Libby, Laurence and I watched it last night. It was well good. John was better than he's ever been. Scarlett was Scarletty. It made me want to live in a dysfunctional community in a town in America. It wouldn't even have to be in New Orleans, but somewhere with rivers and caravans and sun. And jazz. Has to have jazz.

From time to time I have dreams about crazy people with knives. As often as not, they're out to kill people I'm fond of. Normally in those dreams I just get frightened, and run away or I wake up before anything really violent happens. I had a dream a few months ago (I think) and there was a crazy person with a knife wanting to kill us all. I had a chance to kill him with another knife, but I didn't because it freaked me out too much. When I watched horror films, I'm always the person saying "Come on! Just stab him in the head! He's going to get up again." It always seems like such sage advice when you aren't the person holding the knife/gun/pitch fork.

But last night I had a replay of this same dream. Half way through I recognised it from before. And the same opportunity came up again. I had two knives and a chance to kill the crazy man. And I did it. And it freaked me out. I woke up straight away, lying in bed wondering what I'd done and what it said about me. I have a new appreciation for why those people in horror movies ignore my advice.

Anmol and I watched Paycheck last night. Pretty average it was. But not nearly as average as Ben Affleck. Gee.

skinny have the goods. Man oh man. Do they ever fail?

The PLO has its own TLD. It's in Palestine, so it ends in .ps. And instead of mil.ps or gov.ps they get plo.ps. I love it.

Everyone is so keen for Hamas to "renounce terrorism". Keen enough that they're willing to starve Palestinians and kidnap Hamas' ministers randomly. Why doesn't Hamas do what every other government does - renounce terrorism, and just keep doing it. They seem to be the only poor fools putting honesty before expediency. It's no wonder their government is doing so badly.

Taking assumptions L3 to the limit then yields M_LL = M^-1_LL + plim nDD'

Even econometricians sometimes like to live dangerously.

I reckon The Shins could be my favourite band. Apart from Merril Bainbridge (obviously) I haven't ever really wanted to be friends with anyone from my favourite bands. But I really want to be friends with the boys from The Shins. Even Bob Dylan, who I love, I wouldn't really want to be friends with, because for me that would be like being best buddies with Elijah from the old testament. And while you'd like to think that you can mix it with the prophet crowd, deep down I think we all know we'd just embarass ourselves.

I bought some Logitech X230s a couple of years ago now for about $80AUD and they are really good. The bass is a bit heavy, but overall they sound tops - far better than a lot of micro hifi systems I've listened to. And they go much louder than I would really need, without distorting at all. Although my printer perches on top of the subwoofer, and the printer starts to vibrate audibly when the volume goes up too much.

I love my bedroom so much. In spring (which it is right now) it is simply the best little spot in the house. I feel so much like a little kid in some little house in Paris. I want to grow up in this room.

Wouldn't it be interesting to pick out students from high school at random and give them nifty university scholarships. The ones that got scholarships would be more likely to go to university, regardless of how clever or motivated they were. Then after 10 years you could go and see if they were making more money or being more productive or something. Then you'd know if university was useful or not. No one really knows if university is helpful. Economists kind of sort of think it's useful, but it's possible that university has no impact at all. Although even if university did earn you better money, it still might just be because you seem like a better proposition. Not because you actually are. So you wouldn't have all the answers. But at least you could say that university has more of an impact than just stealing the brightest kids from high school and then taking the credit for their brightness. Although now I think about it, you couldn't even do that. Those scholarship kids might simply get higher incomes because they went to the same institution that others smart kids went to. You'd need to use a university with no name brand recognition. Gee whiz. Practical economics sure is tricky. It's not wonder most economists focus on the impractical sort.

McDonalds has founded the McDonald's Center for Type 2 Diabetes and Obesity. I suppose they figured that selling hamburgers wasn't sufficient demonstration of their support for diabetes and obesity, so they're researching more innovative ways of increasing diabetes and obesity levels. I wonder if they decided that their facilitation of Type 1 Diabetes was beyond question, and decided to invest their money where it would have the most impact.

What would happen if, instead of looking at your UAI when you apply for university, they looked at your marks relative to the average mark in your postcode? I reckon that a lot of success at university is determined by personal characteristics and ability (which should be fairly independent of postcode) and not that much by absolute UAI (which is very dependent on postcode).

