Posts from ‘April, 2009’

So, the San Jose Sharks just got bounced out of the playoffs in the first round, to the #8 seed Ducks, after compiling the best regular season record of any team in the NHL. I think that this poor performance was specifically a matchup issue; during six or seven games in the regular season, the [...]

Robin Hanson summarizes the literature, in case you weren’t convinced: Decades of research on financial markets have shown that it is hard to find biases in market estimates. The few direct comparisons made so far have found markets to be at least as accurate as other institutions. Orange Juice futures improve on National Weather Service [...]

Torture is illegal, and unethical, but the death penalty is legal. I think if polled most people wpuld rate torture as worse, ethically speaking, than death. Why?

If an interrogation technique is painful enough to make a person divulge information that they would not have otherwise divulged, in order to make the pain stop, it’s torture. It’s that simple. You can’t use pain to gain a confession. There are studies of evidence showing that tortured prisoners will confess to anything and everything [...]

More American Workers Outsourcing Own Jobs Overseas It’s simple time arbitrage, and it’ll work as long as your boss doesn’t find out. I’ve wondered when students are going to start hiring overseas assistants.

“Here’s how to know if you have the makeup to be an investor. How would you handle the following situation? Let’s say you own a Procter & Gamble in your portfolio and the stock price goes down by half. Do you like it better? If it falls in half, do you reinvest dividends? Do you [...]

Zero growth in 2001 and 2002 and slow (under 2%) in each year of 2003-2006. H/t Calculated Risk.

Video of the Big Dog robot we watched today in class: The way it recovers from slipping on the ice and being kicked is incredible. It’s carrying a 300-pound payload on its back. Here’s an early version of the same project: Can you spot the difference?

Investing There are two schools of thought on investing as a college student. One says that because your current income is low and your future income is high, spend money now because you’re going to make more later. The other says that the earlier you start investing, the higher your return will be in the [...]

I read this Sports Illustrated article about Findlay Prep, the “school” set up by a UNLV booster for top young players. They live together in a house with plasma-screen TV’s, equipment, food and furniture all paid for by the booster. Spoiling young athletes seems ridiculous at first glance, because it seems like it’s circumventing the [...]