Thoughts In Grey

A Physicist and an Economist Are On a Desert Island...

Today's news from the world of physics is both exciting, disturbing and potentially highly-disruptive. Even a low-level science buff like myself can get excited about the fact that the Standard Model -- long the mainstay of theoretical physics -- has been shown to have a major potential flaw.

But even amongst physicists whose work is inherently tied to the existing model, there are no put-downs, no dismissal of the work, no personal criticism of the scientists who claim the conflicting discovery. Rather, there is a true sense of inquisitiveness, a desire for greater proof and a recognition that if the discovery proves to be true, it will force the dismissal of formerly-held beliefs, but will in the end advance the field, not retard it.

Try presenting a similar type of observations to a bunch of economists. Bring a flak jacket if you do.

Brief Notes

Slow going here:

• I like this image, courtesy of my friend Hazel-Grace. Wondering what I should change, and whether it's one thing or a whole bunch of them?
    
• Was awakened from rather poor sleep at about 2am by an earthquake. Another hit just a couple of hours ago. Apparently quite a few have been taking place on the same fault just offshore.
   
• Being woken up at 2am didn't help my attitude throughout the day.
   
• This report about the impact of technology on our brains is pretty interesting, I'll have more about it later.
   
• Got another voter registration card today and dropped the Democratic Party registration. As noted before, I don't recall ever registering with that party (or any other) to begin with and suspect the reason lies with incompetence or possibly maliciousness at the county clerk's offices. I just really don't want more junk mail or annoying phone calls from washed-up celebrities.
    
• Clio is not liking the new low-carb food quite as much as the old and is eating less. This is probably a good thing.
   
• I'm beginning to wonder if we're ever going to see the sun again on this side of town.

mg

Weekend notes

• The report on The Age of Denial in New Scientist is fascinating. Thanks to Barry for passing it along.
   
• One of the most common misconceptions echoed in some of the comments is that if something is false, it will be dis-proven and by extension, everything that can't be dis-proven is fact. This is the veneer that many deniers of various sorts cling to. In fact many, probably most, statements can't be proven true or false. Say I told you there is intelligent life on Venus. Prove me right OR wrong. You can't. What if I made the same statement about the U.S. Congress? You'd still be hard pressed either way.
   
• Yesterday I commented about junk mail. Today the junk phone has started in earnest, with a robocall from mostly-forgotten bloated actor and activist Ed Asner. I wonder who is really that desperate? (I didn't stay on the line long enough to find out.) Ed Asner? He's supposed to be the voice that will influence somebody in 2010?
   
• I realize that due to a quirk in law, my participation in the "no call" list run by the FTC doesn't restrict political parties, campaigns and some other "special" groups. But it doesn't prohibit them from honoring it if they choose to and it would probably behoove them to choose to. Calling people who have clearly expressed an interest in not being called is only going to piss us off. There is no more certain way of ensuring that I won't support you than hitting me with a "junk call."
  
  As Coach Wooden once said: "Consider the rights of others before your own feelings and the feelings of others before your own rights." These robocallers may have the right, but would do well to consider my feelings on the matter first.
  
  
• My brother's garbage disposal jammed on broken glass and could not be revived. We replaced it with a simple drain that also opened up lots of extra storage space under the sink. What's so difficult about just tossing stuff in the trash can anyway?
   
• My experiment with Foursquare is over. I have been still playing around a bit since my last comment on the matter and it was interesting to try, but until I see some utility to it -- either because my friends are on there or they build in new capabilities that provide capabilities that are interesting -- I'd rather spend my time and bandwidth on other things. For now I've killed the app on my iPhone and moved on.
   
• My brother's going to both Europe and Asia this summer. From a currency perspective, it's the best time in years. But somehow I'm not particularly drawn to either. Too many trails I haven't ridden and rivers I haven't run, and they're all just a few hours from home.
   
• Lazy Sunday. Cleaning up a bit.

mg

Accelerating Change

Watching the near-implosion of Toyota's (NYSE:TM) image in recent weeks, I've had two thoughts:

1) There but for the grace of God went my car's value. You see, I owned a Prius up until December 31. I had problems with the anti-lock brake system (similar to the ones reported on the 2010 model, though mine was much older), and had it repaired under warranty at great expense to Toyota, but never really got the feeling they knew what the problem was or had any solution other than "replace the whole thing and hope it works." Between that and the early rumblings about sudden acceleration problems in "push button start" vehicles, I decided that getting out of that car sooner rather than later was a good move.

Besides, I did my deal on New Year's Eve, when the dealer was happy to cut things to the bone to move inventory. It worked out well for me, but probably not so well for whoever ended up owning my old vehicle.

2) How in the world could the world's entire automotive industry throw away a century of experience about what is required for user safety in any dangerous piece of equipment, which a car most certainly is?

I'm talking about the "push button" start, and more specifically, about the fact that vehicles equipped with it no longer have the sort of a safety shutoff switch of the type required in virtually every dangerous piece of equipment that you might purchase, from a toaster to a table saw, to a large piece of motorized industrial equipment.

Crying Wolf

If you've purchased a car in California you've experienced one of these stickers blocking the view on your driver-side window. At least for the few minutes it takes you to get it home when you scrape it off.

You've also seen a similar warning every time you enter a parking garage, or a hotel, or a business of just about any size.

If you live near any sort of manufacturer, food-processor or anybody else who might occasionally use a cleaning solvent in the course of doing normal business, you will also get a letter from them every year telling you pretty much the same information, even if the use of the chemicals is entirely within an enclosed facility with no impact on the outside environment.

I have no argument with the notion that businesses should have to disclose non-obvious and non-normal risks to the public that they serve or that might be impacted. But we've gotten to the point of crying wolf. Identifying obvious risks so frequently and pervasively that the warnings of real, unusual or unanticipate risks gets lost in the clutter.

Seriously, is there anybody with enough brainpower to read this label who does not yet know that things like gasoline, oil, antifreeze and automobile exhaust are dangerous? Is there anybody checking into a hotel who doesn't know that the cleaning supplies they use to sanitize the bathrooms may, in sufficiently large quantities, be harmful? Anybody who is not aware that a parking garage may contain all of the above and more and that maybe it's a bad place for kids and pregnant women to play?

Yet we seem trapped between those who feel that everything should be disclosed, to the point that the disclosure becomes so routine as to be meaningless, and those who feel that business should not be hampered with any disclosure requirements.

If you think it's bad with this Prop 65 stuff, try to buy a car or a condo. Dozens to hundreds of pages of disclosure, all of which is so dense as to be meaningless and not understandable. Want to understand how the mortgage crisis could happen? It's because a mortgage -- which should be easy enough to describe in less than a single page of high-school enlish -- now requires so much disclosure and documentation that even a guy like me with an MBA in finance can't understand it.

Yet the answer we get from government is always more disclosure.

The problem is we need less. We need less disclosure, but meaningful disclosure. We need warning labels and letters about non-normal risks, not warnings on every parking garage. We need mortgages and car loans to use a 1-pager disclosure form indicating interest rates, initial payment, maximim payment over time if it's a variable rate, date the reset can happen, and just a few other simple things.

Yet we're not getting this, instead we're getting more and more confusing disclosure. More confusing paperwork and labels that just give the banks, the polluters and everybody else who needs to disclose stuff ample opportunity to bury the important disclosures in among the hundreds of other meaningless warnings that know we have come to ignore.

Our regulatory infrastructure is designed to force people to cry wolf. Along the way, we never notice that occasionally a wolf is really there.

mg