PC at home using Picasa, so you'll have to wait till I get back. The Air & Space Museum was probably my personal favorite, me being a little geeky kid at heart. It was also the only thing I remembered from the last time I was at DC when I was like 10, and I have to say it was a bit smaller than I remembered. :) I also thoroughly enjoyed the National Gallery of Art, especially the modern art wing, where they had a Kandinsky, a handfull of Matisses, and some Giacometti sculptures, as well as a ginormous Calder and awesome architecture I think by I.M. Pei.

We do have excellent WiFi and broadband Internet, which is way sweet, and cable TV. But no Speed Channel. The past few races have aired on Fox, but I decided to go find a Formula One fan group in the area, and they watch the races in Alexandria, not too far from a Metro stop. They've had pretty good turnouts, anywhere from 10-20 folks, so that's been cool, and it's great to be able to share the race experience with others, which I haven't done since Erika moved out.

Cato has been a wonderful experience so far. It's not exactly what I expected, but nothing ever is, and I'm not really sure what it was I had expected. Two things have kinda struck me. One, it's very much just like an office environment, and I spend most of my time at my desk in front of a computer. I don't know what I pictured a think tank would be like, but I thought it would be different, somehow. Secondly, the folks there aren't particularly that social. I mean, they're not anti-social. But for the most part, most of the policy analysts and fellows don't interact with us interns that much, and some of the research assistants seem rather socially awkward (which, I suppose, I should have expected, given that many libertarians are quite geeky). And most of my work so far has simply involved reading.

But I think I am starting to make a good impression, handling my assignments fairly promptly and professionally. Most of them have been pretty straight-forward, although I have a rather open-ended one to get Jim Harper up to speed on the various private identification and authentication schemes out there. I know Erika has always been trying to convince me that my tech background will be an asset and not a liability, but I'm seeing first-hand that it's definitely the case. My computer expertise has also been handy in a few other cases, and it was also a reason I snagged a small assignment to create a libertarian search engine for the big veep, David Boaz (although that was also because I keep up with a lot of blogs, especially libertarian ones).

The interns have also taken a bit of time to warm up, but it's getting there. It helped when the four Koch fellows showed up, as one of them sits next to me and we seem to get along quite well. Plus we had a party last Friday, which was more fun than I expected. I was hoping Rachel would make it, but she bailed because she was too tired. Still, she's been showing up to the softball games, which have also been fun. I'm still rusty, but at least I haven't gotten conked on the head by any fly balls either.

We've also been attending quite a few seminars, like 3-4 per week. About a quarter of them have covered topics I already knew quite well, but I've learned quite a bit from the others, and just being in the same room and listening to guys like Gene Healy, Tom Palmer, Roger Pilon, and David Boaz is just an absolute treat. Tom Palmer, who runs the curriculum, is especially awesome. And it's his talks that reinforce for me that I am in the right place, voicing opinions that mirror mine quite closely. He is very critical of Bush, talked a lot about public choice theory and rent-seeking (which jives with my long-time interest in campaign finance, although most libertarians -- Palmer probably included -- don't like the idea of campaign finance reform), and even talked about how we ended up with a two-party system because of our first-past-the-post voting system (something that I rarely hear libertarians talk about even though that's been pretty firmly established by political science and is a big reason libertarian ideas are held back so much).

The social life has been a bit slower than I had hoped. Then again, I had rather hoped that I'd be hobnobbing with the libertarian and DC blogging elite by now, which was, admittedly, rather unrealistic. I've been spending most of my socialness with my fellow interns (there's about 25 of us) and my roommates, plus the Formula One fans on race day, some time with fellow FEE folks Tom (who goes to GWU) and Tanja (who works at Cato) and of course Rachel, who moved into her new place in Arlington last week and starts at GMU law in the fall. Divya from SJSU is also interning in DC, and I'll be meeting her for lunch on Monday. So it's still been quite social. I'm getting out, having fun, and seem to be consuming more alcohol than I was during the school year (not having exams or papers to worry about on the weekends seems to help).

Anyway... I think that mostly covers it. I do still get some mood swings and hit highs and lows (last week was quite low, for some reason). It concerns me, as it's clearly not linked to a certain something that I don't yet have access to here. So it might have to do with the normal stress of being in a strange new place and job, or that I'm not going to therapy out here. Dunno. But on the whole, my mood has actually been quite good. Although some things haven't met my expectations, others have exceeded them, and time has been flying by. I can't believe it's already been almost a month. I'm getting mixed feelings, in that I do miss home and my friends there, but I also don't want this to end. I guess that always happens. And I'm pretty sure DC will be prominently featured in my future somehow.

oh, there be grades

Thu, 31 May 2007 21:51:07 GMT

Grades were posted yesterday. I guess I haven't written much about classes this semester, heh.

