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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in SandmanTV's LiveJournal:

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    Sunday, November 8th, 2009
    12:58 pm
    Phone numbers!
     I just reset my iPhone, and lost all my phone numbers.

    Would you be so kind as to text me with just your name? 202-288-2315
    Wednesday, May 13th, 2009
    11:38 am
    Scams
     I went with a couple friends to Borders yesterday. As we were sitting in their cafe, we heard one 20-something guy giving the hard sell to a teenager trying to recruit him into some sales-pyramid type thing. You know "buy a lot of product from me, sell it to your friends". Steak knives, tupperware, insurance, whatever. One of my friends had the boldness to say "hey kid, you know this is a scam, right?" Which made them very awkward. The scammer came over and said harsh words to us, but we ignored him and told him to go away, and they took their interview somewhere else.

    It just reminded me that few things piss me off quite so much as a scam. Our world is full of them, and not just obviously criminal con-artists. But entire legal businesses that we are told to be respectful to. My own experiences are being recruited for Vector Marketing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_Marketing and Ameriprise http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ameriprise , but fortunately I know how to use google (unlike the other kids there). And it's easy to make them seem legitimate. You set unreasonable goals, and promote the 1% that attains them, and so now your management is full of people who actually think it can work (and are making money from the pyramid).

    And of course so much of political work, both in donations and recruiting young people to work for almost no wages, is built on the same format and these also are treated as perfectly respectable people.

    I don't know, it's depressing.
    Monday, May 4th, 2009
    2:45 am
    So a common type of story about an evenly matched war is a Tiger, master of land, and a Shark, master of Sea. France v England, Russia, v US, and this happens in plenty of fantasy.

    Is there any example where the tiger is portrayed as the GOOD guy?
    Friday, March 20th, 2009
    7:22 pm
    Bonuses!
     It is now Day 6 of of the biggest scandal of the year so far, and as much as I wish the issue would die a quick quick death, it hasn't. I thought I would array my thoughts, for anyone on this list who hasn't heard them. Quick, below the fold!

    1. Facts of the matter: Because AIG obviously can't pay their normal performance bonuses to the financial products division (we're gonna stick with bonuses throughout, although my inner pretentious child cries out for bonii), their contracts said they would pay retention bonuses in order to keep their employees who expect high six and seven figure incomes. They announced their intention to do so a while ago, and there was no sign they were going to pay less than they usually pay all the way up till they paid people this past Friday.

    2. Most people will react that the people who crashed AIG into basically government receivership probably don't deserve huge salaries. Furthermore, they are probably displayed such incompetence that they won't really be useful, certainly not necessary. This is understandable, but very possibly wrong.

    2A. AIG has to unwind many of its positions in several complex markets and products. This is hard work, and often involves going to people they bought stuff from, and selling it back. If you have to do that, wouldn't the person who made the original purchase be useful. I'm not saying absolutely necessary, but worth a 1% to 2% edge? Maybe more, maybe less. Well AIG has over $170 billion of weird financial products to unwind. If the bonuses kept enough employees such that they get a further 0.1% edge from that institutional memory, then they were worth it from the perspective of AIG.

    Now there's a lot of argument about whether these traders could find other jobs (they could), whether they would actually retire (many would), and whether it's socially useful for them to be doing nothing more than getting a slight edge for one finance giant rather than another (in my opinion, it is not). But all that matters from the AIG board perspective is whether these retention payouts would pay for themselves in filling AIG's coffers, and it's pretty easy to see that they would.

    3. That's part of the reason finance salaries are so absurdly high. They are dealing with such giant amounts of money, that anyone who can provide the smallest fractional value more than the next best available person, is easily worth six figures. It's not even close.

    3A. That's not the entire reason and it wasn't always so. Before the 80's, salaries for mid-level finance were more mediocre, and in many non-US countries, bonuses aren't quite so high. Culture is responsible for a lot of what is "acceptable" to pay employees. Attempts to make Wall Street culture less willing to pay out that much are entirely understandable.

    3B. Of course this is a lot like the "salary cap for baseball players" problem. Someone rich is going to benefit from the profits of this company. It might be a higher return to capital (the investor) or labor (the 20 something math guy), but either way relative to the average citizen of the world, it's goig to look obscene. Be careful that you aren't punishing one person (quant guy, or baseball player) in a way that simply makes the owner of the company richer.

    4. Whatever, we can maybe see why their first instinct was to pay out these retention bonuses, but shouldn't they have known this would start a political firestorm?

