Stephan Wehner

Accounting for a better world

December 30, 2010 economics, generic, systems No comments

In another weak moment I was pondering progress and whether in some sense people have become better, or the world has become better. It’s a huge topic of course, look it up through a Google search, “Is the world improving?” It will show you a lot of pessimism. On the other hand, Noam Chomsky, an unusually harsh critic (which is excellent since he knows and understands so much), said “Slowly, over time, the world is becoming more civilized, in general“.

My immediate prompt was seeing all this technology around me, an “iphone” here, SSD memory there, oodles of websites with free photos, people coming up with new stuff like bitcoin, quora, about.me, groklaw.net, some dubstep music. It adds up, and it made me think how fast everything is nowadays, and whether people were really slower in the past. There is no one around coming up with loads of, for example, impressive symphonies or novels anymore, as far as I know. There’s loads of average products that one hears about, like for example, Windows Vista. I think being prolific doesn’t quite mean the same anymore. So it’s not clear cut to me.

How to measure?

Now my pondering led me to think about how could one measure this, how could one find an objective answer, how to do a better job at resolving the question. A connection with my personal ongoing tasks of filing tax returns led to this: as you’re probably aware, accountants are updated about all kinds of goings-on in a business. Wouldn’t it be nice if one could look up the “books” of fifty years ago, 25 years ago, and find “the data”.

I run a small company, The Buckmaster Institute, Inc, and I can well see how accounting is useful, if only in providing one perspective. Every little piece counts, after all. I can understand the accountant’s approach, I have learned from conversations with some professionals. I know about software and how it is used for accounting. I have recommended against the naive use of spreadsheets (still need to write those stories up). I have personal insights into the amount of effort that goes into accounting.

Resource Allocation

Have you heard about economists talk about “resource allocation”? For example, free markets are declared to be good at “allocating resources efficiently” by to some of those economists. Then this improvement in resource allocation should show up in the “books”, no? In as much as a drop in the efficient allocation of resources would be a sign that the world is getting worse, we might find evidence for the world improving in the financial statements of the businesses of today. Compare the figures to the financial statements from decades ago and we would see whether the world is getting better, maybe only in some small area. But it would be a start.

Doesn’t work

I think you’ll agree it’s not going to work. They very likely didn’t record the right numbers and amounts.

Should we call it -1 points for the accountants? Or would you go so far as assessing a full -10 points?

Or do you disagree? Please elaborate by posting a comment below; that would be exciting to learn about! If you think a mere comment would not do your insights justice, please contact me (@stephanwehner on twitter, and we’ll take it from there)

Help!

Any hint or pointer would be greatly appreciated! Don’t think your insight might be insignificant. Please don’t think there is a limit on space or time, and we cannot handle all responses. Please help by leaving a comment now. Thanks so much.

Couple of thoughts about evolution and economics

August 19, 2010 economics, systems No comments

I saw a documentary about Charles Darwin a few months ago. I think it was part of David Suzuki’s The Nature of Things.

Evolution and natural selection are of course endless topics with many different and interesting aspects. So I’m writing here about a few thoughts that occurred to me while watching the documentary. Please leave corrections or pointers to related articles in the comments, if I got something wrong or missed something!

So, I used to think this was a good way to think of natural selection: Let’s say your eating potato chips, then towards the end, the bag has only small chips − the big ones are more likely to be pulled out. I’m sure this corresponds with your personal experience. Pretty intuitive isn’t it?

Well, watching the documentary, I realized that it’s not that easy. The potato chips example is primitive in the way that the chips don’t change over the time. They don’t interact while you’re eating. This simplicity might make it a good example, but it really doesn’t capture enough of the phenomenon.

The curious thing to me about evolution and economics is that I got the picture that people learned about evolution and what marvelous creatures are produced by simply letting natural selection do its work. Just around that time (late 19th century) it became popular to think: Why not build society on this principle? Let the best survive, why bother with the inferior (apply to employees/products/politicians/strategies)

And in as much as the theories that evolved (it might be fair to say this thinking led to neoclassical economics) may be behind a lot of amazing features and products of modern society, I think overall there is also a sense of profound failure.

So what I wanted to write about here, is that in fact, these economic theories did not actually copy over the findings of evolutionary studies.

