Yet Another Stupid Blog

What I learned filing taxes in 2010 or How I learned to stop hating taxes and love saving money!

2010-02-16T16:33:00.000-08:00

You start with your income including taxes (gross income; because taxes taken out by paycheck are just an estimate of your taxes) and adjust it based on things that the IRS doesn't consider income (including some things they call deductions) to get your adjusted gross income.

Then you choose between taking the standard deduction ($5700) or itemizing your deductions. Deductions are things that you "shouldn't have to pay taxes on" like taxes or interest. For simplicity the IRS gives you the option to take the standard deduction, that way you don't have to keep tons of paperwork, and there's a lot less auditing.

Then you take an exemption which is essentially an additional $3650 standard deduction for each person whose finances you're responsible for, including your own.

Based on this, you calculate your tax.

Now you subtract any Tax Credits, which are are financial incentives to do certain things, like taking care of your kids or preparing for retirement. They can be refundable or not. Non-refundable tax credits reduce the amount you need to pay in taxes dollar for dollar. Like if you paid $200 for school fees that qualify for the tax credit, that's $200 less that you need to pay in taxes (unlike a deduction which reduces what can be taxed, tax credits reduce taxes you pay).

Before considering you for a refund, report the amount of money you made that you paid no taxes on and add this to your tax.
Now sum any Payments. Refundable tax credits are one type of tax Payment that the IRS considers paying you, if you don't owe them taxes. Refundable tax credits are things that the government is trying to encourage so much, it will actually pay you money to do them. Payments also includes previous taxes paid that were not owed.

Finally, subtract payments from your tax. Positive: you owe; Negative: you're owed.

In summary, you take your nominal (or gross) income, adjust it to reflect things the government doesn't consider income, deduct from that income things that the government doesn't think should be taxed (including an exemption for the basic cost of living of each individual you care for including yourself), and then calculate your tax based on that income figure (your adjusted, deducted, and exempted income). Now subtract from that tax any non-refundable tax credits and add taxes for any income that was not taxed. Now subtract any payments that you would be due (including refundable tax credits or previous payments made to the IRS for this tax period). If you have a negative number that's how much the IRS owes you. If you have a positive number, that's how much taxes you owe the IRS.

I'm finally giving up on the climate change argument

2010-02-15T01:34:00.000-08:00

Unfortunately, I am unwilling to dedicate my life (or several years of full-time study) to understanding climate science. And I cannot try to disprove the scientific consensus on climate change. However, the existence of scientific consensus does not mean that there are not legitimate scientists with valid and scientific beefs with the mainstream consensus on climate change and that comparing them to holocaust deniers (ie neo-Nazis) is neither productive, nor fair to those who genuinely seek the truth on the matter; nor is much of the popular debate surrounding climate change.

Popular proponents of the mainstream consensus on climate change are just as ridiculous, biased, and uneducated on the subject matter as those against it, however, because they agree with the scientific consensus, their lack of education is somehow OK. Further, because of the lack of thorough understanding by popular proponents of the mainstream consensus who loudly voice their ideas, easy targets are made for those who wish to criticize the mainstream theory.

Finally, regardless of the mainstream climate predictions many things are true (that we should agree on and legislate solutions to before we even engage in a popular debate on climate change) including:
-the climate has always changed and will always change, as a nation and as a species, we need to prepare for those changes
-there is a limited supply of fossil fuels and our distribution system grossly undervalues them. Blowing our limited supply of fossil fuels on mundane activities like daily commutes in single passenger vehicles and disposable grocery bags is reflective of our out of whack valuation system and a travesty
-emissions of many kinds are demonstrably harmful to human health and disruptive to environmental services, while we have a clean air act in the US, 1/3 of the pollution in LA comes from China. We need to develop a framework for dealing with international air pollution broadly, and we can then deal with Greenhouse Gas emissions in that same framework
-Cap and trade is special interest non-sense in the way it has been proposed for the US. The reason being is that it favors current polluters through grandfathering. A more appropriate solution is pollution credit auctions wherein rather than giving valuable pollution credits to polluters, the federal government caps emissions at a certain level and sells them to the highest bidder. This creates a huge influx of government revenue (rather than giving that revenue to polluters), gives no preference to past polluters and instead lets the market decide who needs to pollute most for the maximum benefit to society. Further, though US legislation will change the cost structure for US economic activity (including production), it will not change those costs for other countries, nor will it change the demand curve in the short-term. So the US will sacrifice economic competitiveness and not necessarily make a significant (let alone cost-effective) change in total greenhouse gas emissions. Given this situation, an appropriate legislative solution would be to put a more robust law on the books (than would be possible in with unilateral* action) that only goes into effect once all G8+5 nations put laws on the books that satisfy certain benchmarks as certified by the state department and the attorney general (or congressional action). By putting a law on the books that commits the US to action but requires a similar commitment from the most polluting other countries

