The View from China...

Certainly, the first version produced by Citizens Against Government Waste is the accurate translation, yes. However, the second editorialized translation makes an interesting counterpoint...

Well Said...

"Doctrines are antithetical to pragmatism."

~ Yoni Appelbaum

Yoni Appelbaum

Source: Appelbaum, Y (2011, March 24), The Political Perils of Pragmatism, Atlantic.

America's Main Street Depression

I regret that while public corporations in the US have been experiencing a profit rebound in recent months, Main Street America remains in economic depression. The decoupling of our nation's largest "too big to fail" public corporations from Main Street has created widespead economic turmoil and hardships for small companies and familes in America. The continuing demise of Main Street began when US monetary and fiscal policy-makers unwisely posited "too big to fail" as a governing principle.

Treasury Sec Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chief Ben Bernanke (2008)

Keep in mind that "too big to fail" was the conceptual argument invoked back in 2008 by the US Federal Reserve lead by Dr Ben Bernanke, and the US Treasury lead by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. Today, gigantic "too big to fail" public corporations enjoy tacit financial guarantees from the Federal government, while small companies and businesses along Main Street are essentially left out in the cold.

America's emerging consolidated banking system is now laced with systemic risks extending from Wall Street into every facet of regional banking. In my view, the nation's banking needs would be better served by many thousands of smaller community and regional banks, instead of a few "too big to fail" financial institutions aligned with Wall Street. The economic risks associated with building and maintaining "too big to fail" corporations are not well-understood. Nevertheless, our nation's central banking system continues to grow larger while Main Street America is left to languish.

I cannot help but think that the powershift from Main Street to America's center will eventually lead to new unforeseen difficulties for America. History tells us that over centralization carries risks. Recall that the former Soviet Union was never able to marshal the human know-how and technical resources to manage and direct a massively centralized command economy. Is capitalism somehow different? I doubt that the US will be able to manage from the center indefinitely.

Years from now, a comfortably retired Dr Ben Bernanke will write in his memoirs something like this:

"...I wish we at the Federal Reserve would have paid closer attention to the impact of monetary policy on small businesses and community banking in America -- in reflection, I would have been more attentive to the plight of small businesses and regional banking across the nation -- however, we had no choice but to save the largest "too big to fail" institutions in America because we felt that saving Federalism was our mandated priority..."

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Well Said...

"One accurate measurement is worth a thousand expert opinions."

~ Dr Grace Murray Hopper

Rear Adm (Dr) Grace Murray Hopper, USNR (1906-1992)

APA Philosophy Hand Signals

Everyone using the American Psychological Association (APA) style guide will want to learn the following hand signals:

APA Philosophy Hand Signals [click image to enlarge]

Public versus Private Enterprise

enterprise
n.
1. An undertaking, especially one of some scope, complication, and risk.
2. A business organization.
3. Industrious, systematic activity, especially when directed toward profit: Private enterprise is basic to capitalism.
4. Willingness to undertake new ventures; initiative: "Through want of enterprise and faith men are where they are, buying and selling, and spending their lives like serfs" (Henry David Thoreau).

public enterprise
n.
(Economics) economic activity by governmental organizations.

private enterprise
n.
1. Business activities unregulated by state ownership or control; privately owned business.
2. A privately owned business enterprise, especially one operating under a system of free enterprise or laissez-faire capitalism.

The world needs less public enterprise and more private enterprise...

Source: The Free Dictionary

Innovations in Education: Sea Semester

I recently came across an interesting education program called Sea Semester: Field Programs in Marine and Environmental Studies. According to their website:

Since 1971, SEA has been a leader in off-campus study focused on marine science, maritime culture, and environmental studies. Our SEA Semester study abroad programs challenge students intellectually and physically by combining the sailing adventure of a lifetime with study of the deep ocean and the interactions of humans and the sea.

SSV Robert C Seamans

Why not study "at sea" for a semester? Follow the link below to learn more:

Sea Semester

Domestic Spending Cuts and Libya

According to The Hill:

US military operations in Libya could wipe out a significant chunk of the budget cuts won by congressional Republicans in recent weeks, defense analysts say. GOP leaders have trumpeted enacted spending reductions that amount to more than $285 million per day since the beginning of March. But defense analysts say the Pentagon could be burning through more than $100 million per day in Libya, putting those budget savings at risk.

It seems as if the more the US cuts domestic spending, the more the US spends overseas...

Source: Berman, R & Bennett, J T (2011, March 21), Cost of Military Campaign in Libya Could Wipe Out GOP's Spending Cuts, The Hill.

Business Intelligence versus Business Analytics

What’s the difference between Business Analytics and Business Intelligence? The correct answer is: everybody has an opinion, but nobody knows, and you shouldn’t care.

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I Hate War...

Andrew Exum (also known as Abu Muqawama) of the Center for a New America Security (2011) makes a good point about the cost of war to US taxpayers:

A Tomahawk Missile cost $569,000 in FY99, so if my calculations are correct, they cost a little over $736,000 today assuming they are the same make and model. The United States fired 110 missiles yesterday, which adds up to a cost of around $81 million. That's twice the size of the annual budget of USIP [US Institute of Peace], which the House of Representatives wants to de-fund, and is about 33 times the amount of money National Public Radio receives in grants each year from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which the House of Representatives also wants to de-fund in the name of austerity measures.

