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-the Agile Solution to Future Depressions

from Prof Dani Rodrik.

So what will the post-mortem on Wall Street show? That it was a case of suicide? Murder? Accidental death? Or was it a rare instance of generalized organ failure? We will likely never know.
The regulations and precautions that lawmakers will enact to prevent its recurrence will therefore necessarily remain blunt and of uncertain effectiveness.
That is why you can be sure that we will have another major financial crisis sometime in the future, once this one has disappeared into the recesses of our memory. You can bet your life savings on it. In fact, you probably will.
Who Killed Wall Street?.

A never ending cycle of trouble-solution-trouble again.
In the end few people can forsee the big problems of tomorrow, thus we are forever preparing for the last war, but there are things that prove to be scarier. The speed at which information travels has exceeded our capability to make sense of it. This is true for financial innovation, and almost all other forms of innovation fueling our modern world! What we have is I think similar to what programmers have to face.
Agile programming was born as a result of frustrations with alot of the management styles that programmers are forced to adhere to. It designs the process ofsoftware development to be more responsive to changes. The processes are designed to help produce code that is easily or more readily tested and responsive to the ever changing user requirements. This is mostly done because of a structure where trust in the abilities of your co-workers and supervisors/team leads are present in abundance.
The thing is because of the fema fication of government we just don’t have that level of trust in the abilities of the people who run the government (Ben Bernanke exempted).
Going back to my main point, The technology is there, hearing Larry Lessig talk (reading on the web but hearing talk is more dramatic) of a more responsive techology enabled democracy, I cannot help but think of how much we need to restructure government to be adaptive, to be more agile.
This is because we will almost always be prepared for the last war, massive leverege, predatory lending, etc those things will be solved eventually, albeit slowly, but if we have structures/processes/agencies that are geared towards minimizing the hurt and maximizing the returns from the new challenges that face us then maybe just maybe we could live as if nothing changes because we have changed ourselves and our government to function in a way where only change is constant.

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-Resumes Are Useless- from : the_codist()

The whole pot was an excellent read. I’ve discussed my utter hate contempt <insert/hurl other insults here> in another post (ok the post was more of a positive post on not needing resumes) here and here.
The lowdown is simple if you have the ability to learn something fast, If you have the mental structure to do good work fast (programming context: for java people its a good grounding in patterns, for other more advice language its a great understanding and experience in meta programming), If you have the requisite basic social skills to be considered a good to great co-worker, you would probably never want for jobs.
Co-wrokers would refer you, and most of the times the resumes is secondary to the recommendation.
You work with someone for around 6 months and you probably know or have a fairly good idea of how well your co-worker learns, and in programming how ugly his or her code is.
If what you are working on is relatively hard and with deadlines that require you to level up your work output, if you can work in a project with some one that has critical time constraints and is still a hard project or problem you tend to have an idea of how he/she react under pressure.
This is something that no certification, no resume will tell you, and a test short of on the job evaluation will never show you these skills or attributes of a person.

I did a really short term contract a year ago, only a single week, in South Carolina trying to adapt a “free” tool for a use it wasn’t really supposed to be able to do. I had never seen the technology before (an XML publishing tool) and it had to interact with a system I knew nothing about (J.D. Edwards) and a week was all the time I had to learn, master, hack and deliver. I managed to succeed in 4 days (the fifth was a half day of just documenting) despite all the barriers and left on a real positive note from the customer and the agency. How do you put this in a resume? An ability to do anything that’s needed by learning rapidly, applying a lifetime of skills and a creative mind. Yeah, that’s a real good resume line:
Able to rapidly learn anything you need and deliver professional results
Talk about a useless resume. Yet it’s true, but lost in a sea of lies on resumes the statement may as well read “234234 dsfsjkhsdf = %432”.
Maybe resumes are still necessary, since the industry can’t figure out how to match employees and employers with a better method. Maybe people should write tests and challenge anyone to pass them (I think some people have tried that) instead of trolling for perjury. Even that isn’t foolproof since tests can be googled and passing tests doesn’t really prove you can actually deliver (I once knew a guy who passed the Java Developer Certification but couldn’t write two lines of code together that worked). Maybe people should read your blog and see if you know anything meaningful. I don’t have an answer, I just wish there was one people could agree on.
Meanwhile maybe I will try with the one line resume “Will write good code for good money”. I’d like to do some short term PHP work in the DFW area, so a short resume would be a plus.
At least it’s not a lie. Who knows, someone might believe it.
the_codist().

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Death By Chocolate–from Brad DeLong

I once ate around 3 kilos of chocolate within an hour period, hmm maybe that caused my migraine attack. But what a way to go!!

Death by Chocolate
Where would we be without the internet and wikipedia?
Theobromine poisoning: Chemists with the USDA are investigating the use of theobromine as a toxicant to control coyotes that prey on livestock. Humans are also susceptible to chocolate poisoning if enough is ingested. The lethal dose is placed at around 10 kg (22lbs).
Grasping Reality with Both Hands: The Semi-Daily Journal Economist Brad DeLong.

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-Excellent Financial Advice From Mark Cuban-Where To Put Your Money Right Now « blog maverick

I’ve personally resisted credit cards because my family has had a history of thinking of credit cards as cash. I almost got one last week but got cold feet when I realized that the only reason I’ve been able to save around 20 percent of my pay is that I can’t buy stuff online. I really like buying things but credit cards go against one of my principles of truly living in the moment (post about this in the future).
(emphasis mine)
So in a nutshell, while the interest rate on your credit cards is going up, the return on your investments has been going down. You know what they call someone who keeps on giving money to their stockbroker, mutual fund or 401k, but doesn’t pay off their credit card balance in full every month, BROKE AND STUPID !
Where To Put Your Money Right Now « blog maverick.

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-Idea-On the 8 Spot » Google vs Alzheimer’s

This is straight out of the Nintendo Playbook. I think that if they could promote this in a way where baby boomers view this as another part of the wellness movement and not as a sign of old age this might just work!

It Seems that a good way to increase the web search market share is to reel in those baby boomers into searching as a preventive measure against Alzheimer’s disease.
On the 8 Spot » Google vs Alzheimer’s.

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Google vs Alzheimer's

Functional magnetic resonance imaging provides...
Image via Wikipedia

Internet searches MIGHT have a positive effect on brain functions of middle-aged adults. Here’s a snippet (emphasis mine):

UCLA scientists have found that for computer-savvy middle-aged and older adults, searching the Internet triggers key centers in the brain that control decision-making and complex reasoning. The findings demonstrate that Web search activity may help stimulate and possibly improve brain function. The study, the first of its kind to assess the impact of Internet searching on brain performance, is currently in press at the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry and will appear in an upcoming issue.
…
“Internet searching engages complicated brain activity, which may help exercise and improve brain function,” said principal investigator Dr. Gary Small, a professor at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA who holds UCLA’s Parlow-Solomon Chair on Aging.
For the study, the UCLA team worked with 24 neurologically normal research volunteers between the ages of 55 and 76. Half of the study participants had experience searching the Internet, while the other half had no experience. Age, educational level and gender were similar between the two groups.
Study participants performed Web searches and book-reading tasks while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans, which… tracks the intensity of cell responses in the brain by measuring the level of cerebral blood flow during cognitive tasks.
All study participants showed significant brain activity during the book-reading task, demonstrating use of the regions controlling language, reading, memory and visual abilities…
Internet searches revealed a major difference between the two groups. While all participants demonstrated the same brain activity that was seen during the book-reading task, the Web-savvy group also registered activity in the… areas of the brain which control decision-making and complex reasoning.
…researchers found that during Web searching, volunteers with prior experience registered a twofold increase in brain activation when compared with those with little Internet experience. The tiniest measurable unit of brain activity registered by the fMRI is called a voxel. Scientists discovered that during Internet searching, those with prior experience sparked 21,782 voxels, compared with only 8,646 voxels for those with less experience.
…the Internet’s wealth of choices requires that people make decisions about what to click on in order to pursue more information, an activity that engages important cognitive circuits in the brain.
“A simple, everyday task like searching the Web appears to enhance brain circuitry in older adults, demonstrating that our brains are sensitive and can continue to learn as we grow older,” Small said.
Small added that the minimal brain activation found in the less experienced Internet group may be due to participants not quite grasping the strategies needed to successfully engage in an Internet search, which is common while learning a new activity.”With more time on the Internet, they may demonstrate the same brain activation patterns as the more experienced group,” he said.

