Put up the please-don't-clean sign while you're there, then leave N*$5 as a tip when you leave (since they'll be cleaning the room between guests).
I also can't pay attention in conferences, and almost never pick up anything from them. They should just cut out the talks and leave the socialising/networking in. If you want to learn something, read a damn journal article, as usual.
This one might be helpful - it's about admin stuff for a position I've recently assumed, and I've never held this kind of position before.
Which of course means I don't know anyone here, though. It's also kind of nice when you already know a few people.
You know us, heebie, and we're right there with you.
I'll be live-commenting, I assume.
I'm at one now
I initially read this as an expression of Zen-like peace. (Or is this a "thanks for making that explicit" moment; as I said on the other thread, blogs are confusing.)
4: Yeah, I've been to those before, too. It's like the first day of 7th grade in a new town and new school all over again, but harder because we're adults now, and the walls are up.
That sounds overly dramatic now that I reread it.
I've only been to one, ffej, but it wasn't that bad.
I like how at this point we're basically guaranteed to hear anything happening to the front-page posters that involves the sum of five dollars. (Not that this an uninteresting post; far from it.)
10: Too bad pay-for-sex rates are well past that.
9: Well, ok, but I've gathered from my lurkings that you're a pretty lady, which might make things a bit easier.
Ok, I'll use this as an opportunity for two blegs.
1) how much do you tip the hotel maid? I believe we've had this discussion somewhere before but can't find it. I've gone as high as $20/day but that feels excessive. This seems like an area where there are NO RULES.
2) How do I answer my 4 year old's constant question "Why does Mufasa [of the Lion King] die? I went through a long explanation of the struggle for power in monarchies and how that struggle leads to disregarding human relations, but that just produced confused blinks and repetitions of this question like 10 times a day. What would you say?
You're supposed to tip hotel maids?? Shit. Now I feel like an ass.
These sort of rules need to be more explicit.
Trampled by wildebeest, as I recall.
13.2: "The narrative requires it." (Seriously, I have no idea.)
Tipping is a cultural disease. It's one of the little things I dread when I visit the states.
13.2: "You didn't clap hard enough."
I thought $5/day? Left each day, because it will be different people.
13(b): "The devil possessed Scar because he hadn't accepted Jesus as his savior."
I thought conferences were for getting sloppy drunk in hotel bars with people you know mostly from your bibliography?
I thought conferences were for getting sloppy drunk naked in hotel bars rooms with people you know mostly from your bibliography?
Though I suppose one could easily lead to the other, so maybe the strikethroughs were unnecessary.
22: I'm not sure why you think those are mutually exclusive. The former facilitates the latter.
The last rule I knew is way out of date by now, I think it was valid in the eighties: a dollar per person in the room per day. I think I just sort of guess. (I've heard the 'do it every day' thing, and I'm just not going to. Surely even if they can't manage to split their tips in some organized way, who cleans the room on the last day will even out in the long run.)
maybe the strikethroughs were unneccessary
'Sloppy naked' is really the one to avoid.
2 They should just cut out the talks and leave the socialising/networking in.
The trouble is: everyone agrees that conferences/workshops/whatever are best with fewer talks. But everyone thinks that they should give a talk.
Every time I've organized something I've tried very hard to limit the number of talks, and every time it's been way more than I or anyone else wanted. It seems like superannuated people whose careers don't benefit at all from giving yet another talk are also the pushiest about insisting that they be allowed to.
||
I have a coast-to-coast red-eye flight tomorrow night to attend my brother's wedding, and I can never sleep on planes*. I have no experience with sleep aids, but is there something OTC suited to this purpose that won't make me drowsy the next day?
* On trans-Pacific flights, I can get so tired I attain a state of no-mind for 15 minutes or so, but that's the maximum.
|>
I've considered going with a modified version of 20.
$5/day seems reasonable, I guess, but it's odd in that most tipping is a percentage of the bill, which would be ludicrously expensive in hotels.
29: Benadryl makes most people pretty sleepy, as does dramamine. I think most OTC sleep aids are basically antihistamines, but I'm not sure.
I also can't pay attention in conferences, and almost never pick up anything from them. They should just cut out the talks and leave the socialising/networking in. If you want to learn something, read a damn journal article, as usual.
I can't pay attention to journal articles because there's rarely any indication of which 1% of the results are the important part and which 90% of the results are supposed to be obvious, or why any of it matters at all. Presentations at conferences are so much better because you can actually see what the person presenting the data is emphasizing, you can see an actual person leading you through the stages. Unless they are horrible public speakers.
This only applies to scientific conferences of course. Somebody standing up and reading a paper out loud with no visual aids would be horrible.
Somebody standing up and reading a paper out loud with no visual aids would be horrible.
Yeah, what's up with those people?
I remember being kind of weirded out at some point in the music class I took my first quarter of college when I realized the instructor wasn't just, like, talking off the cuff, or even lecturing from notes, but had written his remarks in advance and memorized them.
$5 or $10 per day, depending on the cost (real cost, not rack rate) of the room. I suppose if you're staying at the Ritz in NYC or in Pasadena (as I did once -- ah, that was truly a glorious time) or somewhere similar, $20 might be appropriate. The key, though, is to leave it every day, as a different serf person will be cleaning your filth from the floor around the toilet.
And speaking of serfs and the like, this is just about the best thing I've seen in forever. If anyone can figure out how to buy such a print, please let me know. I'd be very grateful for that information.
32, 33: It's the old fashioned style. Everyone used to do that back in the day.
29:Melatonin, but see the Wiki page
And it is prescription in some countries
I took melatonin for a few years, and found the timing to be important.
29: get some Valium. Seriously, 10 mg will make a trans-continental flight a lot more bearable. 10 mg with a 5 mg booster over the Polar cap (shrinking, shrinking, shrinking) will work for a trans-Atlantic journey. And so on.
36 gets it right. doesn't work if you're in a well-lit room though.
37: Valium was OTC* in Honduras and I stocked up when I was there a few years ago, but I am sadly out now. I need my own Dr. Nick.
