He has got some skills

Check this out . . .

Some nice unicycling - ridden by Kris Holm

Happy Birthday Charles Darwin !!

This week marks both the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin and also the 150th anniversary of "On the Origin of Species".

Three hours from disaster - the US economic and political system

Check out this video - Rep. Paul Kanjorski explains how the US (and world) economy came within 3 hours of complete collapse due to an electronic run on the banks.

He explains just how close we all came to economic and political disaster:

I was there when the secretary and the chairman of the Federal Reserve came those days and talked to members of Congress about what was going on... Here's the facts. We don't even talk about these things.

On Thursday, at about 11 o'clock in the morning, the Federal Reserve noticed a tremendous drawdown of money market accounts in the United States to a tune of $550 billion being drawn out in a matter of an hour or two.

The Treasury opened up its window to help. They pumped $105 billion into the system and quickly realized that they could not stem the tide. We were having an electronic run on the banks.

They decided to close the operation, close down the money accounts, and announce a guarantee of $250,000 per account so there wouldn't be further panic and there. And that's what actually happened.

If they had not done that their estimation was that by two o'clock that afternoon, $5.5 trillion would have been drawn out of the money market system of the United States, would have collapsed the entire economy of the United States, and within 24 hours the world economy would have collapsed.

Now we talked at that time about what would have happened if that happened. It would have been the end of our economic system and our political system as we know it.

Please check out the video!

The World is Flat 3.0

Here is an interesting talk from Tom Friedman (speaking at MIT).

He says:

A bigger problem still is that three billion new players are streaming into this newly flat world, seeking their own version of the American dream, with cars, toasters, and microwaves. “If we don’t find a cleaner, more non-emitting way to power their dreams, we’re going to burn up, choke up, heat up and smoke up this planet so much faster than even Al Gore predicts.”

Friedman scoffs at those who claim “a green revolution is going on,” calling it instead a green party, entailing no real sacrifice or pain. He says the only hope will be a “disruptive breakthrough” that brings a completely different mix of standards and taxes.” Friedman’s new mantra is, “Change your leaders, not your light bulbs.” Without new leaders to rewrite our laws and trigger the innovations, “we are cooked.”

More here

Gambling advice - two systems

Martingale System:

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Originally, martingale referred to a class of betting strategies popular in 18th-century France. The simplest of these strategies was designed for a game in which the gambler wins his stake if a coin comes up heads and loses it if the coin comes up tails. The strategy had the gambler double his bet after every loss, so that the first win would recover all previous losses plus win a profit equal to the original stake. Since a gambler with infinite wealth will with probability 1 eventually flip heads, the Martingale betting strategy was seen as a sure thing by those who practised it. Of course, none of these practitioners in fact possessed infinite wealth, and the exponential growth of the bets would eventually bankrupt those who choose to use the Martingale. Moreover, it has become impossible to implement in modern casinos, due to the betting limit at the tables. Because the betting limits reduce the casino's short term variance, the Martingale system itself does not pose a threat to the casino, and many will encourage its use, knowing that they have the house advantage no matter when or how much is wagered. (WIKI)

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Anti-martingale system:

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In a classic martingale betting style, gamblers will increase their bets after each loss in hopes that an eventual win will recover all previous losses. The anti-martingale approach instead increases bets after wins, while reducing them after a loss. The perception is that in this manner the gambler will benefit from a winning streak or a "hot hand", while reducing losses while "cold" or otherwise having a losing streak. This general idea of increasing bets when conditions are believed to be favorable can improve the odds in games with a memory by using a strategy like card counting. But in a true random memoryless game there is no such thing as a winning streak or losing streak (these notions are gambler's fallacy) so this strategy can't improve the expected winnings in such situations. (WIKI)

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HINT: Both systems don't work unless you have unlimited amounts of money to throw away!!

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HINT 2: The concept of martingale in probability theory was introduced by Paul Pierre Lévy, and much of the original development of the theory was done by Joseph Leo Doob. Part of the motivation for that work was to show the impossibility of successful betting strategies!!!! (WIKI)

Normal Accidents: Living with High Risk Technologies

I have just been having a read of "Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies" by Charles Perrow.

The blurb on the back reads:

"Normal Accidents analyzes the social side of technological risk. Charles Perrow argues that the conventional engineering approach to ensuring safety- building in more warnings and safeguards - fails because sytems complexity makes failures inevitable. He asserts that typical precautions, by adding to complexity, may help create new categories of accidents. (At Chernabyl, tests of a new safety system helped produce the meltdown and subsequent fire.) By recognizing two dimensions of risk - complex versus linear, and tight versus loose coupling - this book provides a powerful framework for anaylzing risks and the organizations that insist we run them."

** Well worth a read, especially if you are familiar with the work of Ulrich Beck and his ideas of the Risk Society.

Note: I was recently reading about the Exxon Valdex Oil disaster and how it was caused by jealousy (see River pilot's jealousy linked to massive oil spill) but after reading this book I can see how it was not simply the fault of the captain (i.e. human error) but was the result of a 'normal accident' due to the massive complexity of the global oil system. The added 'safety' precautions made it more unsafe due to the increased complexity of the system and therefore more likely to fail.

Thus, the failure was not the pilot's fault as such, nor was it due to the inability of humans to design systems that are foolproof, rather Charles Perrow suggests it is simply a result of the increased complexity of our human systems and that failures will occur in multiple and unforeseen ways that are virtually impossible to predict. He explains this well on pages 5 -8 of his book here using an everyday example of someone having a 'bad day' and being late for an job interview.

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Also check out:

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New Green Jobs ??

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Splitting: 'jobs' versus 'the environment'

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Comments always welcome !!!