It would be good to have a way of removing the bias of high school quality and parenting resources from entry into university. If you were compared to the people in your postcode, rather than the people in your state, a lot of those extraneous-ish factors would be disregarded. I also suspect our universities will get higher quality students. I am certain that someone who gets a UAI of 80 where the average is 40 will generally do better at university that someone who gets 90 where the average is 90. University is all about effort, and a UAI isn't the best indicator of effort.

The other nice effect is that it would encourage all those North Shore parents who want their mediocre children to study medicine to move to Cabramatta. They'll be probably be horrified by the resources at the Cabramatta school they go to and so they might get together with the other North Shore refugees on the P&C to raise some extra money. Which would probably be an OK outcome. If you end up with educational equity instead of a "leg up" for capable kids in poor postcodes, that isn't the end of the world. You might even get the situation where North Shore parents are bribing Mt Druitt principals to let their kids in after their HSC trial results arrive. Which would be absolutely hilarious, and would totally make the whole system worthwhile by itself.

I was doing some "study" for macroeconomics, and I started thinking about the proportion of GDP going to workers. As you do. Apparently it has gone down in the last few decades, which I suspect is the reason the average P/E ratio on the ASX has stayed fairly constant even as liquidity has gone crazy. Productivity hasn't gone up much, because GDP hasn't grown that much, so you'd have expected profits per dollar of sharemarket money would have gone down. We're throwing money at all these super funds demanding a happy return, but most of that money isn't actually being invested in productive activities. It's just inflating share prices. Except that we don't notice the inflation because profits have gone up too. Normally they go up when business gets better at doing stuff (making a bigger pie). But sometimes profits just go up because companies get a larger share of GDP (which is just stealing someone else's slice of pie).

So anyway, I was sitting here, thinking to myself. And I read some stuff by Frank Stilwell and got to remembering some things. On the left, there seems to be this funny attachment to socialism, even when capitalism has managed to make everyone happy. There is the fear that capitalism will sneak into our lives and subvert all our heroic dreams for revolution by giving us everything we want. For instance, Menzies started helping workers buy their own homes, as a "bulwark against bolshevism". What a devilish plan! It worked. Now Australia has a high rate of home ownership, and nobody wants a revolution.

I have my doubts that the rich will ever let economic equality truly happen, but if they're willing to, then I'm not sure what the problem is. I suspect the rich would gas the poor, before they choose to share their merry mansions, but maybe I'm underestimating them. If you win the class war by making everyone bourgeois, then that seems rather good. My only problem with the bourgeois is that some people aren't. My only problem with capitalism is that it doesn't do what it says, and roots an awful lot of people economists reckon it's supposed to benefit.

The traditional medium of exchange on the island of Yap, was fei, stone wheels up to 12 feet in diameter. These stones had a hole in the centre so that they could be carried on poles and used for exchange.

The stones were heavy, so it took substantial effort for a new owner to take his fei home after completing a transaction. Although the monetary system facilitated exchange, it did so at great cost.

Eventually, it became common practice for the new owner of the fei not to bother to take physical possession of the stone. Instead, he traded his claim for goods that he wanted. Having physical possession of the stone became less important than having legal claim to it.

This practice was put to a test when a valuable stone was lost at sea during a storm. Because the owner lost his money by accident rather than through negligence, everyone agreed that his claim to the fei remained valid. Even generations later, when no one was alive had ever seen this stone, the claim to this fei was still valued in exchange.

From my macroeconomics textbook. I reckon that is really cool.

Last week was a terrific week for the dams. From 40.8% full to 42.1% in five days. Go dams!

As George says, not just any kind of comparison will do. When comparing the behaviour of the United States to those of Islamic extremists, we can make satisfyingly specific comparisons.

And they claim the Chinese are malnourished.

Two hours and 38 minutes into my econometrics study I have completed question 1 part b and c. Lucky I did part a the other day, or I would have been here all day. Now I only have questions 2 to 13 for chapter 3. And then the questions in chapters 4 through to 16 (minus 12, 13 and 14 thankfully). Rocking.

I've wondered quietly to myself occasionally about why people get upset about child labour. I can understand that child education might be better than child labour, but is children working on farms really the work of satan? Isn't the issue child exploitation rather than labour or do people seriously want children to sit around playing while they and their parents starve? Compulsory education is largely a western thing. Having experienced primary school, secondary school (sort of) and university, I'm not convinced that educating us all to go off and become investment bankers is a lot kinder than giving us a little patch of land would be.