*Or maybe a prescription was just pointing and saying "I would like to have that, please." Not sure.
This reminds me, I've been planning a long weekend getaway and didn't until just now think that, depending on the length of the trip, I should perhaps make arrangements for the cat.
Best conference-type thing I've ever been to, each presenter had twenty (enforced) minutes to talk, then there was a long discussion. Kinda like a panel, only with real research results in the twenty minutes. My blog-fed squirrel brain has no patience for any talk not severely pared down.
32, 33: the last time I gave a talk (that wasn't my dissertation defense spiel), I used a powerpointbeamer thing in which every other slide was completely blank, and the only text on the slides that had text was quotations I was referring to. I'd bring up the quotation when I reached the appropriate point in the paper, then when I'd moved on from it move back to a totally blank slide.
When I'm talking you should be paying attention to me, dammit!
34: I was less taken by the piece than you were, but I really did love the line,
You smell like bacon to us.
Best conference type thing that I've been to was the most recent BALLE conference (though I only attended the final day, so it's a small sample).
Much, much better than I expected. The presentations were fascinating and the event was very well organized.
I did have a conversation with somebody at the time about how it probably made a difference that most of the people were not there for career advancement, but just because they were interested in the issues.
A sleep specialist told me that there are actual data behind valerian, but it won't knock you out like Benadryl does.
Thanks for all the tips.
Mayo Clinic site says valerian increases the sedative effect of alcohol, so maybe that and a couple beers.
Bob, what do you find to be the optimal timing for melatonin? 30-60 minutes before when you want to sleep, as I read in places?
33: I had a professor who basically did that, but it was like theater, carefully practiced over many years.
I hate a lot of visual aids unless they're very good. Does anyone know where tutoring is available for people who struggle to prepare visual aids. I
I'm so non-visual that it's really a learning disability.
Has anyone tried Beamer presentation software?
47:Yeah, exactly. My experience was that max effect was at around 45 minutes. So I would be trying to relax and sleep at 15-30 minutes.
Increasing dosage was counterproductive.
Melatonin is useful for falling asleep and adjusting to time zone changes BUT prolonged use can exacerbate depression, so be careful.
I found melatonin useful *if* I got to bed around 30 minutes after taking it. If I accidentally stayed up for 45-60 minutes, I ended up in this weird hyper-awake state. Also, I often felt mentally cloudy the day after taking it.
I've got about 6 post ideas from this conference so far. But the internet access in the conference rooms is annoying. Back to the conference rooms now.
I used valerian for a few months, and then it suddenly not only stopped working, but started keeping me awake. I since then was once served tea that I didn't know had valerian in it, and figured it out from the very particular kind of wakefulness it caused.
I like conferences, because they are often an excuse to use the Eurostar, which is my favourite form of travel.
51: This might explain one of the worst nights of my life, when I was having a bad acid trip, and a friend gave me melatonin to help me fall asleep. Then I laid down and tried desperately to go to sleep. DID NOT WORK.
Also, I don't know if I'll ever trip again (though that wasn't the last time) but from the couple worst trips I've ever had, the main lesson is that no matter how much fun I'm having, I DON"T want to take another hit.
This might explain one of the worst nights of my life, when I was having a bad acid trip, and a friend gave me melatonin to help me fall asleep. Then I laid down and tried desperately to go to sleep. DID NOT WORK.
That might have more to do with the acid than the melatonin. It's nigh on impossible to get to sleep until it wears off completely.
Yeah, for sure. I had always thought that was the only culprit, and I'm interested to know that the melatonin might have hindered, not helped.
An OT question from a friend:
Do you think I can get in trouble if my company is doing fraudulent things to get state contracts. My boss has been lying about who works here and faking like he's them on the phone. I don't really care unless somehow I could end up in trouble because of it.
My instinct is no, as long as you don't somehow become involved, because I don't think there are any sort of required whistleblower statutes for this sort of thing (this is a small company), but honestly I have no idea. Anyone else have an opinion?
(My advice would be to try and find another job, because it's not good for your soul to work somewhere evil. But this friend just came out of protracted unemployment when he found this job, so I think that advice may fall on deaf ears.)
He should find a friend who's a lawyer and ask him.
I think someone else already gave him that advice.
I would be really surprised by the existence of a whistleblower statute -- generally, you can't even get in trouble for not reporting a murder unless you were involved. I would warn him to be really really careful about anything that could be perceived as assisting the fraud, though -- anything he signs should be absolutely literally true or he doesn't sign it, and if anyone ever asks him a question about anything related, he should spill his guts instantly.
I thought white collar crime was protected by law?
Speaking of lawyers, I was amused by this overheard tidbit in the elevator at the courthouse the other day, "At least your guy used his gun."
62: the only one I have any familiarity with is S-OX, but it's surprisingly tough on whistleblowing requirements (not generally, of course, but for a few very particular people who may know about a few very particular misdeeds). Obviously that doesn't apply here, but I didn't know if state contracting might involve anything similar. Probably not.
I've actually given the advice in 62 before to an acquaintance in a similar situation, but he left the job before anything happened. I would be looking for work and figuring out how best to turn them in when he finds something different, though -- not just morally, but it doesn't sound as if the job is going to last long.
66.last: Yes, in my not extensive but non-zero experience of things of this nature, when the cracks start showing to people outside of the inner circle it's usually not too long before it blows sky-high with unpredictable* consequences .
*Other than not-goodness.
59: My advice would be that shorting his own company is insider trading, but AFAICT there's no reason not to go long on the competition.
Also, yes, he should be looking for other employment.
72: Darn it, I reread that like 3 times looking for a gendered pronoun and couldn't find it...
How do you know he's not a lawyer?
Shite torts.
Well, at a minimum, it seems likely that your friend (and possibly you) could end up subpoenaed and having to testify. And what LB says above.
Does state x have a qui tam statute or rule? Your friend could leave, get a new job, and make some money. Actually, what is his phone number? (kidding).
