What a joke. I say it because I took multiple practice tests and at one point I earned a 790 (math), and at another I missed half of the test (don't know the score equivalent). On the real deal, I earned a 750 (math) and a 590 (verbal). But I could just as easily have earned lower on both (or higher), considering that I was nervous as hell and hated the whole process.
It's funny how graduate schools have you take a test that doesn't reflect anything you've learned during your undergrad years. I understand that it's one measure of many that admissions folks look at, but sheesh. I hated the whole thing.
Totally didn't study for the verbal, with the exception of vocabulary flashcards. I figured, "I know english, and I know big words, so I will do well!" Wrong. But I also knew that GMU and NYU econ programs don't look too much at the verbal.
I wonder if you can retake the GRE piecewise? That'd be great, but I doubt it. It's meant to be an enduring (3 hour) process for a reason, I suppose.
All in all, a valuable lesson learned in what is my first step into the inanity that is graduate school.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
My Thesis
AP -- With [increased] demand, [bullet] prices have also risen.
"Used to be gold, but now lead is the most expensive metal," said Donald Richards, 37, who was stocking up at the Jefferson store.
Actually, no, not at all. But I did discover something interesting:
"Used to be gold, but now lead is the most expensive metal," said Donald Richards, 37, who was stocking up at the Jefferson store.
Actually, no, not at all. But I did discover something interesting:
It takes lead to make bullets, for sure, and the price of lead did increase right around the presidential debates, where McCain was at his prime idiocy. No, really, what a mooncalf. I suppose I could compare lead's price activity relative to all other industrial commodities' prices around that time, maybe I'd be on to something!
But seriously, we do see a jump in Oct. '08 and Jan. '09. I wonder how much of the lead market firearms and ammunition take up.
Something's not right.
AP -- Bullet-makers are working around the clock, seven days a week, and still can't keep up with the nation's demand for ammunition.
Shooting ranges, gun dealers and bullet manufacturers say they have never seen such shortages. Bullets, especially for handguns, have been scarce for months because gun enthusiasts are stocking up on ammo, in part because they fear President Barack Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress will pass antigun legislation...
Demand has been so heavy at some Walmarts, a limit was imposed on the amount of ammo customers can buy. The cutoff varies according to caliber and store location, but sometimes as little as one box — or 50 bullets — is allowed...
At Jefferson Gun Outlet and Range in Metairie just west of New Orleans, owner Mike Mayer is worried individuals are going to start buying by the case.
"If someone wants to shoot on the weekend you have to worry about having the ammunition for them. And I know some people aren't buying to use it at the range, they're taking it home and hoarding it." [Emphasis mine]
Interesting, I'm guessing the managers at a place like Wal-Mart aren't allowed to ad hoc raise prices during times of high demand. Kind of neat, in that smaller businesses are able to better provide in times of turbulent demand. But this is merely a conjecture. Although, it seems as though Wal-Mart of all places would be savvy enough with their merchandise to raise prices in a timely manner, as opposed to limiting purchases (and thus limiting their own profit potential). I wonder if the government is somehow involved in the bullet business? Wouldn't surprise me at all.
I added the last two lines simply to say "What the hell?" What business is it of Mike Mayer's to be concerned with what the hell people do with the products they purchase from him? He uses the word "hoarding" as a pejorative, like storing bullets for rainy days is stupid. If that's his stance, he needs to clear out his bank account, sell his investments, throw all the canned goods in his pantry away, and donate any clothes he hasn't worn in the past 3 days to the local Good Will. We can't go halfway when it comes to hoarding, sir.
Sheesh, Mr. Mayer sounds like a Keynesian!
Shooting ranges, gun dealers and bullet manufacturers say they have never seen such shortages. Bullets, especially for handguns, have been scarce for months because gun enthusiasts are stocking up on ammo, in part because they fear President Barack Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress will pass antigun legislation...
Demand has been so heavy at some Walmarts, a limit was imposed on the amount of ammo customers can buy. The cutoff varies according to caliber and store location, but sometimes as little as one box — or 50 bullets — is allowed...