*I know that the US is not the first nation to take action, but the current law that is proposed is not within a context of concerted global action, but rather intended as an act of global leadership. As a country that is already struggling with a trade-deficit, reductions in production output that is not part of a simultaneously global reduction is dangerous economically.

The Idea of Race

2008-07-18T14:37:00.000-07:00

Race is a biological term, a biological idea. A race of a species is a group within that species that has some set of characteristics that distinguish it from other group(s) within that species. A race (or subspecies, variety, cultivar, breed or other such distinction) simply means that there is enough variation for humans to see it as worth noting and reliably different at least in some sense.

At some point in time, some human noticed the usefulness of the term race in describing differences among all types of species besides Homo sapiens and then decided to include Homo sapiens among the types of species that could be known to have races. After all, no one will disagree that there are biologically significant differences between groups of Humans and that groups of people can be formed out of individuals within the global population that share these biologically significant differences.

This, of course, is a social construction. It is a human fabricated idea that divides the universe into more manageable chunks. These smaller and more manageable chunks make the process of choice and thought easier, but are prone to making errors, particularly along the margins of the chunks. For example, consider the distinctive curliness of the hair of Native Africans. Certainly not every single curl is the same width, and certainly the average width of curls varies from head to head. So any descriptive simplification regarding these distinctive curls will inherently not accurately describe those Native Africans with larger width curls or smaller width curls. Duh!

The fact that race is a social construction is not something to debate, it is not an argument to be won, it is a fact. The greater and more difficult question is whether that social construction is useful. While we ponder this question, if you don't find it useful, don't use it. If you find it useful, go ahead. However to presume that because race is a social construction that it is an immoral, offensive, or logically invalid idea, is not logically founded. If you disagree and have logically valid reasons for doing so, I'd love to hear them.

2007-03-17T19:36:00.000-07:00

We the people of the former USA, in order to improve our union do hereby enact this constitution. We acknowledge that it won't last forever but that it is another draft on top of the one that the "founding fathers" made.

Our government will be composed of a set of commitments that we make as a society and the mechanisms that we will make to uphold those commitments and to make new commitments.

We are committed to:

1. Generally allowing every individual to do as they please, so long as that action does not interfere with the desired actions of others. In situations where the desires of one overlaps with the desires of another;

2. Maintaining a set of laws, guidelines, and mechanisms that maintain speedy and fair decision-making and the binding mediation of conflict.

3. Listening to the pleas and the desires of the marginalized in our society even if we don't believe we can address their concerns. Further, making a good-faith effort to address their concerns and finding win-win solutions.

4. Allowing every individual a chance and access to the opportunities that everyone else has, which includes;

5. Empowering disempowered groups.

6. Generally staying out of the business of other countries unless explicitly asked to. If there are currently in place means of preventing that asking from taking place, and we have reason to believe that we would be asked if those means were not in place, we can intervene but only by removing, circumventing, or disabling those means. Our actions in other countries should only be what we are asked to do. In the case of allies or national friendships, lots of activity ought to be maintained as long as it continues to provide net benefit to both societies.

7. Being responsible for our actions as a nation and the consequences of our actions including: acknowledging past and current wrongs, thoroughly examining our own actions for negative consequences to others, and righting our wrongs to the best of our ability.