This isn't hardly on topic, even for a thread that's no longer on topic, but it's as good a place as any to ask the econ-minded folks here. Laurence Kotlikoff's Purple Tax Plan: does it make sense? Is it glossing over stuff? I don't quite trust the people I've seen advocating it, though they seem generally saner than the Flat Tax / Fair Tax evangelists. But mostly I just don't have enough economics chops (or any such chops, really) to evaluate its claims.
The thread topic is "Miscellaneous", apo, so I think you're okay.
77: The first thing I noticed about it that's definitely not going to fly is this from the transition rules: In transiting to the new system, taxes businesses and individuals on unrealized capital gains, calculated as of the date of the reform, on existing asset holdings.
Everyone with a house they've owned for a long time would be in for a huge payment that they might easily not have liquidity to make; even beyond that, valuing all assets in the country, which you'd have to do for this, is not a trivial problem.
I don't have the chops to work out whether the plan makes any sense at all; that bit just popped out as something that's not going to happen.
73: Benquo doesn't even see gender.
77: I have no idea but it reads like it was designed by the sort of people who make really nice models that don't really account for how hard it is to adjust for a baseline state. This is mostly a VAT, no?
The FICA tax part might make some sense in isolation if removing the ceiling would raise enough money to offset the under $40k part. Except I don't think it would.
85: I was thinking of econometricians.
76: Probably right. Anyone taking investment advice from me should probably bear in mind that I employ an almost entirely passive strategy.
Do as I do, not as I say.
Or did you specifically mean that the aforementioned strategy could still get one in legal trouble?
The demogrant is critical to making the sales tax progressive, but it's hard to trust that the demogrant wouldn't eventually be labelled "welfare" and lopped off from the rest.
I will say that the sharpest anti-tax conservatives are terrified of any national sales tax or VAT, because it's such an efficient way for the national government to raise funds. European countries are VAT-funded but thanks to benefits the whole tax and transfer system is very progressive.
I am fascinated by Kotlikoff's Limited Purpose Banking plan (http://www.thepurplefinancialplan.org/node/2 ) though. He wrote a good book on it that explains it well, called "Jimmy Stewart is Dead" I think.
88: If insider trading based on knowledge of criminal activity is wrong, I don't want to be right.
88 -- it's trading on material nonpublic information, so, yes, most likely illegal (as long as it's a conceivably effective strategy). Simply buying a competitors' stock is not a magical out from the insider trading laws.
91: What you need to do is list the name of the company here. That makes it public and then trading on the information is so legal that you'll get 6 hours of CLE credit for doing it.
91: That seems odd, because he wouldn't be taking a position on the one company he has direct info about.
When a company I worked at was doing some ill-thought-out deals, an analyst colleague of mine had the idea of shorting our nearly identical competitor, on the assumption that they were probably making the same mistakes. The legal department's insider trading specialists (who AFAIK had no incentive to say yes to anything ever) assured him he was in the clear.
He never followed through, but if he had, he'd be a rich man now.
Did they give him wrong advice, or is my intuition that 68 describes an even safer action incorrect?
Your intuition is wrong. In the situation urple describes, the guy actually knows something specific secret, that will cause the price of his own company's shares to go down, and, thus the competitors to rise, once it is disclosed. In the situation you describe, your colleagues didn't actually have any specific material nonpublic information -- they were simply making an informed guess about what the competition was up to.
95 -- My experience from a decade ago is that the regulators are slow to care about insider trading that is based on a large revelation of fraud on the part of the company. By "slow" I mean glacial. Glacial during the age of Global Warming. I hope things have changed . . .
My concern goes the other way. It's fraud to omit a material fact. So long as the friend is never in a place where its his job to interact with contracting officers or whoever, I suppose he stays in the clear. If he does have to deal with them, though, and doesn't say anything, then he seems like a conspirator. I wouldn't expect to see him prosecuted (except as a ploy to get him to roll over on the other guys) but you really never know what the state is going to do.
94: Huh. Doesn't there need to be some kind of violation of fiduciary duty here?
Suppose you know that company A is buying company B. Clearly, front-running the deal and buying B's shares would be illegal. But what if you make an educated guess that the purchase of B will drive up the shares of C? What responsibility are you violating here if you buy C shares? (Has there ever been a case like this?)
What responsibility are you violating here if you buy C shares?
The responsibility not to trade on material nonpublic information.
What is material nonpublic information? If you accumulate mounds of publicly available information and then combine them in some novel way, that's just research and you can trade on it, right? But, what if your research involved seeing which cars were parked outside of which bars on a given night? That information would have been publicly available but isn't really available after the fact.
95.2 is a very valid fear. 98 gets it right. Another danger, of course, of trading on the nonpublic information is that the feds are more likely to tag you as a co-conspirator.
98: Well, I'm not going to get into an argument about law with lawyers ... Oh, wait, apparently I am.
You can certainly trade on material nonpublic information, as Mark Cuban knows. Cuban got off the hook (as I understand it) because he didn't have a fiduciary duty to the company.
101 -- That story doesn't say that Cuban got off the hook. It says that the IG found that his complaints of SEC misconduct were unfounded.
101 -- there's a complicated law of selective disclosure that, IIRC, Cuban was invoking -- he was a regular investor and got a message from the CEO, and the question was whether that message was provided in confidence and selectively. Plus, I thought that the decision dismissing his case was reversed by the Fifth Circuit and is still going on, but I haven't checked. Under the misappropriation theory, you don't need to be in a direct fiduciary relationship to be liable for insider trading.
Oh, I just saw that you linked to the story about the Cuban case. No time to read it now.
The worry here is that the whole concept of insider trading is caselaw, not spelled out in the statute. So pinning down the boundaries enough to be sure you're safe is also tricky.
I think this sucks, and it should be much more tightly defined than it is, but in practice it's not.
http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/092110cubanopinion.pdf
Actually, the Fifth Circuit opinion looks like a nice basic review of the law.
105 gets it right. I've actually always wondered why these prosecutions don't get thrown out on due process groudns as void for vagueness.
