tsiklop

03:46 am: Focusing on the real stuff as usual
Hello all. This is something that was on my mind a couple of weeks ago but I was too busy with my final exams to post then.

Let's backtrack a couple of weeks in time. Suppose today's date is December 4th. India and the rest of the world were rocked by the horrific Mumbai attacks just a few days ago. Somalian pirates are taking over oil tankers and jumbo cargo ships in the Gulf of Aden on a daily basis. Turmoil persists in financial markets and the world economy is entering a recession. Major banks and entire countries are imploding. In the US, the Big 3 are about to collapse without getting a fast government handout.

Now suppose you work as a cartoonist for The Economist. Your weekly cartoon is supposed to say something if not humorous then at least somewhat interesting or amusing about current economic or political events. So, what's your cartoon going to be about this week? You probably guessed it wrong because The Economist is again following its time-honored tradition of bashing Russia at the time when it is least appropriate. Ok, I understand, it's just a cartoon, I am not taking this too seriously, and I myself think that a whole lot of stuff has gone awfully wrong in todays Russia. Yet, this strange anti-coincidence does caricature The Economist's attitude towards Russia really well.



Cartoon link

03:02 pm: Yay.

Looks like Berkeley's tree sitters are being evicted after all.


http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_10419085

04:11 pm: Gorbachev: Russia Never Wanter a War
Gorbachev speaks out on the recent war in Georgia and Russia-West relations. It's a very well written piece that summarizes Russia's recent grievances with the one-sided, and often quite reckless, US policies towards Russia in the post-Soviet times. Gorbachev has been keeping a low profile since he left politics, but I always enjoyed hearing his opinion on the current issues.

Op-Ed Contributor
Russia Never Wanted a War
By MIKHAIL GORBACHEV
Published: August 19, 2008


In my opinion, foreign relations alone is a good enough reason not to vote for McCain in November. Do we want a continuation of the same reckless, bullying neocon policies of the GWB administration for additional four to eight years? The world is facing some serious international challenges. The Bush administration has clearly shown that they can't deal with them. Instead of working closely with other countries, including Russia, on solving these problems, our administration is primarily concerned with absolute subjugation, both military and political, of all natural resource producing countries, non-stop bullying of Russia by surrounding it with NATO members and bases that clearly have anti-Russian intent while offering Russia zero political or economic support during the disastrous years of "liberal and pro-western" Yeltsin's rule, bullying and attacking sovereign states while misleading and borderline lying to American people that this is being done to capture some non-existent WMDs or to bring the democracy to other countries. Other reason not to vote for McCain is to prevent the continuation of the same reckless fiscal policies that we are having under the current administration. So far, McCain's economic platform primarily consists of cutting more taxes for the very rich, reduction or elimination corporate taxes while at the same time offering no real plan for balancing the budget which is already suffering from the excesses of the current administration. I do think McCain is a very good senator and we certainly need more people like him to curb the excessive pork barrel spending being done by the current lawmakers.

07:37 pm: A brief, balanced background article on the roots of Georgian-Ossetian conflict from Christian Science Monitor:

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0819/p12s01-woeu.html

Also, another good article on how Georgia managed to win the PR war even after its all out attack on South Ossetia and Russian peacekeepers.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/aug/18/pressandpublishing.georgia

01:02 am: Some news
I passed the economic theory preliminary examination on the second attempt, so I am good to continue onto the second year of Economics PhD program. Below is my class schedule for this Fall semester. I will also work as a research assistant for an econometrician.

Course	Title	Campus	Credits	Level	Start Date	End Date	Days	Time	Location	Instructor
ECON 61800 001	Macroeconomics Seminar	West Lafayette	3.0	GR	Aug 25, 2008	Dec 20, 2008	TR	12:00 pm - 1:15 pm	Jerry S Rawls Hall 2079	Saunders
ECON 63500 001	Monetary International Economics	West Lafayette	3.0	GR	Aug 25, 2008	Dec 20, 2008	MW	3:00 pm - 4:15 pm	Jerry S Rawls Hall 2077	Naknoi
ECON 67200 001	Econometrics II	West Lafayette	3.0	GR	Aug 25, 2008	Dec 20, 2008	MW	4:30 pm - 5:45 pm	Jerry S Rawls Hall 2079	Kejriwal
MGMT 69100 007	Seminar in Financial Markets I	West Lafayette	2.0	GR	Aug 25, 2008	Oct 21, 2008	R	6:00 pm - 8:50 pm	Jerry S Rawls Hall 1062	Saretto
MGMT 69100 008	Seminar in Financial Markets I	West Lafayette	2.0	GR	Oct 22, 2008	Dec 20, 2008	R	6:00 pm - 8:50 pm	Jerry S Rawls Hall 1062	Saretto
			Total Credits:	13.0

01:46 pm: A brief summary of what happened in Georgia



This is what happens when you try to poke the Russian bear in the eye before making sure its hands are tied. 

Summary:

1. Georgia attacked first, hoping Russia will not retaliate.
2. Russia retaliated, Georgia lost.
3. Game over. (In the near future: South Ossetia goes to Russia. Georgia goes to NATO as was expected)


Of course, this is not the picture the fervently anti-Russian western media wants you to keep in mind.

In plain words: Georgia attacked first, shelling civilian targets in South Ossetia with multiple launch rocket systems (see image below). According to most reports I have read in Russian-language internet media, including numerous first witness accounts, more than 2,000 South Ossetian civilians were killed outright and tens of thousands refugees were sent fleeing across the border into Russia. No one knows the exact number of civilians killed by US trained Georgian army, but I have no doubt that something terrible did happen. At the moment about 500 Russian peace keepers were present. At least a dozen were injured or killed. All of this happened after Saakashvili's numerous assurances about how he will never try to solve this conflict by force and how he will never start a war against his own people. In the face of this unprovoked Georgian aggression, Russian response was more than justified. OF COURSE Russians absolutely HAD to strike military deep inside of Georgian territory. How else were Russians supposed to stop the bombing raids by Georgian air force?

In the end, Russia did lose the information war. Bush, McCain, Rice and the rest of the neocons are decrying Russian "aggression". (e.g. as opposed to the American non-aggression in Iraq. Only United States has the moral right to attack other countries). Saakashvili claims on NPR that if Russia is not stopped now, next Russian targets will be in Poland, other European countries or some other nonsense like that. He and the rest of Georgian government officials are giving non-stop interviews to western media, wondering "WHY AREN'T US and NATO defending us???!!11."

I for one, as a US citizen and a taxpayer, can't understand why the US is supposed to start a new Cold War because of this GEORGIAN AGGRESSION over some centuries old territorial conflict between Georgians and Ossetians. South Ossetia is a little piece of territory the size of West Bank and with a population of less than 100,000 people most of whom are ethnic Ossetians who want to be united in with rest of Ossetians living in the North Ossetia which is part of Russia. Why should we be starting a new cold war with Russia over these peanuts? Why aren't Bush, McCain, Chenney, etc, scolding Georgia over their blatant atrocities against the South Ossetian civilians? Based on the logic that NATO used to justify the bombing of Serbia when the Kosovo conflict flared up, an American aircraft carrier should pull into Black Sea and start bombing Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia. Why not? Oh, I forgot, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline is going through Georgia, and Georgia wants to join the NATO.

Still, it really cracks me up that America's Georgian lackeys had sent 2,000 troops into Iraq to support the disaster known as the Iraq war, while their American masters were not eager to protect Georgia when it was under a direct Russian military assault.

For your viewing pleasure: The brave Georgian military "liberates" South Ossetia by indiscriminately striking a populous city killing hundreds of civilians and sending tens of thousands refugees across Russian border in the process (note, this happened before any Russian "aggression" took place):





A backgrounder on the history of Ossetians:

Ossetia: Great Danes and Great Russians

10:20 pm: What if the Candidates Pandered to Economists?
Harvard's professor Mankiw wrote a piece on What if the Candidates Pandered to Economists? His platform consists of the following 8 points (with my point of view in below):

1. Support Free Trade

Agree.

2. Oppose Farm Subsidies

Agree.

3. Leave Oil and Speculators Alone

Agree.

4. Tax The Use of Energy

Partially agree. Given the rise of energy prices, it is not clear whether additional taxation is necessary to make people care about energy use efficiency. Consumers and businesses are already changing their behavior as a result of increasing energy costs. I do agree that we should keep the federal gas price, and in fact raise it a bit. This gas tax is meant to fund the highway infrastructure. It hasn't been increased for decades to keep up with the inflation and our highway infrastructure is deteriorating. I don't see a better way to fund infrastructure other than charging the motorists for the services provided.

