Interesting Links for 22-8-2011

[andrewducker]

• The Wall Street Journal abandons actually thinking about things for "common sense"
  (tags: economics finance)
• Harry Potter and the danger of giving the audience what they want.
  Ion
  (tags: harrypotter starwars fiction)
• Neil Gaiman and Grant Morrison talk to each other about comics
  (tags: comics grantmorrison neilgaiman)
• Utility companies to be charged for digging up the road. Yaaaay!
  (tags: uk roads)
• New energy storage device could recharge electric vehicles in minutes (and help a _lot_ with renewable energy sources)
  (tags: energy storage technology)

Comments

New Energy Device

[zornhau.livejournal.com]

What a breakthrough for civilisation and general greeness. (Can I have my Gauss Rifle now?)

Re: New Energy Device

[andrewducker]

Good question! If they have the power capacity of batteries with the discharge rate of ultracapacitors then probably!

Re: New Energy Device

[zornhau.livejournal.com]

With that amount of firepower trivially accessible, better have some armour to match...

Hmmm.

That could be heavy. Suppose we strapped the armour onto some sort of walker or exoskeleton...

Re: New Energy Device

[andrewducker]

Seems to be a bit of it about:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powered_exoskeleton#Current_exoskeletons

I bumped into this a short while ago, the US army is _very_ interested:
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2010/07/16/can-we-build-a-real-high-tech-hero/1

Re: New Energy Device

[zornhau.livejournal.com]

Now all we need is a jump drive.

Re: New Energy Device

[andrewducker]

Then we can conquer colonise the universe!

Re: New Energy Device

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

Rather slowly if it takes a week to make each jump of one to six hexes...

Re: New Energy Device

[andrewducker]

Clearly we need bigger hexes!

Re: New Energy Device

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

Not IMTU! *



* 'In My Traveller Universe'

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

Utility companies to be charged for digging up the road, unless they do it at night?

Great for traffic, not so good if that happens in urban areas... and I can't exactly see the companies relishing the shift pay of that kind of work moving to back shift

[andrewducker]

That's the point of charging them for it, isn't it? So that they weigh up the costs of paying for doing it during the day, and the costs of moving it to the backshift.

And, hopefully, so that they talk to other companies who are also digging up the road, and coordinate their work. Which isn't currently in their interest to do, because it doesn't save them any money.

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

I would suggest that most things that move roadworks in residential areas to night-time is a bad idea.

[andrewducker]

I suspect there'll be bedding-in issues, but most of the problems I've seen with digging=up streets haven't been on residential roads. So it's possible that they won't implement it completely stupidly. I guess we'll have to see.

[andrewducker]

And, in fact, from the PDF linked to:
"charges would be permitted only on streets that have been designated as traffic-sensitive by the highway authority"

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

"Common sense" as defined by a macro-economist known for taking a minority view on aspects of macroeconomics* might not be the same definition of "common sense" used by the general public.

Krugman is a very clever guy and he's done some good work, but he's massively over-exposed because of something I call 'The Lordi Effect'.

Lordi is a bizarre Finnish heavy metal band who I correctly predicted would win the Eurovision Song Contest some years back. My wife thought my prediction at the time was absurd, but my logic was that in a first-past-the-post**** electoral system with twenty more or less identical candidates spouting out Europop and one bizarre candidate (in this case a Finnish heavy metal band), the bizarre candidate has a very good chance of winning the popular vote since the bland Europop vote is split. And this is exactly what happened.*****

Krugman is Lordi. Instead of Finnish heavy metal, his genre is neo-Keynesian macroeconomics. Since most notable macroeconomists of the last generation or two have been 'freshwater'*** - i.e. monetarists / Austrian school / new classicalists etc, Krugman stands out as different. If you're a newspaper editor and you want a couple of famous macroeconomists to give their opinions, you probably want one fresh and one salty. And while you have a selection of freshwater economists to pick from (especially if you get someone from Wall Street or the City), your choice of Keynesians and neo-Keynesians is much smaller. So you probably pick Krugman, who is always happy to do an interview or write a column.

And this means that Krugman gets much more work from newspapers and magazines than any other economist. This feeds into a circle, since now any editor who just wants 'an economist' to give a view on whatever will get the most popular and famous one. Paul Krugman.

The follow-on effect, is that the less clever or less scrupulous newspaper editors (and readers for that matter) start to believe that because Krugman was right about one thing once, he must be right about everything all the time, and that any economist who has another view must be wrong.

So despite holding a minority view, Krugman becomes in fact the world authority on macroeconomics.

Strange thing, the Lordi Effect...




* and who is now eating out on the fact that he was one of few economists to not be part of the pre-credit crunch consensus**.

** and in macro-economics, 'consensus' is about as far away from "everyone agrees" as it is in climate science.

*** In the US, macroeconomics in academia is traditionally split along geographical lines with the east coast universities ('saltwater') being more keynesian and the lakes and inland universities ('freshwater') being more monetarist / Hayekian / new-classical.

**** I thought that would get your attention Andrew...

***** This is obviously where the Yes2AV campaign went wrong.

[andrewducker]

You had my attention at "Lordi" :->

And don't get me started on where Yes2AV went wrong...

[andrewducker]

Oh, and it's Stephen Moore that's calling for common sense over theories, not Krugman.

Krugman may also get some kudos for winning the Nobel prize, of course.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

Oh sorry - yes, you're right.

Krugman obviously does get kudos for his Nobel Prize*, but since there are probably more freshwater Nobel laureates than saltwater, that sort of supports my argument. Want a famous neo-Keynesian macroeconomist who has won a Nobel? Ask Krugman. Want a freshwater Nobel laureate? Ask Prescott, Kydland, Smith, Mundell, Lucas etc...




* If we're being really, really pedantic, the Economics prize isn't a true Nobel Prize since it was created later rather than in Alfred Nobel's will.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

"Want a famous neo-Keynesian macroeconomist who has won a Nobel? Ask Krugman."


Or Stiglitz now that I come to think about it. But my point still stands.

[andrewducker]

Oh yes, absolutely. He's definitely more famous for being that way inclined.

The question, of course, is whether he's more frequently right than the people on the other side. Does anyone keep score?

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

I suspect that would be essentially impossible.

[interactiveleaf.livejournal.com]

Something I think you're leaving out is that Krugman is right in his predictions more often than not, and more consistently and more often right than most others out there.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

To be fair, that isn't a study of economists, it's a back-of-the-fag-packet comparison of various people who write newspaper columns and go on television

[andrewducker]

in macro-economics, 'consensus' is about as far away from "everyone agrees" as it is in climate science.

You mean 97% of them think the same thing?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change#Surveys_of_scientists_and_scientific_literature

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

What I meant was really more about "what do we do?" than "is it getting warmer?".

Having said that, there is an important point here - Krugman is clever and knows what he is talking about. If he was the only neo-Keynesian macroeconomist in a world of freshwater monetarists, new classicalists and Austrians I think that still would mean that "there is no consensus". (The same applies with climate science - just replace Krugman with your favourite climate scientist who doesn't sign up wholeheatedly to the AGW theory.)

[andrewducker]

Aaah, yes, there's a lot of difference in opinions over what we do.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Harry Potter and the danger of giving the audience what they want.

My exposure to Harry Potter is watching one film, and so I can't speak to that, but I'm unswayed by the argument about Star Wars. I don't think the problem is that Lucas created the prequel films, it's the fact that the prequel films were utterly dreadful. If they'd been of the quality of some of the material in Knights of the Old Republic, I think that fan reactions would have been very different indeed.