    4A. Yeah no. As pointed out, these bonuses are 0.1% of the money we're loaning AIG. 0.02% of the money we're loaning banks altogether. 0.03 percent of the President's budget that is working it's way through Congress. 0.02% of the money that's in his 10 year cost for universal Healthcare. 0.0001% of the output gap across the world that is the root of this recession. It is, in short, a distraction. It receives far more news coverage than it's proportionately worth.

    5. Most of all, this is the center-left's fault. In January the far left, from say Barney Frank to liberal bloggers to Paul Krugman, and including myself, wanted the TARP funds to contain strict limits on executive compensation. Frank even proposed an amendment with this specific requirement. It was shot down, by Obama's economic advisors and the Senate banking committee. And this was all very very public.

    Well this is what the result is. We had an argument in the legislature about what compensation limits would be, there was no public outcry, and so the "no limits" side won. And now AIG is understandably baffled because they are well within the limits the government explicitly set on using TARP funds.

    My anger is not at AIG, it's for center-left elites who shot down these limits before, and now have to fake populist outrage.

    6. This is especially ironic because one of the main reasons given for not setting compensation limits before, was that it would discourage companies from accepting bailout funds. I was somewhat sympathetic to this, because CEO's can be irrational, and it's one thing to say "we failed, can you please help us government" and another to say "we failed, can you please help us and force me to take a 95% pay cut". Some egos can't handle that, and I don't want the economy to crash because of their intransigence.

    6A. But this situation is MUCH WORSE for scaring away TARP participants. It's one thing to have clear limits set on what you can do, it's another thing to know that accepting TARP funds will put your company under a microscope where routine activities can cause giant public relations embarassments and bill of attainder type legislation.
    Monday, March 9th, 2009
    9:47 pm
    Make something!
     Tagged from dumblebe, who made me a nice mix cd.

    The first five four people to respond to this post will get something made by me! My choice. For you.

    This offer does have some restrictions and limitations:
    1) I make no guarantees that you will like what I make;
    2) It'll be done this year;
    3) You have no clue what it's going to be. It could be anything. Jewelry, a poem, a contract, a mix CD, a photograph... anything, really; and
    4) I reserve the right to make something extremely odd.

    The catch? The catch is that you incur a moral obligation to repost and follow through. Creativity is totally hip.
    Thursday, February 26th, 2009
    2:54 am
    Non-Con Nominations and why young HRSFen need to die.
     Amount Tony lost: $1000, $2000, $3000, Graham's number, 100
    quadrillion zimbabwean dollars, $4000, daily double, corperate
    finance, 2(*amount tony lost), 4, $6000, $7000, 100 billion dollars,
    $8000, Sum of all nominations, carl, dozens, if not thousands, $9000,
    it's over 9000!, bankrupt, lose a turn
    Wednesday, January 21st, 2009
    11:14 am
    Inauguration ( Read more... )
    Monday, December 1st, 2008
    4:46 pm
    PSA, and sucks.
     Yesterday my "service engine" light went on in my car. Feeling like I should be responsible, I took it into the station for checking today. They said it would be $85 up front, which sounded fine. Apparently all that was wrong was my gas cap was a little loose, it wasn't twisted tight enough when I last got a refill. They called and let me know that, and charged me $85.

    This really ticked me off for a number of reasons. If people commonly have this issue, then there should be some other warning thing, or perhaps the station attendent could say "sure, check your gas cap first". Also of course, money is a little tight now, and I don't like wasting $85 on stupid shit. But even more, stuff like this is why I don't take better care of my car. Some things that seem ominous, could just be really minor things that don't matter, and taking it in will only cost you a lot of money to find that out.
    Thursday, October 16th, 2008
    9:59 am
    Predictive Abilitiy
     In 2006, I joined the congressional campaign of Victoria Wulsin. I convinced my friend to come join our campaign as well, as he was driving to join the campaign of Matt Dann, the Dem nominee for the attorney general of Ohio. I felt the AG was a fools position, because while Republicans were unpopular in Ohio, the sitting Rep incumbent was popular as an independently minded official. Dann won, Wulsin lost.

    In early 2007, I eagerly pursued any way I could to help the John Edwards campaign, while I passed up interviews to be a data coordinator for Obama in New Hampshire.

