Shulaibao

Researchers at UC Berkeley discovered that rap music, commonly believed to have originated from African-American culture, was actually derived from a form of traditional Chinese performing art known as shulaibao. The full story is here.

The value of education

Mark Thoma: "Human Capital: Literal Truth, Fairy Tale or Myth?"

I thought it was a criticism of the theory of human capital but it turned out to be much more inspiring and far-reaching than that. The true life story of an economist.

Erdős number

Though the number of people with finite Erdős numbers will probably keep on increasing, and it is not the least possible that one day every experienced researcher on Earth will have a finite Erdős number, the mean value of Erdős numbers belonging to people alive will inevitably rise overtime.

Image source: xkcd.

Setting Google.com to be your default Google portal

The generic Google site, or the Google site for the U.S. (www.google.com) is always the pioneer in utilizing new technologies and improvements that Google develops and makes. Despite that there are customized and localized Google regional sites (e.g. www.google.com.hk) in most parts of the world, many English-speaking users would rather use the generic site. Nevertheless, Google automatically redirects traffic to your regional site based on your location. If you want to use the generic site, you’ll have to click “Go to google.com” every time, and it sometimes switches back and forth when you are using different Google services which is a little annoying.

To deal with this, you can use the “No Country Redirect” URL www.google.com/ncr or http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en (until now I don’t know the difference between these two sites but I use the prior one). However, you have to bookmark this location or type the “ncr” every time; otherwise the browser will still turn to the regional site. The way to solve this is to

1. delete all your cookies,
2. restart the browser, and
3. visit www.google.com/ncr so that your browser will remember your preference next time.

To delete all your cookies in Chrome, go to Options, under the Under the Hood tab, open Content Settings under Privacy. Under the Cookies tab, open "Show cookies and other site data…”. Finally, click “Remove all” in the pop-up window.

Note that if your homepage is set to be your regional Google site, or www.google.com, this will not work since when you restart your browser, the regional site is loaded and this site will be remembered instead. So make sure the first Google site you visit after clearing your cookies is the generic site by changing the homepage setting.

After this, whenever your type www.google.com in your location bar, the clean and simple Google.com will be shown. Tell me how it works and enjoy browsing!

References:

• Google: Go to the Generic (English) Google Site Instead of the Regional Page by davak
• Google NCR by Deepak Vasudevan

Statistical significance and the p-value

Alex Tabarrok explains the true meaning of statistical significance, especially in the study of economics.

Foreign official balance

Dollar-denominated reserve assets held by foreign central banks.

I found no clear definition of this item in the balance of payment accounting on the Internet, so I came up with mine. Please reply if it is mistaken.

Congregation of the “Atheist Church”

More than 2,000 atheists from around the world are gathering in Melbourne, Australia, to celebrate their lack of religious belief.

But isn’t institutionalized atheism a kind of religion? I don’t think atheism is anti-religious. Only agnosticism may qualify. The news report on BBC is here.

Accurate numbers aren’t any better

I came across this strip from Michael Creel’s homepage.

Gender Imbalance

In China the male-female ratio has been rising at least since the 1980s, and the unmarried males, or “bare branches”, alone are not the whole problem:

In any country rootless young males spell trouble; in Asian societies, where marriage and children are the recognised routes into society, single men are almost like outlaws. Crime rates, bride trafficking, sexual violence, even female suicide rates are all rising and will rise further as the lopsided generations reach their maturity (see article).

So how can we resolve it?

In the 1990s South Korea had a sex ratio almost as skewed as China’s. Now, it is heading towards normality. It has achieved this not deliberately, but because the culture changed. Female education, anti-discrimination suits and equal-rights rulings made son preference seem old-fashioned and unnecessary. The forces of modernity first exacerbated prejudice—then overwhelmed it.

The author inevitably mentioned the one-child policy of China and criticized it. In respect to this matter, I choose to withhold my opinion. It may not be a perfect solution, probably not even a good one – but any other alternative may be even worse for China, with a culture so headstrong to believe that “more children, more happiness”, especially in the rural areas. Here for the full article at The Economist.

The Dinosaur Extinction Theory Settled

A group of 41 researchers have pored over the evidence and decided that—in accordance with the original postulate put forth 30 years ago by a team led by father and son researchers Luis and Walter Alvarez—it was, indeed, a massive asteroid that slammed into Earth, creating Chicxulub Crater on Mexico's Gulf Coast, that killed off many of the species on the planet, including the non-avian dinosaurs.

Here for the full story and exactly what happened on and after that tragic day. Note that only the non-avian dinosaurs were killed – in fact we are still living with dinosaurs everywhere, despite that we usually only call them “birds”.

Three Levels of Time Management

I do not intend to establish any new time management theory. The three levels are as simple as the following:

1. Wasting time. That is, doing things that are (almost) purely a waste of time, without any value added. Well, you probably wouldn’t call it time management at all. This is the lowest level.
2. Fully utilizing time. Consuming every minute doing things that are meaningful and beneficial in some ways.
3. Maximizing the utility of time. Doing everything that is the most important and meaningful at each hour, with rational marginal-cost-marginal-benefit analysis. This should be the ideal situation among the three.

Aware of it or not, many of our fellow students are sometimes still in the entry level of time management as listed here. For example, a student may set her alarm clock to ring every five minutes starting from 7am; however, she does not get up until 8am. The hour from 7 to 8 is close to a pure waste: she doesn’t either sleep well or do something more meaningful than lying uncomfortably in the bed damning herself. So how to resolve it? Simply set your alarm at eight, or get up and find something to do.

Did the discovery of cooking make us human?

'Bigger brains': "Did cooking our food make us human?"

[I]t is no coincidence that humans - the cleverest species on earth - are also the only species that cooks.

How many colors do you know?

Color Names: "

 
Author: chris
Posted on: 2010-03-02 14:49:24

I remember reading scientists found that how a person categorizes colors will affect his or her ability to perceive the differences between colors. Does this contribute to the fact that there are more males who are color amblyopic?

Will capitalism lead to socialism eventually?

I was asked this question in an interview a year ago. Today morning when I rethought about it, I came up with a more concrete answer now.

No, I don’t think capitalism will ever lead to socialism, as long as the form of human beings remain the same, and there is no extreme and catastrophic events such as technological singularity which by and large render this question meaningless.

For one thing, socialism is grounded on the belief that one day there will be sufficient resources for everyone to enjoy without working. First of all, by sufficient we mean that every human being can consume as much as they want, and that indicates, as the principle of diminishing marginal utility implies, the consumption of every good has reached a level where its marginal utility is zero (so that no one would want to consume anymore; imagine you probably won’t eat a tenth hamburger in a row even if you are paid to). That will probably come true one day for industrial goods like food and clothes. But that is generally not possible for goods whose stock is limited in the natural world and cannot be produced manually due to limitation by the law of nature, such as gold and diamond. Since people cannot all have enough of gold (and not even close to enough), people who have gold will treasure it and demand clearly defined property right, which is a fundamental characteristic of capitalism.

For another thing, besides goods, there are services that can only be provided by human beings to meet a certain standard. In these professions, simply the notion of service by machines, even as competent as humans in accomplishing the job, would render the service two-bit or sometimes worthless. Examples are education, R&D, massage, prostitution, etc. Since there is a demand for these services, there has to be property right to provide ways to pay for these services.

Update on 4/28/2010: I read this article by Jonah Goldberg about capitalism and socialism and find it interesting. “Socialism is a system based upon an assumption about human nature that simply isn’t true.”

LaTeX installation in library

Letter to the librarian

Dear Sir/Madam

I am writing to suggest that we have LaTeX, the de facto standard typesetting software used in many technical fields of study (e.g. Math, Physics, Economics etc.), installed on computers in the library. It is widely used in writing papers, reports, and sometimes assignments in technical courses/studies. Thank you.

Faithfully

Han Zhang

How to reduce sweatshop labor

BBC: China's Pearl River manufacturing hub 'lacks workers'

This is unprecedented. That means the manufacturers now has to improve the payment for laborers, upgrade their workplace conditions, and/or develop new technologies that require fewer labor to meet the production target. If this trend continues, the number of sweatshops in China will inevitably decrease, without any intervention of labor unions and human rights groups.

See this is where economics come into play. The way to improve the standard of living of laborers is not by boycotting clothes made in China – that normally only does the opposite, since the sweatshop jobs are probably already the best those undereducated laborers can get. The right way is to let the “invisible hand” to adjust the market, like in the case of Pearl River manufacturing industry now. Let the workers have their say.

However it should be noted that this shortage is largely driven by the stimulus package last year. We are still not sure how the trend will continue after the effect of the package dies down.

Philosophers and Economists

I have heard a saying that “Philosophers and economists are the two kinds of people with the most agile minds.” Today I read in Sophie’s World that “Plato believed the state should be governed by philosophers.” However, probably every economist would agree that countries should be governed by economists, or at least politicians well trained in economics.

My Old Blog

I found that I do occasionally write something in Chinese that I would like to share with others. Therefore I have restarted my old blog. The feed is here. By the way, please do not expect me to update it often – probably once every few months.

Birthday Gift

This gift is from my dear friend Kaye, who drew it herself. Thanks, Kaye!

Are Economics Students Bad Boys/Gals?

Here’s what Tim Harford thinks.