The British apparently like their pastries and bread crumbly - all the loaves I buy here invariably shed crumbs everywhere, even from just removing a slice from the wrapper.

Bread in Singapore and Malaysia tends to have larger and fewer crumbs. I can't imagine why, honestly; just a difference in flour sources, perhaps?

The same economists who promote rational-choice theories of politicians - i.e., the idea that politicians only act in a manner that furthers their material self-interest, and any aberrations from this can be discarded as empirically insignificant - never promote rational-choice theories of economists, who would logically be sucking up to aforementioned selfish politicians.

Wonder why!

It is true that in practice most economic monopolies are capable of implementing some degree of price discrimination that restores Pareto efficiency. So monopolies are not typically as Pareto inefficient as classically taught.*

However, there is then a corresponding loss of incentive to work, so all we have done is shift inefficiency around. Consider the process taken to an extreme: since perfect price discrimination shifts all surplus to the producer, the consumer is left with none: therefore what incentive does the consumer have towards income? All of it is extracted by the producer!

In a situation involving only a few minor markets the effect may be minimal, but when it regularly involves large purchases like housing, higher education, or cars, then presumably there is a macroeconomic effect.

* and, of course, the real issue of monopolies - that they represent a wealth transfer from net consumers to net shareholders - is quietly swept under the rug by a misaimed focus on efficiency loss.

Because the US Republican party is nominally libertarian, it is also home to the fringe (but loud) strand of thought that insists that a gold standard is crucial to monetary and fiscal discipline. This apparently dominates libertarian rhetoric at the political level (e.g., Ron Paul), even though it is academically widely discredited;

Because this fringe believes in a gold standard, the Republican party as a whole is obliged to persistently accuse their political opposition of plotting hyperinflation, even though market data shows that 'the market' is not expecting inflation;

Because their political opposition is in power, such criticism is ubiquitous; therefore the Federal Reserve is obliged to exercise further caution on inflation;

Because the Federal Reserve is now excessively cautious, inflation targeting as a solution to the current recession is immediately dismissed, even though it makes the most theoretical sense to economists on both sides on the fence (c.f. Krugman, Mankiw +1).

How's that.

Packing.

When did I have two hwachong school ties?

Digging through the Straits Times archives is fascinating.

a sampler:

No respect for old people [LETTER]
The Straits Times, 24 September 1956, Page 6

No respect for old people
I agree with what Mrs. H. Tamplin had to say about the politeness of Singapore school-children. For five months I have travelled by bus every morning from Johore Bahru to Singapore. The bus (Green Bus Line) is always filled with children aged from 5 to...

Word Count: 106
Full article also available on microfilm reel NL1821

some things never change aye

Me and blym decided to go for a walk.



Roughly 20km.

Here it is on Google Maps. The tail end near Harbourfront seems to have been cut off, though.

About half of the Ulu Pandan connector network, then the Kent Ridge trail towards Harbourfront.

My handphone camera is terrible at taking pictures in low light. :(

I saw a typical shopper trotting around Giant today carrying a shopping basket in one hand and... an Acer Aspire One in the other. It was on, and open.

How she managed to juggle all that and still browse the potatoes I'm not really sure, but she managed.

dhamol
dacophan
motilium
loperamil

Hands-off signs, Google style:

Lab mice are common model organisms. Unsurprisingly, they are fed controlled food.

The formal term is "standard mouse chow". No, really.

There has got to be a better way of studying economics than poking at fixed-point theorems.

I got on the bus and headed for the seat near the exit.

Next to me was an old Chinese man, face lined and looking rather sunburned, apparently napping. A folded lianhe zaobao sat in his lap.

My sitting down must have roused him, because he obliged by putting his newspaper away, fishing in his pockets for a new moments, then taking out a hot pink iPod shuffle and white Apple earphones, fitting them carefully to his ears. Then he grinned towards the window, head nodding gently in time to some unknown music.

Someone just called me.

"Hey, are you coming?"

... what?

"Wait, is this David?"

Uh, yes. Who-

*cut*

...





This is my confused face!

I fled to economics because I realised my ability to grasp abstract physical principles was limited; since then I've realised that economics is just even more complicated.

It's fun, though!

The story of Benoit Mandelbrot's fractal geometry is fascinating in light of the inescapable logic of physics envy. Although Mandelbrot's study of fractals grew out of his work in economics, economists showed no interest in his theories of techniques until they had been deployed by physicists. As one eminent economist explained to him: "No mathematical technique ever becomes prominent in orthodox [read, neoclassical] economic theory without having first proved itself in physics." (Cited in Mirowski 1989,387).

- JB Murphy, The Rational Choice Controversy: Economic Models of Politics Reconsidered, ed. J Friedman

The key idea at the base of microeconomics is exchange: we don't know, objectively, the value of a given product. We therefore say - if two people trade freely, then their preferences have been revealed by their trade. Thence value! And this is, itself, a valuable insight.

This idea works wonderfully in exchange economies, but it does not extend well towards actual economies with production and labor and geography and so on. If people were exactly, perfectly rational with perfect access to to information, this distinction would vanish (and I should be able to predict the future!). But this isn't so, and it isn't clear how to weaken such conditions - in effect, the model is incredibly strong in isolated areas, but weak in the other ideas that we are interested in.

This is especially frustrating given that there appear to be some kinds of quasi-causal relationships out there - demand curves generally slope downwards, don't they? We just don't know how they work, precisely, and an approximate answer isn't enough.

There is no dichotomy between "markets are rational" and "voters are rational"; it seems entirely coherent to say that both occasionally fail - perhaps markets mess up in a certain manner; we should thereby attempt to compensate via voters in another manner. This merely means that economics is complicated.

Optimality is a convenient abstract device, but it is perhaps overrated.

Toefl: 114/120. Not that I expected anything less than very good, it's Test of English as a Foreign Language, after all. So it's largely a formality.

So, University of Warwick for me.

Incidentally, here's me a year and three-quarters ago. Curiously, I feel much more optimistic now.