    In late 2007, I joined a congressional campaign in New Jersey (when she was the only one running). I passed up an opportunity to work on a campaign for Governor of Deleware with the rebelious State Treasurer who was running in a primary against the party-annointed Lt. Governor. The congressional campaign lost abyssmally, while the state treasuer won the primary.

    In short, if I ignore your campaign, cheer to the Heavens!
    Thursday, October 9th, 2008
    12:04 pm
    Running Tally
     I am now keeping a running tally of actors who appear in How I Met Your Mother, that have also appeared in Joss Whedon productions.

    Alyson Hannigan
    Neil Patrick Harris
    Alexis Denisof (Wesley)
    Amy Acker (Fred)
    Morena Bacarin (Inara)

    Science must go on.
    Tuesday, September 16th, 2008
    4:12 pm
    Why I don’t like centrist pundits.
     A couple political scientists took groups of people, left and right, and asked them their opinion on false pieces of political information (Iraq has WMD, a Koran was flushed down the toilet). Both were then presented with evidence that proved this wrong. The liberals maintained their belief. The conservative belief actually INCREASED, a “backfire” effect as it were. Nothing new is really under the sun.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/14/AR2008091402375_pf.html

    Now here is what’s great. Some blogs pick this up. First a science blog: http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2008/09/cognitive_dissonance_and_polit.php , and then a media punditry blog http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/09/cognitive_dissoance_and_politi.php . Both blogs are run by guys who admit they are liberal-leaning, but generally of the “pox on both your houses” variety that finds both parties corrupt.

    Their commentary is “wow this makes a lot of sense and we should all believe science, unlike those foolish partisans”. And then they add on “also liberals couldn’t possibly be influenced by this less, I know plenty of liberals in my life and they’re just as bad”.

    Yes. They push some research mocking partisans for ignoring facts in favor of their own narrative – and then they ignore the research in favor of their own narrative (“both sides are just as bad”).

    This is what some Democratic partisans hate about some moderate institutions. A lot of them are in fact knee-jerk and ignore evidence for their own narrative.
    2:15 pm
    Thursday, September 4th, 2008
    11:58 am
    Thoughts on the selection of Sarah Palin as VP nominee.( Read more... )
    Thursday, August 14th, 2008
    9:56 am
    best line of the day
     http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0584.html

    And once again, Probability proves itself willing to sneak into a back alley and service Drama as would a copper-piece harlot.
    Tuesday, August 5th, 2008
    9:59 pm
    Friday, August 1st, 2008
    3:42 pm
    Random thoughts
     Random political thoughts about the state of the race (both for President and Congress). ( Read more... )
    Thursday, July 31st, 2008
    10:30 am
    So I read this article in Mother Jones magazine about a “spy for the gun lobby”. http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2008/07/mary-mcfate-sapone-gun-lobby-nra-spy.html

    You don’t need to bother to read it, since I’m willing to summarize what’s relevant.( Read more... )
    Thursday, July 24th, 2008
    10:16 am
    So there’s this recent phenomenon that fascinates me in a maudlin way: fake Republican fundraising.( Read more... )
    Saturday, July 19th, 2008
    10:00 pm
    watcbmen
     So, the watchmen trailer is out. Check it out here. http://watchmenmovie.warnerbros.com/

    Very pretty. But as my friends know, I've always feared the oncoming Watchmen movie. It's amazingly good, but also deep and detailed and a lot of the quality can be found in the small touches and dense pieces of writing. Not monologues, but excerpts from books or transcripts and that come at the end of each comic and narrations. How can those be translated to the movie, and how can a translation be true without them?

    Well I think a little differently now. Watchmen is (arguably) the best comic book ever. The only adequate translation could be the best movie ever. And yet, am I to hate a movie for the mere crime of not being the best movie ever? So an imperfect translation of Watchmen, containing only some of the elements that made it badass and brilliant, is still... badass, brilliant, and worth getting excited for.

    PS: Just saw Dark Knight. In my mind, despite the horribleness of the movie, Tommy Lee Jones was the true Two Face. Michael Keaton was the true Bruce Wayne. And Jack Nicholson most definitely was the true Joker. In the previous three sentences "was" is the operative word.
    Wednesday, July 16th, 2008
    11:19 am
    I've been waiting for http://www.drhorrible.com/ for quite some time, and am glad it's getting released. If you like a) Neil Patrick Harris, b) Buffy writer Joss Whedon, c) supervillains, d) wacky musicals, e) web show The Guild, or f) free stuff then go watch it this week.
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