At Jefferson Gun Outlet and Range in Metairie just west of New Orleans, owner Mike Mayer is worried individuals are going to start buying by the case.
"If someone wants to shoot on the weekend you have to worry about having the ammunition for them. And I know some people aren't buying to use it at the range, they're taking it home and hoarding it." [Emphasis mine]
Interesting, I'm guessing the managers at a place like Wal-Mart aren't allowed to ad hoc raise prices during times of high demand. Kind of neat, in that smaller businesses are able to better provide in times of turbulent demand. But this is merely a conjecture. Although, it seems as though Wal-Mart of all places would be savvy enough with their merchandise to raise prices in a timely manner, as opposed to limiting purchases (and thus limiting their own profit potential). I wonder if the government is somehow involved in the bullet business? Wouldn't surprise me at all.
I added the last two lines simply to say "What the hell?" What business is it of Mike Mayer's to be concerned with what the hell people do with the products they purchase from him? He uses the word "hoarding" as a pejorative, like storing bullets for rainy days is stupid. If that's his stance, he needs to clear out his bank account, sell his investments, throw all the canned goods in his pantry away, and donate any clothes he hasn't worn in the past 3 days to the local Good Will. We can't go halfway when it comes to hoarding, sir.
Sheesh, Mr. Mayer sounds like a Keynesian!
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
The Silver in the Sand
AP -- President Barack Obama says the United States was slow to recognize the magnitude of climate change, but that Washington is moving swiftly to catch up...
Addressing the U.N. Climate Change Summit in New York, Obama said his administration has made the "largest-ever" American investment in renewable energy. And he called on other nations — the rich and the developing countries alike — to rise to the challenge.
Obama acknowledged that pursuing costly environmental clean up is difficult at a time when the world is trying to recover from a recession, but said it has to be done. The president said "we did not come here today to celebrate progress," saying the conference dramatizes the need for even more work...
"We understand the gravity of the climate threat. We are determined to act," Obama said. "And we will meet our responsibility to future generations."
Obama is under pressure to put political capital behind getting a serious clean-energy law at home and show that the U.S., an economic giant, will do its part to cut heat-trapping emissions. The U.S. House passed a bill this summer that would set the first mandatory limits on greenhouse gases, but a Senate version appears increasingly unlikely this year.
Calgary Herald -- When a leading proponent for one point of view suddenly starts batting for the other side, it's usually newsworthy.
So why was a speech last week by Prof. Mojib Latif of Germany's Leibniz Institute not given more prominence?
Latif is one of the leading climate modellers in the world. He is the recipient of several international climate-study prizes and a lead author for the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He has contributed significantly to the IPCC's last two five-year reports that have stated unequivocally that man-made greenhouse emissions are causing the planet to warm dangerously.
Yet last week in Geneva, at the UN's World Climate Conference--an annual gathering of the so-called "scientific consensus" on man-made climate change --Latif conceded the Earth has not warmed for nearly a decade and that we are likely entering "one or even two decades during which temperatures cool."
While they deny it now, the facts to the contrary are staring them in the face: None of the alarmist drummers ever predicted anything like a 30-year pause in their apocalyptic scenario.
Even if warming was happening, there's no reason to believe the buffoons in the beltway could do anything close to efficient to mitigate it. It's pure politics at this point, and as for 2009, the U.S. will not take any action towards the global warming paper tiger. In a world in which the media isn't held hostage by its own ideology, you would expect a story like the one above to hold several headlines on multiple major newspapers. Instead, we get President blockhead all over the Internet damning the U.S.'s egregious industrialism.
I'm thankful that a more moderate, less aggressive democrat wasn't put into office in 2008. Obama has thoroughly stretched himself so incredibly thin (health care, energy, prodigal social spending for the next x years), and has stepped on board with much baggage (a less than impressive resume of friends and ties with a criminal organization [ACORN]), I'm going to be bold and predict that he's a one-term president. He hasn't done much of anything this year besides appeasing car manufacturers, a ~1.8 trillion dollar deficit, and pissing off a major fraction of this country with his agenda. I couldn't ask for a better president, in a way, because
The best Washington is a divided Washington.