8. Maintaining a sense of humor for cryin' out loud! :).

9. Allowing for flexibility in our legal system and the understanding that it has limitations and may at times contradict itself. At times when our laws contradict each other, the most important principle to take into account is the spirits of our laws especially as they relate to these commitments.
10. Allowing for the modification of these commitments over a long period of time, but preventing them from being modified on a whim.
11. Trusting in our system and lodging complaints and seeking routes within our system to make change rather than violent means.
12. Maintaining transparency and the free-flow of information and ideas from, through, and throughout government and society.

there is no such thing as a linear relationship

2007-03-17T19:25:00.000-07:00

Linear relationships only exist as simplifications of non-linear relationships or simplifications of portions of non-linear relationships. Even our own representations of lines themselves are in fact non-linear. however, thinking of things in terms of lines is helpful. Apparently it's useful to mathematicians, so lets leave them with their lines. But in general we come into problems when we try to apply linear models to anything in reality because nothing is linear. One possibility for a truly completely strait line is the edge of a crystal. but who's to say that the atoms line up exactly, and further, the edges of an atom are not definite but flexible, a line is not flexible, nor rigid, it is imaginary and only exists as a tool that can be used properly or improperly in explaining or simplifying the universe.

why should you care and what new information is this:
Well, in economics and in any quantifiable study graphs are usually employed to represent the data visually. Students are taught from a young age the idea of lines and that definition is regularly redefined for them. In the context of graphs, lines are no longer used but curves are substituted. Unfortunately, similar definitions of lines remain on curves, such as zero width. Because of this simplistic model of reality we have to employ cumbersome and outmoded tools such as error bars. Whenever a simplification is to take place, it is important that the students know that such simplification is taking place and that they see the limits of the lens you've given them rather than believing the image they currently see is the be all and end all description of reality.

Barack Obama

2007-02-09T00:01:00.000-08:00

Judge people by the content of their character and not the color of their skin.

There is a lot of hype about Barack Obama because of the belief that he might be "electable" and that he's "black". He might be the first "black" president.

There was this woman on the Colbert report who argued that Barack Obama is in fact not black because part of what black means is part of the post-slave culture of African Americans.

I think at some point we need to stop trying to boil down the human experience to anything but an individual experience and a community experience. Labels and categories won't ever truly work, except to teach the lesson of individualized experience. Now I'm not saying that we don't have things in common as humans or that there aren't similarities among humans, but humans don't belong to definitive categories usually. Someone who identifies themselves as a christian, may in a different mood or frame of mind more identify with being a woman perhaps despite having a penis.

We need to acknowledge the experiences that have taken place over the course of history, consider those experiences when deciding what to plan for the future and what to do in the present, but we must not dwell on what has taken place in the past so much that it defines the present.

One of Barack Obama's many hats is that of a politician. As such, I think he couldn't be happier than to ride the wave of sympathy from a culture he doesn't belong to.

I'm not against the notion of a dark-skinned person being president, I'm against the notion that the color of one's skin defines their experience as human and/or betters or worsens their ability to be president necessarily. There are many light-skinned people who identify much more with a "black" experience than many dark-skinned people. But what does it matter? Do you get it? We are talking about his skin color or his cultural experience!!! Try to discuss a bold initiative he's proposed. Try to discuss what he's going to do to improve the situation in the poor neighborhoods of our big cities. Try to discuss his ideas. Try to discuss the ideas of any candidate. Try to discuss anything beyond the labels of liberal and conservative or wacko or bible-thumper. Try if you can to move beyond the labels toward improving the level of happiness in our society.

How hot is my stove?

2007-01-03T20:24:00.000-08:00

I search online led nowhere so I decided to create the content myself. I found a rough estimate of the temperature of the surface of a scratched teflon pan using the smoking point of two fats, butter and refined canola oil (325 and 425 respectively).