I would add that here in my part of the world, Gov Corbett of Pennsylvania has recently proposed to cut state funding for my alma mater, Temple University, by about $80 million, which is what the US spent on a single night of bombing in Libya. Certainly, I regret the onogoing plight of innocent Libyans and others in the Arab world. However, I likewise regret that Temple University is having to endure a 50% cut in its public funding during these difficult times in America. A national debate regarding the endless costs of war to US taxpayers is urgently needed.

Source: Center for a New American Security

Origins of "Business Intelligence"

The term "business intelligence" was coined by computer scientist and inventor Hans Peter Luhn in a 1958 article that appeared in the IBM Journal (p. 314):

In this paper, business is a collection of activities carried on for whatever purpose, be it science, technology, commerce, industry, law, government, defense, et cetera. The communication facility serving the conduct of a business (in the broad sense) may be referred to as an intelligence system. The notion of intelligence is also defined here, in a more general sense, as "the ability to apprehend the interrelationships of presented facts in such a way as to guide action towards a desired goal."

Hans Peter Luhn died in 1964 at the age of 68.

Hans Peter Luhn (1896-1964)

Source: Luhn, H P (1958), A Business Intelligence System, IBM Journal, 2(4), 314-319.

The Wiki History of Civilization (in 100 Seconds)

Gareth Lloyd has geotagged the recorded history of human civilization according to Wikipedia to create the following 100 second videography. The video includes 14,238 events between 499 BC (which coincides with the beginning of recorded history) and today. While you watch the video, imagine a world map overlaying the screen as 2,500 years of human history unfolds chronologically. Notice that the recorded history of the world begins in what we know today as Asia and eventually migrates across the Americas following Christopher Columbus's discovery voyage in 1492:



Gareth Lloyd is a software engineer living in London.

Well Said...

"Libertarians recognize the inevitable pluralism of the modern world and for that reason assert that individual liberty is at least part of the common good."

~ Dr Tom G Palmer

Dr Tom G Palmer

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The Numerati (for Lovers)

by Aurelie Thiele © 2011 Aurelie Thiele

I read The Numerati [by Stephen Baker] some time ago and never got around to writing a post about it, so here is my long overdue summary. Stephen Baker is a former BusinessWeek writer with interests in technology; his latest book, Final Jeopardy: Man vs Machine and the Quest to Know Everything was published last month. The topic of The Numerati, according to the book jacket, is "a new math intelligentsia [who] is devising ways to dissect our every move [using the trail of data we leave on the Internet] and predict, with stunning accuracy, what we will do next, [in order] to manipulate our behavior."

Whoever wrote the book jacket got a bit carried away ("the mathematical modeling of humanity", really?) but the book itself makes an important contribution. It is divided in seven chapters: Worker, Shopper, Voter, Blogger, Terrorist, Patient and Lover; in each, Baker describes what he learned from extensive discussions with experts in the field. To be honest, I am not quite sure I belong to his intended audience (who seems to be the majority of the population who doesn't practice data-mining nor math modeling, and needs to be educated about the potential and pitfalls of data), although Baker did attend the INFORMS annual meeting two years ago and autographed some of his books to operations researchers. On the other hand, I don't know if the people who would benefit most from his research will be sufficiently interested in data-mining to buy a whole book on it - I can see how they would gain from an article in their favorite magazine, but a book is a tougher sell. Thankfully, The Numerati is now out on paperback and Kindle, so people can get the book relatively cheaply.

I found myself a bit frustrated at times by the book's high-level descriptions, since I understand the technical part enough to want to know more about the complexities faced by the experts Baker interviewed, but the level of technicality was excellent for a layperson interested in learning more. I particularly enjoyed reading the issues faced by Google's Adsense with respect to spam blogs, or splogs, (in the "blogger" chapter); as an update, Google changed the way it ranks search results just last month to try to fight content farms.

Also, the "patient" chapter was fascinating from beginning to end; it focused on networked gadgets that can help hospital patients or people in poor health. A scientist at Intel Research Lab whom Baker interviewed "sees sensors eventually recording and building statistical models of almost every aspect of our behavior. They'll track our pathways in the house, the rhythm of our gait." But Baker also points out that taking advantage of this technology is not as easy as it sounds. In my favorite anecdote, on p.158 of the hardcover edition, he explains: "One woman, researchers were startled to see, gained eight pounds between bedtime and breakfast. A dangerous accumulation of fluids? Time to call an ambulance? No. Her little dog had jumped on the bed and slept with her."

However, the potential of data analysis is undeniable: according to the Intel scientist, "specialists studying the actor Michael J Fox in his old TV shows can detect the onset of Parkinson's years before Fox himself knew he had it" (p.165). In another startling analysis, described p. 177, researchers at University College London studied the manuscripts that prizewinning novelist Iris Murdoch left behind when she died of Alzheimer's, and were able to identify a curve followed by her use of language in her books, growing more complex until the height of her career and then falling off. While Baker sometimes oversells his case by picturing a distant future where our lives will be dominated by data-mining, rather than the more relevant (for readers) near- to medium- term, the studies he quotes are very interesting.

Finally, the "lover" chapter has an unexpected application to the resumes of job candidates: "according to BusinessWeek, 94 percent of US corporations ask for electronic resumes. They use software to sift through them, picking out a selection of "finalists" for human managers to consider" (p.195). Baker comments: "The point is that when we want to be found... we must make ourselves intelligible to machines. We need good page rank. We must fit ourselves to algorithms."

Republished with kind permission of Aurelie Thiele

On Fortitude

The fortitude of the Japanese people sets an example for the world...