Southerly: For Those in Need of Sleep
45 Responses
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Don't believe anyone who says to keep your Antigone in the dark. I tried that and the poor thing expired before I'd finished shutting the door.
I tried for years to grow Medeas at home but they don't produce viable offspring.
I like to follow my Agamemnon with sliced Cassandra.
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On the Solow Residual thing, one thing that maybe an economist could explain to me is why they always look at productivity growth as:
Universal Widgets produced 100 trunnion brackets an hour at a value of $1000 using 10 workers. After installing an Acme 2000 flange twiddler at a cost of $1mln, the same number of werkers were able to produce 120 items an hour
rather than
Universal Widgets shut down due to foreign competition and their 10 workers lost their jobs. InfiniDim Software opened a development centre the same week and hired 10 IT geeks, who each produce $120 of software an hour
Both of these are productivity growth, but all the economics I've seen concentrates only on the first kind. Or is there something I'm missing?
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It seems to me that this has profound implications for our economy, i.e. that we can achieve significant economic growth by investing in technology that has a higher exergy conversion efficiency -- something that there is massive scope for in this country. It also raises the question as to whether economic growth, etc. could be managed by controlling the flow of energy within the economy, e.g. by having something like an 'energy reserve bank'.
Rod Oram did a column last year where he noted that Claifornia had achieved it's economic growth from the early 1970s, when they began serious state legislation to require cleaner cars, energy conservation, and so on, until now with much the same level of energy consumption. He was contrasting this with New Zealand, where our energy consumption has increased significantly in the same period, with much poorer growth.
Oram is not as widely publicised, sadly, as those members of New Zealand's business community who believe anything that inhibits a pollution rich, poor-worker race to the bottom is a DISASTER FOR THE COUNTRY! AND I"LL PACK MY TOYS AND GO TO CHINA!
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Oram is not as widely publicised, sadly, as those members of New Zealand's business community who believe anything that inhibits a pollution rich, poor-worker race to the bottom is a DISASTER FOR THE COUNTRY! AND I"LL PACK MY TOYS AND GO TO CHINA!
Heh heh!
Tell 'em not to bother packing. The toys were made in China anyway. There's plenty of room here for landfills, and they can buy brand new toys over their- due to magical invisible hand, they'll be even cheaper than the cost of transport. -
It passes. It all passes.
I certainly hope it does!
I agree - everything that goes into the sprog passes through. Hence your inpromptu redecorating spree.
Babies have their moments, but you get much more value from other people's babies - that way you still get sleep and you can hand them back at the first sign of a loaded nappy.
However, once they appraoch a year or two old, and display some personality and can react to all those books you'll be reading them, they are much nicer to have around. I can see the attraction in adopting youngsters at about a year old - and I'm not that one that gves birth!Still, there's all the wonderful landmarks in a small life:
the first real smile when you realise that the other ones really were just wind.
The first night of uninterrupted sleep (under the new definition of uninterrupted = >5hrs).
The first steps and first words are overrated IMHO, but the first time they finish a verse of Hairy Maclairy that you're reading them is a sure warm fuzzy.
When you come home from work and a little voice screams "daddy!" as the owner attaches himself to your leg. -
Then there's the weirdness which becomes a normal part of life with you barely noticing it.
The first time your wife calls you Dad, while the kid isn't in the room.
When you sit down & realise you can't actually remember what you used to do to fill in all that time that's now taken up with parenting - what does a Saturday morning without a soccer game or two look like?When you stop and realise that you've suddenly been posessed by one or more of your parents, and they're talking to your kids - "Eat your pumpkin, it'll put hairs on your chest". I spent years promising myself I wouldn't make my kids eat stuff they didn't like!
The sudden urge that comes over you late at night to phone your parents and apologise.
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David - you can't just drop a 37 page paper combining physics and economics on us in the moring and expect answers/comments in the afternoon. Not, at least, coherent and relevant ones - we're not lounging around at home, catching up on reading while spending quality time with loved ones and their excreta. Give us a chance, there is a lot of websurfing that must be done and work related bovine excreta to shovel before we can get to the fun stuff.
[**REPLY**: Er, when you put it like that, fair enough, I guess... -- DH]
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When you stop and realise that you've suddenly been posessed by one or more of your parents, and they're talking to your kids
And when you realise your kids are channelling your childhood self. ("But why do I have to get dressed? Are we going somewhere?) A good tipper for this is if you're complaining about your kids to your mother and she points at you and falls out of her chair laughing.
The first steps and first words are overrated IMHO, but the first time they finish a verse of Hairy Maclairy that you're reading them is a sure warm fuzzy.
Yeah. Or the first time you hear your daughter sing the "Inky Wanky Spider" song...
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Is anyone else even slightly interested in this?
Yes, but I feel responsible for enough damage to this thread already. Too much homerphobia for my liking.
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special psychic powers - being irish helps
its all greek to me
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I get my Agamemnon ( done in interestingly shaped old bottles) from an ageing hippy on the Coromandel who has built his own Memnon press from old tractor parts.
Er, I think some of you have misunderstood what Agamemnon is.
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What an emotional rollercoaster this thread is. To wit:
Laughing........
These days, butter wouldn't melt in her mouth.
People say that, and yet, have you tried? Because it does. In my experience, eight year olds enjoy both the testing process, and the horrified look on Grandma's face.
Crying...........
Apart from hunger there was no upset, no hurt, no distress that could not be cured by snuggling on down on Daddy.
