Ketan.org

I thought I knew what "fast" meant

2012-01-29T19:34:00.000-06:00

That's not what "experience" means

2011-12-27T16:40:00.003-06:00

Thanks, Harvard Business School, for clearly signalling what your Executive MBA is worth. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to prep for surgery; I had a discussion about appendectomies with some surgeons the other night, and I'm ready to go.

Jack o'lantern

2011-11-02T20:32:00.002-05:00

Fighting pointless battles

2011-10-20T05:42:00.004-05:00

The United States recently committed to upgrading Taiwan's F-16 fighters. China, as one might expect, made a stink about it. Why bother? China knows they're not going to change the outcome. This is a battle they won't win. Is this just China being China, with dramatic, belligerent posturing?

The Free Software Foundation recently started a new campaign to prevent computer manufacturers from restricting their hardware to running Windows. Their fear is that Microsoft will use a new security feature as a Trojan horse to lock out Linux and other competitors. To me, it's obvious that Microsoft will not do that. They're under too much scrutiny from the United States Justice Department and the EU's anti-trust enforcers. Something this blatant would get smacked down hard. This is a battle the FSF has already won. Is the FSF just being overly-sensitive and panicking over nothing?

In both cases, the battle is not the thing that matters. China knows they can't prevent the F-16 fighter upgrade. The FSF knows that Microsoft isn't going to induce PC makers to restrict their hardware to Windows. This battle is irrelevant. What matters is the next battle, and the one after that.

For China, the next battle is replacing Taiwan's decades-old F-5 fighters with new F-16s. The battle after that is preventing Taiwan from getting the still-in-development F-35. There are innumerable battles after that, ranging from further arms sales to US Navy exercises in the Western Pacific to economic agreements and so forth.

China is drawing a line in the sand. Actually, they're drawing two lines in the sand, the drama line and the real line. The United States is crossing the drama line, but is also acutely aware of the real line and how close to it they are. By making a stink now, China is sending a clear signal how much they're willing to tolerate. They're promising a huge fight if the United States gets too close to the real line. It's not even about winning the next battle, or the one after that. It's about convincing the United States today to not even offer battle tomorrow.

By behaving this way now, China is telegraphing how they will behave in the future. They're training the United States government in how to think, in how to approach cost/benefit analyses of initiatives involving Taiwan in the future by raising the perceived costs. This battle is lost to China, but they're making it more expensive for the United States, and they're making it crystal clear that future battles will be expensive as well, quite possibly making them so expensive that we don't even try some things we would have wanted to do.

Similarly, the FSF is sending a clear signal to Microsoft. Don't even think about stepping out of line. You're being watched. They too have drawn a line in the sand. Microsoft is stepping close to it. This campaign isn't about winning this battle; it's already won, it's just not public yet. This campaign is about drawing the line, and making sure Microsoft knows the line is there. Next time Microsoft has a bright idea like this, they'll kill it before it gets out of Redmond, and that will be because the FSF made them understand where the line was, and how close they could get.

Winning battles is nice, but the best victories are the ones where your opponent doesn't even try to oppose you.

Suburban dad for the win

2011-10-05T21:25:00.001-05:00

This is our first new car ever (either separately or together). And I've already scratched it.

Tips for new parents: night lights and dimmers

2011-09-10T21:56:00.002-05:00

Low light is your friend.

Buy a bunch of night lights. Put them everywhere you might need to go in the middle of the night: kitchen, bathrooms, stairs, the hallway between your room and the baby's, etc. You probably don't want them in sleeping rooms unless you're sure they won't distract you.

You also want dimmable lights in the baby's room and possibly yours as well. You can get a $15 lamp from the hardware store and a $10 dimmer plug pass-through if you don't find a dimmer lamp you like (surprisingly hard to find them).

Zeroth Birthday

2011-08-29T10:46:00.001-05:00

Leo Naveen Gangatirkar. 7 lbs, 8 oz and 20.75 inches. Born at 8.42pm Saturday, August 27, 2011 at home as planned. Labor was fast and intense, starting a little after 3.30pm. Everyone is doing fine. More pictures to follow at his own site (once I figure out what that should be).

Memes, if you're into that.

Tips for new parents (part 1 of ...?)

2011-07-24T08:33:00.004-05:00

We never found a diaper disposing device that was worth the money. They all required lots of cleaning and got disgusting anyway. We eventually settled on a simple metal trash can with a lid, lined with a garbage bag. We put dirty diapers into plastic bags and tied them shut before putting them in. Produce bags and newspaper bags were pretty useful for this. If this seems wasteful to you, consider how much plastic is in a Diaper Genie. You're going to throw that away eventually.

Find ways to spend time with your kids where you have no agenda. The biggest source of stress and conflict is trying to get kids to do things. It's even worse if there's a deadline. Often it seems like I spend all my time with them trying to get them to do things. It's also why I'm often better with other people's kids. I have no expectations of them, and I have no agenda for them. All I'm interested in is the current moment.

The least difficult way I've found to get the kids to do things is to be very predictable. They are more willing and more diligent doing things when they know what's coming. For example, Uma and Kieran get the newspaper before breakfast. They have to do a basic room pickup after waking up. Bed follows stories follows bath follows dinner. Any time there's a deviation, we try to make sure they have ample and repeated warning.

