Author: Isaac

Categories
economics

All of our money will leave!!!

This is a post I read on an audio forum and my response. He was essentially trying to say that inexpensive audio gear is pernicious…

Cheaper is better? Not if you are exporting your dollars for something of temporary value.

When we import stuff and exchange hard currency for it, we are exporting dollars in exchange for that stuff. The dollars leave our shores forever, at least in a large proportion. We as a country lose that net wealth.

To which I responded:

Ah, but you can’t listen to currency, nor can you eat it or clothe yourself with it. You’ve made the mistake of confusing money with wealth. Wealth is determined by what you can do or purchase, not by how many pieces of paper you have. You do understand that if we send money somewhere else and they do nothing with it, that would mean that they traded an amplifier for pieces of paper or electronic digits… What a deal! Unfortunately for us, they do indeed use that money, they expect something back. Currency is debt. Whoever holds it is entitled to goods or services. The Chinese surely cash in on those IOU’s. Here in the US, that has mostly taken the form of buying our debt but there has also been quite a bit of bond, stock, and other investment over here as well. Believe it or not, they have even imported some American stuff too. They have to do something with those dollars…

Currency trading aside, the key thing to remember is that anything that makes the stuff we buy less expensive increases our wealth. We are able to buy more (or do more, make more, etc) for the same amount of money. That is the definition of an increase in wealth. It could be caused by better machinery, technology, or less expensive labor, the result is the same. We get richer as costs go down. Focusing on money instead of wealth will lead to ideas like it is better to pay more for the things we want, or at least that less expensive things are somehow hurting us.

As always, Bastiat’s insights are still relevant. I highly recommend his essay The Balance of Trade.

The same arguments have been floating around for hundreds of years, they are just as wrong now as they were then.

Categories
odds and ends

Shaving

I got my new razor in today. It’s a Parker safety razor using double sided razor blades. I had decided to go this route because of my dissatisfaction with the currently available multi bladed contraptions. Not only do they cost a fortune, they don’t shave all that well.

I talked about my initial thoughts and the use of a real shaving soap here. Today it was go day on the razor. It’s a little humbling to relearn something that you’ve been doing forever. It turns out that there are some significant differences between using a safety razor and a modern cartridge razor. First of all, the safety razor doesn’t pivot, so you have to manually adjust the angle of the blade on your skin. Luckily, the blade provides, shall we say, instant feedback on how well you are doing. It gets kind of tricky along those curvy areas around the chin and on the neck. The other thing is that you shouldn’t press the blade into your skin like we all do with the new razors. Thank God I read that before I started!

How’d it turn out? Pretty damn well if I say so myself. I didn’t cut myself at all! Of course, that was probably the longest shave ever. The first time I learned to shave, I didn’t have nearly as much to shave… This blade clearly gives me a much closer shave than the Mach 3 I’ve left behind, and this was a 15 cent blade! I’ll speed up the more I use it, so far I’m very happy with the purchase. For about $35, I have gotten myself a razor and enough blade to last over a year…

One of the better links I’ve seen for shaving like this is here. You ladies can take advantage of this too of course. My face feels like a girl’s!

Categories
culture science

Science is more than this, and less

People often time rely on “science” when they look for something to base their opinions on. The trouble is that frequently there is very little actual science involved. Sure, logic is involved, as is the degree to which it makes sense, but that isn’t science.

What defines science from all of the other ways of forming opinions is the scientific method. In other words, you form a question, build a hypothesis around the answer you think of, and then you TEST THAT HYPOTHESIS. If you’ve been reading this blog long enough, you know this is a reoccurring complaint I have with all of the “CO2 causing global warming” mess. There isn’t anything to test, therefore it isn’t science. I won’t go over all that again here, but I will add that there are some other things that have come under this concern of mine that until now I haven’t though of like that before.

It isn’t enough to gather data and “make sense” when it comes to the scientific method. Data is harder to interpret than we would like it to be, and “making sense” isn’t sufficient, hell, it isn’t even necessary for science. Take a look at quantum mechanics as done under the Copenhagen interpretation for science that doesn’t male sense…

It isn’t just global warming that suffers from this problem. I’m sure it wouldn’t surprise anyone if I told you that macroeconomics suffers the same fate, but for different reasons. There are plenty of testable hypotheses (unlike global warming) in macroeconomics, but there aren’t any ways of carrying out the tests. And like anthropologic global warming, arguments in macroeconomics amounts to sound and fury signifying nothing. Each “side” can point to a theoretical framework and data to back up it’s argument. But nothing is ever resolved because the arguments can’t be put to the test.

That’s not science, no matter how much the adherents yell about it. They are arguing beliefs, not science. Another realm that we see this is the creationism vs. evolution debate. It certainly looks like a faith vs. science argument at first blush, but i don’t think it’s that cut and dried. Certainly, creationists don’t make too much sense to a lot of people, but before you say that’s because Darwin has science on his side think about it. Does he? Really? Is the hypothesis that new species are created through natural selection ever been witnessed in action? Is there a way to test it? I’ve wracked my brain but I can’t think of a way to test it. That makes it belief and outside the realm of the scientific method. I’m not saying that it’s false, I certainly can’t come up with a more compelling idea, but I am saying that we should recognize it for what it is.

You might say that requiring the use of the scientific method is too limiting for science. I disagree. If science is to have any real meaning, it must be held to rigorous standards. The trick is that there are few things as straight foreword as Newton’s third law of motion, or even the General theory of relativity. Most things in our life are messy, complicated, and difficult to sort out. In short, they don’t lend themselves to the scientific method.

