Adventures in Onionism

Wolves (OK, wolf, singular) almost back in California. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-wolf-oregon-20111225,0,1431381.story TTW interviewed Tim DeChristopher. http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/6598

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/17/science/earth/warming-arctic-permafrost-fuels-climate-change-worries.html Last week I presented research at the Naval Postgraduate school, went to a Brandi Carlile concert, saw a rough cut of a friend's movie about the Hiker Trash on the AT, and went for a great run on Mt. Diablo, which may have been my first real run with actual hills in it since July.

WF: I'm sorry to hear that. May I ask why? Me: Because large banks are evil. WF: May I ask what makes you think that large banks are evil? Me: Because I have a PhD in economics and you tanked the world economy. Not you specifically, but Angelo Mozilo and people like that. I already zeroed out the account so it should be pretty easy. WF: Your account has been closed. Thank you for calling.

Anybody ever written letters to a federal inmate in the US? Did my letter to one bounce because it was coming from Kenya, or because it was greeting card size, not regular letter size?

New post for close friends on the invite-only blog. Thoughts from econs/academics/people who have had a job are encouraged. My last day in Busia is a boring and rainy one. The highlight so far has been vegan white bean pancakes. It's hard to make progress on my personal research when it takes 45 minutes to run one 600,000 observation Poisson regression. I think the finding is going to be that when I look at US military deaths from 1990-2006, there are no interesting effects on recruitment, while they're there and strong if I only use 2001-2006, so maybe war-time deaths are especially important.

My garden in Busia has been a big failure. Gigantic pumpkin, broccoli, and zucchini plants, but none of the fruiting part. (How are you supposed to describe that since these are all vegetables?) Too much rain? Too hot? Crappy soil plus bugs?

Not my personal favorite endurance sport, but I gotta respect it. The article is fairly insightful too-- I like the point about the effort being more inspiring from afar. From The New York Times: Marathon Swimmer Diana Nyad Takes On the Demons of the Sea Why the 62-year-old can't stay out of the water. Despite the jellyfish. http://nyti.ms/uaFXWa

I like what he says about change being unlikely. Seems like we could be cynic-buddies. From The New York Times: CURRENTS: On Sidelines, Candidate Speaks Freely Buddy Roemer, a long shot candidate with little to lose, says American politics is plagued by a "plantation mentality" and that the wealth that built the United States may yet stifle its democracy. http://nyti.ms/swS1Wi

bikes all over the world and is a philosophy prof at Williams. I'm jealous. (OK, I guess I did just win a bike race in Uganda, and I'm a postdoc on a project run by some heavies, so maybe I'm not doing too shittily myself.) http://joecruz.wordpress.com/ [h/t MRB]

The New Pornographers are a band I'm familiar with. http://freecabinporn.com and http://bookshelfporn.com are new to me.

Sorry, I forgot about that one. It was a 4-man race, so no big deal, but very beautiful.

Then I went to Lake Bunyonyi and did some hiking and swimming. Next up, Philadelphia, Monterey, Oakland, and Geneva.

Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel by Rolf Potts "Save what little money you possess to meet basic survival requirements, but spend your time lavishly in order to create the life values that make the fire worth the candle. Dig?" That's actually an Ed Buryn quote, but it was my favorite line of this book. It's a pretty short book, long skipable sections of which are lists of informational websites, but still a decent read. I enjoyed the first half or so, but soon realized that Potts' vagabonding isn't really for me. I do love traveling, and I could see myself never really having a normal career and instead drifting from adventure to two-year job in some crazy place to adventure until I get hit by a car, but exploring new cultures isn't really the type of adventure I most crave--my most desired adventure involves steep granite mountain escarpments and at most one or two other people who I already know. I could go on about ho...

Can anybody find me the full text of David Foster Wallace's 2000 Rolling Stone article "The Weasel, Twelve Monkeys, and the Shrub" online or in a pdf? It's not on RS' website anymore.

