Greece's Financial Problems

Click here for an interesting discussion of Greece's financial problems.

Reminds me of the lyrics in the "Fear the Boom and Bust" rap video in the post below. Hayek: "Then all that we're left with is debt."

Also reminds me of the book that Laura read in one of her classes last year: Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation, by Edward Chancellor. I referred to this book in my talk at Yankee Farm Credit's annual meetings a year ago. That book was written in 2000, long before our current economic problems, but maybe that theme isn't worn out yet!

Individuals, financial institutions and countries should all beware of excessive leverage.

Fear the Boom and Bust

A super rap video about the famous economists John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich A. Hayek:



Or click here.

It is amusing that the video has Keynes's General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money in the drawer of the hotel bedside stand where one usually finds a Gideon Bible. The video does not mention any of Hayek's writings, but a good place to start is The Road to Serfdom. It's a good read.

Interestingly, Keynes never won the Nobel prize for economics. Hayek won it in 1974.

Here's a blog post about the making of the video: The Story Behind the Hayek-Keynes Rap Video.

UPDATE 2/18/10: The Hayek-Keynes rap video has been viewed more than 777,000 times on YouTube. Related items: 1) Read the lyrics, download the song and find links to more info on Keynes and Hayek. 2) Instapundit interviews economist Russ Roberts, who created the video. 3) The Road to Serfdom is selling briskly.

UPDATE 2/21/10: This was so good, that I put it on my work blog, too: Keynes vs. Hayek - The Rap Version.

The Oldest College Building

Painter Hall at Middlebury College...

...is the "oldest extant college building in Vermont":

It was built in 1800 and Froze to Death.

1800 and Froze to Death

We sometimes think we have strange weather now, but it is nothing compared to 1816, also known as 1800 and Froze to Death and the Year Without Summer.

There were widespread winter conditions for several days in June across New England. Cabot, Vermont, reported a foot of snow. Cold waves returned in July and August. Most of Vermont suffered killing frosts in every month of the year, devastating crops. The total corn crop for New England was estimated to be 10% of normal. In a time when transportation options were limited, this led to widespread famine.

Abnormally cold weather was also reported in Europe, China and India—basically everywhere that humans were keeping records at the time.

The cause is thought to have been a series of volcanic eruptions beginning in 1812 and culminating with the eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia in 1815. It may also be relevant that the cold weather occurred during a period of low sunspot activity known as the Dalton Minimum.

For more information check out the excellent articles on The Weather Doctor and Wikipedia.

As mentioned in earlier posts, I have lately been enjoying books by C.A. Stephens with Pager. In 1908 C.A. Stephens wrote "1800 and Froze to Death" but, alas, this story is not in either of the books that we purchased for Pager.

Winter!

Our backyard after the big storm last weekend:

Burlington had the largest ever recorded snowfall for a single storm, with over 32" of snow. We had somewhat less here in Jeffersonville, and it was light, fluffy snow so it settled quickly. It has snowed a little more almost every day for the past week, but still mostly light, fluffy stuff. We presently have about 16" on the ground, and it's -4 F this morning.

Secrets of Staying Married

From Woman's Day magazine.

Uh, no, in case you are wondering, I'm not a regular reader of Woman's Day magazine. I found this from reading Instapundit, who blogs about a wide variety of topics (as does his wife).

A Beautiful Mind

The award-winning movie A Beautiful Mind is about the life of Dr. John Nash, a mathematician who won the 1994 Nobel prize in economics for his work in game theory. The movie is about Dr. Nash's struggle with mental illness (paranoid schizophrenia). It is also a love story between Dr. Nash and his wife Alicia.

It's a wonderful movie, very moving. I recommend it. But do not think that it is all literally true. Differences between the movie and reality are discussed here. For example, the movie highlights the love between Dr. Nash and his wife as the one steady thing in his life, neglecting to mention that they were divorced from 1963 to 2001, when they remarried.

While the movie leaves out some important facts, such as the divorce, it invents others. For example, the two most moving scenes in the movie—the pen ceremony tradition at Princeton and Dr. Nash's speech at the Nobel prize ceremony—are both fictitious, completely fabricated by Hollywood (see this link).

Dr. Nash won the Nobel prize in 1994 for work done in 1950-1953, before he was married to Alicia in 1957, before the onset of his schizophrenia in 1959 (later in life than depicted in the movie), and even before the Nobel prize in economics was established in 1968. Dr. Nash shared the Nobel prize with Dr. John Harsanyi and Dr. Reinhard Selten, who did work in the 1960s that built on Dr. Nash's earlier work. Click here for a good, brief discussion of their various works that led to the prize.