I got an A in Money & Banking with Prof. Hummel, the guy to whom I probably owe my Cato internship. I was a little worried after getting a low B on the 2nd midterm, so that's a relief. And it was, frankly, the one class I really cared about.

I got an A- in my Psychology class on Drugs, Brain & Behavior. After getting a 76 on my 2nd midterm because I forgot we had a midterm that day and didn't study (which was, not coincidentally, around the same time as the 2nd midterm for Money & Banking and when my IM addiction was spiraling out of control). So I'm quite pleased. I'm not sure non-econ classes matter anyway.

I got an A- in my Policy Workshop class. That surprises me. I got an A on the midterm, participated in class more than most, did all the homeworks on time (except for the paper draft), and I thought I had a strong paper. I was thinking I had a shot at an A+. So WTF? Maybe my presentation sunk me? Oh, whatever.

And I got a B in my Math Methods for Economics class. Pretty much what I expected and what I deserved.

Not my best work, but I really prioritized my social and dating life this past semester. Which isn't so bad, considering that my career will depend a lot more on my social contacts than my grades. And so, the next two months at Cato will be a lot more important than my Math grade.

At least, that's how I rationalize this, anyway.

silly procrastination poetry

Fri, 11 May 2007 22:41:10 GMT

While procrastinating on my paper writing (which I did finish in time), I was productive in other ways. First, I Twittered this postmodern haiku:

(Reaching|Clawing) for (compact|vivid|lengthy)
Words to (fit|fill) the (confines|expanse) of
The (given|rigid|flowing|ancient) framework

It was a reference to both writing a haiku, writing my paper, and writing something for Twitter (indeed, it's exactly 140 characters long, which is Twitter's limit). Alas, Twitter kept eating the first two words when the first character was a parenthesis, so I added a space and dropped out "given." Oh, the lengths one goes to when they are procrastinating.

BTW, someone random added me as a Twitter contact (prolly cuz she saw one of my haikus on TWITTERKU), and I later noticed she had favorited the above one. Man, I wish Twitter would notify you when someone favorites one of your Twitters. As if I need it to be more addicting!

Anyway, then I wrote a limerick for Prof. Hummel, the one who wrote the letter of recommendation for me to Cato. He gives weekly 5 question quizzes but only counts the top 8 out of 12. Last semester, in his Macro class, once I got 8 perfect scores, I wrote the following "limerick" on my quiz instead of the answers (not my creation, but it's my all-time favorite "limerick"):

There once was a poet from Thrace
Whose limericks never did rhyme
Except for the time
It rhymed in the wrong place,
But by then the meter was hopelessly screwed up.

Tee hee hee! I like that the meter is actually already screwed up in the 4th line.

This semester, I wrote one. Note, Hummel's an anarcho-capitalist who wears a giant tie after the first midterm and always wears sneakers. So here's what I wrote:

I know this great econ professor
Who sees government as oppressor.
His name is Jeff Hummel,
Socialists he will pummel.
And plus, he's a rather ~~strange~~ sharp dresser!

Heh. He has a TA grade 'em, but I'm sure she'll point that one out to him.

There's one more to share, but I'm gonna friends-lock that one...

UPS SUCKS!

Wed, 09 May 2007 16:23:25 GMT

Oh, this is ridiculous. I am still without my only ATM/debit card because of a fuckup at UPS:

05/08/2007 5:05 P.M. THE ADDRESS LABEL IS MISSING OR ILLEGIBLE;THE ADDRESS HAS BEEN CORRECTED. THE DELIVERY HAS BEEN RESCHEDULED
05/08/2007 10:19 A.M. THE APARTMENT NUMBER IS MISSING OR IS INCORRECT. UPS IS ATTEMPTING TO OBTAIN THIS INFORMATION.

So hopefully I'll get it today. I have all of $18 in my wallet, and apparently cannot obtain cash without the card because it is for an online brokerage. Should be enough to make it to the end of the week, if need be (if I make sandwiches for dinner), but I hate this unsettled feeling, especially with a paper due tomorrow.

Yes, I was a moron to have gotten kicked out of Mission Ale in the first place, and am apparently even more of a moron to be relying upon that card as my only source of liquid funds. But I'm not the only screwup here. Does the above status even make any sense? How can it take seven hours to get the correct address in an age where we have telephones and databases? Goddamn UPS. I've always hated their service. Plus what was up with Mission Ale closing out my tab for me and losing my card? Not cool.