Big burner|Small burner
325 1 min | 1 min
425 2 min | 2 min

It seems the size of the flame didn't matter all that much. Also important to note, the small burner was tested second and retained heat from the first test even though it soaked in the sink with cold water in it for 2 minutes.

Invalid Assumptions in Macroeconomic Theory

2006-12-26T05:36:00.000-08:00

Macroeconomic theory in our country is very much centered on 2 false premises:
Wants are infinite and resources are scarce;
"Consuming" goods and services brings satisfaction.

Macroeconomic theorists have a greater obligation than many think to be meticulous and open minded because an incorrect model on their part can cause a depression in the world that lives beyond charts and graphs that they might only rarely interact with.

To say that wants are infinite is to express a sentiment of an immature creature. Wants are infinite in our world only if resources are infinitesimal. This is extreme and inaccurate. In fact our resources can meet the needs of 6 Billion people (though, because of inequities of distribution, which these assumptions enforce, the needs of many go unmet).

Consuming goods doesn't necessarily bring one happiness, satisfaction, or utility. While this is somewhat addressed through the idea of marginal utility, this concept doesn't have a macroeconomic counterpart, ie marginal utility from aggregate consumption is assumed to never reach zero and certainly never dip into the negative. More consumption is always better it is assumed because, of course, no one would continue consuming when it is not in their best interests to do so. But that is clearly not true. Heroine addicts continue consuming all the time. Imagine what a heroine marginal utility curve would look like... Similarly if we examine the goods and services we "consume" we would be missing the picture if we did not see the addictive parts. For example, mobsters offer protection from themselves. This is inherently addictive and parasitic. What about a less extreme example? Cigarettes. Legal, no crime involved save for false advertising perhaps. What about something a little closer to home for non-smokers? Imagine being told that you will be happier and healthier if you buy a certain product. Imagine being told your parents love you more if they buy you a certain product. Imagine a productivity tool that costs more to produce and maintain than it returns in productivity and has hidden costs. We live in a world more complicated than guns and butter.

And finally, while those assumptions worked in a simple hypothetical world, the application of those models of reality is a creative process and not merely a flawed descriptive one. When we conjecture "wants are infinite" we don't just conjecture, we tell a story; a story people generations from now will hear and may believe as fact. We teach students that they are greedy first, wonder them with mathematics, and as our final nudge leave our posts in cookie-cutter positions for them to fill as researching but uncritical pawns.

Imagine a teaching style where criticism is encouraged. Imagine a teaching style where assumptions are considered and analyzed and a critical essay is worth more than a blog post.

SdrawKcab!!!

2006-02-08T20:32:00.000-08:00

While not doing homework, I came up with the idea for a restauraunt in which everything is backwards. The entrance is in the alley and the dumpster is on the sidewalk (it would be moved into the alley for the trash day).
When you open the door, a lady waves good-bye and says have a nice day. And then asks "Cash Credit or Check?". She then asks you if you enjoyed your meal, and based on how much food you want, you tell her "Full" if you want a lot, "Satisfied" if you want a little, and "Starving!" if you don't want very much. Each amount would be a flat fee, and you don't get to choose your food. (now would be the time to discuss any food preferences, vegetarian, salty, protien, no carb, low-fat, etc)
You are brought to a table with dirty dishes on it which are replaced with desert, then an entree, a salad, and finally some starters, that weren't chosen by you, along with clean silverware.
You are then handed a menu items we are thinking of stocking, as well as items we currently stock. You order to show your preferences on what things you would like served. Order a la Carte to make suggestions.

Finally, as you walk out, the lady asks how she may help you.
Along with lots of other backwards-themed items (as well as embarrassing costumes for the help), this could make for a potentially profitable tourist restaurant.