5. Raise The Retirement Age

Undecided.

7. Invite More Skilled Immigrants

Agree (but please also do something to improve math and science education in America's schools to get the students interested again in science and engineering careers).

8. Liberalize Drug Policy

No opinion.

9. Raise Funds For Economic Research

No opinion.


Some burning economic policy weren't mentioned. In particular, what to do with escalating the costs of health care and prescription drugs, millions of Americans with not health insurance, and what to do (if anything at all) to prevent the crises similar to the subprime mortgage meltdown.To deal with the first two questions, I can see many states eventually adopting legislation similar to the Massachusetts health care reform law, which essentially makes health insurance mandatory. To deal with the last question, I think we need at very least tighter credit standards. Too much easy credit, regardless of whether it is cheap or not, will always lead to situations like what we have now. Most of the subprime loans were not even cheap, and yet people borrowed anyways, simply because they could, and most likely without thinking twice about whether they could afford the loans in the long run.

10:18 pm: Hello, I am back.
I am studying for my preliminary examination retake and doing some research assistant duties at Purdue.

10:32 pm: My assessment
Obama is 180 delegates away from securing the nomination, and Clinton is 169 delegates behind him (counting Super Delegates). The delegate count of the remaining states is less than 220. Therefore, it is safe to say that Obama can't secure the nomination without the help of the Super Delegates. At this point two things may happen:

1. The trend of splitting the delegates in the remaining state primaries will continue, and Obama will end up with less than 80 delegates away from the nomination in June. At that point, it is safe to say that there will be about 80 undecided Super Delegates out there who would say: "To the heck with it, we can end this stalemate in June instead hurting our party's chances and waiting until the Democratic convention in August." And so, the battle will end in June with Obama securing the nomination.

2. A lot of the remaining states are predominantly rural and/or blue collar states with predominantly white populations (West Virginia, South Dakota, Montana). Oregon is predominantly white, and Puerto Rico is predominantly Hispanic. It's safe to assume that these are Clinton's strongholds and so she may carry those states. If in addition, she manages not to lose the remaining states (or at least end up with something like 49/51 loss), that could potentially help her to build enough momentum to convince some Super Delegates that she is the more electable candidate. Still, I can't see her winning the popular vote, but the timing of her victories in the remaining states could potentially help convincing the Super Delegates not to jump the gun until August.

All in all, I think 1 is far more likely. Moreover, I suspect that some of the Super Delegates also think the same way, and so it is possible that more of them will start throwing their weight behind Obama now instead of waiting until the primaries are over. Of course, there is also the question about the Florida and Michigan delegates.. The funny thing about Florida and Michigan is that if those states simply accepted the party approved dates for their primaries, their delegates would count, and they would possibly end up deciding the nomination in favor of Hillary Clinton.


PS: I didn't go to vote or listen to any of the candidates talk. The whole thing coincided with our final exams, and I'd rather pass my classes... I didn't vote because after moving to Indiana I thought: "Since a year from now I will be changing my address, I might as well wait until then to register to vote. After all why would I need to be able to vote before the end of 2008.."

09:24 pm: Funny Japanese video
Here is a highly educational video that helps native Japanese language speakers to get a good workout while learning essential conversational English.

11:24 pm: What you really need to pick up a hot chick in Moscow


Zveri

I like the song and the video.

04:00 pm: Spring break
No school for one week! Yay! It's not as fun as it sounds though. I am going to spend this time to catch up on some RA work, grading, homeworks, tax returns, basically boring stuff. I would have traveled somewhere, but this year given my moving expenses, graduate prep and application fees, etc I am just too broke. Yesterday, we went to see some acoustic guitar player called Mike Kelsey at Knickerbocker Saloon (the oldest bar in Indiana and one of the few local live music venues in Lafayette). This guy was awesome. It was great, but you really have to see him live to appreciate this musician's talent. He usually plays by himself, but this time he brought a drummer, which made it even better. The show started at 10pm and had two intermissions. We left at 2am because my friends had to wake up early on Sunday, but he still kept playing! The place was packed. I hope he comes back again.

03:38 pm: My shortcomings
Resolved: After having spent four years as a student at Cal (and other places), I still don't know how to take good notes and how to take tests. So what I am I doing the in the graduate school?