Update: NOW they shipped it -- but to the wrong address. According to their phone maze, they left it at the front door of 615. And I went there and there's no package and no answer. And so I asked Merrill Lynch if they could ship it by any other means other than UPS because I always have these stupid idiotic problems with UPS (so many times I called to have a package held and then I get there and they say, whoops, they forgot to take it off the truck, or whatnot), but no dice. Tis their only carrier. So... maybe I'll get it tomorrow morning. I suppose it's a little bit encouraging that there are people even more idiotic than I am.

Update 5/10: Last night I found the card shipped to the wrong address at my doorstop. I guess whoever actually received it was nice and delivered it to the actual address on the label, which was correct. UPS morons. Alas, the card was already canceled, of course. But this morning, I did receive the new one and so now I'm back in business. Dang, I could've gotten cashed a check at Safeway? I had no idea. Did I mention that I was a moron?

Sat, 28 Apr 2007 21:51:10 GMT

The sleep problems seems to have mostly resolved itself, I think. Sorta. I woke up at 9 AM on Friday even though I didn't get to bed until 5:30 AM and didn't need to get into work at 2. Went through the day in a foggy haze. Went to bed early, around 8, but then proceeded to wake up every two hours and then couldn't fall asleep again around 6 AM. But after doing some more research for my paper, I was able to fall back asleep for a few more hours (yay for academic writing), and I feel mostly caught up.

So I think it's okay. Maybe it had to do with IM withdrawal? I dunno. On that front, I refrained from IMing in class except during Math, and that was mostly with Rachel T., who was sitting next to me, so it's not like I wouldn't have talked to her anyway in lieu of IM. And I made sure to cut down on other times as well by logging on less often and initiating fewer conversations. Although I have to admit it also helped that Rachel S. happens to be on a trip to Poland now and so hasn't been online herself.

Hopefully it's not too late. I got a low B- for a midterm in an easy class (more people in that class got A's on that exam than any other grade). My grade in that class is still a low A-, and the final counts as two midterms, but still... this is Hummel's class. Hummel, as in the guy who (unasked by me) wrote to the Cato institute to put in a good word for me. Yeah. And he wrote on the back of the exam, "You should be doing better than this!"

Thus the "I am a moron" on my Twitter.

But this is a good day.

I guess there was an upside to the mailbox break-ins from a few months ago. The HOA decided to install a security door around the mailboxes. They needed to use a lock that the whole complex could open, so that meant I had to carry around a big key that I hadn't had to before, which was annoying. And so just now, I'm going outside to drop off the mail, and I get hit by this unusual heat. Ugh. What's happened to the weather this year? It's so East Coast. Cuz I'm silly, I'm wearing a sweatshirt and am too lazy to take it off, and it's not that long a walk, and when I get to the mail security door and use that extra key...

I notice that it's our pool key. Yeah, that was the extra key the whole complex already had, so it's what they used for the new door.

Believe it or not, I hadn't used the pool in years. Partially cuz I've lived here so long that I take it for granted, partially cuz of my blue hair, partially cuz I have A/C, and partially cuz the only person I cared about showing off my body to had been Erika. But I'm going to living elsewhere for the summer, the A/C has been acting up, the blue hair is mostly gone after my last haircut, and of course, I'm now single (well, officially on July 2nd). I don't know how many single folks are in this complex, cuz I hadn't been particularly social, but I imagine there must be some.

Besides, ya gotta take the time to enjoy the simple pleasures in life, or else you're just marking off time until you're dead.

(okay, the true story is that the real reminder was when Jenn asked to see the pool a few months ago and then this past Thursday asked if she could come over to use it sometime, so the above was mostly just today's reminder, but isn't it a better story this way?)

Fri, 20 Apr 2007 15:44:19 GMT

I've been having trouble sleeping for the past few days. At both ends: not being able to fall asleep at night, and then waking up too early in the morning and not being able to go back to sleep despite still being tired and not having to be anywhere (my slacker schedule has entirely free mornings except for my therapy appointments on Wednesdays). Yet I can nap on the light rail (have yet to miss my stop, luckily) and find myself nodding off at work.

Troubling. Not sure what the cause is.

offline for a while

Sat, 14 Apr 2007 22:23:29 GMT

In my Drugs, Brain & Behavior class in Psychology, we've learned that rapid reward is one of the factors that can lead to addiction. A drug that takes a long time to take effect will (all other things being equal) be less addictive than one that acts very quickly. Indeed, you can see this effect with the same drug taken via different routes (e.g. inhaling vs. ingestion).