Chores should also be tied to objective events. It's best (but not necessary) when they are a logical consequence of some preceding event. For example, after meals, you clear your dishes. Not "because I said so," but because that's just the thing you do. Making kids do something "because I said so" would be convenient, but it doesn't work all that well. That's probably a good thing in the long run. You want them to be driven by internal motivations, not the imposition of your will.

Objectivity and transparency in media

2011-07-12T21:35:00.002-05:00

The Economist argues that transparency is an adequate substitute for objectivity. The gist is that it's okay to be biased if you're upfront about your biases and provide supporting evidence.

That is idiotic. The fundamental problem is that the knowledge in your head does not have an audit trail. If you read something untrue or distorted, even if you know it when you read it, there's a good chance you're going to remember it as true.

The way they describe it sounds more acceptable, but they open the door for biased, distorted reporting. Human memory is flawed. It's unreasonable to expect perfect memory and discrimination from people in order to excuse away your own lack of objectivity.

Drive-by friendship

2011-07-10T02:25:00.003-05:00

A name I just made up for a phenomenon I've observed a lot. Alice posts something on Facebook (or now Google Plus, I guess). Maybe some people comment on the post. Frequently, some Bob comes along and posts something like, "cute cat. Hey, so how have you been lately?"

To me, it's obvious that Bob doesn't actually care how Alice has been. It's obvious he hasn't thought about Alice at all. He's only asking how she is because her post showed up in his feed. If she hadn't happened to post about cats, or if Facebook's bizarre and inscrutable relevance algorithm had not shown it to him, thoughts of Alice would not have crossed his mind at all. He saw it, he had a brief thought about her, he expressed it, and he moved on. It's like dropping a pebble into a pond. There's a small ripple, and then it's gone.

If Bob did care, he would have taken an extra 30 seconds to send a personal, private communication (email, text message, instant message, etc. There are so many options). He would have made an effort to initiate a real interaction. He wouldn't have hijacked a thread on some completely different subject. Maybe some people really love cats and want to hug all of them but they can't, so they're discussing it on Facebook. Then Bob comes along to ruin the discussion with thoughtless, irrelevant, pointless comments.

tl;dr: when people post about cats, comment on the cat. If you want to check in with them, do it in a way that's private, personal, and direct.

An alternative approach to selective college admissions

2011-07-05T22:15:00.003-05:00

Suppose highly selective colleges took a different approach to admissions. Rather than taking the "best" 6.2% of applicants (Harvard for the class of 2015), they might pre-select the top 15% or 20% who met a certain minimum standard (albeit a high one). Then from that pool they would select the students whose lives would benefit most from a Harvard education.

The rich and privileged are going to be rich and privileged no matter which college they attend. The scrappy underdogs, on the other hand, could see a real difference.

Obviously, no highly selective institution would switch to this approach exclusively. Perhaps they could reserve a third of their places for these candidates, or just have it as a substantially weighted factor in the overall equation.

All this ignores the question of whether the emperor has clothes, whether an education at a so-called top tier school is really worth what we think it's worth. Whatever you think the right answer is to that question, there are interesting implications of following this method.

If I had billions...

2011-06-26T18:42:00.004-05:00

Worthy causes I've not seen getting funds:

Universal Frisug: RISUG is a procedure for reversible male sterilization. The efficacy is near perfect, it uses simple and cheap chemicals, and it is quick. A similarly quick and easy procedure reverses it. Imagine a world where every male got this at age 15, to be reversed if and when he chose. Right now it needs funds to get approved, and then someone to pay for every fertile male who wants it to get it.

Institute for Sciencing: an organization that exists solely to duplicate scientific experiments conducted by others

Eternal knowledge: come up with some way of storing a terabyte of data in some format durable enough to be read a billion years from now, and cheap enough to be replicated thousands of times. These data stores would be buried around the world, sent to the moon and possibly other planets, sent into orbit around the various planets, and even sent out of the Solar System.

Public Discobedience

2011-06-19T09:51:00.000-05:00

public discobedience, n: non-violent but disruptive protest via dancing to club music from the 1970s.

Time In

2011-05-29T11:13:00.002-05:00

We have given about 1 timeout between the two kids in about 3 months. We started to feel like it wasn't doing any good, and it was pushing them away. As far as I can tell, behavior without time out >= behavior with timeout.

This is how cynical I am

2011-05-17T08:25:00.004-05:00

There was an article today in the Austin newspaper about drug cartels selling counterfeit DVDs in Mexico. The article is not important; I have just told you everything you need to know about what it contains.

What's more important is why it exists. That article exists because someone from the RIAA or MPAA or one of those Hollywood trade organizations has been pushing newspapers, news shows, and other media outlets to cover this phenomenon. Someone from the Dallas Morning News bit. Then someone from that same lobby went around promoting the forthcoming article to other media outlets to get reprinted. The Austin newspaper obliged.

