John Barrdear

Ken Livingstone to work for Hugo Chavez

Published
by
John Barrdear
on 28 August 2008
in Politics
. 0 Comments

This piece in The Independent is short enough to quote in full:

Former London mayor Ken Livingstone has agreed to help Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez improve urban planning.

While he was in office Mr Livingstone made a deal with Mr Chavez to exchange cheap Venezuelan fuel for British buses for London’s advice to mayoral candidates in Caracas.

But the current mayor Boris Johnson cancelled the deal when he came to office.

Mr Livingstone said he will personally advise officials and candidates to ensure that the country gets the “advice that we promised”.

A spokesman for the Mayor of London, said: “Boris Johnson made it clear during his election campaign that he did not want to be on the payroll of Hugo Chavez and did not believe a poor South American country should be subsidising one of the wealthiest cities in the world.

“He has kept that promise to the people of London. Ken Livingstone is free, as a private individual, to offer his advice and services to whomever he wants.”

Of course, the last time Mr Livingstone made the news was only a couple of weeks ago, that time on the generosity of the Chinese government:

When Livingstone and his Trotskyist cronies were given a multi-million pound payoff from city hall I wondered how much they would be giving away to good causes. As it happens it’s Livingstone and his aide John Ross who have been reviving charity - from the Chinese government.

As Andrew Gilligan reports in today’s Evening Standard these champions of the working person stayed at a £1,100 a night hotel in Beijing and were given VIP seats for the opening ceremony. No wonder he told the Today programme that the Chinese regime was not a police state and was going in the right direction on human rights. Tell that to HIV Aids campiagner Hu Jia.

Apparently, the Chinese invited Livingstone because they saw him as someone “who might have some influence in the future”. Senior Labour figures closely involved with the ill-fated Livingstone campaign are now tearing out their hair out at the former mayor’s increasingly unpredictable behaviour since he lost the election. The sooner the Labour Party finds a decent candidate for 2012 the better.

Hmmm.

Dreams are more negative than real life

Published
by
John Barrdear
on 20 August 2008
in Umm .. Other stuff
. 0 Comments

Dreams are more negative than real life: Implications for the function of dreaming

Authors: Katja Valli; Thea Strandholm; Lauri Sillanmaumlki; Antti Revonsuo
Published in: journal Cognition & Emotion, Volume 22, Issue 5 August 2008 , pages 833 - 861
Abstract
Dream content studies have revealed that dream experiences are negatively biased; negative dream contents are more frequent than corresponding positive dream contents. It is unclear, however, whether the bias is real or due to biased sampling, i.e., selective memory for intense negative emotions. The threat simulation theory (TST) claims that the negativity bias is real and reflects the evolved biological function of dreaming. In the present study, we tested the hypothesis of the TST that threatening events are overrepresented in dreams, i.e., more frequent and more severe in dreams than in real life. To control for biased sampling, we used as a baseline the corresponding negative events in real life rather than the corresponding positive events in dreams. We collected dream reports (N=419) and daily event logs (N=490) from 39 university students during a two-week period, and interviewed them about real threat experiences retrievable from autobiographical memory (N=714). Threat experiences proved to be much more frequent and severe in dreams than in real life, and Current Dream Threats more closely resembled Past than Current Real Threats. We conclude that the TST’s predictions hold, and that the negativity bias is real.

A post from my iPhone

Published
by
John Barrdear
on 10 August 2008
in Meta
. 0 Comments

This is a post from the Wordpress app on my iPhone. The interface is simple enough, but seems to lack any admin functionality.

Returning

Published
by
John Barrdear
on 10 August 2008
in Meta and Personal
. 0 Comments

Was on holiday. Back now.

Information and Learning in Markets

Published
by
John Barrdear
on 20 June 2008
in Academia, Economics, Epistemology and Finance
. 0 Comments

I’ve got my hands on a copy of Xavier Vives‘ new book, “Information and Learning in Markets.”  It’s a graduate-level textbook on mechanisms for information aggregation and I have to admit - my inner nerd is pretty excited at the prospect of not understanding most of it.

ORLY?

Published
by
John Barrdear
on 11 June 2008
in Academia, Politics and USA
. 0 Comments

Dear Michael Medved (who wrote the article and who graduated from Yale) and Professor Greg Mankiw (who linked to the article and teaches at Harvard),

I’m willing to accept that Michael’s argument represents some of the reason why Harvard and Yale graduates represent such a large fraction of presidential candidates if you are willing to accept that it is almost certainly a minor reason.

Ignoring your implied put-down of all of the other top-ranked universities in the United States, not to mention the still-excellent-but-not-Ivy-League institutions, the first thing that leaps to mind is the idea of (shock!) a third event that causally influences both Yale/Harvard attendance and entry into politics.

Perhaps the wealth of a child’s family is a good predictor of both whether that child will get into Harvard/Yale and also of whether they get into the “worth considering” pool of presidential candidates?

Perhaps there are some politics-specific network effects, with attendance at your esteemed universities being simply an opportunity to meet the parents of co-students?

Perhaps students who attend Harvard/Yale are self-selecting, with students interested in a career in politics being overly represented in your universities’ applicant pools?

Perhaps the geography matters, with universities located in the North East of the United States being over-represented in federal politics even after allowing for the above?

For the benefit of readers, here is the relevant section of the article:

What’s the explanation for this extraordinary situation - with Yale/Harvard degree-holders making up less than two-tenths of 1% of the national population, but winning more than 83% of recent presidential nominations?…

Today, the most prestigious degrees don’t so much guarantee success in adulthood as they confirm success in childhood and adolescence. That piece of parchment from New Haven or Cambridge doesn’t guarantee you’ve received a spectacular education, but it does indicate that you’ve competed with single-minded effectiveness in the first 20 years of life.

And the winners of that daunting battle - the driven, ferociously focused kids willing to expend the energy and make the sacrifices to conquer our most exclusive universities - are among those most likely to enjoy similar success in the even more fiercely fought free-for-all of presidential politics.

Needing a visa to visit America

Published
by
John Barrdear
on 3 June 2008
in Australia, Justice/Law and USA
. 0 Comments

Australia, like most of Western Europe and a few other countries, is on America’s “visa waiver” programme, which lets people travel to the USA for up to 90 days at a time without first applying for a visa, although the US can still deny entry to anybody that doesn’t answer the immigration official’s questions to their satisfaction.

By comparison, Australia requires that all visitors from everywhere except New Zealand have a visa. It’s a staggeringly simple and not overly expensive process that can happen online, but it’s a visa-requirement nonetheless.

It looks like the US is moving to an Australian-style system. They’re still calling it a “visa waiver,” but the requirement that I register before entering the US and that they reserve the right to deny my registration seems a lot like a visa to me. From the article:

Passengers travelling to the United States from countries whose citizens do not need visas must register online with the US government at least 72 hours before departure [from January 2009]

…

Although the new rule requires 72 hours advance registration, it will be valid for multiple entries over a two-year period. The rule will only apply to citizens of the 27 visa waiver programme countries

…

A Homeland Security official said the new measure would require the same information that passengers now have to include on the I-94 immigration form they must fill out before entering the US. He said Australia has been using a similar system for several years.

Presumably this means that the US will be more likely to start adding the newer members of the EU to the “visa waiver” programme.

Where is Obama’s big speech on sexism?

Published
by
John Barrdear
on 3 June 2008
in Politics and USA
. 5 Comments

I can’t write much at the moment - exams - but it just occurred to me to ask:  Where is Obama’s big speech on sexism?

Why didn’t he give a month ago?  In particular, why didn’t he give it before the DNC made their decision on Florida and Michigan?  Giving it after Hillary bows out will look like what it will be - a naked political attempt to convince her most ardent supporters to turn up on the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November.  If he’d given it two months ago, it would have had at least a chance of being seen as an honest, even gracious attempt to reach out to the Hillary-voters and convince them that he believes in fighting all forms of bigotry.

Enquiring minds want to know …

Published
by
John Barrdear
on 12 May 2008
in Health Care
. 0 Comments

Are obese people more likely to break their bones when they fall over because of their extra weight?

I can imagine that their bones are stronger than healthy-weighted people, but are they sufficiently stronger to make up for the extra pressure in a fall (as opposed to just walking around)?

Dilbert gold

Published
by
John Barrdear
on 9 May 2008
in Humour
. 1 Comment

Scott Adams has given up some gold for anybody dealing with dodgy datasets (and they’re all dodgy):

8 May 2008:

7 May 2008: