Speculators and Oil price

The Economist covers speculators' effects on commodities based on recently recatagorized data release by the CFTC. They only released data for a brief period, BUT it was marginally inconclusive. If anything I gleaned that the data indicated speculators were playing a valuable market role. I suppose they will find some periods over which the results are more in favor of speculators and people will hem and haw like they do now.

More information is alwyas good. The market usually wins though, no matter WHO leads America. Educating more people so they don't believe politicians is our only hope. I'll cite the last 2 sentences of the articls:

It is tempting to look for scapegoats when high prices hurt consumers. But the real culprits for oil-price volatility may be much more familiar: supply, demand and global instability.

Market Based Health Care Reform

A couple weeks ago, out for a glass of wine, the subject drifted to health care reform. The girl I was talking to said something to the effect that "We're not giving time to let the market work" on health care. Clearly the cost and quality of health care have been largely in the public eye the last 5 years in my opinion. I saw a lot of validity in that point. Also many recent studies I've seen stipulate that we spend much more, for lower quality of care then many nations out there INCLUDING some countries with nationalized medicine (which I am NOT explicitly in favor of at this time).

Then while reading the most recent edition of The Economist, I read a pretty fair article summing up the current debate and posturing on both sides of argument that had a great finish which indicated something similar:

Though it has a shameful history, the insurance industry has done a U-turn of late. It now accepts the need for a radical overhaul of insurance markets through measures such as guaranteed issue of coverage and the creation of health insurance “exchanges”. But its leaders are increasingly unhappy about the shrill attacks. Can Mr Obama continue to bash the insurers one day and rely on them the next?

Which got me thinking, perhaps the THREAT of legislation is enough impetus to resolve the issue. How can Barrack Obama have his cake and eat it too? I think he's a smart guy who hasn't shown himself to about face when confronted with reality. Rather than pushing health care reform now, I think he should declare a 6 month moritorium to allow the debate to continue so issues can get worked out. I also believe that he should insist that at this time the health insurance company should come to an agreement amongst themselves (a. la. market based regulators of the financial world. They (like NYSE for example) self regulate reasonably and pre-empt government action sometimes by implementing reforms first.

I think if the insurance companies did a good enough job coming up with a basic system of rights then the current motivation for reform would wane, and people could all have health care. I do think that at least providing preventitive care (which reduces emergency care later in uninsured) and emergency care for all makes sense, and probably that basic provision should come from the government. The reality is we're never going to see emergency care not provided as needed, because that's just wrong, and luckily everyone pretty much agrees.

On top of that poll numbers say that people don't agree with Obama's current approach, and I'm SURE that health insurers don't want too much more government control. I think that Obama/The Government should propose, and possibly pass, just a patient bill of rights. Here's my suggestions:

1) No disqualifying for insurance based on history. Costs are purely decided by age.

2) Government provides every citizen a voucher entiling them to basic preventitive care (i.e. physicals and immunizations), basic medical coverage, and reasonable emergency coverage.

Note: People with more money will always be able to pay for fancier things. Also we will NEVER have doctors refusing emergency care so SOME preventative measures (those which save money long term) should be free.

3) Alternative therapies' effectiveness will be thouroughly tested head to head so that that best cost solution is used.

4) All drug studies will be 100% transparent.

More to come......

"Signing Statements" a.k.a. Line Item Veto

I didn't know that presidenta could sign a bill, then declare a provision of that bill unconstituional in his interprative instructions to his executive branch. This practice known as issuing "Signing Statements" apparently has been around for some time.

The New York Times covers this issue with a poorly worded and misleading "Obama's Embrace of a Bush Tactic Riles Congress," which at least they redeem with a fuller recount saying:

Since the 19th century, presidents have occasionally signed bills while calling a provision unconstitutional. But the practice was rare until President Ronald Reagan. He and his successors, including Bill Clinton, began issuing signing statements much more frequently and challenging far more provisions.

So it's not really a bush tactic, nor even a partisan one, but one that's been used for a long time, though become more common since Reagan. Since then the parties of the president have reversed 3 times. They also note that it's use peaked with approximately 1200 bill challenged durint Bush Jr's two terms, somewhat redeeming the healine.

It seems that basically presidents have found a way to get a line item veto. I remember various presidents particularly Bill Clinton trying to get a line item veto passed but it never worked. Personally I'd rather see them give the president a line item veto so the process is more transparent. I'd also rather see ALL political donations itemized and enumerated on the web so donations have total transperency too. I'll keep dreaming.

It also reminds me of the interprative philosophy of judical interpretation. The most prominent example being the use of the "just and necessary" clause as a sort of carte blanche for judicial decisions. It seems a little suspicious to me, but it's difficult to pass judgement. I'm not a lawyer or a politician. I think it's just good for us citizens to be informed.

Memristors complete the electrical spectrum

At least until memcapacitors and meminductors come, we now have all of the basic building blocks of electronic devices. New scientist has a GREAT article about memristors. Seems that one guy (Leon Chua) figured out how this missing component a.k.a. the memristor should have been back in 1971! Turns out another guy (Stan Williams) had acceidentally stumbled on an arrangement that behaves just as Chua expected around 2000. Why is this exciting? I'll tell you in a minute. Suffice to say the effect is based on charged oxygen bubbles migrating into or out of RESISTORS! It also appears it was not within our technology realm until we got much close to today in terms of fabrication techniques (i.e. photolithography etc.)

Then we get on to Biology. It appears that a gentleman by the name of Max Di Ventra (UCSD woo hoo!) connected the behavior of a large single celled slime with the memristor. Of course it turns out that SYNAPSES are just memristors (Based on their description they operate in the frequency domain) with the "ebb and flow of potassium and sodium ions" substituting for the charged oxygen bubbles. Nature had them all along!

I did a brief stint working at the neuroscience institute working on robotic autotmata for the first robocup with segways. The institute was founded and run by Gerald Edleman who did amazing work on the structure of antibodies which he recieved a nobel prize for. Basically one of the feelings I got while there was that he valued just as much trying things out as opposed to trying to unravel them. We basically worked on building models of the brain to do limited things based on our understanding as it stood at the time. Of course we were just SIMULATING neurons in a coarse, and really digital fashion and they were able to make great strides in understanding. Now all of a sudden there's a circuit element which behaves like a neuron.

So this begs the question.....How long til AI? I certainly think this is a big step toward starting to have intelligent systems because we can just copy our brains to figure things out instead of trying to simulate what ends up just being a memristor in the first place. This certainly opens new doors, and the rapid development on this project track though I still wonder at seeing a sentient machine in my lifetime. It was only a few years ago it took a hundred million dollar machine (deep blue) to beat the best chess player at CHESS! Imagine the difficulties in programming, or really as we get closer TEACHING a computer. I think it will be a while before the technology, let alone philosophy exists for us to raise a sentient computer.

GoogleOS!

Word on the street today is that google is going to release an OS! This is a BIG move into microsoft's territory. Even IF it's as they say just for netbooks, and basically an android follow on it's still a big move following on the heals of the browser release.

The Economist headline reads: Google v Microsoft: Clash of the titans. They point out that M$ still has about a 90% share of the marketplace and this OS is aimed at netbooks. The reality is, they say, and I agree, that it will be a big challenge. Still the timing, and the company (now and google versus sun 15 years ago) seem to be well placed for success. Google has turned everything they've touched into gold.

Cnet news.com's coverage is also here with a more techie sort of view. Two nice summarizing paragraphs excerpted cover the authors opinion:

Google's general idea seems to be twofold. First, it wants to make it easier for regular people to use a computer by making an operating system that is fast, secure, and lightweight enough to run on portable devices.

Secondly, Google believes that through the use of Web standards like HTML 5--promoted heavily during its recent Google I/O conference as the development platform of the future--software development on a browser-based OS will be easily understood by developers reared in the Web 2.0 era.

I pretty much agree. Starting from scratch is usually a better way to do anything if you want to change. I think they can be competitive becuase MS is SO encumbered by backwards compatability they they can't be as nimble. Also as an IETFer and Open Source afficianado I think it's a good sign they are being open about it and using OS software, and (likely) well documented open protocols.

Google already has attacked MS on the Applications front with google aps. Not only are they well featured, but they are instantly shared and have versioning! I've been using these simple free tools for a while to do work and collaborate.

Still the reality is that google is going major now. I predict 5 years max until they are no longer a a darling, and begin to have some of the problems all incumbents always do. Hopefully the competitive pressures of being a Web 2.0 and web services based company providing a service will mitigate some of those issues and they will be a company of the future. I'd love to be wrong.

A good article I always think of when talking about these subjects is Robert Cringly's 5% solution. He talks about how companies will no longer be able to be lax about improving their products if they want to survive in the future. This is also the future prognosticated for ALL industries by one of my favorite references, natural capitalism. They also agree, but for the bigger picture, that providing services instead of things people buy up front, you encourage producers to be effective and efficient.

I welcome people's feedback.

Error Analysis

I recently had a need to do some error analysis. I had forgotten the some rules, or so I decided to brush up. Really the two main ones I did remember were that PERCENTWISE when you multiply(divide) two numbers the percent error adds, and when you add(subtract) the percents stay the same. On the bright side these basic non-calculus rules can be quite helpful most of the time.

I don't do a lot of analog circuits, or statistics any more. Typical problems involve selecting circuit components to guarantee the parameters which are desired for a circuit. As you start getting into capacitors, inductors, and transistors, the linearity goes away. Also if there's some sort of statiscical distribution your function things can also be quite complicated. In these situations you must use calulus which starts to get VERY complicated once you start getting to deal with statistical distrubutions. Error anlysis can also be extended to computational algorithms, estimation functions, and a whole lot of different concepts. See wikipedia for some complex examples. Still even you can get pretty far doing simple integrals.

The additive property seems quite obvious. The multplicative (or really any rule) is pretty clear if you approach it like a circuit problem (or at least when I do) and think of the biggest variety doing a sweep in (the old days when I used to do) simulations. Fortunately On the bright side quite often you can reasonably simplify a problem to a set of linear equations. For example, despite the complexity of the circuitry inside the op-amps which were the cornerstone of the instrumentation amplifier I was investigating you can see from wikipedia the it's just the basic math operations because of the confiuration used. so extracting the net error is simple following the basic rules above. If you wanted a more exact number you might consider nonlinearity in your opamps, but using basic design rules you learn in EE 101 the high gain of an omp amp can be used to idealize a non linear circuit to something linear.

This is often what you want for something like an instrumentation amp where you're trying to amplify a signal. Still these concepts can be applied to more complicated scenarios. Quite often for analog circuits that have a transfer function and are applied to AC signals you can use a fourier (continuous signals) or laplace transfor (unit step or other functions with instantanous changes) to put them into a linear set of equations.

Error anlysis is pretty pervasive. A good open course from Columbia is a good refresher. Enjoy.

Iran Uprising!

I know it's been a while since I've written. It's been a tough month for me, but the action in Iran to me is amazing and very impressive.

First I want to comment on Barrack Obamas words, and Senator John McCains words. I know we have pretty much never tolerated external meddling in internal affairs so I think Obamas comments saying the people of iran need to pick their ruler was the smart, and conscienscious move. He has made me proud once again. I think what McCain said was not only political but naive and counterproductive. The reality is it appears the Iranian people have the issue covered.

Clearly the people have undetaken some risky protests. This is a brave act of civil defiance, and it appears Iranian politicians and those in power are reacting appropriately:

1) The people are rising up and peacefully (in most cases) asserting the rights which is a powerful uplifting message.

2) It appears that the supreme council of religious authorities are meeting to investigate the issue

3) Reports indicate that the secret police are refusing to assualt or shoot innocents for no reason. I think this is an amazing re-affirmation of the power of civil disobediance as we saw with Martin Luther King, and countless times throughout history. It's also a beautiful re-afirmation of the fact that most people, really, are good in their hearts. Even much vilified (and probably not perfect) Iranian Secret Police.

Iran IS a democracy. Perhaps after their own fashion, but it's for real. And i think we should all recognize the rights of different people to work through issues in their own way. I think it's a source of pride for America that we are what we are. I also believe that we have a lot to learn from different societities out there, and this is a good opportunity.

(6/18/09) A recent update from the Economist. I think clearly if the will was there, the protests would have been over in a day because few people will stand up to a tank (a la tank man). But the reality is that jouralists have been expelled. And to quote their article:

"Its men have beaten up protesters and fired on the crowd. Reformers, intellectuals, civil leaders and human-rights activists have been arrested or have gone missing, not only in Tehran but also in Tabriz, in the north-west, and across the country. Since the Ministry of Guidance has expelled foreign journalists, the course of the repression will be hard to follow. And the outcome of this clash is impossible to predict."

So it's not all perfect. Still I think it's clear that the people have a will that will not be suppressed, and I still think it's a good sign.