November 2007 Archives

I recently had a conversation with my father about the weather in Chicago. Whenever we talk about Chicago, he, like everyone else I've talked to, always bemoans the horrid weather in this place. But I simply can't understand why this is. Since I came here, I have actually been delighted at how nice the weather is. Compare it to Portland: it is colder, so it spends more time snowing than raining. Rain makes you wet and soggy, while snow has no such problem. The days here are longer in the winter than in Portland, and therefore less dreary. It is even brighter and sunnier here: Portland has an average of 222 completely cloudy days per year, while Chicago only has 176--a month and a half less cloudy! And lastly, while Portland receives precipitation in a pattern of slow and continuous drizzle, Chicago receives it only in short powerful bursts. So while the annual precipitation in the two locations is comparable, the probability of getting wet when walking outside is much, much less in Chicago. The point of all this is that people must stop complaining about Chicago's weather. Chicago has fantastic weather. Maybe it gets a little hot and humid for a few weeks in the summer, and maybe it gets a little frigid and windy for a few weeks in the winter, but these are merely annoyances, if anything.

I was recently in the mood to expand my musical horizons, so I took a foray into modern classical music by checking out some Philip Glass from the library. While it is certainly very different than "classical" classical music, it really is excellent. He layers repetitive variations on particular rhythmic and tonal themes to generate some really interesting music. From a musical standpoint, it can be very minimalist, but that feature is what makes it compelling in my opinion. As a side note, because of its repetitive nature, it makes an excellent accompaniment to mathematics or physics problems.

In typical Chicago style, a Senegalese graduate student in chemistry was shot and killed yesterday about three-quarters of a block south of my dormitory. In the same night there were two robbings and an assailant who chased a student while shooting after him. Now I know why the swank apartments on 61st-63rd streets are so cheaply priced: discounting for the possibility of death. I may have to rethink my plan of living there and my daily late-night library visits.

Someone else also informed me that on 50th and 61st streets two female bodies were found strangled to death and burned beyond recognition in dumpsters on two occasions last weekend. It's very strange to think that I live my life in state of complete calm and prosperity while people are brutally murdered on a regular basis just blocks away from the invisible boundaries of Hyde Park and the university's sphere of influence.

Something about algebra is just so annoying. Group theory is just so... blah... Undoubtedly in no small part because I am going to fail my midterm tomorrow.

In another twist to the presidential primaries, we have a move that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. How is this possible?

One of the nice things (sort of...) about living the Midwest is that one gets to experience the, er, fullest range of climatic conditions available in the contiguous 48 states. Thankfully that means that it snows, and the first snowfall of the year may occur during the next 48 hours! For some reason my motivation increases tremendously in the dark, frigid, and snowy days of winter, causing my happiness to increase as well. Perhaps this will correct my recent dearth of motivation.

Upon further investigation, my previous post may have been a bit too optimistic. While my reasoning was correct, I misjudged the number of InTrade markets on which I can successfully deploy my strategy. They do exist, and there are profits to be had with no risk, but they are not especially common. There are also ways to increase the profits my introducing a small amount of risk, in which case my scheme just becomes the same as a certain common investing technique.

Others tell me that it is possible to make a great deal of profit by simply trading off volatility in the InTrade markets for sports games. As my friend pointed out, this may be more lucrative on average than my strategy. Nevertheless, my strategy has the aesthetic advantage of being embarrassingly simple and risk-free.

The website InTrade.com offers prediction markets for a wide array of possible events: everything from predicting weather to predicting election news. Not only is this an intriguing idea, but volume is low and these markets appear fairly inefficient. Actually they are extremely inefficient, and I have figured out a completely risk-free method for reaping consistent, high returns by exploiting certain inefficiencies. But alas, it is a secret, otherwise you will take my money by buying away all the inefficiencies!

It was Saturday evening. I had finished my analysis problems for the week. My conscience was telling me to do more work, but my friend Felipe suggested that I go to a movie at Doc Films with him and Abraham. I succumbed to peer pressure.

The film for the evening was Michael Moore's latest "documentary", Sicko, on the insurance industry. While I had heard nothing but scorn for the filmmaker from my friends of all political persuasions, I had never experienced his cinema for myself. Moore is generally known for making films that are laden with anecdotes and information that ranges from misrepresentation to false. Though his movies are generally classified as "documentaries", they really are more like cinematic editorials. The word "documentary" implies a sense of objective documentation, and Moore eschews all possible opportunities for objectivity.

Upon watching the film, the negative hype surrounding Michael Moore was generally confirmed in my mind. The film begins by highlighting the catastrophic state of the insurance and healthcare industries in the US through a series of disturbing examples: people who died because their insurance companies refused them coverage, people who were forced to choose which lost limbs they wanted to reattach because they could only afford to reattach one, etc. This was fine and well-done. We can all agree that there is a serious problem with healthcare when 50 million Americans are unemployed and people die because they can't afford treatment.

But then the film quickly transitions to the so-called "solution". Mr. Moore spends well over and hour preaching the merits of state-run health care, largely through examples from other nations. Given the embarrasing state of America's current privatized system, some sort of government sponsored universal health care seems like a compelling idea. However, rather than evaluating the option objectively by analyzing the costs and benefits of such systems, he uses a series of cherry-picked interviews to support his claim, without ever considering any possible counterarguments. In fact he only deals with his opposition by using caricature. This is a catastrophic failure on his part because the major counterargument for state-run healthcare is its cost and potential inefficiency. If you neglect to establish that your system can be any more efficient or cheap than the current system, then you have absolutely no argument whatsoever. Worst of all, he repeatedly makes the absolutely asinine claim that universal government-run healthcare is free. He even devotes an entire scene to walking around a British hospital attempting to "find" where people pay. Since the British medical system is entirely supported through taxes, no monetary transactions take place at the hospital, obviously. But he proceeds concludes that healthcare in Britain is free, and therefore is a better model than the American one. Maybe he's right, but only by sheer luck, not by any kind of analytical insight.

On an analytic level, Sicko provides absolutely no insight or interesting analysis on the healthcare problem in America whatsoever. Then again, we shouldn't expect much from someone who does not understand the difference between correlation and causality. From this standpoint, it is profoundly unsatisfying. On the other hand, it is an incredibly well-made movie. The use of irony is excellent. The trip to Cuba, where doctors treat the American patients who can't get treatment here, is delightfully produced. Subtracting all the content, it is actually a very great movie to watch. One can only wish that Michael Moore's political opinions and intellectual depth had more complexity than those of a five-year old.

“There’s only three things [Giuliani] mentions in a sentence: a noun and a verb and 9/11."

--Senator Joseph Biden, in the recent Democratic debate.