You see, there is this distinction that biologists make between sexual and asexual reproduction. What biologists are telling us is that sexual reproduction can produce better organisms, better in the sense that they are more likely to survive, or better in the sense that they fill the available “space” more completely, are bigger, stronger, and more complex overall. (In general, what makes natural selection so general is that what “better” means is very open, and cannot be preconceived)

(Usually you think of sexual reproduction as it involving a male and a female producing offspring. A simpler variation of asexual reproduction may be that it simply takes two, instead of just one organism, to reproduce.)

Sexual reproduction can be viewed as unfair on an individual level, but also as a bad idea on a species level. After all, its form is: if a pair of individuals have the same sex, then they cannot mate, they cannot have any offspring; no matter what, and there are no exceptions. Who cares how superior they are, and even if they are the two best individuals of the species: tough luck.

So here’s a question: what would be the analogous set up of sexual reproduction in economics?

Here is one way: you divide the economic population (people + organizations) into red and blue people. Red people can only work for blue people, and vice versa. Red people can only buy from blue people, and vice versa. What on earth would that look like? I really don’t know. At first glance, you might call this a sophisticated variation of racism—horror. However, biologists are hinting this might be a better system. Overall, the population is going to have a stronger economy; individuals get to follow their rational preferences, maximize their utilites, while companies maximize profits, and everyone just acts independently on the basis of full and relevant information.

However, since I already mentioned neoclassical economics, I think the form of sexual reproduction, with its strong “You cannot mate” can also be found in the big pain point of the corporate world: regulations. After all regulations put constraints on what corporations can do. You have probably often personally heared about complaints from the business world. (In fact do they complain about anything else, besides taxes?) However, what we see in natural selection is that even the most basic, and brutally unfair, rule such as we find in sexual reproduction can actually work out.

Rock, Paper, Scissors with Handicap

May 10, 2010 rps No comments

So I was playing Rock, Paper, Scissors with my daughter the other day. (It was her idea; I didn’t tell her about the game, my previous blog post about Rock, Paper, Scissors, nor about the new rpsmatch.com site). She won, and I lost a few rounds. Then I noticed: she wasn’t using “Paper”!

So I thought of this variation on the game: one player is not allowed to use one of the weapons. All other rules stay the same.

To make it more interesting, the other player would not know which weapon is not allowed. How to do that? The handicapped player chooses one card from 3, each card showing a different weapon. The player is not allowed to use that weapon. Only after the winner is determined is the card shown to the other player for verification. If the handicapped player cheated by using the forbidden weapon, then they lost!

I doubt this change gives the non-handicapped player an advantage. But you never know. The number of draws should decrease, though. Then again, maybe not. Would be nice to figure it out (mathematically)!

Rock Paper Scissors for Three Players

April 5, 2010 generic, rps 3 comments

In the summer of 2009, if not to say, a long long time ago, Sharon Twiss asked on twitter: “can groups of more than two use Rock-Paper-Scissors?”

In case you’re not familiar with the game, Rock, paper, scissors (wikipedia link) is played by two people. “Rock beats scissors, scissors beats paper, and paper beats rock”.

A basic way to play the game with more than two people

It took me quite a while to find this article about Rock, Paper, Scissors at indopedia.org, which explains how the game can be played by more than two:

The game is easily adaptable to more than just two players. This variant works remarkably well, even for large groups. The rules are the same, with the following exceptions:

If all three weapon types are played, or only one type of weapon is played, the round is considered to be a draw. A new round begins.

If there are only two different weapon types showing between all of the players, then all of the players showing the losing weapon are eliminated.

A different way for three players

Let us add another “weapon”, called Lizard, like this:

Weapons and winning sequence for 3 Player Rock Paper Scissors

(I based the illustration image on another one from wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pierre_ciseaux_feuille_l%C3%A9zard_spock.svg by Nojhan )

The game for three players is played like the original version, with this order

Lizard beats Scissors
Scissors beats Paper
Paper beats Rock
Rock beats Lizard

Count to three, and on three, each player chooses one of the weapons with their hand.

How to determine the winner with the extra weapon?

What you do is look at the sequence of weapons chosen. For example, here

Blue player: Lizard, Yellow player: Scissors, Purple Player: Paper

Player Blue: Lizard, Player Yellow: Scissors, Player Purple: Paper

Player Blue chose Lizard, Player Yellow chose Scissors, and Player Purple chose Paper. Lizard beats Scissors, Scissors beats Paper. So you would say Player Blue, who chose Lizard, won, right?