So tired of hippie liberalism

2006-02-08T01:47:00.000-08:00

Don't get me wrong, I eat organic, I wear birkenstock's, and I live in a commune, but certain things that hippies do piss me off beyond belief. The biggest one at Santa Cruz is their criticism of the UC. Now, I don't like writing checks to the Regents any more than the next guy. I don't think they're great people. I don't even think they have good intentions per se. All I'm saying is that hippie liberalist ideas about the UC are off-base in well... let me count the ways:
Hippie/liberal myths and why they're wrong:
1. The UC mistreats its workers:
Employers that mistreat workers have high turnover rates. Have you seen any new bus drivers? Don't those dining hall workers look eerily familiar? Now, I can't cite statistics, because quite frankly, I don't know the turnover rate. But I hear a lot about people who have been around for a long time and I don't hear a lot about worker shortages. If wages weren't in alignment with going wages, people would leave to other jobs. Further, if the UC workers were skilled enough to do good work at a place that paid better, they would. And if the UC wanted to keep its skilled workforce, it would be forced to raise wages. Basic economics.
2. The UC gives outlandish bonuses while cutting pay to workers and raising tuition:
Usually this is backed up by some sort of statistic. But remember, if that statistic was put out by the University, it wouldn't be trusted, so why trust statistics from people who can't even pass their community studies classes? You should give these statistics at least as much if not vastly more scrutiny. And further, you should understand that statistics when cited (as opposed to reported) are inherently biased as they are cited in the context of an argument. Statistics come in all shapes and sizes, some will show how good UC workers have it in one category, another will show how bad they have it. Hippie liberals will always cite the bad, because they always want to show how bad everyone else is. They want to fight something because they are frustrated and marginalized. Unfortunately for them, they are marginalized because they keep fighting. If only they would stop pacing and look around, they'd find that there isn't any cage holding them in except the ones they create for themselves.
The issue is comparison. How much are UC executives paid compared to others? Not compared to educationless dish-washers. Compared to people who have skills that are in demand, rather than those who inundate our employment system in droves.
3. Students and workers are/can/should be allies:
Worker wages are paid by student fees. An increase in worker wages WILL be paid for by rising student fees. Regardless of what one thinks *could* be used to pay them, for those of us writing the checks, it's really a question of what will be used (our money). While at the strike last year, I asked one of the student "leaders", "Don't you think the student-worker coalition is a little one-sided? I mean, do you really think that workers are gonna show up to a student protest when the regents raise our fees?" He thought they would. And I didn't go, but... not many students did either. I doubt more than 5 staff did. But, I could be wrong.
To add further insult, the "strike" seemed a lot more like a day-off for workers and another opportunity for scenesters to protest. How many staff did you see out there? I didn't see many. Maybe at peak about 100. Even if there were 200, Do you know how many that means didn't show up? Do you know how vastly they were outnumbered by scenesters?
4. We could have money to pay for "all these things" if we didn't give executives bonuses and we cut all "the fat":
If we didn't give executives bonuses, they'd leave. That's what bonuses are for, to motivate employees for good performance and to stay. All other employers do it, why should the UC be exempt from basic principles of economics?
As far as the fat, well Mr Community Studies C- average, what do you recommend? After years of experience blazing, what pipe dreams did you come up with?
"How about cutting nuclear programs?"
Guess what genius, UCSC doesn't have a nuclear physics program. Try finding it. I bet it's on Science hill right? Well, unless uranium is found in keyboards or econ textbooks, you won't find it on science hill. (Try doing a search on the UCSC webpage for "Nuclear" see if you find anything). Besides, expenditures on nuclear programs are not paid for by student fees, nor are they done by staff. If you read news ("The Project" and FRL don't count), you'd know that the UC recently won a bid (in cooperation with lockheed martin) to run the atomic labs. The key word is "won". The UC desperately wanted that *funding*. Nuclear research is *funded* by grant money. It's written in the California constitution that our fees can't go to anything besides paying for costs directly incurred to the university as a result of our enrollment and participation.
"Well, how about all those new buildings they're building, they must have money!"
Well, a) of course they have money, it's the most prestigious public university in the united states; b) Big one-time expenditures are often funded with loans, so they probably didn't pay cash. For example, college eight is still paying off their mortgage. c) Those new buildings are made to house more students, which dilutes our education to make it relatively cheaper. Of course, we won't see tuition cuts ever, but our tuition will rise less quickly because of expanding enrollment.
"I heard Denise Denton spent $30,000 for a place to walk her dog"
She probably did. Who cares? $30,000 does not even register on UCSC's finances.
"Blah blah blah blah blah"
Yep, that's what you sound like.