Eh, in practice the rule is "don't trade on a secret that seems like it came from an insider source," almost everyone seems to get that, and most prosecutions are for pretty obvious and egregious frauds. Not too worried about this one (and I reserve my world's smallest violin for white collar criminals generally).
A lot of economists think the whole concept of 'insider trading' is unworkable and stupid anyway (since you should want people trading on all the information they have since then prices will be more informative). I am generally *extremely* skeptical of economists who wish to eliminate financial market regulation but in this case I wonder if they're right.
Sure, insider trading means naive outsiders to the markets get fleeced, but won't this always happen anyway?
109: No, they are not right. Prices do not become "more informative", they become more prone to profiteering. And it's not just naive outsiders who potentially get fleeced, it's anyone, which makes the whole market less liquid and significantly raises transaction costs (in terms of the diligence required to (help) prevent getting screwed).
This is yet another example of some economists pitching the results of their simplistic theoretical models, while completely ignoring the actual historical experience we have with markets without bans on insder trading.
108: I've got a certain amount of sympathy for criminal defendants regardless of what they're wearing -- criminal law an area where there's a general obligation of the law to be unambiguous and it's really not on this topic.
The problematic issue isn't so much where the info came from -- anything about a company is going to have come from an insider originally -- it's when has it become public. A rule saying "I'm not an insider myself, have no duty to anyone who is, and was not engaged in an investment scheme in cooperation with an insider. I'm the public, and so if I know something, it's public information, even if it's not known by many people," makes perfect sense to me. As prosecuted, though, it's fuzzier.
Well, you're talking about tippee liability. There are very few prosecutions for even remotely plausibly innocent tippees, since the tips generally come from actual insiders. Again, prosecutors can always overreach, but that's true in any criminal law context and I'm not particularly worried about this one.
Urple gets it right in 110. The point of the insider trading laws was to open up the stock markets to mass investors (or, more precisely, to get mass investors back into the markets after 1929) in order to provide liquidity; before you had regulations, the stock markets were basically the realm of (even more than today) scammers and con artists.
of economists think the whole concept of 'insider trading' is unworkable and stupid anyway
As far as I know, basically everyone who feels this way is part of the Efficient Market Hypothesis crowd. I would think that's all you would need to know to dismiss this claim in its entirety.
McMegan has a piece in The Atlantic this month that flirts with the "insider trading is a victimless crime" line.
There are very few prosecutions for even remotely plausibly innocent tippees, since the tips generally come from actual insiders.
That begs the question a bit, doesn't it? Say your actual insider is just a big gossip, and tells people stuff she shouldn't. At some point, that stuff isn't secret any more because she told people. So when are the people who heard stuff from her allowed to trade in the stock without committing a crime?
If there's no brightline answer to that, I think it's a problem despite the fact that anyone who might be prosecuted is the sort of evil person who has money to buy securities with.
I was off reading the Fifth Circuit opinion in a different case, and missed the economist business. No one should listen to economists pretty much ever, but especially when they are trying to justify might making right.
The brightline rule is that the tippee knows or should know that the insider was breaching a duty of disclosure. That kills the "innocent gossip recipient" prosecution, but allows for the far more realistic prosecution of people to whom the tipper is giving the tip in the hopes of benefiting the tippee. It might not be the clearest of clear lines but in practice it's not exactly incomprehensible.
people to whom the tipper is giving the tip in the hopes of benefiting the tippee.
Abetting is a valid concept in the criminal law, as is conspiracy, but they require the person prosecuted to agree to aid in the commission of a crime, or to assist in the commission of a crime. That a tippee has independent liability even where the prosecutors can't show such an agreement or such aid seems fucked up to me.
As a frequent tipee, I hope I can't be held liable.
The theory is that the tippee is participating in the breach of duty, and is doing so for profit. There is a requirement that the tippee know (or constructively know) that the tip is being provided in breach of a duty.
Without that rule, insiders could just tell their friends or relatives about inside information, and have them trade on it, with near-impunity.
That a tippee has independent liability even where the prosecutors can't show such an agreement or such aid seems fucked up to me.
Prosecutors still have to show that the tipper had a fiduciary duty, and that the tippee knew that or should know it. That seems pretty reasonable.
Without that rule, insiders could just tell their friends or relatives about inside information, and have them trade on it, with near-impunity.
Conspiracy, vague as it is, isn't enough here?
Just read a new NYRB piece arguing the laxer standard for insider trading should be extended to other forms of financial fraud - so you prove not that they knew, say, the marketing for a CDO was false, but that they should have known. I'd be on board with that, especially if it's true, as the article has it, that the lack of prosecutions has been partly due to trepidation over proving mens rea beyond a reasonable doubt, not purely lack of political appetite to do so.
I haven't read the piece, but I disagree; we've got plenty tight enough laws if they were just enforced, and vague criminal laws that don't require mens rea are oppressive and evil even if the people being oppressed do work in the financial industry. Increase the enforcement budget in the SEC and the Justice Department before passing vaguer laws with weaker standards of proof -- draconian laws and weak enforcement is a recipe for invidiously selective prosecution.
My world's smallest violin is sounding up again.
Enjoy your police state, Halford.
Note that the most significant ramifications would be in civil, not criminal, cases.
Also, you want to play around with the world's money, you should take on the risk that errors of gross negligence can lead to serious run ins with the government. (I actually think that many prosecutions would be warranted under current law, but that the Obama administration is a bunch of pussies). If not, world's smallest violin.
I know a company that is about to perfect violin miniaturization. They haven't announced yet, so I can't tell you which company.
I've officially lost patience with this conference. I'm ready to go home, which is good, because I fly home in the morning. I officially made zero friends and hid out in my lovely hotel room as much as possible, but actually learned a lot about what I was supposed to learn.
Everyone is nice individually but in aggregate I'm hostile to them all.
hid out in my lovely hotel room as much as possible
#OccupyMarriott
Also it's somewhat hard to find food without being social because there aren't big tables of pastries and that kind of thing, and they seem to intend that you go hunt down a restaurant, which i did once, but mostly I've just been hungry all conference, which is getting annoying.