There’s nothing wrong in believing in something that can’t be proven scientifically, but please remember what that is. It is faith, not science. I wish more people realized that…

Categories
Uncategorized

Great TV to listen to

As I’m sure you know, I am a fan of a show called Doctor Who. It has been on TV more or less since the mid 60’s so there’s a lot for the dedicated fan to absorb. As much as I enjoy the show, I think I enjoy the audio plays more.

Yes yes, I know, they aren’t “canonical” in the sense that they don’t fit into the show’s continuity, but both Big Finish and Broken Sea are making things that are worth listening to. The Big Finish productions have an edge since they get a lot of the original actors to play their parts in the audio dramas. Of course, they also cost money, unlike the Broken Sea productions. Broken Sea looks like it’s a real labor of love. In addition to Doctor Who, they also do fan fiction based on some other series like Battlestar Galactica, Planet of the Apes, and Logan’s Run(!).

So they are done well, and they are a lot of fun. Some are done well enough that I have false memories of watching them! This may come across as a bit heretical to die hard Who fans, but if your only experience of the Doctor Who series is the “new” one that started in 2001, you might want to stick with these audio plays instead of delving into the archives of the TV show. Let’s face it, a lot, arguably most, of the older shows really weren’t all that good. Even supposed “classics” like “The Pirate Planet” really suffer in comparison to the quality of the newer shows. It isn’t just the effects either, although those are uniformly laughable. The quality of the acting is pretty bad, and the writing varies from decent to stunningly bad. It has it’s own charm, in an older, BBC kind of way, and die hard fans will want to experience all of the enemies that the Doc has faced throughout the years. If you enjoy the current series and want more enjoyable stories, the audio plays are the way to go. Check them out!

Categories
culture freedom

Prop 8

OK, now that prop 8 has been upheld, there is more legal stuff being brought to bear to overturn it again. failing that, people are promising to bring it to another vote as early as next year.

This is crazy. Regardless of which way this goes, about half the population of CA will fight it. At what point do people say enough?

An obvious solution is for the state of California to say, “We don’t care who you marry, don’t talk to us about marriage!” Why people feel the need to have the state bless their union I’ll never understand. All of the benefits and privileges that are associated with marriage can either be gotten rid of, or managed some other way. We don’t have to have all of this wailing and gnashing of teeth, people could be getting on with their lives if they would stop turning to the wrong entity for validation. Sheesh….

Categories
culture freedom

Memorial day

I was watching a baseball game on sunday night when the announcer reminded us to remember the people that have voluntarily put their life in danger for their country. A fair number of them never came home, and there’s no doubt that we owe them a great deal.

On this memorial day, and I think on all memorial days from now on, I want to especially remember the people that died in conflicts that they did not want to be a part of. Many people fought only because they didn’t want to go to jail. They didn’t care about falling dominos, a UN resolution, or any other reason the politicos gave them for killing other people and getting shot at.

It’s one thing to die for something you believe in, it’s quite a different matter to die for something that you don’t care about. A lot of soldiers died that way, between a rock and the draft.

In addition to remembering the bravery of the soldiers that fought and died for us, we should also remember the additional burden of the ones that were forced into dying for us. Memorial day should be a day to remember bravery, but it should mostly be a remembrance of sacrifice.

Categories
culture

Favorite sentence of the week

With all of the talk about the credit card stuff going on on DC, this sentence from a podcast I was listening to really stood out.

“Everyone thinks that credit is good but debt is bad.”

It’s odd how we think differently about credit when we use it as opposed to when we don’t.

Categories
odds and ends

I have registered!

After a little cajoling from a friend of mine, I have registered to take the test that is required to get through the teaching program. Next is to get official transcripts in fro all of the schools I’ve been to. And then the tuition (which is thankfully not all that much) and then the course work. I’ll feel good about getting on with my professional life a little later in the process…

Categories
medical

The gym is my friend

Wow, going to the gym really makes a big difference for me. One thing that my diagnosis does for me is that it explains how exercise doesn’t have the same effect on me as everyone else. everyone always says, “I love working out, I feel so energized afterwards.” I felt like crap, like my soul is leaking out of me. Exercising really take it out of me, I don’t feel like doing much of anything for an hour or two afterwards. I might even fall asleep.

So it’s tempting for me to not go, it really is. Here’s the problem, when I don’t go, I pay the price. I have found out that if I don’t go for a couple of days, I get real stiff, the spasticity in my legs is pretty bad. Still no pain, but wow, they lock up good. If I go to the gym, I’m much looser. Of course, that first day back is pretty rough. Stretching doesn’t seem to help all that much, but the activity does.

I’d like to say that I’ve found this out with a controlled scientific approach, but I can’t. It’s mostly about how lazy I get. But it truly is pay now or pay later. I hope I can maintain this through the heat of summer because people with MS typically don’t do well with the heat. AC and an exercise bike are all I need to stay on course, and I suppose a little reminder from my legs once in a while would help too.

Categories
economics politics

What? Why didn’t he think about this before?

I really can’t believe Obama said this…

“We can’t keep on just borrowing from China,” Obama said at a town-hall meeting in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, outside Albuquerque. “We have to pay interest on that debt, and that means we are mortgaging our children’s future with more and more debt.”

Umm, why didn’t you think of that before pushing through that so called stimulus and all of those bailouts? I would use a well known saying involving a pot and kettle, but I don’t want to be accused of being a racist. Where does he think all this debt came from? And more importantly, why didn’t he worry about this BEFORE taking on all of that debt? Unbelievable…