D. Freedman, Evaluation Review , December 2006: "Experimental data are often analyzed by fitting regression models and their ilk. As shown in section 10, randomization does not justify such models. Experimental data should therefore be analyzed first by comparing rates or averages, according to the intention-to-treat principle. Only then should models be deployed. It must be emphasized that statistical adjustments to experimental data often depend substantially on assumptions, not just on randomization."

I originally shared this on fb just because the photos were fantastic. Then people pointed out that the dude in photo #3 is my long lost twin. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/11/13/opinion/sunday/20111113_Opinion_Exposures.html?src=me&ref=general#3

On Mitt's plan to privatize Veterans Health: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/14/opinion/krugman-vouchers-for-veterans-and-other-bad-ideas.html I thought this was particularly insightful: "In fact, it's hard to avoid the sense that Republicans are especially eager to dismantle government programs that act as living demonstrations that their ideology is wrong. "

that one of the things I most look forward to about being in the states next month is that I'll be able to pipe into my old department's server and run code at a decent speed?

Have I mentioned this yet? OS Lion is a slow and buggy piece of crap. Don't upgrade. Now that I already did, it's kind of a pain to downgrade because I'm stupid and only have Snow Leopard Time Machine backups in storage in the US. I think my options are to (1) manually back up everything I need, wipe the drive, install Snow Leopard, and hope that all the software, photos, and music all function when I'm done (2) wait until next month, manually back up all the photos I've taken in the last several months, restore a Snow Leopard Time Machine back-up from July, and add the new photos back (3) move my job market paper research to my PC, learn to use R instead of Matlab (R's free and I presently only have Matlab on the mac), and basically just put the Mac to rest, or (4) scream, throw the mac against the wall, and go for a run. UPDATE: I went with option #1. I think I lost all my Firefox bookmarks, notes in Stickies, and lots of other app-specific preferences. What f...

From Cormac McCarthy. So much in so few words. I'm going to tell you right now cousin, when the mood comes on you for a fat woman they just wont nothing else satisfy. Parham yonder actually claimed that a man ought not to date anything he couldn't lift. Said what if the house caught fire. Or the barn. Or the barn. There was a old waddy told me one time he never knowed a woman raised on indoor plumbin to ever turn out worth a damn. I mean if you were lookin for somebody to give a shit I can tell you right now it sure as hell wasnt Gene. This world was never made for him. He'd outlived it before he could walk. Get married. Hell. He couldnt even stand to wear lace-up shoes. Damn straight. I think number two's my favorite.

This weekend is a chill one--sitting under the gazebo, napping, washing the dog, working on retooling my job market paper for a attempt at publication and a presentation in Monterey next month, reading Cormac McCarthy and articles on climate justice, and writing a letter to the imprisoned subject of said articles. Here's a recent one of the articles from Outside-- http://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/nature/The-Trials-of-Bidder-70.html Makes you want to get arrested for a good cause, huh? I also recently watched the documentary If a Tree Falls , about the Environmental Liberation Front arson and so called "eco-terrorism" of the 1990's, which is definitely worth watching. It, and the Tim DeChristopher stuff, brings up interesting issues about the validity of courts weighing political motives in crimes, the definition of terrorism, and whether we should treat terrorism just like any other crime. I agree with one of the law enforcement agencies who was invo...

Or maybe just a hold until after the election? http://www.grist.org/oil/2011-11-10-we-won-a-temporary-victory-on-the-keystone-pipeline-but-the-figh

Motorcycling is probably the greatest means of transportation since walking, running, hiking, snowshoeing, skiing, and bicycling. I rode to Lake Baringo this weekend and saw some hippos and crocs. The section from Busia to Eldoret wasn't amazing (and Eldoret traffic was horrible), but crossing the Kerio Valley from Iten to Kabarnet was fabulous. I left the house around 10 on Saturday and made it there at 5, but I left a little later on Sunday, took a different route, and spent the night in Kakamega, where I'll be living next year. I bought some roadside honey and tamarinds, I got a flat tire that cost me $1 and 10 minutes to have fixed, and I had a good time. Taking pictures from a motorcycle would be instant death while moving, and while stopped is instant over-heating in my riding gear, but I suffered just for you. Here you go.  