The lecture notes I take is an embarrassment. I wouldn't want anyone but me to see them. Even I don't read my own notes preferring reading books and my classmates' notes. The second issue is more serious. I cannot take math tests. Point. I think I can do fine on a math-heavy test where the problems are listed in the ascending order by their level of difficulty. However, if the professor puts the more difficult problems first, that could catch me off guard. See, the more intelligent people usually recognize that they might be hitting their head against the wall on some part of test, and move on, but not me! I keep thinking "I think if I spend five more minutes on it, I'll probably get it!" Then, when 15 minutes are left, I realize "shit, I still have three more questions, and those are the ones I could probably answer, but now I have only 15 minutes left! let's panic!" Also, my brain halts and falls apart when I run into a problem that requires something like 2-3 pages of mechanical algebraic derivations to get to the answer. When I see those I just panic. In fact, we had a class just like that last year. I could take my time and solve these when I am not under time pressure, but when I know that I have only 15 minutes to work on this I simply panic and make many stupid mistakes. I like working on math problems, but I hate those that rely heavily on algebraic derivations and basically computational stuff. Such questions represent only one side of the coin in mathematics. The other side is the problems that are heavy in proof and logical thinking, and these are the ones I enjoy working with.

12:08 am: I'll Take You To The Tundra (Kola Beldy, USSR, 1970-ish)


If there was a song I'd want to sing on karaoke, this one would be it. Too bad no one has the melody. The words of this romantic song are hilarious and singer's voice is amazing. Some of the well known lines are saying:

We will ride, we will ride reindeer in a hurry early in the morning,
And desperately burst into a snowy dawn.
You will see that the north is called the far end north without a merit.
You will see that it is endless.
I present it to you as a gift.

...

I will take you to the tundra, and you will understand why
You are being attracted to, why you are being called by the Polar Circle.

(Right... The north/reindeer theme in this song is kind of appropriate because the singer was born in the Russian Far East, a very cold place, and some native peoples indeed use reindeer for transportation there.) The expressions on the faces of some of the spectators are somewhat funny, specially those sitting in the back. It seems like they're kinda enjoying the show but at the same time the quasi-bored looks are almost saying that they're thinking "How I wish they let us rock'n'roll!" Ok, back to studying econometrics..

07:12 pm: Some of my favorite youtube videos
Two cobra and mongoose encounters:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=P3BfL7X1uU8
http://youtube.com/watch?v=HYQYHsyn5Ss

Giant king cobra:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=x7XY3dMVNhg


A rabbit and a snake encounter:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=_Ez5QPW-ku4

Monkey taunts a tiger cub:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=1AZn5nWIj_g


Two chickens break up a rabbit fight:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=D35uQCtr4EY

Funny accident in Greece:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=tth9krDtxII

09:39 pm: Indiana Weather Patterns
Based on the weather that we have been having here in the past two months, I would say that Indiana winter is basically classified as a Midwestern winter-lite. Even though we're only 120 miles southwest from Chicago, it seems like Chicago gets chillier temperatures and more generous snowfalls. When we have a mild snowstorm in Lafayette, based on the news reports, Chicago is having major snowstorms. Move up a little north from Chicago towards Wisconsin (or to northern Michigan across the Lake Michigan) and they seem to have even harsher winter climates. The time intervals between major snowstorms are wide enough, and the temperatures are high enough that all or most of our snow gets to melt between the snowstorms. This is different from my experience in the southern Russia. Once it starts to snow there in December, there is always some snow on the ground that lasts until something like mid-March. Yesterday I could wear just a sweater outside, but the worse weather is supposedly yet to come. What's really missing here is a nice mountain with a chair lift (600 vertical feel or taller).

04:00 pm: A Funny Conversation About College Textbook Prices
Today in the afternoon I had a funny conversation with my classmates about the runaway costs of college textbooks. I was showing them my newly arrived $120 copy of Green's Econometric Analysis. We seemed to agree that despite the high cost, this textbook is probably worth the price (besides being used as a first year econometrics text, we heard that this book makes a good general reference too). The next subject of our conversation was our other new text, a relatively thin paperback copy of Existence and Optimality of Competitive Equilibria. Someone mentioned that it can be bought somewhere for 60-something. I proceeded to insist $60 is still a lot to pay for a thin paperback edition. My friend objected.

