Random
catdynamics | October 16, 2008Cool autumnal friday and I have to cross all of Ohio, chased by several thousand wolverines.
We ask the Mighty iPod One: wazzup with J092712? Recoil, binary or just crowded?
Woosh goes the randomizer.
Woosh.
The Covering: Eyes on the Prize - Bruce Springsteen
The Crossing: The Pines of Rome I - Ottorino Respighi
The Crown: Take Down the Union Jack - Billy Bragg
The Root: Orgasm Addict - Buzzcocks
The Past: Levi Stubb's Tears - Billy Bragg
The Future: Sea Cruise - Rico
The Questioner: You Woke Up My Neighbourhood - Billy Bragg
The House: Ready to Run - Dixie Chicks
The Inside: Raquel -…
catdynamics | October 15, 2008Lobster market collapse!
Gordon Brown to blame.
Maine Lobster Crisis
"...Faced with high fuel and bait prices, fishermen were able to keep their heads above water with the price at $4 a pound, but the international financial crisis has sent shock waves that were felt in a fault line running from Iceland through Maritime Canada to coastal Maine.
The crisis in Maine is tied directly to the collapse of Icelandic banks which were key lenders to processors in Canada, according to Dane Somers, executive director of the Maine Lobster Promotion Council. Without ready credit from those banks,…
catdynamics | October 15, 2008Joe the Plumber
h/t deLong
Wonder if the dood ever heard of slashdotting
catdynamics | October 14, 2008so what happened in Iceland, where are things headed, and is it a one-off microsystem gone off the rails, or a bellwether for the developed world
Iceland was a dirt poor fish+agriculture economy, under external Danish rule until 1944 when it unilaterally declared independence, the Danes being otherwise occupied.
Over the next 40 or so year it grew a modern economy, very slowly, building a tight Scandinavian social democracy, with currency and import controls and a developing industrial economy. The export driver was fish - and fishing was, and is, relatively tightly regulated to sustain…
rallain | October 13, 2008I went home for lunch today. While waiting, I saw this lizard. We have many lizards in Louisiana, I like them, really I do. So, this is what I did:
No lizards were harmed in the filming of this video.
I was really surprised. I thought for sure that I had tried this before and nothing happened. Maybe it was because of the white surface the lizard was on. Maybe it was because it was an older and wiser lizard (it was larger than normal). Maybe this is already a well known fact about lizards and laser pointers. Needless to say, this was quite entertaining and completely justifies the…
catdynamics | October 13, 2008renowned blogger, Paul Krugman, won the Nobel Prize in Economics
for his excellent outreach effort
for being consistently mostly correct but ignored on US economic policy since 2000
for some theoretical modeling on international trade in Asia back in the '90s
Hm, I wonder if he has a permanent gig or if ScienceBlogs could sign him up, I hear he has sometimes got almost as many comments as Pharyngula... 'course he'll probably be too important and busy to blog now :-(
I'd ask if he does international consultancies, for small nations in dire economic straits, but I don't think we can afford him
catdynamics | October 12, 2008Conjure Report 1 - fixing LIBOR is out.
Something to ponder.
'cause linking is good.
catdynamics | October 10, 2008Wild friday finally at an end.
What, oh Mighty iPod, for Iceland now?
Whoosh goes the randomizer.
Whoosh.
The Covering: God Only Know - Beach Boys
The Crossing: Dead Souls- Joy Division
The Crown: Two Seconds - Laura Cantrell
The Root: Mathematically Safe - Half Man Half Bisctuit
The Past: The Card Cheat - Clash
The Future: The Selecter - The Selecter
The Questioner:Lullaby (All through the night)
The House:I'm Free - Violent Femmes
The Inside: Sumar í Reykjavík
The Outcome: New York Skiffle - Half Man Half Biscuit
Wise is the iPod One.
because I'm free...
every day in every way
I'm…
catdynamics | October 10, 2008select links to ponder:
Krugman ponders lack of leadership and consensus at G7 meeting
Naked Capitalism ponders the Lehman Bros CDS auction
Steve Hsu at Information Processing has more on Lehman CDS auction - somebody is paying a couple of hundred billion or so to other people by Oct 21 - if they don't have the cash to do so, then there will be cascading defaults due to counterparty failures. Basically people making bets without having the reserves or assets to honor them in case the bet goes bad.
ex-investment banks tightening hedge fund margins?
catdynamics | October 9, 2008someone is coming to Iceland and bringing dollars!
Yoko Ono is giving the Peace Prize to the Nation
$50,000 - that's pasta for another week!
In other news:
I overlooked the obvious, there's hoarding of tampons
and, I still haven't figured out if Bills of Attainder are actually constitutional in Iceland, I'm pretty sure they used to be, but it is the kind of thing that one would think had been fixed in the last century. Or not.
rallain | October 9, 2008Dear High School students,
How are you? I am fine. I am very glad that I am no longer in high school. Maybe you enjoy high school, but for me, it was not so good. Don't get me wrong, I went to an excellent high school (Waubonsie Valley HS). There was something in high school that didn't feel right. Maybe it was being in classes for too long and the lack of time to work on my own projects. Maybe it was lack of freedom in choosing my own classes (there was some freedom to chose). Or perhaps I was just not mature enough to enjoy it. Needless to say, I am past that now.
I think now, how…
catdynamics | October 8, 2008Kaupþing, largest and last of the Icelandic commercial banks goes under
Landsbanki went under earlier this week - classic depositor run on its UK subsidiary, Icesave.
The problem came because the UK has a cap on depositor insurance, and Icesave depositors with over 50,000 pounds stood to lose their funds. The Icelandic government offered a guarantee for domestic depositors but could not offer an extended guarantee for foreign depositors - nor to should it, they took the risk when they went for the higher rate of return offered by Icesave.
The people screwed are the wholesale depositors -…
catdynamics | October 7, 2008 [world: /$] root% fsck -f
are you sure? y
checking
6,034,932,778 files, 5,843,314,092 used, 1,253,913,456 free (67 frags, 173 blocks, 54.6% fragmentation)
bad blocks fsck not able to repair
filesystem is NOT clean
BAD SUPER BLOCK: MAGIC NUMBER WRONG
/ ***** FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED *****
volume America appears to be corrupted
volume Asia appears to be corrupted
volume Australia appears to be corrupted
volume Europe appears to be corrupted
unrecoverable error
please repair the system manually
[world: /$] root% fsck -f -y
reboot?
system will reboot in 27 days
waiting... waiting.... waiting…
catdynamics | October 7, 2008The people who told us
That two and two is ten
Are now trying to tell us
That two and two is five
We're trying to spend our way out of trouble
You keep buying these things but you don't need them
But as long as you're comfortable it feels like freedom