I do have $15 worth of vouchers to buy myself room service dinner tonight, though! After this last talk.
You are away from the kids? How often does that happen? Go nuts.
Our at least write something untoward on the hotel comment card.
I feel a night of hookers and blow is in order.
That's the traditional move, anyway.
excuse me, sorry to interfere, but my god, kids who knows WHERE and mom commenting on blogs is an inacceptable situation
Enjoy your well-shod police state, Halford.
"Sergeant, these are the best hydrated prostitutes I've ever seen."
THERE IS NO I IN PEDIALYTE
I love eating alone in restaurants with a novel. I also love room service. Eating alone on a trip! It's great!
So here's my observation of trading by insiders (as distinct from insider trading ... let's assume) based on observations of a company that um, ..., a friend of my brother's told me about. The insiders have a good track record on things like when to dump options and the like*. Who knows based on what, but pretty freaking good, but not like supernaturally great. And of course broadly speaking they always have inside information. Let's say, hypothetically speaking, there are vague rumors of a takeover in the offing and the stock climbs and insiders dump a fair bit and then the rumors are debunked (and the insider stock trades are seen as confirmation/part of the debunking)--all legitimate rewards of the system, right? Nice system.
*And I don't think this is just true for my friend's brother's company, but it raises the question, are there any broad studies of insider trades compared to the market? A bit of desultory googling yielded nothing, but did not come up with a query that did not have a lot of confounding words.
A drink alone with a novel at the hotel bar is also ACES.
144: On a recent West Coast business trip, I went to Fatburger while on an expense account. In part because of feelings such as heebie expresses in 130 (so as you can see, I had a good reason).
Room service should be here within 30 minutes!
The last talk was amazing and wrecking. (I suppose I'm just going to ruin any shred of mystery about what conference I was at.) The speaker was Tyrone Hayes, the scientist who's fighting Atrazine and other pollutants that make us die. It was entertaining and moving and about 1000x more than usual I want to cry for the sorry state of the human race.
You know how science is. One week eggs are bad for you, the next they're great. Atrazine will probably be the same way.
Don't cry for me, heebie-geebie.
Tyrone Hayes
Googled and wtf. I assume whoever wrote this has an agenda, but it's still pretty weird if they're not making it up.
I wish my job involved more frog gonads.
Holy shit. He did actually mention sending some emails with foul language, which were part of the controversy surrounding him.
He's very charismatic, and gives a very moving presentation, though.
The journals he'd published in, and the peers he published with, during the presentation, seemed to leave no doubt that his science was totally sound.
152: In other emails, Hayes brags about his personal wealth, the value of his house, his $150K remodeled kitchen, and his prestigious education.
I wonder what kind of a coffee maker he has.
seemed to leave no doubt that his science was totally sound.
I hope not. I spent my youth drinking water from aquifers filled by rain that fell on fields covered in the stuff.
Hooray, my burger and beer are here! Won't you dine with me?
These green chiles are totally lame and not at all spicy. WTF?
152: That site seems a bit politically motivated, by which I mean extremely politically motivated. But, Wikipedia agrees about his Atrazine studies having findings that could not be replicated.
And the PICKLES ARE SWEET. That's the grossest thing I've ever mistakenly put on a burger. WHAT THE FUCK?
The EPA report they mention that disregards his findings is from 2007, so I feel comfortable dismissing it out of hand.
Atrazine is not allowed to be used in Europe.
I cannot get over these sweet pickles. Who the fuck puts sweet pickles on a burger?
It seems you've learned something, heebie. In future, be one of those room service orderers who says, "And make sure the pickles for the burger are dill pickles. I'm not even kidding. Also, if your green chiles are not spicy, don't even bother including them. I assume the beer is going to be cold, by the way."
How's the beer, by the way?
162: Yeah, it's not the kind of site I'm comfortable believing. But those emails are really something.
I like sweet pickles on burgers. Bread and butter pickles especially.
It's cold. It's Sierra Nevada. It's ok.
Sweet pickles. For crying out loud.
I don't like sweet pickles at all.
170: Oh really? Because you like gross food?
I love relish. Only not sweet relish, because that is gross.
Okay. Apo will take your sweet pickles, so it works out. If they gave you olives for some reason, I'll take those.
I like dill pickles too. Pickles for the win!
I like olives, although the little black ones aren't my favorite. But there weren't any.
If they gave you feta cheese, I can take that off your hands. nosflow doesn't want it.
175: Because I like many different foods, you racist.
But, Wikipedia agrees about his Atrazine studies having findings that could not be replicated.
Where is this? I don't see it in the Hayes wiki article.
164: Based entirely on the Atrazine wikipedia page, it looks like there are EPA studies from before and after Bush that didn't find anything. Not that those studies included frog gonads.
183: I'm looking in the Atrazine wiki article, which sites Hayes.
Sweet pickles and relish are great, especially on hotdogs.
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I just read the following paragraph and thought, "no wonder megan wanders the streets at night adjusting sprinklers."
The [Sacramento] metropolitan area, which lands regularly on lists of the top green cities, smart cities, and liveable cities, also has earned this startling ranking: it squanders more water than anywhere else in California. That distinction makes it one of the most water-wasting places in the United States . . . Residents of the metro region use nearly 300 gallons of water per person per day -- double the national average.
|>
Oh, there it is. I'm still on Team Hayes, though. The evidence in his presentation is pretty stunning.
Well, the last amphibian section sentence said the USGS may have found something.
on hotdogs.
Keep telling those knock-knock jokes, while the girls shiver and give you weird looks.
Tyrone Hayes eats sweet pickles all the live long day.
On a couple of occasions I've had amazing room service burgers at the O'Hare Hilton late at night after an exhausting day of getting bounced from one standby list to another. Probably the burger wasn't objectively very good, but being able to finally sit down and eat something in a comfortable room was.
191: Are you calling him black?