See, the UC system is run by people who were hired because of their *experience*. In time, you will gain experience. In time, (hopefully) you will see the mistakes in your logic and the assumptions that skewed it. In time you will find, that, being angry and miserable about things you can't change and won't ever change, just sucks. It sucks out your life energy to do things that would actually benefit something, like planting a garden, restoring habitat, investing in yourself, etc.

So, in closing, yes, the UC system is flawed. Academia has a bad reputation for not raising wages in line with everybody else and infation, and it may change over time. But getting angry and going to protests won't help you or anyone else. You'll just lose the chance to do all sorts of things, like graduate.

Individial well-being

2006-02-04T14:33:00.000-08:00

If there are economic externalities such that an individual persuing their own economic interests will have unconsensual negative impacts on someone elses economic interests, it seems that if one were to give up economic persuits in their own right and focus on individual well-being that there would be well-being externalities. But, this may not be the case because one person having well-being does not detract from another person's well-being, whereas my having of one dollar prevents someone else from having it. But, that has nothing to do with anything. If I seek personal well-being (whatever the fuck that means) then won't I have negative impacts on other people based on what I'm doing? Yes. The hunt of any deer will tread on some grass. However, grass grows back, and so long as I'm not 4-wheeling it through other people's lives, I think that overall it's not a big deal. Especially since I live in this forest and cultivate these friendships such that I care fully and deeply for all it's parts.

70-20-10 rule for Earth Use

2006-01-25T19:56:00.000-08:00

Currently, humans see the earth as entirely a resource created for humans, a set of resources we can use to our hearts content. It is only recently that we have begun to realize that we can overexploit to our detriment. So, any cutbacks we make will have been motivated by the fact that if we don't, humans in general will lose. I propose something a little more drastic. As humans, we can say 20% of the resources on earth belong to us, completely ours, 10% are shared resources with animals, and 70% are dedicated completely to non-human use (this would not be hard to do at all given just how much energy is being expended and consumed by non-humans. However, given the US's incredible agricultural coverage as well as suburban sprawl, land acreage would probably be better off divided 70% human, 20% shared, 10% completely non-human. That is 70% for agriculture and cities, 20% for parks and recreation, 10% non-human natural reserves. Obviously each category of land would be selected to optimize resources; agriculture would select for plains (with wildlife corridors running through), parks and rec would select for mountains, deserts, and coast, and non-human areas would be selected so as to maximize biodiversity and provide for a strong gene pool and population reserviour for the parks and rec areas.

Actually, the 70-20-10ness of this is really irrelevant, I think that what's more important is for us to set a goal as a society of how much consumption of resources and land is both equitable and most utilitarian in terms of long and short-term costs and benefits. Once we set a goal, then we can start setting aside resources and begin the recovery process.

*Google has an 70-20-10 rule (70% of resources go to the core business (search, adwords, adsense) 20% of resources go to related projects (book search, blog search, scholar, local) and 10% go to oddball experiments that don't necessarily provide any foreseeable revenue (picasa, earth, talk).

Voluntary sexual training et al

2006-01-25T19:43:00.000-08:00

We may benefit, as a society from making the choice to provide for some method of voluntary sexual training that is not taboo rather than to relegate the learning of sex to experimentation by children and adolescents.
Also,
Why do we relegate the work of parenting, food preparation, and construction to the least educated and experienced? These are important jobs that require trust.
I guess we do so because we value cheap housing over quality housing. I guess I just don't think that buying crappy housing and food is any better of a long-term investment than selecting for poor parents to bear the brunt of parenting in our society.