What to do when two players choose the same weapon? Let’s say like this:

Blue and Yellow player: Lizard, Purple Player: Paper

Player Blue and Player Yellow: Scissors, Player Purple: Paper

Both Player Blue and Player Yellow chose Scissors, Player Purple chose Paper. Scissors beats Paper. There are two winners, so now Player Blue and Player Yellow play a round of 2-player Rock-Paper-Scissors to determine the winner.

Let’s look at this case,

Blue and Purple player: Paper, Yellow Player: Scissors

Player Blue and Player Purple: Paper, Player Yellow: Scissors

both Player Blue and Player Purple chose Paper, and Player Yellow chose Scissors. Scissors beats Paper, so Player Yellow won. No need for a 2-player round.

Obviously, if all players choose the same weapon, then it is a draw, and the game starts from the top.

Two different versions of this game

Now we come to a case that has no equivalent in the 2-player version:

Player Blue and Player Yellow: Lizard, Player Purple: Paper

Two player chose the same weapon, and the other player chose a weapon that neither beats the other weapon directly, or is beaten by it. (They are opposite in the circle).

Here I see two options. Either this is declared a draw, or the player who chose the single weapon is declared the winner. I think time will tell which is the better choice.

Advantage

I’ll try to explain the advantage of adding another weapon in a separate post. Stay tuned!

Thanks

Thanks go to my friends Sara and Gerry who played this game with me yesterday. Sara won.

License

All illustrations licensed under Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic

rpsmatch.com

Put a website together that allows you to play the game over the Internet: rpsmatch.com. You can either play with one (standard “Rock, Paper, Scissors”), or two other players (“Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard”). Operated by my company, The Buckmaster Institute, Inc.

// This probably still needs some editing, will keep updating //

La Cumparsita: Piano Lesson with Linda Lee Thomas

March 19, 2010 music No comments

Last fall I practiced Nocturne No 9/2 by Chopin on the piano (on youtube: Horowitz, Rubinstein, Shebanova, Yundi Li). I found it pretty difficult, because it’s very delicate, and for me there was a lot more stretching, and the left hand moves a lot farther distances than in the Moonlight Sonata). The right hand needs to play louder than the left hand and the pedal is absolutely necessary.

“Discovering” La Cumparsita

I managed to play it reasonably well by the time we had our piano party, after which I wasn’t sure which piece to practice next. I looked through some score books that I discovered in my bookshelf. I could recognize most titles, and tried them out and nothing seemed appealing, when I got to a piece titled La Cumparsita. I didn’t know it, so I went over to trusty youtube, searched for “La Cumparsita piano“, and came across a lot of nice versions, but I found this rendition by Alberto Dogliotti just amazing. Isn’t that wonderful?

Little bit of background

La Cumparsita is originally not a piano piece. From wikipedia:… it was written by Gerardo Matos Rodríguez, an Uruguayan musician, in 1917. It is among the most famous and recognizable tango songs of all time. The title translates as “The little parade” and the original lyrics begin: “The little parade of endless miseries…” It was named cultural and popular anthem of Uruguay. (There are some more links further down)

Starting to practice

So I tried going through the scores that I had. They didn’t come out anything like what I found on youtube. I went to a music store, to buy scores, but they had none (to my surprise). So I searched the internet for other scores, and found this one. I practiced that for a while but didn’t find it too satisfying.

Pointed to Linda Lee Thomas

I mentioned my latest ambition to my friend Chris Startup, a professional Jazz Saxophone player. He recommended I should ask Linda Lee Thomas for help.I called her up and left a message and got no reply. So I thought of looking her up on the Internet. Oh my, she is the principal pianist for the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. I mean I’m really not that good of a player. I called a subscriber of the Vancouver tango mailing list, Gabriela Rojo, if she knows someone and she also recommended Linda. Ok well, I called again. She was very encouraging! I told her I am kind of stuck because I have no scores, and she said that’s right, I need to “make something up”. She would be away to Argentina, the heart of Tango, until the beginning of March. We could meet after she returns.