(that photo is beautiful)
And I don't even have kids. The sleep-deprivation will pass, David. The joy will not. And the funny thing is, that people wait for their child to be "interesting" when birth to 3 yrs old is the most important time in the development of a child's brain. Neurologically, there's all sort of things going on. Pathways are being laid in the most interesting way. Think of that the next time you are sitting in stunned sleeplessness at 3 in the morning, with screaming hell all around you. -
Ayres and Warr start their little effort on physical work with the assertion: "This paper tests several related hypothesis ...". Papers do not, however, test anything; they are used to report things such as new ideas or the results of tests conducted by the authors and observations made by them. Since the first sentence of the paper is palpable nonsense, can any encouragement be offered for my persevering with the rest of it?
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K J Aldous wrote:
... can any encouragement be offered for my persevering with the rest of it?
Er... admittedly they didn't put that very well. What they mean is that they test their mathematical model with various possible explanations for the Solow Residual.
I guess I've always been amazed that you could call something 'residual' that actually describes such a gargantuan gap between theory and reality. Perhaps the Solow 'hole in our theory that you could drive a bloody truck through' might have been a better term.
At any rate, Ayres and Warr come up with a nifty explanation that produces an astonishingly good match between theory and reality for the US economy (and, I have since discovered, also Japan's). And with no fudging as far as I can see.
It impressed me, at any rate...
P.S. You may be interested to know that my Ph.D thesis originally contained a similarly silly sentence in the introduction, which provoked a similarly frank reaction from one of the examiners.
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Alright. Anything amazing is usually interesting. But the application of thermodynamic concepts, which concern very simple things such as boxes of molecules, to something as forbiddingly complex as an economy has about it the odour of new-ageism. At least they steer clear of crystallography.
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Dr Creon sounds like a character from one of Pynchon's novels. I haven't read Mason & Dixon but am currently reading Vineland which is very funny, reminds me of the Coen brothers.
Pynchon and thermodynamics - so appropriate.
But the application of thermodynamic concepts, which concern very simple things such as boxes of molecules, to something as forbiddingly complex as an economy has about it the odour of new-ageism.
Not necessarily. I've only glanced thru the paper so don't have a handle on what they are saying but economics is based on having to keep one's self alive in the face of a universe that usually doesn't play along, accept for the occasional unintended and short lived gift such as fossil fuels. It's all about energy (food, warmth etc) and (as Hayek pointed out) information - thermodynamics. And Pynchon - he was there already.
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Hi David,
Thanks for mentioning that Ayres paper. I have been thinking about how to reflect on energy policy and you just drop a link in there as a throw away line almost.
K J Aldous wrote:
Since the first sentence of the paper is palpable nonsense, can any encouragement be offered for my persevering with the rest of it?
How about this?
The original theory sucks bigtime.
And
This one (Ayres) actually makes sense.
Here is my attempt at a bluffers guide on the topic.
If you look at a graph to see what the Solow residual is and what a huge gap there is on the graph between the actual $ numbers and the line plotted by the Cobb Douglas model. (driving a bloody great truck through the gap works too.)
I agree with David Strahan when he suggests that "a model that failed to explain over three quarters of what it sought to explain should be junked or thoroughly reworked."
In my view a theory that looks at transformation outputs with a sharper eye is well overdue.
The significance of the theory is that efficiency gains in the use of energy can actually drive economic growth. which has huge implications BTW.
Diagram on page 17 shows this.
And just to cover all our bases - what these various economists were trying to do (in general terms) was to try and explain economic growth by modelling the key metrics back from their model against the actual results - where they could.
The only real surprise is that it has taken decades (Solow,1956) for Kummel and now Ayres to make a more sensible back story for the economic growth.
Economics has got a whole lot more interesting since Paul Omerods book -'Butterfly Economics" where he was described as the thinking persons economist.
Can I suggest that the Professor Ayres is also a "thinking persons" ecomomist, especially compared to the Solow residual.
Can I also say - that as the father of a 6yr old daughter how much joy that has brought into my life. One of the earlier comments has it right - enjoy the now. Every day is an adventure.
And if you can stay awake while reading economics then you were obviously getting too much sleep before!
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Also just noticed that there is summary of sort on the significance of Solow / Kummel & Ayres at
Oil Depletion and Economic Instability
which also refers to the Last Oil Shock book by David Strahan where I came across the theory.
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Jason:
Many thanks for posting your summary of the paper (much better than my attempt), and the other nice summary by Paul Chefurka.
It's vaguely heartening to know that at least three other people in the world (you, David Strahan, and Paul Chefurka) also think this paper is a big deal.
I'll modify my original comments to say that everyone interested in economics and energy should read your and Chefurka's summary.
The only real surprise is that it has taken decades (Solow,1956) for Kummel and now Ayres to make a more sensible back story for the economic growth.
I hadn't got around to thinking that quite yet -- but you're dead right. What have economists been doing since 1956?
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Hello again David,
I'd have to agree that economics has really only got interesting in the last 10 years or so. I'm glad I got to it a bit later via complexity theory and Kevin Kelly.
Perhaps now it is much easier to crunch some of those numbers ? and see the results of the models??
Definitely the riduculous post rationalistion of results like the Solow residual should not have helped that dude win a Nobel prize.
Are you going to have a look at this book?
Hot Topic by Gareth Renowden. Using the latest evidence from the Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change’s Fourth Assessment Report, Gareth Renowden puts climate change into its New Zealand context.
BTW - I am going to write a 2 or 3 part post on green Futures and so I will be expanding on oil and renewables using some of the other materials from the science section here (thanks for the) and on the energy front
check out this one from the Solar from Japan news front
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