I have a friend/colleague who recently wrote a book about endocrine disruptors. She's been lecturing about the issue for years. That's some chilling, sit-with-your-legs-tightly crossed shit. As for Tyrone Hayes, he seems like a very weird dude. But every time I start to doubt him*, I think of all the ratfucking that Rachel Carson withstood and remember that Big Pesticide doesn't play nice. And then I think, so what if he raps.
* I'm not qualified to judge his findings.
On the one hand, there's a ton of chemicals dumped onto fields and that can't be good in the aggregate. On the other hand, dumping herbicides on fields means tractors don't have to drive up and down fields nearly so often and that soil erosion is better controlled. On the third hand, there are probably other herbicides. On the fourth hand, it's been around a long time and all my farmer relatives who didn't smoke seemed to live long lives. On the fifth hand, maybe I should look into why I have so many hands.
I think of all the ratfucking that Rachel Carson withstood...
She's got a bridge in Pittsburgh named after her, so that worked out in the end.
I'm afraid I saw that coming, Moby. And yes, DDT wasn't really all that bad (this comment offered in the same spirit as urple suggesting that Di is objectively pro child slavery).
He asserts that BPA and Atrazine are uniquely well-understood to be horrifying, and are real no-brainers, compared to the other 80 chemicals in our run-off water that are poorly understood to be horrifying.
I thought you said all the bridges in Pittsburgh are falling down.
uniquely well-understood to be horrifying
By whom? I mean, I'd agree that a select group of enviros and scientists understand this (for some value of "understand"), but I don't think it's anything like conventional wisdom at the moment. Or at least it wasn't the last time I went to one of my friend's talks, at which I crossed my legs tightly and generally felt uncomfortable about my gonads (not all that unusual, I suppose) and worried for the future.
197: Most of them. She got a very nice bridge. Just as nice as the bridges Warhol and Roberto Clemente got. Hers is even better because it is farther from where the Pirates play.
You know what? I'm going to shut up now. I'm starting to feel the same way I did when Steve Jobs died: like my comments are suggesting hostility that I don't feel. I'm actually an endocrine disruptor panic fellow traveler. I just think Hayes is a weird dude and probably not the ideal spokesman for the movement. But again, Rachel Carson was the ideal spokesperson, and look what happened to her (sotto voce: cancer).
We stopped using stuff with BPA, but everybody else was also. Things started to come with labels that said BPA-less and I misread it as 'braless.'
200: By the Science! I mean, this is not something I've researched; just based on his talks. He made it sound like these two chemicals had boatloads of well-established peer-reviewed articles making the case, and since I already believe that to be true about BPA, it was an easy sell. We saw lots of slides of various gonads and learned about aromatase.
I think BPA is broadly understood to be bad. I'm less sure that's true of Atrazine. But like I said above, I'm going to shut up now.
I also stopped using plastic containers in the microwave about the time we went BPA-less.
I believe he is weird, but he is charismatic in person, and answered questions thoughtfully and brought up issues like the disproportionate impact of these toxins on minorities and migrant workers, which made me predisposed to like him.
No, no, keep defending Big Chemical.
I'm predisposed to like him, too -- for the same reasons, I might add. But I can't quite pull it off. As read will tell you, I'm racist.
I've never had room service. I actually don't think there's a way to get it, if you're deaf. I've never been in a hotel room that had a tty or a videophone. I guess I could walk down to the front desk and order food to be delivered to my room. That seems like it defeats the purpose though.
I like sweet pickles. Not on a hamburger, though.
I just realized that I actually have three friends who have written books about endocrine disruptors. That's gotta be some kind of a record!
Sweet pickles are disgusting. I think this might be, at least in part, a Jew/gentile divide that can never be bridged.
207: Me too. The thing I haven't figured out is that they also say "Also it's in the liners of all cans". Plus I still drink sodas. Even when pregnant.
Soon I bet you can text in your order, or email it to them. In fact, I bet you could email it in currently if you could figure out which email address would be locally monitored.
I cannot believe they gave me sweet pickles on a goddamn burger. I appreciate the solidarity, Jew.
Sweet pickles are disgusting. I think this might be,
at least in part, a Jew/gentile divide that can never
be bridged.
I will gladly bridge the divide by declaring my gentile disgust with sweet pickles.
yeah I guess that's probably a thing that I could get sorted out during checkin. I bet somebody would tell me a text number or email that would work, in some hotels at least.
Other hotels put me in a wheelchair-accessible room and insist that this satisfies all my disabled needs, and then ask if I'd like a wakeup call.
I feel like you guys have just never had a good sweet pickle. I mean, sure, everybody hates a bad sweet pickle. But if you just TRIED a really GOOD sweet pickle, there's no way you could maintain this weird sweet-pickle-hating attitude.
The only good sweet pickle is a dead sweet pickle.
I define "a good sweet pickle" as "a sweet pickle that everybody likes". So you can see I'm bound to win this argument.
I apologize for the oversight of Moby's pickle preferences and hereby acknowledge the rightness of Di's preferences.
Sure, if a vacuously true statement can really be called winning.
Solidarity with 220. I only ever had homemade sweet pickles until I was around 10, so I'm just going to assume that my idea of 'good sweet pickle' is superior to anything you're thinking of.
Your mom is vacuously true.
I WIN.
I've had homemade sweet pickles and they sucked ass. They're worse that sweet pickles from the store because you have to pretend they are good.
Di is objectively pro child slavery.
To be fair, it's more of a subjective preference. I appreciate that it's not for everyone.
I'm willing to alter my theory: there may be goys who deprecate sweet pickles, but there will surely never be a Jew who precates them.
it's true that the sweet pickles they sell in your average grocery store are gross. I'm on board with hating them. Boo! Down with bad sweet pickles!
My mom is a wonderland, bitch.
Jewsy Jews and maresy doats and little lambsy diveys.
231 smacks of the sweet pickle Vichyism to me. Choose a side, dammit!
I'm on my own side. It's the side of truth and justice and happiness and delicious pickles.
326: You put soup on your pickles?
Also I lost a jacket at this conference and I didn't love it very much, so who cares, except now I'm cold.