The Nobel Prize web site is a wonderful source of information about Nobel Prize winners. For Dr. Nash they have the following resources:

Autobiography
Prize Seminar (good discussion of the math)
2004 Interview (discusses the movie, among other things)
Photo Gallery
Other Resources

The autobiography is fascinating. A piece of trivia from it: he had a choice of attending graduate school at either Harvard or Princeton. He chose Princeton because "the Princeton fellowship was somewhat more generous since I had not actually won the Putnam competition." (Several top scorers in the Putnam competition win a monetary prize, but only one winner is awarded a scholarship for graduate studies at Harvard, the alma mater of William Lowell Putnam.)

UPDATE 9/26/10: I found this cartoon about Nash and Feynman amusing (source):

It's funnier if you've watched the movie A Beautiful Mind and if you know a little about Richard Feynman.

First Molecular Transistor

This is cool: First Functional Molecular Transistor Comes Alive. It uses a benzene molecule.

Christmas 2009

All three children plus Congcong were here for Christmas this year. Brian got a pair of snowshoes which he seems pretty excited about!

Pager came over for supper. Nancy had purchased two gifts for him — Canada Mints from Chutters and Sailing on the Ice: And Other Stories from the Old Squire's Farm by C.A. Stephens:

Pager keeps a supply of Canada Mints for visitors. And C.A. Stephens is an author Pager has liked since boyhood. He has recently been enjoying Stories from the Old Squire's Farm by C.A. Stephens.

Pager and me with our matching Yankee Farm Credit jackets and caps:

See also this post from last year.

Merry Christmas to everyone!

Congcong Visits a Farm

I learned last weekend that Congcong had never visited a farm. So we made arrangements for her to visit the Gingue Brothers Farm. Congcong liked to pet the calves:

But not so much the cows:

Dan Gingue did a great job explaining dairy farming to Congcong:

It was a cold day but we had a beautiful sunset!

New York City

Nancy and I were privileged to visit New York City earlier this month at the invitation of CoBank. It was a business trip for me, but we found time for sightseeing. It was the first time we had been in New York City together since our trip in April 2002, mentioned in this post.

We stayed at the Palace Hotel in midtown Manhattan. Sunrise from our room on the 53rd floor:

Northwest of the hotel lies St. Patrick's Cathedral and Rockefeller Center. Here is a view of the Cathedral from Rockefeller Center, looking through the Atlas statue:

The Christmas tree (with its Swarovsky Star) and skating rink at Rockefeller Center are guarded by the gilded statue of Prometheus bringing fire to humans:

The main purpose of our trip in 2002 was to visit the World Trade Center site. Here's how it looks eight years after September 11, 2001:

We were fortunate to have an opportunity to see the Rockettes perform their Radio City Christmas Spectacular:

We also were fortunate to see the Phantom of the Opera at the Majestic Theatre (no photos). It is the longest running show on Broadway with over 9,000 performances.

Ender's Game and Blogs

When did blogs get started? In an earlier post I mentioned that I discovered blogs in April 2002. The World Wide Web was invented in 1990. According to Wikipedia, the term "weblog" was coined in 1997 and "blog" in 1999. Personal blogs began to be popular around 1999, and political blogs gained popularity after September 11, 2001.

Before all of that, the 1985 book Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card, included something very much like today's political blogs.

Ender's Game is about Andrew "Ender" Wiggin and his older siblings Peter and Valentine. Ender, who is at Battle School, and Peter and Valentine, who are at home, use "desks"—which sound just like today's notebook PCs. Peter and Valentine communicate via something that sounds exactly like today's e-mail.

(My earliest use of anything like today's e-mail was in 1994 when Brian's Cub Scout Den exchanged e-mails with my cousin David Porter at McMurdo Station in Antarctica, and we all thought that was pretty novel and cool. We were using the Compuserve internet service at the time. My e-mail address was 74001.2030@compuserve.com. It wasn't until later that we could use names before the @ symbol.)

More significantly, Peter and Valentine use their "desks" to post anonymous articles on "nets," in an attempt to influence world opinion. Sounds just like today's political blogs!

Valentine wrote under the name "Demosthenes" while Peter wrote as "Locke." The earliest blog that I encountered, in April 2002, was the blog of Megan McArdle, then blogging under the name of "Jane Galt." Interestingly, in August 2002 she wrote about the downside of blogging anonymously, and referred to an anonymous blogger named Demosthenes. I don't think Ms. McArdle knew about the connection to Ender's Game, but Demosthenes did.

Ender's Game is an excellent book and I recommend it. It is about a lot more than "nets."

UPDATE 9/26/10: From xkcd: