Hopefully I screwed up and put the broken kindle in my backpack instead of the replacement. Because otherwise, that would mean that after my first Kindle failed, I got 2 bad replacements in a row. Either that, or I am cursed to break Kindles that come near me.

Exited almost all my longs a few weeks ago, put some in commodities (largely silver), left some in cash. Down a bit for a couple weeks, but this week doing much better. Jim Rogers' claim is: "If the global economy gets better, commodities are going to go crazy. If it doesn't, they are a better store of value than fiat currencies"

I want to diversity into carefully chosen foreign stocks though, that's what I might use Schiff's firm for.

I am so glad I invested in Palantir, I feel way better about a small growing company that I am optimistic about compared to publicly traded corporations or making wild guesses about global macro when I'm just a dabbling retail investor.

radiantsun: "I'm curious, in the context of your belief that kids turn out mostly from nature, how does nurture overiding nature affect that?"

1) The number of these nature/nurture interactions that have been found is relatively small, I believe that a big deal is made out of them b/c people like challenges to nature being important. (I just saw a blog post about this, forget where though)

2) If there really are nature/nurture interactions, they would show up statistically as environmental effects. If a trait is 60% heritable, that means 60% of the variation in the trait comes from variation in genes. 40% comes from variation in other places, like prenatal environment and family/neighborhood environment. A gene that expresses differently depending on the family environment is will produce variation in outcome depending on family environment and thus gets partially counted in the analysis of environment. In other words, the studies Judith Harris talks about that say family environment has 0% impact on personality would find these effects if they existed. Since they find no measurable effects on broad personality characteristics, these effects are likely rare and/or minor.

3) As I have commented in Shannon's journal, the set of things that has been studied and found no family environment effect is pretty small. IQ & Big 5 Personality Test scores are the ones I am most sure have been studied. I have also seen claims for literacy and divorce being things that disappear when you control for genetics (and changes in neighborhoods/income, for divorce), and for crime. Harris makes the general claim that most things sociologists find correlations for are caused by genes, not by family environment, but I have not seen a variety of studies to back this up.

peter_bayesian says in choiceful's post: "She's referring to nearly all the measures that were used in the 20th century by researchers who claimed to have shown that parenting style X causes children to have behavior Y after they leave home. That means standard personality tests, crime rates, and many other things. I don't recall any researchers claiming to have measured an effect of parenting styles on adult happiness ratings, so there may not be any of those for her to discredit. She has no new research, just arguments against the bad research that's out there."

And he provides some specific cites for crime. It would not surprise me if Harris' claim was true, and it seems to have held up in the areas where it has specifically been looked at, but I have not seen the wide variety of evidence that would support such a broad claim. And her discussion w/ Bryan Caplan implied she didn't have data on outcomes.

Thus there are many remaining aspects of a person's character which may be influenced by their upbringing (family environment), and which may be important to happiness and life. One can believe in Harris' thesis, and still believe that parenting matters. Plus there is the question of how much you enjoy the time where the kids are at home, as choiceful said: "less ideal circumstances are less pleasant for the time that a kid is at home! ... It *counts* that a child is unhappy when beaten, for example."

Another Ephemerisle poll, this one is more specialized than the last one, since it only applies if you are considering attending Ephemerisle.

Basically, Ephemerisle is going to be pretty expensive due to insurance, complexity, and the cost of building floating platforms (for common space, docks, and camping) which are only amortized over a few days use per year. (ie the per-square foot cost for our homebuilt platforms is much lower than a commercial floating dock, but still pretty high for a 2-day festival). If we charged full cost, we think very few people would come. So we're probably going to subsidize it and lose some money on the festival, hopefully in return for value in promoting seasteading (and a shot at recouping our investment later by throwing additional festivals on the same set of platforms, although this is tough b/c we want to push the festival to rougher international waters).

In deciding how much to subsidize it, it would help to know the demand curve. Obviously y'all are not a representative sample of potential attendees, but you are who you are and you represent yourselves (yo, self represent!) and that's better than nothing. Y'all were very helpful on the charity poker tournament poll (thanks!), so here's another...

For these questions, only answer if you're considering attending, and with the context that this is an event put on by a non-profit where none of these price points are making money (the highest is at best breaking even). Your individual answers will not be shown, only aggregate statistics. For each question, please choose the highest that you would pay, any higher and you would not attend the event. If you would definitely camp, then answer $0 for docking, if you would definitely dock, then answer $0 for camping. Also, when answering the dock/camping space questions, assume that general registration is $25:

Poll #1430261 Ephemerisle Price Points
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: None

How much would you pay for general registration?

How much would you pay to dock a boat or other floating structure for 2 nights, with 4' width of dock space along with the length of your vessel?

How much would you pay for an 8'x8' camping space on the central island, for 2 nights?

Thanks so much!

LoudTwitter seems to have died just as I want to make a daily auto-post to LJ of my tweets. Anyone know how to do it via some trivial service (not having to run a script myself)?

We are at the theater to see Bruno, and many teenagers are in line, often in costume, for tonights HP6 premiere.

Some costumed kids get in line behind us, and one of them pulls out a hand-whittled wand and says "Hallo."

"Woah, now", says I. "We ain't done nothing, no need to be castin' any spells."
"Ah yes", says he, without missing a beat, "I always forget how easily Muggles get alarmed."

Whatever you think about Sacha Baron-Cohen's sense of humor, he risks quite a bit in making his movies.

( spoiler stories of danger and excitement )

Saw prof. Benjamin at FreedomFest, and he mentioned his recent TED Talk on how we should replace high school Calculus with Statistics. It's only 3 minutes.

An amusing side note you won't find in the video: Art said that the main special interest affecting the curriculum is textbook publishers, and they are indifferent to the change, so it can actually happen. (Unlike many other proposed alternative reforms).

"Look, the world has changed from analog to digital. And it's time for our mathematics curriculum to change from analog to digital...to the mathematics of uncertainty, randomness, and data."

eBay? CraigsList? Dealer?

(my Honda S2000, now that it has plates, can soon be sold!)

I hadn't even really noticed, but my seasonal allergies have almost disappeared in the last year. I no longer take zyrtec daily. I used to have really bad allergies, when I first moved to NorCal I had one of those skin prick tests, and I exploded. Of 120 allergens, on a 1-5 scale, I had 113 that were 4 or higher. I was fond of saying I am allergic to anything with hair or leaves.

But now I'm not! Cats still cause problems, and I occasionally take zyrtec, but not often. I am using a steroid nasal spray, but I did that before and it didn't help then. Not sure if the difference is my diet (paleo, lots of fermented foods), or something else. I do still get occasional random skin rashes, like a couple weeks ago after drinking a Smirnoff Ice, my torso broke out. So clearly I have some immune reactivity. But it is a lot better!

Same goes with acid reflux, another condition I took meds for for years. I did get surgery for it, but I think less alcohol, caffeine, and carbs is helping a lot too.

Considering how many rx drugs I have tried over the years, the fact that I am now taking no regular systemic meds (nose spray only) is pretty awesome! Yay diet! Boo western medicine!

(Well, there are many things I like about western medicine, like my jaw surgery, but when it comes to chronic illness, I think the mainstream is often very wrong. Of course, my beliefs are based on other parts of western medicine, just fringier ones)

Re-listening to Th Power of Now, b/c despite all the mystical bullshit it has much awesomeness. (Btw, those who said get the audiobook were totally right). It is talking about how you should never wait, and I agree. Waiting is pretty much always a mistake, because there is always something better to do, like breathing, thinking, exercising, or watching.

(You see that waiting in this context doesn't mean just being somewhere because of a future appointment, like sitting in the doctors office, it refers to your state of mind while there).

I do very little waiting nowadays, mostly because of smartphones, but also because I have learned that it isn't fun and I can almost always find something better to do.

Great for lifting. Soles are pretty thin. A little annoying that they are lace-up, I prefer shoes I can put on quickly. But overall, pretty nice shoes, minimal support. The bright white I got doesn't go with many of my normal clothes, unfortunately.

How is it that us women have the unique ability, (similar to that of a cruise missile) to find, attract and date the only emotionally/physically unavailable man in the entire dating market?
...
We pick men who (deep down we know) are emotionally/physically/in some form unavailable to date or commit to us in any way.

Why do we pick these men? Because they are safe. Because we tell ourselves, "hey I can be totally vulnerable and open with this guy, because it ain't going to go anywhere".

So you flirt, act normal, have no inhibitions and feel completely cool, collected and comfortable. What you are in fact doing; is digging your own grave.

Why? Because you are opening yourself up to a man .. who has the emotionally availability of a toothbrush.

But because you are being so open and vulnerable, it allows for the development of a spark of forbidden undeniable attraction.

From "Why Do You Attract Emotionally Unavaliable Men?" (sic).

Because they are safe? No, it's because their behavior signaled high status in the evolutionary environment.

This poll is for a charity poker tournament we may put on at as part of an Ephemerisle fundraiser next month. Please answer it based on how you'd feel about any charity poker tournament for a non-profit cause you were interested in, whether or not you care about Ephemerisle. If you would never play a charity poker tournament, don't answer. Note that unlike last weekend's event, there will be no Playboy Playmates present.

Poll #1429464 Charity Poker Tournament
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

What entry fee would you pay to play in a charity poker tournament for a cause you like?

How much of the prize pool would you expect to be returned in prizes?

Thanks!

yesterday we went to Whole Foods, I'd been there a few times before, usually shopping for lunch rather than groceries, but after seeing John Mackey at FreedomFest, and being more committed to a healthy diet, it was a very interesting experience. It seems like Whole Foods basically optimizes for healthy, natural, yummy, and convenient, at the expense of, well, expense.

Stuff like: pre-chopped veggies for cooking, pre-made salads, smoked salmon, organic berries, prosciutto, all kinds of really yummy looking, conveniently packaged food that fits great into my diet...at costs like $9 for 300 calories of salmon jerky or prosciutto, $4 for a small box of berries. Together they'd make a great afternoon snack...for $13. I sat on the plane with Eldon (who plays at Colma), and he said he sometimes pays $100 for the ingredients for a home-cooked meal for 3 there.

I felt like it was sort of a confidence scheme, like "It seems strange to pay this much for food, but everyone else in here is doing it..."

Anyway, it's nice to have something in this space for when my priorities align with their optimization, but it's a bit expensive to be the bulk of one's diet. And if I think that, then I'm surprised they have so many customers. Maybe part of it is that grains/starches are much cheaper than fruits/veggies/meats, and most people get the bulk of their calories from grains, and so getting more expensive fruits/veggies/meats has less impact on their overall spending.

patrissimo: "Non-profit Executive Director: All the stress, responsibility, and hours of a CEO without the pay, stock, or jet."

Maybe I'm just grumpy from last week - getting nowhere in the WSOP, and then putting in long hours at FreedomFest and feeling like it didn't result in much benefit. Also, after 5 days of lots of talking, my jaw is quite sore. On painkillers now. Tomorrow should be a lot less talking.

Hustler is making porn movies based on classic shows like Happy Days, Star Trek, and The Cosby Show. (via boffo)

every time I've read LJ in the last month, I've had at least 4 days of backlog.

DSL: 1.5Mbps down, 380 up.
Comcast Cable: 13 Mbps down, 9Mbs up.

Wow.

Responded briefly to an emergency during the final dinner. During a speech, there were a couple weird screams from backstage, maybe 30-60 sec apart. We thought someone was being a dick, but after the third time, a staff member went to investigate, and called for a doctor. A half dozen of us went.

The patient, a young large male, was lying down backstage with blood on his lips. Coworkers reported he "just started acting really weird and didn't recognize them", and that he had been sick that morning. Patient was confused and disoriented, he knew his name but not much more. A bit freaked out by having 6 people around him. I sat down and tried to connect with him non-threateningly, but there were too many ppl and the hotel EMT came in a minute or two, so I left.

So, the simple explanation (seizure), or something else?

If seizure, that's twice this year I've been present for an unexpected one!

I wish I could refresh my EMT training and work a shift a week...sigh...so much else to do. My life is full with a huge waitlist.