Problems in the financial markets

Where will the problems in the financial markets stop?  What will be their impacts? Will there be recessions, or even depressions?  Are the problems in the financial markets an example of what can happen when entities don’t trust each other - if so, is this a graphic example of the importance of trust between entities in non-command economies?

My blog lives!

I’ve been so busy in the last few weeks it’s ridiculous. I have to ration my time! I literally havn’t had time to write on my blog. I’ve just finished the draft of a submission to a traffic study for 2011RA and I feel like I’m falling asleep.

I’ll write again in the next day or two. Ciao.

Mysticism surrounding the number 137

For some reason, the number 137 has obtained mystical significance for some people, particularly in relating to physical reality (although not to physics). It is very natural to attempt to construct order in observing the world (which is what everyone does all the time, and scientists do as their profession). However, the desire to construct order around the number 137 is probably more about mysticism than anything else.

An example of this significance can be found at the following website, which I’ll quote in part below to whet your appetite:

Solar System 1/137      Allow me a few phrases with something of mystery to avoid an inconvenient extension.    It has been said that the Greek sages gave up the cultivation of the technique because they understood that it could distract the fundamental thing. To a tree which produces fruits and branches, fruits and branches cut him, but not the connection with its roots. According to these ideas, the most indispensable thing is the most elementary thing.    The present man could lose the priority sense of the elementary thing (in science, policy, justice), by the cult to the complexity and the technique. With it the hierarchy of the most direct arbitration is lost.   It is natural that the mathematics bother many young men. The mathematical invocations should explain more natural concepts before that concept of specialists.   There are numerous indications that relate the fundamental physics to judgment elements. Know what has not been said.   Though this surprises you, here you will have to find easily connection of an unknown form fractal, a base for some new mathematics, a basis for a structure of the Solar System with identification of fine structure and Pauli exclusion principle.Meanwhile:   In the embryogenese of each animal birth around, millions’ years of evolution continuously reproduce the history of each passage until the being who is born. With the evolutionary generation of organic beings we have the unquestionable evidence of a hierarchy order.

Using mathematics and astronomy in odd religious ideas

For some reason, I was sent the following e-mail. Some people love to connect mathematics, astronomy and religion, and here’s an example.

Click on the link for more in the same vein.

3 (+/-)* Earth/Hell

                        (Earth Mass = 1)

If you’re going to Hell,

Check your reservation:

FrankHatchiii.com

 http://www.FrankHatchiii.com

New career direction

Yes, a week and a half ago I started a new job at a different organisation - the Australian Energy Market Commission (www.aemc.gov.au), a government body that writes the Rules for the National Electricity Market and conducts reviews on national energy policies. It’s interesting material for you all economic reformers - the electricity and gas networks are key elements of modern life (imagine the consequences of either drastically failing) and the associated markets are very interesting.

For all those interested in its work, I recommend downloading and reading the documents on its website. I’ve been reading and learning an enormous amount since I started the job and am already working in a project.

The Singularity Institute

Mitch Porter recently sent me this link to The Singularity Institute. In amongst the concerns of daily life and areas of immediate interest (e.g. politics), it’s very interesting to consider more long-term issues, such as how humanity might deal with an artificial intelligence that is more powerful than the mind of a human being. To quote from The Singularity Institute’s website:

In the coming decades, humanity will likely create a powerful artificial intelligence. The Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence (SIAI) exists to confront this urgent challenge, both the opportunity and the risk.

Long-term “out of the box thinking” is always needed.

My name is Alena.

In the last few weeks I’ve received 3 unsolicited e-mails purporting to be sent by Russian women seeking my attentions. I’ve reproduced the latest one below.

Is this another scam to get bank account details from people? What sort of scam is it? A quick search doesn’t reveal anything in particular about it.

Enjoy “Alena’s” e-mail below.

My name is Alena.
I am from Russia. I am 30 years. Recently I with girlfriend have
climbed in the Internet and have seen this site. I was on different sites,
but it has liked me also I has decided to write. I hope my letter do not
remain without attention.

An excerpt from “The Revolt of The Masses”

A work colleague gave me the following excerpt from JOSE ORTEGA Y GASSETT’s The Revolt Of The Masses.

Take stock of those around you and you will see them wandering about lost through life, like sleep-walkers in the midst of their good or evil fortune, without the slightest suspicion of what is happening to them. You will hear them talk in precise terms about themselves and their surroundings, which would seem to point to them having ideas on the matter. But start to analyse those ideas and you will find that they hardly reflect in any way the reality to which they appear to refer, and if you go deeper you will discover that there is not even an attempt to adjust the ideas to this reality. Quite the contrary: through these notions the individual is trying to cut off any personal vision of reality, of his own very life. For life is at the start a chaos in which one is lost. The individual suspects this, but he is frightened at finding himself face to face with this terrible reality, and tries to cover it over with a curtain of fantasy, where everything is clear. It does not worry him that his “ideas” are not true, he uses them as trenches for the defence of his existence, as scarcecrows to frighten away reality.  The man with the clear head is the man who frees himself from those fantastic “ideas” and looks life in the face, realises that everything in it is problematic, and feels himself lost. As this is the simple truth- that to live is to feel oneself lost- he who accepts it has already begun to find himself, to be on firm ground. Instinctively, as do the shipwrecked, he will look round for something to which to cling, and that tragic, ruthless glance, absolutely sincere, because it is a question of his salvation, will cause him to bring order into the chaos of his life. These are the only genuine ideas; the ideas of the shipwrecked. All the rest is rhetoric, posturing, farce. He who does not really feel himself lost, is lost without remission; that is to say, he never finds himself, never comes up against his own reality.

A Greater Sydney Metropolitan Council?

In a recent news story, the Sydney Chamber of Commerce was reported as saying that Sydney was overgoverned with 43 local councils covering the Sydney metropolitan region. I tend to agree - most Sydney councils are fairly small geographically and in population, and the Brisbane City Council (in which I lived for many years) provides a good example of a large council that works reasonably well - it has the ability to plan and execute large projects and can borrow large sums of money.

Medically supervised injecting room to stay open

Some good news: the medically supervised injecting room in Kings Cross is going to stay open (see here for the SMH report and here for the very similar Daily Terror’s report). The NSW govt must have resisted the “compelling” arguments of Piers Akerman.