According to worldchanging, the dutch are implementing a GPS based road usage system which charges people based on miles driven, congestion and the fuel efficiency of their car.
I've thought of a similar system many times before, including the revenue neutral part, as a way to get people to accurately estimate the social cost of their individual actions.
This is so wonderful! It's also a great way to assess the economic impact of building roads - now you can collect data on road usage and utilization, and factor that in to your planning.
I could imagine combining this information with maps to yield highly precise and objective measures of congestion and areas for focus in transportation solutions.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Monday, December 8, 2008
Nassim Nicholas Taleb on Charlie Rose
I watched all twenty minutes, and found them rather interesting:
http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/9713
The points he raises about (1) deleveraging across the board, (2) banks as utilities, (3) re-inventing economics as a discipline and (4) less speculation, all seem very sensible and logical.
I found his book, Black Swan, informative and I think insightful in the section on finance. It was, however, so obtuse and repetitive that I had to do a harsh skim read through most of it.
My personal thought on the crisis, and one which I haven't seen picked up generally, is that one of the classic responses to a principal-agent problem is transparency, or more information flow.
It seems to me that with web technologies we can radically increase transparency and reduce the hazards associated with leaving our money in the hands of others.
While this is a general and fairly utopian idea, it is worth stating that the presence of professional managers of other people's money are not going away. So we have to solve this problem, or at least ameliorate it.
But we can certainly create a new sort of information infrastructure, one where by opening up all sorts of information on corporate activity to public scrutiny we can introduce greater diversity and debate in the interpretation of their actions.
http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/9713
The points he raises about (1) deleveraging across the board, (2) banks as utilities, (3) re-inventing economics as a discipline and (4) less speculation, all seem very sensible and logical.
I found his book, Black Swan, informative and I think insightful in the section on finance. It was, however, so obtuse and repetitive that I had to do a harsh skim read through most of it.
My personal thought on the crisis, and one which I haven't seen picked up generally, is that one of the classic responses to a principal-agent problem is transparency, or more information flow.
It seems to me that with web technologies we can radically increase transparency and reduce the hazards associated with leaving our money in the hands of others.
While this is a general and fairly utopian idea, it is worth stating that the presence of professional managers of other people's money are not going away. So we have to solve this problem, or at least ameliorate it.
But we can certainly create a new sort of information infrastructure, one where by opening up all sorts of information on corporate activity to public scrutiny we can introduce greater diversity and debate in the interpretation of their actions.
Ingenius Marvels
I came across several nature related posts which were worth jotting down.
First, a piece on the natural fly predators of the invasive fire ants of the southeast:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiJgsPUYahs
I was stunned at the cruel ingenuity of the fly: it injects eggs into the headcase of an ant, itself a remarkable feat considering how fast those things move.
Next, the eggs hatch, feeding on nutrients in the ant. But, to ensure a more stable place to grow, they ensure the removal of the ant's head from its body!
Using that skull case as a sort of coccoon, they hatch in peace. Remarkable!
Second, the venus fly trap. I saw a digg post on youtube videos on these, and then read the wikipedia article.
Again, just breathtaking simplicity carried to a beautiful conclusion. The venus flytrap has essentially a spring loaded mechanism, poised to close its jaws over stray pray.
It uses a very simple, and elegant, heuristic to decide when to close its jaws: if two of its sensor hairs are triggered. So simple!
Further, the movement of the captured animal triggers further closure - if it's small enough to escape, all the better as that allows insignficant prey to escape! Elegant.
Interestingly, the average 'flower', as a plant can have multiple, only preys 3-4 times during its lifetime. So in a sense the video is capturing a rare event.
First, a piece on the natural fly predators of the invasive fire ants of the southeast:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiJgsPUYahs
I was stunned at the cruel ingenuity of the fly: it injects eggs into the headcase of an ant, itself a remarkable feat considering how fast those things move.
Next, the eggs hatch, feeding on nutrients in the ant. But, to ensure a more stable place to grow, they ensure the removal of the ant's head from its body!
Using that skull case as a sort of coccoon, they hatch in peace. Remarkable!
Second, the venus fly trap. I saw a digg post on youtube videos on these, and then read the wikipedia article.
Again, just breathtaking simplicity carried to a beautiful conclusion. The venus flytrap has essentially a spring loaded mechanism, poised to close its jaws over stray pray.
It uses a very simple, and elegant, heuristic to decide when to close its jaws: if two of its sensor hairs are triggered. So simple!
Further, the movement of the captured animal triggers further closure - if it's small enough to escape, all the better as that allows insignficant prey to escape! Elegant.
Interestingly, the average 'flower', as a plant can have multiple, only preys 3-4 times during its lifetime. So in a sense the video is capturing a rare event.
On Word and WordPress
Note: I'm not a wordpress user, but this struck me as interesting.
In the early days of word processing, there was a clear distinction between data and formatting. In wordperfect and other tools, rendering was a separate step.
We all embraced WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) with graphical OSes, and haven't looked back.
It strikes me that blogging has us returning to that earlier model. My data, what I enter, is largely separate from its display and formatting. The two are separate again!
In the early days of word processing, there was a clear distinction between data and formatting. In wordperfect and other tools, rendering was a separate step.
We all embraced WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) with graphical OSes, and haven't looked back.
It strikes me that blogging has us returning to that earlier model. My data, what I enter, is largely separate from its display and formatting. The two are separate again!
Thoughts on Vegetarianism
You probably don’t want to watch this, but it’s really horrible. http://www.chooseveg.com/animal-cruelty.asp
I had no idea it was that bad. The really scary part is about the way that dairy cows are treated. I don’t know if organic milk does anything for this issue, and would like to find out.
I’ve been quasi-vegetarian for quite a while, or at least infrequent in my meat consumption. But I think I’m going to go fully vegetarian from now on.
I am convinced that if more people were just aware of what goes into the food that they eat, the world would be a very different place.
Mahatma Gandhi, among others, stressed internalizing the full extent of your actions, in both a political sense, but also in the economic and cultural choices you make.
It seems to me that that idea is very pertinent today. Animal cruelty in an industrial food production system is just one of many symptoms of a system where the true consequences of our actions are obscured because of the complexity of the systems we've built to support our lives.
I had no idea it was that bad. The really scary part is about the way that dairy cows are treated. I don’t know if organic milk does anything for this issue, and would like to find out.
I’ve been quasi-vegetarian for quite a while, or at least infrequent in my meat consumption. But I think I’m going to go fully vegetarian from now on.
I am convinced that if more people were just aware of what goes into the food that they eat, the world would be a very different place.
Mahatma Gandhi, among others, stressed internalizing the full extent of your actions, in both a political sense, but also in the economic and cultural choices you make.
It seems to me that that idea is very pertinent today. Animal cruelty in an industrial food production system is just one of many symptoms of a system where the true consequences of our actions are obscured because of the complexity of the systems we've built to support our lives.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)