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 Saturday, September 14, 2002
Technology Review: Data Extinction. Both are faced with the knowledge that current methods for preserving digital things work poorly, even in the short term. Just how bad is the problem? Examples of digital things lost forever abound, some personal in scale, some global. [Tomalak's Realm]
I'll have to read this when I get up. It is off to bed now. 1:36:10 AM 
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But It's Not Fair Just to Pick on the Right. But it's not fair just to pick on the right. The quality of economic analysis on the loony left is just as low as--perhaps lower than--the quality of economic analysis in National Review. Larry Kudlow finds his match in Krystal Kyer, for whom all trade is bad, all the time: Krystal Kyer: What Rhymes With NAFTA, But Smells Worse? CAFTA!: ...Since NAFTA, American, Canadian and Mexican independent farmers have seen prices plummet and safety nets removed. Thousands of small farms... [Semi-Daily Journal]
Yeah, this sure sounded believable until he used some real numbers. Domestic food prices were up 20% in the first 7 years of NAFTA. That works out to be something like 2% a year. Wow, that is huge (NOT!) I may be a liberal but free trade is not a problem. It makes markets more effecient and makes war much less likely. When economies intertwine, disruption hurts all of them. That is why any conflict should be carefully chosen and executed. 1:14:25 AM
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Paul Krugman on the "Economic Rationale" for War Against Iraq. Perhaps the stupidest things written about what action should be taken in response to Iraq's flouting of U.N. resolutions on its armaments are Larry Kudlow's cry to invade Iraq to raise the Dow and John Podhoretz's cry to invade Iraq to elect more Republicans to Congress in November. Here Paul Krugman takes on the mostly-whispered claim that a war against Iraq would be "a good thing" for the American economy. Needless to say, policy should rest on whether Saddam Hussein... [Semi-Daily Journal]
It has been suggested that the direct and indirect costs will be about 1 trillion dollars. Someone suggested that we should take 1 billion and create grants for mercenaries to take out Saddam. 100 at a 10 million each might do the trick. I certainly do not think we should get into this war because it will help the economy. I am of the opinion that it will not help, but we can not know for sure until it happens. 1:01:30 AM
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More People Worry About Deflation. The Economist steps up to the "let's worry about deflation" plate. I agree with them. The Federal Reserve, however, does not seem to: the Federal Reserve appears to believe that the NAIRU--the unemployment rate at which inflation is constant--is somewhere near 5.5 percent (rather than the 4.5 to 5.5 percent I would estimate), and that the rate of growth of potential output--which is the rate at which real GDP has to grow to keep the unemployment rate constant--is only a... [Semi-Daily Journal]
I am scared spitless about deflation. I need to find out what sorts of things to do. Because there might be no place to invest if the entire world is fighting deflation. I wish we were hearing more about how the government will prevent this, than whether we should go get Saddam. Because this is going to have a much greater, direct effect on us and the world if our economy gets hosed. 12:57:29 AM
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A simple click stirs a lot of outrage [CNET News.com]
A State Department web site has a direct link to the Republican National Committee, in violation of half a dozen federal laws, and all they can say is that it was a mistake; that they were astounded that anyone ever found the link. What if it had been a link to a porno site? I ran a web site for several years with well over 2000 pages. The software exists to tell you where every link in the site goes to. You can easily get a printout of every external site that your site links to. Who runs these sites, that they would be so clueless as to be amazed these links were found? No wonder they are so afraid of hackers. 12:43:02 AM
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Chemists show proteins behave differently inside cells than they do in water solutions [EurekAlert!]
This is huge. One of the dogmas of protein folding had been that if you denatured a protein, you could get it to sponatanously refold under the right conditions. Turns out the right conditions are not in a test tube but in a cell. How obvious. After the fact. I wonder what affect this will have on protein modeling. Most times, the models are based on a surrounding aqueous medium. What happens when you surround the protein with tons of other proteins, instead of with water? ANd the main investigator was a senior when he started. I think he has quite a future ahead of him, if he chooses to pursue this. 12:33:27 AM
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Cancer research boosts local biotechs' stocks. San Francisco Chronicle Sep 13 2002 5:45PM ET [Moreover - moreover...]
Well, it isgreat to see your stock go up 30% because of some test tube experiments. This is the Lottop version of Biotech. The number of companies that demonstrated great test tube data, yet failed to ever get anything useful into a human being is huge. Only a select few actuall make a product that helps people. Yet, some people will buy the stock of a company that can not have anything useful for 4-5 years. This is known as the 'greater fool' approach to investing. There will always be someone to take the stock off your hands. This worked in the bubble we just had, but I would not think it will be very successful in this market. At least for anyone other than the market makers on Wall Street. 12:08:46 AM
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