Voting is so... 3 centuries ago

2006-01-21T13:28:00.001-08:00

In a "representative democracy" we choose people we trust in our stead to make our decisions since we either would make worse decisions or because we have other concerns. Voting is a very simplistic system, which worked in a simpler society but I think our idea of expressing our needs and wants of government could use some modification.
I propose a more fluid "trust system". Each person is allotted 150 "slots" for people they know best (based on the assumption 150 is the optimal human community size from "Grooming, gossip, and the evolution of language" by Dunbar). They may choose or not choose to fill these however often they want. What person A says about person B will only be counted if both person A and person B have each other on their respective lists, otherwise, the data will be ignored (this is to make sure that people can only assign trust to people they actually know).
Finally, each person is given 10 "trust points" which they can assign in any manner among the (up to) 150 people on their list. This would lead to a maximum of 1500 trust points possibly assigned to one person.
But not all points are created equal. That is, a point from someone with 10 trust points will be worth more than a trust point from someone with none. Also, trust points would provide less and less value as they permeate through the degrees of separation*. Further, person A's trust points assigned to others who trust person A would be discounted when calculating person A's reputation to prevent circles of trust that do not integrate into the broader context (see search engine spam).
This system would work elegantly and could be understood by anyone with a high-school education from the last 15 years (of course, high school education would subsequently be designed with this in mind). For those who cannot understand logarithms or exponential functions, there would be a transitional government pamphlet that would explain it. The more important issue is that it would greatly simplify things for people. All we have to do is:
1. Type/write the full names of some people you know well (150 max).
2. You have ten points, assign them in any way you like among the people on your list, remember, by assigning these points you are voting for people who you think are better suited to make government decisions than you. If you do not think anyone else is better suited, simply assign the points to yourself, or don't assign them at all. Come back as often as you like to change your list or point assignments or even delete your list if you choose.

Results will be tabulated nightly.

In addition, there would be different categories of trust points. For example person A might trust person B to make environmental decisions but not budget decisions and so for each category of decision making deemed useful, a person could assign 10 trust points from each category in addition to the general trust points. And finally, rather than the categories of decision making being enforced from the top down (ie categories of municipal representatives, members of the cabinet), the importance of categories of decision making would be voted on simply through the assigning of points because you can decide on your own what category of trust you would like to assign someone trust points under, including a category that you make up, as long as you have fewer than 11 categories.

*this could be done by a logarithmic scale, or an exponential scale:
[number of points assigned directly to person A]*1^0+[number of points assigned to person A's point assigners excluding person A's points]*1^-1+[number of points assigned to person A's point assigner's point assigner's, excluding person A's points and person A's point assigner's points]*1^-2... etc

dolphin musher

2006-01-21T12:16:00.000-08:00

In the future when fossil fuel resources are scarce we are going to need to find ecologically sustainable ways to do the things we've gotten used to doing as well as adjusting what we do to reflect ecological restrictions (or ecological realities if you want to think about it that way). There are many ways we can do this. For example, artificial technology is both exhaustive of resources we have very little of and not as good at the job as an organic solution would be. Brains can be fed sugars, proteins, and nutrients (quite renewable and perhaps even organicly derived and sustainably made). So, take the brains of many "simple" animals and use them to do simple calculations. Error checking and redundancy will be a cost of this system.
I was also thinking, maybe we could have dolphins drag around our boats. But... maybe that's not such a good idea.

2006-01-10T17:32:00.000-08:00

I've found that if I imagine these 3 phrases being said in my head, I can motivate myself:

"Welcome to Google. Can you start tomorrow?" http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/11/how-i-got-to-google-ch-2-tale-of-t.html

"DO IT NOW!" http://www.stevepavlina.com/articles/do-it-now.htm

"I love you."