Then I said: "I bet if this was a novel, it'd cost $15."

My friend took the book with both hands and said while shaking it in front of my face: "Yes, I know, but THIS is knowledge."

Personally, I suspect that after reading this book we will feel the same way as a famous electrical engineer John Pierce, who speaking of Shannon's information theory once said: "What some of us attained was perhaps wisdom rather than knowledge." (We thank Caltech's Prof. Joel Franklin for preserving this awesome quote.)

I agree that the book is still worth the price. (We're actually pretty excited that this course is being taught by this book's co-author. Today's first lecture was elementary but very formal in terms of math exposition.) And the pricing of both texts is not as exorbitant as it might seem at first. The market for both of these texts consists mostly of students in economics PhD programs. So few copies will be sold that it is understandable that the publishers need to charge a hefty price just to break even. However, their pricing of undergraduate texts is more suspect. Stewart's Calculus is the most infamous example. It's a big calculus book that's being used as a mandatory calculus (I, II, and III) course reading at most US colleges and universities. A new text is typically sold for over $150. A new edition is issued every couple of years to prevent students from reusing the old books. The publisher always claims that the new edition is necessary to incorporate new teaching techniques, better organization of material, and typos. Almost any actual instructor of college calculus would laugh at these claims. Neither the content of the introductory calculus courses, nor the teaching techniques have changed for decades. As for typos, does it really have to take six editions to finally get it right? One of my math professors bitterly complained after the fifth edition was released: "And they still haven't fixed the errors that I know about!"

05:45 pm: Finding an apartment in West Lafayette
We have an interesting student housing market here. 99% of all apartments that are within 10 to 15 minute walk from campus and which do not look like a complete dump have been already all rented out. For some reason, I thought I could wait until the end of the Fall semester and then easily find a decent place at a good price for the 2008-2009 year. Forget it! What's left is mostly slim pickings. I have visited apartment management companies that manage 100s apartments each with no 2-bedrooms left at this point. There are still lots of apartments a short car drive or a bus ride from campus. However, no matter how much I would like to have a 24-hour gym next floor, swimming pool, and a pond with ducks and swans outside of my bedroom (they really have places like that around here), I would prefer to be able to walk to campus whenever I please. Fortunately, there were still some apartments left in my building, but once I found out that the price is going up from $680 to $800/month for a two bedroom next year, I decided to shop around and see if I find anything better for that price. I am convinced that we had it really good this year in our building. There is nothing comparable for $680. Most apartments like ours or worse are priced $800-$850. By some strange luck, the company that rents me my apartment still had about three apartments left in a different apartment complex (out of like 100 apartments there). The price is the same, but the apartments there are bigger and much prettier. The neighbors look more respectable than on average too (e.g. more graduate students and families instead of noisy undergrads). I am sure I will have no problems finding a roommate to fill the second bedroom. Despite the strong demand for apartments near campus, the student housing market here in West Lafayette is one of the very few things that's better in West Lafayette compared to Berkeley. In Berkeley, almost no one can afford the luxury of having a living room and not renting it out to someone to live in. So 1-bedrooms (normally priced 1000-1300/month) are normally shared by two people, 2-bedrooms are shared by 3 people etc, while here if I really wanted to I could afford to live in a 1-bedroom by myself on my graduate student stipend. Of course, that wouldn't be very wise, I'd rather save money for something else. (another good thing about WL is that we basically have no crime near campus. I walk home from school at 8pm, 10pm, 1am, 3am, and 5am, etc. No problem at all.)

05:43 pm: Funny news

Drunk Driver Hits Cop Car Stopping Drunk Driver.

05:37 pm: I would like to thank the local Arby's for inserting coupons into the student newspaper weeks ago. Once I realized that I can have a $7 meal for $3.27 (a market fresh or toasted sandwich combo), I went to a large classroom and collected a dozen of coupon sheets there! I have been eating a meal at Arby's every day for the past two months. Thanks for supporting poor hungry graduate students! Too bad those coupons expire at the end of December though :(

Those sandwiches are fine, but I wish the combo meal included a healthier side dish. Why does it have to be at a nearly every fast food restaurant in America the choice of a side item is usually limited to fries or .. fries! Damn, give us something that's not fried. Maybe some steamed vegies, or a salad, or at least mashed potato.

Tags: life of a penny pincher