Note, this also applies to other addictions, not just drugs. For example, the reward center of the brain involves the mesolimbic dopamine system, which is stimulated, not just by drugs, but by positive social experiences. Furthermore, anybody who knows how much of an online presence I have probably realizes that I have an Internet addiction. It seems to have gotten more acute in the past couple of years, as I've become a much more social person and have gotten exposed to various social networking sites. But I am sure the divorce also plays into that somehow. Plus my undying need for external validation due to my depression and low self-esteem (which will be a topic for another time). While they have improved quite a bit in the past few years, they still persist, which is why I'm in therapy, after all.

This addiction is becoming acutely apparent to me right now. My therapist has suggested that I lay off the instant messaging for a while. At least a week. I had some coordination to do in regards to that Space Party, and this was more convenient via IM, so I held off on trying this abstention until today. Although I've been rather productive today, I did spend a significant part of the morning writing e-mails in lieu of IMing and then checking somewhat compulsively to see if there are any responses. And a lot of my compulsive Internet behavior in the past has involved feedback, such as reactions and responses to my posts, journal entries, photos, comments, etc. (which is why Twitter ought to allow comments if they have any sense). There's that need for external validation.

And the ultimate in rapid feedback is, of course, instant messaging. After largely eschewing it until last year, I now spend an inordinate amount of time every day IMing (and almost exclusively with women who are, for various reasons, unavailable to me as far as dating goes -- but that's a whole other can of worms). It has, for a while, affected my work productivity. And it is starting to affect my schoolwork.

So... laying off for at least a week. Besides, I've got a paper draft due next week, along with two midterms.

extra ticket for SPAAACE PARTAAAAAY!

Fri, 13 Apr 2007 18:15:30 GMT

I have an extra ticket to Yuri's Night 07 tonight in Mountain View (doors open at 6:30, and the schedule is here). Anybody interested in it? $30 (vs. $40 at the door!).

YAAAAAAAAAYYY!!!!!!!!

Wed, 11 Apr 2007 20:44:57 GMT

I got accepted to the internship at the Cato Institute!!!!!!! w000000t!!!

D.C., here I come!!!!!

SPAAAACE PARTAAAAAY!

Fri, 06 Apr 2007 22:03:04 GMT

I have a lot to write about, and that will come later. Suffice to say that things are looking up again. For now, I thought I'd pass this along. Couple pals of mine invited me to Yuri's Night 07 next Friday night (in honor of Yuri Gagarin). Interactive demos, musical acts running all night, and you get to go inside that big hangar in Mountain View you can see off of 101! Tix be $30 and apparently are going fast. Come join!

anybody lose this?

Wed, 04 Apr 2007 06:21:45 GMT

I think somebody left an Apple power adapter thingy at the partay. Was it any of you?

Update: Never mind, it's been claimed!

lucky...

Mon, 02 Apr 2007 03:55:46 GMT

...to be alive. And no, I didn't need that to appreciate it, but of course it helps. Yes, that was an awesome weekend. Thanks everybody for coming and for making it possible in so many ways. I am so blessed with friends who are so awesome. Thanks to Enrique and Joe S. for bringing the GameCube and extra controllers. Thanks to Jason for making it down from the city and bringing Betrayal at House on the Hill. Thank you to pirategrrl for giving me some party planning tips and for making the drive all the way from Sacramento. Thanks to sabishii (Jenn) and Elliot for helping me clean up the night before, and Jenn especially for calming me down when I couldn't find a party platter. Thanks to Erika for also helping me come up with contingency plans (and congrats on that kickass new tattoo). Thanks to Lance and Jan for making the drive up and bringing that delicious mushroooooom pizza! To saizai for, again, the best massage I have ever had. And to Lawrence for documenting some of the proceedings.

Many thanks to Erin for making the birthday celebration an extra treat.

And, of course, many, many thanks to Enrique for making sure I have many more birthdays to enjoy. I will definitely continue to celebrate my birthday here on out.

And to everybody who was able to make it or wish me a happy birthday, and thus made my birthday this year extra special.

things going well

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 05:36:30 GMT

The presentation for ECON 205B actually went very well. I think our group was one of the best prepared overall and the most polished, myself included. My parents have had us do Toastmaster-style talks here and there, and as much as I hated them, it certainly helped me to the point where I can deal with public speaking okay. I was still quite nervous, and I didn't prepare my part as much as I would've liked (yes, due to last night), but apparently it didn't really show.

The other bit of good news is that my connection/informant from within the Cato Institute (via FEE) tells me that my application and references has made a really good impression! They actually didn't ask for references, but I assume this just means Prof. Hummel did put in a good word for me. w00t!

And the refinancing closed today. So... if I really want to, I could probably quit the job now. But I think maybe I'll just hang on for a while more for now.

Other things seem to be going pretty well too, but I won't talk about that. ;)

And now it's SPRING BREAK!!! But I have to work tomorrow. D'oh!