Addressing the U.N. Climate Change Summit in New York, Obama said his administration has made the "largest-ever" American investment in renewable energy. And he called on other nations — the rich and the developing countries alike — to rise to the challenge.
Obama acknowledged that pursuing costly environmental clean up is difficult at a time when the world is trying to recover from a recession, but said it has to be done. The president said "we did not come here today to celebrate progress," saying the conference dramatizes the need for even more work...
"We understand the gravity of the climate threat. We are determined to act," Obama said. "And we will meet our responsibility to future generations."
Obama is under pressure to put political capital behind getting a serious clean-energy law at home and show that the U.S., an economic giant, will do its part to cut heat-trapping emissions. The U.S. House passed a bill this summer that would set the first mandatory limits on greenhouse gases, but a Senate version appears increasingly unlikely this year.
Calgary Herald -- When a leading proponent for one point of view suddenly starts batting for the other side, it's usually newsworthy.
So why was a speech last week by Prof. Mojib Latif of Germany's Leibniz Institute not given more prominence?
Latif is one of the leading climate modellers in the world. He is the recipient of several international climate-study prizes and a lead author for the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He has contributed significantly to the IPCC's last two five-year reports that have stated unequivocally that man-made greenhouse emissions are causing the planet to warm dangerously.
Yet last week in Geneva, at the UN's World Climate Conference--an annual gathering of the so-called "scientific consensus" on man-made climate change --Latif conceded the Earth has not warmed for nearly a decade and that we are likely entering "one or even two decades during which temperatures cool."
While they deny it now, the facts to the contrary are staring them in the face: None of the alarmist drummers ever predicted anything like a 30-year pause in their apocalyptic scenario.
Even if warming was happening, there's no reason to believe the buffoons in the beltway could do anything close to efficient to mitigate it. It's pure politics at this point, and as for 2009, the U.S. will not take any action towards the global warming paper tiger. In a world in which the media isn't held hostage by its own ideology, you would expect a story like the one above to hold several headlines on multiple major newspapers. Instead, we get President blockhead all over the Internet damning the U.S.'s egregious industrialism.
I'm thankful that a more moderate, less aggressive democrat wasn't put into office in 2008. Obama has thoroughly stretched himself so incredibly thin (health care, energy, prodigal social spending for the next x years), and has stepped on board with much baggage (a less than impressive resume of friends and ties with a criminal organization [ACORN]), I'm going to be bold and predict that he's a one-term president. He hasn't done much of anything this year besides appeasing car manufacturers, a ~1.8 trillion dollar deficit, and pissing off a major fraction of this country with his agenda. I couldn't ask for a better president, in a way, because
The best Washington is a divided Washington.
The Ceiling's Leaking
I don't mean to beat the dead horse, but it's better to see it graphically:
One should draw the conclusion to never, ever, ever listen to a politician when he/she talks about the other party spending at "unsustainable levels." It's hubris at best and hypocrisy at worst. I say this because the Republicans were responsible for the first 8 years of craziness and the democratic executive and legislative has, in only half a year, made all that look like frugality.
I am of course not saying that government debt doesn't distort interest rates and private investment; it does. Because I tend to agree that all government spending is consumption because of its compulsive nature, an increase in the national debt (different from above) makes the citizenry worse off. The 2008 gross federal debt was 9.99 trillion dollars, and it is estimated in 2014 to exceed 18.3 trillion dollars. That's an 85% increase; will we be even .0085% better off? I will be, because I have plenty to write about over the next few decades. But you won't be.
It's funny, we have a debt ceiling in this country, and it was raised to $12.104 trillion by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Have you ever made an expenditure that automatically increased your budget? Nor have I!
One should draw the conclusion to never, ever, ever listen to a politician when he/she talks about the other party spending at "unsustainable levels." It's hubris at best and hypocrisy at worst. I say this because the Republicans were responsible for the first 8 years of craziness and the democratic executive and legislative has, in only half a year, made all that look like frugality.I am of course not saying that government debt doesn't distort interest rates and private investment; it does. Because I tend to agree that all government spending is consumption because of its compulsive nature, an increase in the national debt (different from above) makes the citizenry worse off. The 2008 gross federal debt was 9.99 trillion dollars, and it is estimated in 2014 to exceed 18.3 trillion dollars. That's an 85% increase; will we be even .0085% better off? I will be, because I have plenty to write about over the next few decades. But you won't be.