Link
There are a few caveats though, the study didn’t differentiate between the levels of prior internet searching knowledge (maybe one was a power googler while another might’ve only searched for porn before). One more caveat, the participants in the study may have been through ‘self-selecting bias’.
Does anyone know if Google funded this study? It Seems that a good way to increase the web search market share is to reel in those baby boomers into searching as a preventive measure against Alzheimer’s disease.
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Blog Action Day 08

Blog Action Day 08.
Today is Blog Action Day, where bloggers unite to give voice to the issue of poverty.
The message is simple when someone is hungry you give them food, If someone wants to work you help him find work. It is because we recognize the fact that we cannot be truly happy in a world where too many people are suffering in extreme poverty.
This cry may not be heard, this cry may not be heard above the pleas of people from developed nations, because of the financial crisis that the world is going through.
We should not, we cannot allow our cries to go unheard. Each hour, each minute, each second someone dies, a future becomes dark and a promise remains just…

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Strangely Comforting–Now we’re getting somewhere — Crooked Timber

I do not know why the highlighted words moved me, maybe it is because it brought to mind dreams of a lost youth allowed to be revisited with the wisdom that often comes with age, vaguely hinting at a second chance. Makes me reminisce about Casablanca, It’s irrational, yes but sometimes the human mind makes connections that really aren’t there but the mind still insists!

It’s fascinating to wonder how Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling must feel about all this. Having long abandoned their youthful leftism, they have suddenly been forced by circumstances to implement something that looks superficially like socialism, and might even lead to a genuine restructuring of society (utopian I know, but who would have thought a month ago that we would have been wondering what to do with a nationalised finance sector). At the very least, Brown and Darling must have found it easier to adapt to the sudden collapse of the existing order than those who have never imagined anything else.
Now we’re getting somewhere — Crooked Timber.

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funny—Andy Borowitz: Krugman Could Turn into Massive Douchebag, Colleagues Fear

One day after the Nobel committee announced that Paul Krugman had won the 2008 Nobel Prize for economics, colleagues of Mr. Krugman voiced concerns that winning the coveted award could turn him into an egregious douchebag.
At The New York Times, where Mr. Krugman is an op-ed page columnist, and at Princeton University, where he is a professor of economics, co-workers of the newly-minted Nobel laureate were reportedly bracing for the worst.
“I think it’s safe to say that Paul had pretty high self-esteem before the Nobel thing went down,” said one of Mr. Krugman’s Princeton associates, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “But now he’s walking around like he’s Jay-Z or something.”
The first ominous sign, according to the associate, came at a meeting of the economics department this morning, when Mr. Krugman showed up with a coffee mug reading, “No. 1 Economist.”
Andy Borowitz: Krugman Could Turn into Massive Douchebag, Colleagues Fear.

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Bert Sperling Answers Your Best Places To Live Questions – Freakonomics – Opinion – New York Times Blog

Nods head in agreement!

Unfortunately, I hear all the time from singles that their work usually lasts until 8 p.m. (or later), and there’s barely enough time to grab some dinner and a drink before collapsing into bed and starting the routine again the next morning. Despite all the possibilities to meet new people, the reality seems to be that a single in a big city is confined to a narrow set of acquaintances and co-workers; sort of like dying of thirst in the middle of an ocean.
Bert Sperling Answers Your Best Places To Live Questions – Freakonomics – Opinion – New York Times Blog.