Collateral Damage: Problem and Solution

2006-01-10T17:25:00.001-08:00

Imagine a war in which no civilian died. Imagine a war in which only soldiers who had agreed to fight and die for their country fought and died for their country and that innocent bystanders did not fear war any more than they feared a judicious police officer. Such a system would be a vast improvement over ours and would in fact be the ideal system for war to take place. As the ideal it is something we should (all other things held constant) be approaching. Under such a system, war's only cost would be the lives of soldiers who had agreed to lay down their lives and the costs of equipment and ammunition.
Any war or invasion has a purpose. Assuming that purpose is a noble one (such as liberation) it can be likened to flossing. A region that has been under dictatorial control to the detriment of the dictator's subjects will find it has festering problems that may or may not be solved from the inside. When a liberating invasion occurs, the liberating force (or the force that ordered them) purports to believe that an outside force can be an aid, can accelerate the process of liberation, can minimize human suffering, or can cause to occur a liberation that would have never taken place otherwise.
Any military invasion is bound to create collateral damage. In recent wars collateral damage has been a great cost. To illustrate, current estimates of coalition deaths are about 2 000 (http://icasualties.org/oif/) whereas estimates of civilian deaths are about 30 000 (http://iraqbodycount.org/)--some even as high as 100 000 (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7967-2004Oct28.html). These figures don't take into account civilian dismemberment, disability, loss of family members, loss of livelihood, or ay of many more costs of invasion and war. The idea behind a noble war is that such costs would be outweighed by the benefits to all afterward from long-term peace (thus overall less likelyhood of involuntarily getting killed, dismembered, disabled, or losing family from war) and increased freedom (and thus overall less likelyhood of getting killed, dismembered, disabled, losing family members, or losing livelihood from an oppressive government). However, as rational beings we must constantly strive to make strides in minimizing costs and maximizing benefits. Just as the military rewards research into faster tanks, more powerful ammunition, and cheaper equipment, the DoD has an obligation to maximize the unquantitative benefits and minimize the unquantitative costs of war.
In the long-term the damaging costs of war are partly mitigated by a rebuilding of the country being invaded however, in the very short-term during and after the invasion there are medical emergencies that the military has not been assigned nor does it have the resources to accommodate. As a person on either side of the conflict it is my hope that such medical emergencies be accommodated (imagine if your country was oppressive and was being liberated and your arm was blown off, don't you wish the invading force would help you out rather than let you die on the side of the road?).
The most direct way of doing this IMHO is to take into account the cost of civilian casualties in any operation. A simple way of doing this is by calculating the provision of cost of medical care to wounded civilians as if they were domestic soldiers or citizens.
The outcome of this would be that along with any combative invasion force would have to come an emergency medical force capable of salvaging as many lives as possible. A well-supplied and combat-equiped medic corps would follow and accompany the front-line handing off the medical services to a fully-funded red-cross as the front-line moves.

The google robot

2005-11-25T14:17:00.000-08:00

Imagine a consumer technology device that can understand your spoken words (http://labs.google.com/gvs.html), knows what you've looked for in the past (http://google.com/searchhistory) and can use that information to predict what you want in the future (http://www.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=26651), this device knows what you say to other people (talk.google.com), what you write to other people (mail.google.com), knows what you're studying (scholar.google.com), what you're looking at (images.google.com), what your political biases are (news.google.com), knows what you buy and sell (base.google.com, froogle.google.com), what you find entertaining (video.google.com) and knows your circle of friends (contacts gmail, buddy list in gtalk). Further, imagine that this consumer technology device was connected to a faraway server that could make complicated calculations producing a profile of who you are, predicting such things as your income, what products you would buy, what marketing techniques would be most effective in selling you goods or services (backed up with a feedback mechanism based on what ads you clicked and didn't click) and can even make educated guesses about the intent of your words (labs.google.com/sets) and the words you impart on it in the future (http://labs.google.com/suggestfaq.html#q1, http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=6597)

Sometime in the future, google will come out with a consumer technology device. It won't use revolutionary technology, it will use existing technology in a completely new way (like they have now been famous for doing with AJAX). Given that it will need to connect to google's servers, it must have connectivity of some kind. It could be Wi-Fi only (most useful for those people in mountain view (http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/11/wi-fi-in-mountain-view.html) This consumer technology device (maybe not the first one, but eventually) will recognize your voice ()

So... this is awkward...

2005-11-25T14:14:00.000-08:00

OK, so I figured I'd get a blog and start posting stupid ideas on it, that's my first one.

first post

2005-11-25T14:10:00.000-08:00

I win!!!