You know who else hated sweet pickles? Hitler's mom.
I'm not sure that counts as being pwned, but it's something.
238: Always thinking ahead? Or just a bit dyslexic?
If you dip sweet pickles in atravine they reconfigure into a swastika. That was in the talk.
234: Listen, Won Vafer, I'm not dyslexic, just tired and maybe a bit sideways.
Okay, back to work. I may have solved the problem of the introduction that won't not suck. Yes, I called Encyclopedia Brown for help. But in the end, it was Sally who cracked the case.
Seems we've got a No True Jew/No True Pickle standoff.
Now I want french onion dip and Ruffles. The store is three blocks away and it's cold.
Unless you're DEAF like SOME PEOPLE.
If you mean wake-up my wife and send her to the store, that won't work. I haven't tried lately, but in the past it really made for a rough week.
So cold, Heebie. I'm probably going to mail you a package full of sweet pickles as revenge.
In about 10 minutes, I have to decide if I want to pay $12 for internet, or else I can switch to teeny devices and watching TV.
253: I'm so scared. Like deaf people can mail stuff.
Unless you're DEAF like SOME PEOPLE.
I wondered if this sort of thing was fair game. I suppose it depends, right?
In about 10 minutes, I'm going to bed.
In about ten minutes, I'm probably doing to sleep so I have energy for soccer tomorrow.
256: You bastard.
I mean, you said it as if it rhymed with "boing".
On one hand, it depends if you're deaf or not. On the other hand, it depends if you are my friend or not. There are probably some other hands too.
256: Well yeah, she probably should've kept her voice a little quieter.
I like to think that I'm edgy and transgressive and Messily's friend, all in one.
It's totally rude to shout at deaf people. Except sometimes you have to, because otherwise they can't hear you.
Also I have really great hearing.
I know, Heebie, and we're all really proud of you for that.
I put in my 10,000 hours of hearing, and well, you know.
p.s. Von Wafer, you can make hearing-loss-related jokes directed at me if you want to. I promise not to mail you any sweet pickles.
262: mmm, when you put it like that, I think I'll remain silent (not that you'd know).
Oh dear, 271 is actually a bit of a relief.
I'm reading Conferences, Hotels, Miscellaneous as one of the papers Dwight Yoakam wrote after leaving country music for mathematics. As a contribution to the ever-growing but clichéd subgenre of papers about the loneliness of being on the road going from STEM gig to STEM gig.
Also, making the changes that need to be made in this introduction: harder than I expected. Damn you, Encyclopedia Brown!
Also I have really great hearing.
And acute angina.
Also I've got a pleasant buzz.
266: It took my son a whole month to stop shouting at me after I got the hearing aid. What's really strange is singers sound totally different now that I'm hearing the songs with a somewhat normal frequency response curve.
I'm going to bed. See you later, pickle-haters.
I'm sorry for your internet-impairment, heebs.
I'm half deaf and like semi-sweet pickles okay so I think I can bridge the divide here.
There's no such thing as getting a little abortion, tweets. Pick a side.
285: Oh, there is such a thing. It's just that everything's bigger in Texas.
Are we talking about jammies' pickle?
"previous channel" is he best remote control button, hands down.
Can one of the Texas commenters see to it that heebie drunk-comments more often?
109
A lot of economists think the whole concept of 'insider trading' is unworkable and stupid anyway (since you should want people trading on all the information they have since then prices will be more informative). I am generally *extremely* skeptical of economists who wish to eliminate financial market regulation but in this case I wonder if they're right.
They are wrong. But LB is correct that the law should be clearer.
everything's bigger in Texas
Hey, you know who's really disdainful of this claim?
117
The brightline rule is that the tippee knows or should know that the insider was breaching a duty of disclosure. That kills the "innocent gossip recipient" prosecution, but allows for the far more realistic prosecution of people to whom the tipper is giving the tip in the hopes of benefiting the tippee. It might not be the clearest of clear lines but in practice it's not exactly incomprehensible.
So if I overhear a executive talking about an impending takeover I can trade on the information but if he deliberately tells me I can't? Doesn't seem like the most logical rule in the world.
294: Probably, but that's not who I was thinking of.
I'm willing to alter my theory: there may be goys who deprecate sweet pickles, but there will surely never be a Jew who precates them.
Fuck that noise. I love all pickles equally. (Well, okay, except for sour tomatoes. Those I love even more than most.)
They're awesome too. Also delicious: kimchee and sauerkraut.
I'm down. I once ate at a Korean restaurant in Reno where the waitress was so shocked that I liked kimchee that she asked if I had lived in Korea.
I once shot a Korean restaurant in Reno just to watch it die.
I would eat kimchi every day and probably should. Our farmshare-ish bin this week (mostly local farms with other fruits/veg supplementing to make for kid-friendlier eats) brought me a lovely daikon and I can't wait to figure out what to do with it. My last pickled radishes weren't quite a success but I blame myself.
Josh and I are going to found the Southern Pickle Law Anti-Defamation Center.
145: I'd have to look for them, but IIRC there's good data showing that the market consistently leads the announcement of what should be secrets by a couple of days; tracing trades back to specific insiders may not be possible, but either there are more clairvoyants out there than you'd think, or insider information is getting out.
292: Hey, you know who's really disdainful of this claim?
Don't tell me you're going to turn into one of those fucking Alaskan fuckheads who love to tout the map of Alaska superimposed on the lower 48? Also see the Alaska Statehood Medal.
Did you know the phoenix airport has a Barry m goldwater terminal?
Fried pickles, kimchee, and sauerkraut are all on the side of good. I assume no one would fry a sweet pickle and try to pass it off as food.
Fried pickles are the best. I made fun of them the first time I saw them on a menu (hello, Great Lakes Brewing of Canton-Akron Airport!), but then I ordered them. Heaven.
305: Not surprising. Barry Goldwater was precisely 2.89 times the man and the politician than John McCain for instance, Arizonans* are very aware of that. My favorite Goldwater moment was when he hauled his butt up to the White House in August 1974 to tell Nixon that he was fucked and just give it up already.