It's funny, we have a debt ceiling in this country, and it was raised to $12.104 trillion by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Have you ever made an expenditure that automatically increased your budget? Nor have I!
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Tom's Idea
taken a little further. The original post is here, where Tom McMahon came up with the funny idea. But I think Americans feel like this:
Again, this was derived from Tom's original post. His 4-Block World is very entertaining and original, check it out.
Again, this was derived from Tom's original post. His 4-Block World is very entertaining and original, check it out.
The Cost of Society
Sometimes so much ridiculous stuff goes on during the week in politics that writing about it is beyond me. Current events are sometimes so blatantly ensconced upon a faulty premise that I'm confused as to why anybody would argue about it in the first place. I ask myself, "are we really considering this policy," or "do people actually understand what that legislation would do in the long run?"
Short of feeling dejected, I wrote what follows over the summer. In it is what I believe to be the case for the free market, that the required knowledge to even govern (by compulsion) effectively approaches infinity on a long enough time line:
Thomas Sowell of the Hoover Institution points out that, “The transformation of Western economies from agriculture to industry brought with it a reduction in the proportion of the population consisting of autonomous economic decision makers. However much “consumer sovereignty” was retained, as producers their role as fixed claimants to some extent insulated them from the direct consequences of their own decisions, largely by limiting the scope of their decision making itself.”[1]
Indeed, perhaps the only fathomable drawback to the division of labor and its advancement lies in its virtue, i.e., that we as producers become ever more specialized as time passes. Consequently, we are farther removed from the producing of all of our needs; yet, politically, we retain much ability to shape the overall economic landscape of the country. Inevitably, a disconnection between knowledge and decision-making manifests itself, and as the division of labor progresses, knowledge becomes exponentially expensive. This is not an argument for or against a particular political philosophy, but on the contrary, the cost of knowledge is likely to be the culprit when pondering the utter disparity in today’s state of affairs and yesterday’s reality.
There is always the price system that enables anybody to realize the state of affairs, whether he chooses to or not. However, this is only as far as a market economy is concerned and even this realization incurs the cost of knowledge; it seems as though contemporary leaders default on such transactions, and are extolled for it to no end.
[1] Thomas Sowell, Knowledge and Decisions (Basic Books, Inc., 1980), p.164
Short of feeling dejected, I wrote what follows over the summer. In it is what I believe to be the case for the free market, that the required knowledge to even govern (by compulsion) effectively approaches infinity on a long enough time line:
Thomas Sowell of the Hoover Institution points out that, “The transformation of Western economies from agriculture to industry brought with it a reduction in the proportion of the population consisting of autonomous economic decision makers. However much “consumer sovereignty” was retained, as producers their role as fixed claimants to some extent insulated them from the direct consequences of their own decisions, largely by limiting the scope of their decision making itself.”[1]
Indeed, perhaps the only fathomable drawback to the division of labor and its advancement lies in its virtue, i.e., that we as producers become ever more specialized as time passes. Consequently, we are farther removed from the producing of all of our needs; yet, politically, we retain much ability to shape the overall economic landscape of the country. Inevitably, a disconnection between knowledge and decision-making manifests itself, and as the division of labor progresses, knowledge becomes exponentially expensive. This is not an argument for or against a particular political philosophy, but on the contrary, the cost of knowledge is likely to be the culprit when pondering the utter disparity in today’s state of affairs and yesterday’s reality.
There is always the price system that enables anybody to realize the state of affairs, whether he chooses to or not. However, this is only as far as a market economy is concerned and even this realization incurs the cost of knowledge; it seems as though contemporary leaders default on such transactions, and are extolled for it to no end.
[1] Thomas Sowell, Knowledge and Decisions (Basic Books, Inc., 1980), p.164
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