Tales of the Golem; or, the Modern Epimetheus

I'd cut him if he stands and I'd shoot him if he'd run

posted by Richard Mason @ Saturday, December 30, 2006 1 comments

If you can slip a tablet into someone's coffee, then it avoids an awful lot of mess

I had never read any P.D. James before so I started with her first novel, Cover Her Face. I was in the mood for a cozy murder in an English country house. I had pretty much decided beforehand that I was going to enjoy this one. And I did enjoy it.

But in the aftermath of having enjoyed it, I am full of criticisms.

1. Why on Earth did Stephen Maxie propose marriage to the housemaid Sally Jupp? He told the police, "I was sorry for her, I admired her and I was attracted by her. I have no idea what she thought about me." Elsewhere he said, "I admired her and I wanted to go to bed with her. I suppose you wouldn't call that love."
   
   Let the record show that Stephen Maxie is known to have had previous casual affairs, and he knew Sally Jupp was an unmarried mother. He had no reason to think that marriage was a necessary prerequisite to have sex with her, and he does not seem to have had any other motive to propose to this woman whom he hardly knew.
   
   He knew that the engagement would mean emotional distress and perhaps economic hardship for his mother and sister. Did he then care nothing for them? No, he was very loyal to his family.
   
   So the proposal seems a psychological mystery at the heart of the murder which Adam Dalgliesh has done nothing to explain.
   
   
2. Felix Hearne thought, "Adam Dalgliesh, I've heard of him. Ruthless, unorthodox, working always against time. I suppose he has his own private compulsions. At least they've thought us adversaries worthy of the best." Ridiculous. Why would a book publisher know who was the best Detective Chief-Inspector at Scotland Yard? Speaking for myself, I couldn't even name the local chief of police, although I do know the chief of police of the nearest large city.
   
   
3. I thought I had a third item here, which was that two of the witnesses' accounts were inconsistent (and Adam Dalgliesh didn't remark on this inconsistency). But on review, I see that the "inconsistency" is really too tiny to be worthy of comment.
   

posted by Richard Mason @ Friday, December 29, 2006 0 comments

Times when I feel I'd rather not be the one behind the wheel

Kudos to Bill, Brian, and David on actuating the controls of a Toyota Prius. (Click on picture for video.)

posted by Richard Mason @ Tuesday, December 19, 2006 0 comments

They called me names I never understood

posted by Richard Mason @ Monday, December 18, 2006 2 comments

Them that's got shall get, them that's not shall lose, so the Bible said

I have been thinking about the Lorenz curve. It seems to me that the second derivative of the Lorenz curve is important if people take cues from their socioeconomic peers.

A person who is located on a part of the Lorenz curve with high second derivative can see that those people who are just above him in the economic pecking order have significantly greater income than he does, while those who are just below him have significantly less. He may therefore be highly incentivized to seek promotion, move to Wall Street, or do whatever else it takes to improve or maintain his position, since the prospect of greatly increased or reduced income is very real to him.

On the other hand, a person who is located on a part of the Lorenz curve with low second derivative sees that his immediate economic superior does not actually make much more money than he does. It may be that everyone he comes into any social contact with has about the same income, and substantial changes in income seem unrealistic, like winning the lottery or a peasant becoming king. Although there may be significant inequality elsewhere in the society, his own socioeconomic neighborhood is in effect an incentive-sucking egalitarian mini-society.

For economists who prize inequality as the means and result of properly incentivizing productive behavior: one problem with too much inequality is that you cannot make the Lorenz curve too steeply rising in one place without flattening it elsewhere. If the second derivative is exceptionally high at the upper end of the income spectrum, that may be creating too much relative equality elsewhere.

Based on this simple theoretical argument, one might propose that the second derivative of the Lorenz curve should ideally be constant across social strata, in which case the ideal Gini coefficient is 0.33. This is apparently about the same as the Gini coefficient of Canada or France. A quadratic Lorenz curve would also mean that the top one percent of earners receive two percent of all income, not sixteen percent as is apparently the case in the United States.

But on the other hand, a Lorenz curve with constant second derivative may not be desirable after all, because at the top end of the income distribution the (constant) reward associated with advancement becomes small compared to the individual's existing income.

If instead we say that the second derivative of the Lorenz curve should everywhere be proportional to the individual's income (i.e. proportional to the first derivative of the curve), then the Lorenz curve should assume the form of an exponential:

L(X) = exp(k X) / (exp(k) - 1) - 1/(exp(k) - 1)

for some choice of growth constant k.

The resulting Gini coefficient is
G = (1 - 2 * (exp(k) - k - 1)/k/(exp(k) - 1))
and can thus be anything depending on the choice of k.

posted by Richard Mason @ Saturday, December 16, 2006 0 comments

The time I like is the rush hour, 'cos I like the rush

I was just walking home thirty minutes ago and passed Yao Ming, walking by himself in the other direction on Wilshire.

I had a general idea what Yao Ming looked like, but I was not one hundred percent sure, at the time, that it was him. It seemed possible that he was just some random Chinese guy, who was the tallest person I had ever seen in my life. Or, maybe just some random Chinese guy standing on the shoulders of someone walking down Wilshire.

But get this. We had planned to do some joint robot-car tests with Caltech yesterday, but we were not able to, because the designated parking lot was being used for filming of Rush Hour 3.

And it turns out that Yao Ming is going to be in Rush Hour 3. He will be playing "Triad Member."

We will be able to use the parking lot next weekend. Apparently no filming is allowed to happen in Pasadena that late in the year, on the grounds that the police and other city services already have their hands full preparing for the Rose Bowl.

----

My latest idea regarding rush hour is that the police should start driving full-size pickup trucks instead of their current cruisers. I think these could still be fast enough to engage in high-speed pursuits, but big enough that when there was an accident obstructing traffic, the first cop to the scene could pull the vehicles off the freeway, instead of waiting for a tow truck. I think this would ease traffic problems a lot.

This assumes that you wouldn't normally need a full-on wrecking truck to do the job... although I guess there may be a difference between towing a malfunctioning-but-mostly-intact vehicle, and moving a totally wrecked vehicle.

posted by Richard Mason @ Monday, December 11, 2006 0 comments

I'm guided by a signal in the heavens

Thanks to NovAtel, makers of fine GPS receivers, and Omnistar, providers of fine differential GPS correction services, for their kind sponsorship of our racing efforts.

We went with Gary yesterday to one of the occasional alumni lunches at the Proud Bird. The table was full of old codgers who worked on the Apollo program and such; it seemed just about everyone there was working on guidance and navigation systems. (One guy was interested in using X-ray pulsars as God's own GPS satellites.)

This is probably one of those coincidences-that-really-isn't-a-coincidence. The Proud Bird is right next to the airport, and the neighborhood probably attracts a certain type.

---

Driving at twilight, I stopped at an intersection that was well criss-crossed with power lines, and hundreds of birds had settled on every line in sight. A pedestrian crossing in front of me pointed up at the dark mass of birds. I nodded to show that I was aware of the gathering Hitchcockian menace.

---

Fear of aggressive birds may be why the bird-infested patio tables are more readily available than the inside booths at the Omelette Parlor on Main Street. We've been there twice now and I'm ready to designate it the new brunch place. One thing I like about it is that the fruit that comes with the omelettes is actually good fruit, not lousy melon with a few grapes.

James Baker indirectly acknowledged the unpalatability of melon-laden fruit salad this week when he hoped that the administration would not treat the Iraq Study Group report as if it were one.

The orange juice at the Omelette Parlor is really good too, but expensive, which has inspired me to start juicing oranges at home again.

posted by Richard Mason @ Friday, December 08, 2006 3 comments

I'm guided by the beauty of our weapons

I was talking today to an expert who has spent his career developing fiber-optic gyroscopes. I told him that Northrop Grumman wanted $26,000 for their LN-200 inertial navigation system. He said, "$26,000? We promised DARPA that would cost $5,000 ten years ago!"

----

The other day Maribeth asked for some gin and I told her we didn't have any. "There's no gin in that bottle?" she asked, and I picked up the empty Bombay Sapphire bottle and waggled it to show that there was nothing in it.

Then I accidentally tapped the Bombay Sapphire bottle against the full unopened bottle of Gerolsteiner sparkling mineral water.

Clink.

And the Gerolsteiner bottle detonated and showered glass fragments everywhere. The bottom half of the bottle was left intact, neatly sheared off at the label. I didn't suffer any ill effects, but I did have bits of glass on my face.

Watch out for that mineral water!

Maribeth thinks we should have a contest and bang all the bottles together to see which one wins.

posted by Richard Mason @ Monday, December 04, 2006 2 comments