“Making something up”

So ok, I tried to make something up. I simply changed the left hand from the scores that I had: just repeat the whole chord + the octave (in the scores the chord is broken up) in quarter notes, and at the last 8th play a half note down. I thought that sounds like tango, and it took me quite a while to complete that for the whole piece. I also modulated the volume a little bit (in fact it gets quite loud). Sorry, I don’t have a recording. Its really quite simple. Still it is enjoyable; for example, I heared my family humming the tune after my playing. On the other hand it is far from what I found on Youtube; they do a lot more with the left hand, but I couldn’t figure out what it is.

The Lesson

So I thought that was a good basis for a lesson with Linda; I called her up at the beginning of the week, and we arranged to meet today! My hope was to find out what happens in the left hand. From what I could tell it was playing a few bass notes, then contributing to the melody, breaking up the chords into much less notes than my scores had, and how I was playing it.

So now let me explain what I learned at this lesson.

I started to play what I had put together. I didn’t make too many mistakes, still she praised me for getting this far by myself. She said I must have a good ear. I guess I cannot tell, but maybe that helps. However, she said the way I played it is the “American” way, as opposed to the “Argentine” way, the American way being associated with Ballroom dancing, which is looked down upon in the Latin tango world. Hey, that makes sense. I guess I was after that Argentinian way.

So she sat down and played the Argentinian way: yes that is great, that is what I want to learn. How to get there? I really need to practice a phrase over and over again, so on the spot I find it difficult to duplicate. So she reduced it to a lot less notes in the left hand. Let’s just break up the chord, play its notes as individual quarter notes, but then syncopate the first note – play it a little earlier.

Ok, I think I got that. Now we made it even more simpler: play the root note of the chord, and then the same note an octave higher. With the melody in the right hand that already sounds a lot better!

As far as I understood the right hand then plays the chord notes added below the melody note (which is pretty standard for the piano I guess), plus maybe an octave lower.

Well, that is as much as I could reproduce on the spot. She scolded me for using what she referred to as the American phrase, which is the last-but-one bar in the scores that I have. This is associated with the “American” tango. Instead, what she plays at the end of part A (the piece comes in parts A-B-A-C-A), is d-g, possibly completed to chords, possibly the chords broken up into very fast notes. It really sounds very nice!

Now I also asked her about how she starts the piece. While getting to understand the syncopation, she was playing the right hand (and me the left), but she would always have a nice introductory phrase. I wanted to know how that works – I’m not quite able to grasp whole chords and play them. So this phrase has two parts, the first one of which is just F-F#-G which she pointed out as an important element. After that follow three chords, G-minor, F-major, E-flat-major. Then with the D-minor chord the tune starts.

I asked about using the pedal. With my version, I couldn’t make out any use for it. But when playing just a few notes in the base, and the melody with higher notes, it makes sense to use the pedal to make the bass notes last.

She pointed out that Tango likes to take up the full range of the piano, all high and low notes, “just play it higher, and then lower”.

As I mentioned earlier, I couldn’t immediately play that much of what she showed me right on the spot. I hope that I now can better hear what is going on. She gave me a list of names to find artists for inspiration:

Arminda Canteros
Horacio Salgan / Ubaldo De Lío
Quinteto Real
Franco Luciani

I think what is not in the scores is what you can only learn from teachers, and really at the heart of learning music; here there are no scores available. So thanks a lot to you, Linda, for sharing your knowledge!!

thrackle.org alive again

March 2, 2010 internet, programming No comments

My thrackle.org website is alive again. It’s about a nice math problem that I worked on 10 – 18 years ago.

webcrawlers desperate for content

January 27, 2010 internet, programming No comments

I recently found this in the web server logs of one of the websites I look after:

38.100.8.50 - - [26/Jan/2010:05:01:44 -0800] "GET /application/json HTTP/1.1" 404 763 "-" "panscient.com"
38.100.8.50 - - [26/Jan/2010:05:01:47 -0800] "GET /following-sibling::* HTTP/1.1" 404 763 "-" "panscient.com"
38.100.8.50 - - [26/Jan/2010:05:01:55 -0800] "GET /AppleWebKit/ HTTP/1.1" 404 763 "-" "panscient.com"
38.100.8.50 - - [26/Jan/2010:05:01:58 -0800] "GET /following-sibling::* HTTP/1.1" 404 763 "-" "panscient.com"

In case you are not familiar with web server log files, these line mean is that someone/something from IP address 38.100.8.50 requested the pages named after “GET” on the website, for example, a page named “following-sibling::*” etc.

Does it need to be said that no such pages exist (that’s what the “404” indicates)?