*ObAnnoyingGeographyNitpickingAsswipeTrivia: He was not born in the state., he was born in in the Arizona Territory.
To the pickle-lovers: I got the very best housewarming gift, of four kinds of these pickles, which are fucking incredible. My friend who sent them knows Rick and says nice things about the company. I got the Smokra (my favorite), the Mean Beans (holy shit), and the hotties and classic sours. Highly recommended. I may have actually injured myself consuming nothing but spicy pickles for about two days.
307: That would be the Akron-Canton Airport, thank you very much.
I know him! Or rather, I was friends with his brother in grad school and went and introduced myself to him down at the market in Union Sq. one day and we chatted. Mean Beans rule for years.
310: My favorite airport. You park like 20 feet from the baggage claim!
Fried pickles are superawesome but can only be had once in a lifetime. Clausen's are the pickle golld standard. Bread and butter pickles are acceptable on hamburgers, but on hot dogs you want one dill spear. Kimchi will keep you alive.
I'm an extra in a friend's film today. 7 am call, craft services, hurry up and wait. It seemed like the Hollywood thing to do, if I were 24.
303: Yes, that would be interesting as well. I was thinking more of a very related set of data where you look at the actual published stock actions that identified insiders make, folks who just in the normal run of action should have a pretty good clue as to when the market is being fueled by unwarranted rumors or optimism.
305: That's nothing, the Minneapolis airport has a Charles Lindbergh terminal.
Mister Charlie Lindbergh he flew to old Berlin. Got him a big Iron Cross and he flew right back again.
254: In about 10 minutes, I have to decide if I want to pay $12 for internet,
You must have been at a nice hotel, it's free at anyplace ordinary. Is there a name or concept for this kind of market "anomaly"--in this case greatly fueled by the fact that the majority of customers are spending other people's money
314: Of course there's a weird issue where insiders are probably in the best position to accurately interpret public information, IYSWIM; their attention is focused on their own company, and they're likelier than anyone else to actually know most of what is publically known, so you'd expect them to be trading better than the market even without misusing secrets.
317: Which is why their trades are published of course... after the fact (maybe they should require advance notice). Did find this discussion of a particular type of inside trading (scheduled in advance) and gives a figure of 3.6% advantage over market. Make me think there is probably research out there on the more general class of trades.
315: Charleston has a Sir Oswald Mosley terminal.
Here's a paper on options trading, looking for spikes in option trading as a symptom of insider information leaking. I don't think it analyzes actual prevalence, but it lists some case studies where it seems to have happened.
I assume no one would fry a sweet pickle
Anybody who assumes that no one would fry [insert any feasibly edible item] has never been to the North Carolina State Fair. There was fried Kool-Aid this year.
I think it was Iowa where they deep fried sticks of butter.
The smokra are my favorite, too. And the mean beans are the perfect garnish for a bloody mary!
319 and *: Sometimes I want to have Wikipedia's babies. Although from the list I learn that it is now the Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport. The fuck? Get on that, teo.
*Is there an equivalent of "et seq." for priors?
As an honorary Jew, I dislike sweet pickles intensely.
the mean beans are the perfect garnish for a bloody mary!
Yes!
321: it's also worth going to the Gilroy Garlic Festival to widen one's sense of the possible. Once will suffice.
Re: conferences, I once was in a session where the chair got up and announced that he would give $20 to anyone who had made fundamental progress on [important problem that everyone says they're working on]. (For context, this was a chemistry / materials science conference.) Then he slotted a $20 bill into the edge of the podium, so it was standing up and everyone could see it. And for the next two hours, every speaker had to interrupt their talk for a few minutes and explain why they weren't going to take the $20.
This being an extra thing is not as gllamorous as it sounds. Stillll waiting for that wide shot, Mr. DeMille. Finished reading The Keep by Jennifer Egan. Recommended!
315: the whole damn San Diego airport is named for Lindbergh.
The last conference I was at, the organizers arranged for tips to be included in the bill. I was extremely pleased. It is so annoying to have to tip separately, why don't I just get a service-included price?
The local airport isn't named for anyone, but due to its IATA code, I've taken to calling it the Margaret Cho Memorial Airport
Finished reading The Keep by Jennifer Egan. Recommended!
I'll second that.
304: No, I'm just going to goad you into doing it for me.
You must have been at a nice hotel, it's free at anyplace ordinary.
So true. When I was a fancy-shmancy hotel earlier this week, they had a particularly evil set-up: free super-slow WiFi, or $20/day for fast WiFi. (No, I didn't pay the $20 in order to refresh Unfogged more quickly.)
For an extra five bucks, you get hot water instead of just luke warm.
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Adventures in pre-computing information management #42. Got to use the sort of interesting Roberts Indexing system at the courthouse the other day.
Select the Index book by the first letter of your surname.Turns out it was developed by the same guy who developed Soundex with which shares some features (the first web link has it labeled incorrectly). The guy lived in Pittsburgh (early 20th century) and the first system seems to be in use in many Pennsylvania courthouses (I'm betting not in Philly and surrounding areas, however).
Determine the "Key Letter" of your Surname. To do this, start with the second letter of the surname, and find the first occurrence of one of the Key letters, (L, M, N, R, T, or Misc. for surnames not having one of these letters.)
Determine where to look for a particular individual. Take the first letter of the individuals given name, and look in the column on the chart with the heading "Given Name Initials." Where the column intersect with your "Key Letter," is the page in the index book where this name will appear
338 is great. Also the typo of "Roberts" for "Russell" is great.
339: "Roberts" for "Russell"
Holy shit... it was my secret indexing system ... I was googleproofing ... help me, Mommy.
Check it out; James Fallows linked to a video of derauqsd's pet bird.
Very cool. The slo-mo wings reminded me of videos of octopuses or squid.
I hate bread and butter pickles so much, but I love sweet gherkins (or used to). Cornichons are better.
Fancy hotel FYI: If you go to a Fairmont, join the President's club thing. It's free, and you get the wifi for free.