A few months or a few years from now, when the next ridiculous pro-Hollywood anti-citizen bill gets drawn up in Congress, Chris Dodd or Mitch Bainwol will sit be sitting at a table with their ex-colleagues. They'll bring out this article and others like it. "Senator, the drug cartels are profiting from this. This is just another weapon in the War on Drugs."

Do readers of the newspaper really care about this issue? Nobody cares. This isn't for the readers to read. It exists to create evidence. It exists to serve a political purpose that won't come to fruition for a few years, until the next time the RIAA and MPAA need their Democratic friends to push through another power grab. These people play a long game. As Ars Technica put it:

That's because, no matter how much power and money Congress devotes to intellectual property, rightsholders are back every couple of years for more—as the NET Act, DMCA, Sonny Bono Term Extension Act, PRO-IP Act, and Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) remind us. Each is "essential" — but somehow never quite enough.

Give me some reason to think I'm wrong. It won't change the result, but it'll make me feel slightly better.

Obama bin Laden?

2011-05-07T19:48:00.000-05:00

Really? REALLY?

I saw it on the web, and then I tried it at home

2011-05-04T19:53:00.000-05:00

Napalm? Seriously?

2011-04-29T19:47:00.000-05:00

First looks

2011-02-24T20:43:00.002-06:00

Do not buy this knee brace

2011-02-16T20:14:00.000-06:00

Note the bottom left. I'm pretty sure I saw a video where that happened to a dude in a Muy Thai bout. He did not appear to enjoy it.

It snew!

2011-02-04T09:12:00.001-06:00

This guy got a Nobel Prize?

2011-01-19T02:59:00.005-06:00

Quick hit on Paul Krugman's article on the Euro (emphasis mine):

Back in the ’90s, people who were present told me that staff members at the European Commission were initially instructed to prepare reports on the costs and benefits of a single currency — but that after their superiors got a look at some preliminary work, those instructions were altered: they were told to prepare reports just on the benefits. To be fair, when I’ve told that story to others who were senior officials at the time, they’ve disputed that — but whoever’s version is right, the fact that some people were making such a claim captures the spirit of the time.

What an idiot. Some people remotely connected make a claim, so the claim must be considered valid, no matter whether it's actually right (as long as it supports his point). I don't know if it makes it better or worse that it's barely relevant to his overall point.

Replacing pizza

2010-12-17T16:50:00.003-06:00

I'm getting sick of pizza. The world needs something to replace it, or at least compete with it. Such a competitor needs to have all of the things that make pizza such a common food item:

Easily delivered

Has a variety of different flavor options. Corollary: can be easily customized.

Can be modified to suit those with dietary restrictions

Single servings are simple

Relatively clean

Is acceptable left over

Requires minimal infrastructure to eat: no tables, plates, or utensils are needed

Most kids like it

Inexpensive

Budgetarian

2010-12-06T17:49:00.000-06:00

budgetarian, n: someone who does not eat meat due to financial constraints.

Stock picking doesn't work, they say...

2010-11-30T06:20:00.003-06:00

The standard investment advice these days is that one should invest in index funds rather than picking individual stocks or investing in mutual funds that have managers that actively picked stocks. And if everyone did that? Individual stocks would be mispriced.

Suppose currently, FOOD is 20% of the index, WDGT is 30%, and POOP is 50%. Suppose all are valued at the same 15 P/E. If everyone invests via index funds, everyone will be 20% in FOOD, 30% in WDGT, and 50% in POOP.

Now suppose Foodies, Inc. has a fine management team in a growth industry. Their earnings double. At the same time, PoopCo is having problems due to mismanagement. Their product development pipeline is, shall we say, constipated. As a result, their earnings halve.

Thus, at this point, FOOD has a P/E of 7.5, and POOP has a P/E of 30. The right thing would be for FOOD to double in value, and for POOP to lose half its value. If everyone is investing via an index, the supply and demand for FOOD and POOP remain pegged to the initial 20% and 50% allocations. The supply and demand are completely divorced from any per-stock evaluation of worth. There is no longer any mechanism for rebalancing, and the market no longer reflects fair value. It becomes even worse when you factor in money entering and leaving the market.

That is, unless there are a few investors who disobey this advice. Those guys would make a killing. How? There are two ways. As just plain old stock investors, they would keep buying FOOD and shorting POOP until their prices reached their fair value. Everyone investing via indexes would have to keep rebalancing their portfolios to keep up, and they'd be paying all the way up (or down). Alternately, if they were big, they could just take the companies private. If you had the cash, you'd jump at the chance to buy a company at 5x earnings (all else being equal and sane) just to capture that cash flow.

The standard advice, then, only works if some people don't follow it. Otherwise, the market remains static. At any given point in time, about half of stocks will be undervalued, and half of stocks will be overvalued. In the best scenario, the overall market capitalization reflects the total fair value of all stocks, but nearly every single stock will be badly priced.

Bonus questions:

How does a passively-managed market value IPOs?

What would happen if all undervalued companies were taken private for a time, then flipped back on the open market?

What happens to automated trading strategies that do not rely on fundamentals

If you're an active stock trader, either for yourself or to manage a fund, wouldn't you want everyone else in the market to be investing passively? Is that why we keep hearing this advice?