F--- this map , I'm rounding up to 700km. Also, the idea that you could go one way in 5 hours is total BS. That's not to say it wasn't awesome. Pictures soon.

If you do your banking with WF, Chase, BoA, or Citi (or perhaps just anyone on this list ), you should seriously move your money. I was with WF, and started the moving process to a credit union yesterday. Credit Unions are non-profit and member owned, and other non-profits or co-ops I'm a part of (REI, the PCTA) haven't f--ked the world economy, so I think it's a pretty good model. Your money's insured by the NCUSIF and backed by the full faith and credit of the US government, so there's not much to worry about, and most have agreements with tons of other CU's so you won't get the shaft on ATM fees. Look in your area: http://moveyourmoneyproject.org/ http://banxodus.org/

So here's what I've been thinking about for the last several days: constrained optimization in Matlab. I'm trying to find the optimal study sample size by maximizing the sum of several power calculations subject to a budget constraint. I haven't used Matlab in 7 years, but I've figured out the basics. The syntax isn't a problem, but the finer parts of the fmincon function are troubling. I get errors when the power is basically 1 (the power formula involves the Normal CDF). I assume that's because corner behavior is messed up. Also, what I really want to do is constrain the solutions to the set of integers, but I don't think the numerical maximization methods can handle that--I'd have to do a grid search, but if I just plain search over all the possibilities of 7 different treatment arm sizes, I think I have around 2 x 10^12 comparisons to make, which I assume will take the processor a very long time. I'm riding my motorcycle to Lake Baringo tom...

Google, I really liked shared items. Sucks to you for forcing me to use your facebook competitor. Also sucks to you for the reader and gmail redesign. (Readers, if it hasn't happened to you yet, it will.) How bad do they think my eyesight is that I need all this space between lines? UPDATE:OK, you can easily change the spacing between lines. Still, I dislike the wordless icons at the top and menus that come and go.

Krugman (and Yglesias and Brian Beutler at TPM) are especially on point on this subject. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/31/opinion/bombs-bridges-and-jobs.html

I swear I already sent this. Oh well. Here it is again, from the middle of my 5 hour motorcycle ride on Saturday.

I finally put my bicycle back together. Replaced rear brake and derailleur cables and housings, and everything seems to be OK. All that's left is to buy some wire cutters and snip off the extra cable length, as my big Leatherman only serves to crimp and fray it. Upcoming plans that might interest you: Motorcycle ride to Lake Baringo next weekend, supposedly beautiful and full of crocs and hippos. Then Nov. 19 and 20 there's a mountain bike race at Sipi Falls, a beautiful set of 3 falls on the Ugandan western slopes of Mt. Elgon. Then the weekend of the 26th I'm headed with friends to track gorillas in Bwindi Impenetrable Forest in Uganda, with a day at Lake Bunyonyi after. And basically a week after that I head back to the US for 3 weeks. Philly for meetings, NYC briefly, a day in Monterey to present a paper, then 10 days or so in Oakland. I'd like to leave the US around the 25th so as to benefit from the foreign earned income tax exclusion (if you live outside the US...

1/4 of Yale grads become consultants or financiers. http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2011/sep/30/even-artichokes-have-doubts/

Now that I warmed your heart with some animal photos, who's up for some good old fashioned cynicism? You know I am. So much so that at lunch I rattled off my favorite talking points: (1) life is meaningless, (2) all organizations are corrupt, (3) even if development worked, higher GDP doesn't make people any happier, so what's the point? To get a little more specific, the government is trying to weaken the FOIA. https://www.propublica.org/article/government-could-hide-existence-of-records-under-foia-rule-proposal And Mississippi wants to send women and doctors to jail for using IUD's. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/26/us/politics/personhood-amendments-would-ban-nearly-all-abortions.html Oh, and there's this: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/10/25/BAUB1LLTC9.DTL Looking forward to a long motorcycle ride this weekend.