When I saw this I was rather puzzled; and looked up panscient.com (the last item on each line). Their home page says they provide some kind of vertical search service, whatever that is. On their FAQ page, I found this:

Why is your web crawler trying to access pages that don’t exist on my website?

Our web crawler attempts to extract links to valid web pages from javascript and other scripting languages. The crawler may misinterpret the information in these scripts and request a page that does not actually exist. These requests are attempts to retrieve valid web content, and are not an attempt to circumvent your webserver security.

(Emphasis mine) Oh ok. They are looking into javascript files on the web site and attempting to extract names of pages that might have content for the “vertical search”. But not successful in this case. As a web developer, I can tell you that javascript files very rarely contain interesting links to web pages.

Looks like a pretty competitive business when people start pulling at straws like this. Also I take it bandwidth is easier to come by than crawling software that avoids such silly attempts.

the police: competence and responsibility

January 2, 2010 bc No comments

Today there was news about Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard being attacked in his home. I don’t want to talk about the details which you can find covered at

In short, a man broke into his home, Kurt Westergaard hid in a special “panic room”, and called police. The police came and managed to arrest the invader.

What I want to highlight is that

the attacker threw an axe at one of the police officers,
but, the police officers did not kill the attacker.

They managed to arrest the man after shooting him in the arm and leg.

It’s hard to tell whether the police were simply lucky with this successful outcome or not.

For now, they’re actions look much more competent and responsible than the police officers on this continent, who use tasers on young and old, pregnant women, people with mental problems, and for example, killed Robert Dziekański. The explanation or excuse for using the Taser in Robert Dziekański’s case was that he was “armed” with a stapler – compare that to a flying axe.

truste.org ssl certificate problems

December 27, 2009 internet No comments

Today, a little note about a problem with https that I ran into with https://www.truste.org

When visiting that site my Firefox (Version 3.0) warned me that

Secure Connection Failed
www.truste.org uses an invalid security certificate.
The certificate is only valid for *.truste.com

Visiting https://www.truste.com instead simply timed out: “The server at www.truste.com is taking too long to respond.”

Looks like they didn’t configure their web server properly. A bit odd since they specialize “as the leading internet privacy services provider.”

an email about the HandyDart strike

December 26, 2009 bc No comments

I just sent an email to Martin Lay, director in charge of accessibility at TransLink. HandyDart is an accessible door-to-door transit service in in all of the British Columbia’s larger centres, as well as in many smaller communities. It uses vans and small buses to transport disabled or elderly passengers who cannot use the normal transit system.

I was not aware, but the service has actually been provided by independent contractors. Tim Louis takes credit for founding the system, and its previous operator, the Pacific Transit Cooperative. As far as I can make out, it went bankrupt because it was paying high wages (but you know that that is always just one side of the story). Translink then went out to find a new contractor, and awarded the contract to MVT Canadian Bus in late 2008.

Some useful background links

I’m writing this from the perspective of a Vancouver citizen; I find it difficult to get a good picture beyond that.

Translink’s HandyDart page
MVT Canadian Bus, current operator (or not)
HandyDart Workers Support Group (on Facebook)
Todd Brayer writes about the HandyDart Strike in The Tyee
Matthew Burrows writes about the strike in the Georgia Straight
Dean Brown writes about the strike in the Common Ground
handydart.info a neutral website with background information.

The text of my email

(Dated: December 26, 2009)

Dear Mr. Lay,

I just learned that the operator of the HandyDart, MVT Canadian Bus, is not providing the service they were contracted for. As I understand, they were awarded the contract and took over operations at the beginning of 2009. After ten months a labor dispute lead to a strike which has been ongoing since October 26.

I understand that the HandyDart drivers are paid less than “ordinary bus drivers”. Due to the nature of the service, I would have expected them to be paid more! There is more responsibility, and the job is more demanding and requires more skill. Furthermore the users of the service are more dependent on it.

While the HandyDart drivers have a right to strike, I feel that Translink is obliged to provide the service. This is simply an issue of whether Canada is a civilized nation or not. If they have made a poor choice by sub-contracting to MVT Canadian Bus company, that means that Translink needs to urgently work on a more reliable operation. Urgent as in there needs to be a solution tomorrow.

For the time being, the blurb on Translink’s website, “A truly great transit system opens its doors for everyone,” is empty and shallow.

Yours sincerely,