This issue is especially relevant in light of recent increases the rates of child obesity and overweight¹. The fats kids you see in India aren't the labourers. The fatties are the educated kids, who have great dreams of investment banking, and child exploitation from the top of the exploitation chain. If Australia had the option of hard labour in place of less vigorous educational forms (which I'm convinced a lot of children would accept), then perhaps we could make a dent in our child obesity crisis

I believe education is important for equity, but not in itself. And given that 500 years ago virtually even child on the planet would have engaged in "child labour", I'm not convinced working is such a terrible thing. If you turn it into something miserable, with 10 hour days or heavy lifting, that's obviously a completely different story. But child labour is not necessarily child abuse and exploitation.

That said, I'd work hard to get more kids out of the field and into classrooms, if only so they have the power to make a choice between going back to the fields or becoming an investment banker.

1. Happily plagiarised straight from every journal article on child obesity I've ever read.

If hiring someone called Dr. Brilliant to run your "philanthropic" arm doesn't prove that Google wants to take over the world, nothing will. More power to them I say. If this guy is really as brilliant as he claims then hopefully it will be OK.

I once vowed I would never got to the Establishment because it looked so glitzy and pretentious. But Libby and I went last night, because her friend had some tickets to their 6th birthday celebration. It was pretty fun. They had three hours of free drinks, but we only stayed for one. Even so we managed to get pretty sloshed. But I vow that I will never again go to the Establishment.

I just read on the Secuestro Express website that someone is abducted in Latin American every hour. And 70% of those are killed. People have suggested that violent crime is partly a product of economic inequality, but it's never struck me as a very productive response. It's kind of a massive blackmail that the poor executes, hoping that the rich will decide they have more to lose. But I think the perpetrators of crime tend to lose more in general. Maybe kidnapping is a smarter response. You get the blackmail effect of making life miserable for the rich, but you also get money, and you don't necessarily have to kill anybody. Massive inequality is a sad sort of denial of reality. It's pretty easy for the screwed to make life unhappy for the screwers. Perhaps in places like South Africa, or Nicaragua, the state used massive violence to keep control of things, but who wants to live like that? The only way the rich can truly win is if the poor just sit down and take the abuse quietly. I suppose that does happen occasionally too, but I suspect Marx is right in thinking that can't be sustainable in the long-run. He just underestimated the willingness of the rich to compromise their wealth to save themselves. I reckon the wealthy in countries like Chile are probably pretty chuffed that they semi-voluntarily eased off on the genocidal capitalism before they turned into another Cuba.

Over 20 years of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship, and a decade of sanctions, have left Iraq with feeble public services and impaired institutions, such as courts to schools. The Economist

Iraq’s educational system used to be among the best in the region; one of the country’s most important assets remains its well-educated people. The results of education reform in the 1970s and 1980s are evident in the high literacy rates in the adult population. However, over the past two decades, wars, sanctions, and harsh economic conditions have taken a toll on the educational system. UN

So who do you trust? When the Economist claims that the schools have been enfeebled by 20 years of dictatorship and a decade of sanctions, is it really just a polite way of saying it's been enfeebled by a decade of sanctions and three years of war? You can say a lot of bad things about Saddam Hussein, but it's difficult to claim he wasn't also the most progressive leader in the Middle East.

I've stopped studying for all my subjects. I need to study for econometrics the most because it's totally the hardest, and the only one I'm likely to drop this Wednesday. So I spend all my study time studying for that. But because it's so frightening, I don't study for it either. So I'm in a spot of bother. I've read and read the textbooks, but I seriously have very little idea what's going on in chapter 2, and we're up to chapter 11 and 16. I had to read the first chapters over and over, so I didn't get to the middle chapters like 4, 5, 6 and 8. You'd hope that would mean I had a good grasp of chapter 2. But it doesn't. We have this question that assessable and due on Thursday. I can look at it, and understand how incredibly easy it is. There are no tricks. It's totally straight-forward. But I have no idea how to start it.

Tuesday - I decided yesterday. that I would drop this course. I can't even do the homework questions, so I reckon I'll fail the exams. I went and told my lecturer I would drop it today and she was fine with it. I asked her if she knew anything about people who might do tutoring, but she didn't. I wonder if the reason she was so worried when my friend dropped out was that he did it before the date for financial penalty. In a class with 10 students, you have to worry about that sort of thing.

But the more I've thought about it, the more the risk of failing seems less important. I suspect it will prevent me from getting jobs, but maybe that's not as bad as having to spend an extra year or semester at uni. But maybe I have to forget about trying to do things well. I only have to understand the easiest 50% of the course. It feels like that must be achievable. I just wish I could find someone to explain it to me.

lighttpd and FastCGI really aren't very good. I've been having more problems today with the FastCGI processes just freezing up and the server being unusable. It has been during heavy testing, but even so it shouldn't do that. In years and years of Apache use, I've never had a problem that serious. Apache is a brick. In good and bad ways.

Bob is suck a fuckin' legend. Just keeps getting better.

We went Robert and Jenny's wedding last night. The food was really good. There were heaps of vegetarian sandwiches, and awesome desserts. The wine was good too, although I heard that the bar tab ran out and the waiters got stressed. I, luckily, only had half of one [very large] glass, so I can't have contributed too much to that problem. Although I certainly made up for it with my antics later. I shouldn't forget to mention that mammoth plates of cheese and Steve and dad guarded carefully. I didn't eat the giant cheese though, because I was too frightened of eating rennet. So it was a pretty good wedding. Certainly better than Mil and Martin's where I didn't get any food because I was in the wrong room.

Apart from the food, one of my highlights was running with Hannah around Eden Gardens. Robert and Jenny definitely picked a fine place for a reception. So good for a game of hide and seek. Or paintball. Not that's an idea. Hannah doesn't really play hide and seek with me. She prefers less childish sorts of games. She often gets frustrated with me when I want to play in a puddle or explore some little nook. But she is patient.

Tom made a good speech. He's does that sort of thing well.

Oh yes, I have to talk about the best highlight. It was right at the end, when the caterers were packing up. We thought we'd steal a few of the sandwiches that were sitting around, because we were worried they'd get thrown out. I was trying to brainstorm better ways of packing large quantities than in napkins (which, for the record, will not fit any more than three medium-sized sandwiches). Eventually I found an enormous plastic bag, and started stacking them in it. I attempted to walk the very fine line between reasonable sandwich theft, and the large-scale, debauched sort which I may have been guilty of in the past. Thankfully, one of the catering women came out and told us to take as many as we could because they were going to get thrown out. The fine line instantly vanished, and I frenzily started stuffing sandwiches into that bag, oblivious to the appalled mockery of those around me. Chris also managed to squash some desserts into the bag, which I think had a stabilising, sort of binding effect protecting the sandwiches from dismemberment and spillage. Quickly the bag was stuffed to the brim, and we got ready to leave. As I was strolling out, trying to hide 3kg of sandwiches behind my back, one of the other caters came out and jokingly said "You're so bad." I laughed and said "Yeah, but they're just going to throw them out." He looked at me and I realised quite rapidly that he hadn't been joking. He looked me in the eye, said "They were going to the church", and then walked away. It was a dilemma. I could have put the squashed sandwich-desserts back, but the would have just been rude. So I decided to keep them. Although I had haunting thoughts that maybe he wasn't talking about an affluent Thornleigh church, where the sandwiches would have supplemented their gourmet morning tea danishes, but some poor indigenous church made up largely of malnourished children. But the human's powers of self-justification are excellent, and we all trotted off to the car, feeling very chuffed indeed. Especially Chris, because he is poor, and can't buy food.

Bugger. I just realised we didn't play any frisbee yesterday. That would have made the day absolutely perfect.

Writeboard needs to use Markdown. Textile is crap. I was trying to get all organised with note-taking and stuff, until I realised that you can't type any sort of maths stuff into Writeboard, because Textile will start bolding your arithmetic operators willy nilly.

So instead I fixed up Wordpress, and added the Markdown plugin. Much better.

I've found an easier way to rewrite Wordpress URLs than attempt to recreate all of the crazy combinations.

url.rewrite-once = ( "^([^.]+)$" => "index.php$1" )

It basically rewrites anything that doesn't have a full-stop in it. So if you use it, make sure all your images and stylesheets have file extensions.