Ivy league

The schools in Ivory league (and a few more) are successful school. Not necessarily in the education they provide, but in getting money from their students and graduates. They are actually so successful that some of them have endowment exceeding $1,000,000 per current students.
I never quite understood why they hoard such huge amounts of money (Harvard has about $35 billion) instead of spending them*.
BTW: the endowments and profits of (non-profit) schools are untaxed. It is not really surprising that some people want to take such advantage away from them. And so they should.

* My Fulbright application to spend a year at Harvard was rejected despite the (promised) fee $8,000 to the school, invitation letter and basically minimal burden I would be (no, you do NOT get an office when visiting Harvard. You get a chair in the library). Instead, I went to UCSD, for free and met much friendlier (and better, as far as I can tell NOW) faculty. The reason for me not going to Harvard was a fight between faculty and department of economics about space, reconstruction (and who knows what else) which lead the DoE to reject visiting students as much as possible (exchange programs between Ivory league schools had to keep going, otherwise H. students might have trouble to be visiting elsewhere). There seems to be something rotten in the kingdom of Harvard...

Christmas abroad

These are my first Christmas I'm not spending in Czech Republic. I don't miss the people in the supermarkets, buying presents, fried carp or bad weather. I enjoy beautiful weather (though it is cold during night). I can finally relax, just with a book, something good to eat and enjoy UPS truck passing our window, driven probably by Santa Claus, because they deliver presents.
I'm not shopping for any presents - yeah, not even for you :-) However, I bought myself a present I was dreaming about during my childhood. It's a ham on a bone - yes, the one from movies. It exactly like in the movies - small white bone inside huge amount of red meat.It is not salty and as good as it looks. It is also surprisingly cheap - about $1.2 per pound, which is about 50CZK per kg.

Designing an information system

[This is not a San Diego related post, even though I was inspired by the comparison of information systems at UCSD, CERGE-EI, and MUNI.]

Governments collect information about everything they can. You have no way to know what they have about it in their databases. Moreover, they sometimes loose some of this information.
The trouble with a loss of information in the USA (or West in general) is bigger than in Czech Republic, because what you need in the US to do things is just the information, but in the Czech Republic, you need papers.
Yet, it is clear that the future is in the databases. Government need and (unfortunately) will need information, it is easy to get and cheap to store... The question is how to manage it so that the people do not object too much. The design of such governmental information is an interesting, though purely hypothetical question, for now.
One has to consider how information is generated, how it is stored and how is it accessed (by whom etc.)
Such system would contain basically the same information that governments already collect
1. Name, birth, info about parents and children, address
2. Driving license, car, insurance...
3. Property (houses, land,...)
4. As a plug in, one might have access to information about health insurance and expenses
5. Social security (benefits), pension.
6. Taxes,
7. Personal ID and passport renewal
8. Education achieved
9. Criminal record

The best selling point of such database would be (online) access to such information. Not only each citizen could access and verify such information, but it is very easy to get rid of most stamps and bureaucracy. Any "official" transcript could be easily printed (with some ID code that would allow verification).

Making such system secure would not be easy. I would like to see password (changing portion of it would be required during login), finger print or iris scan, which would authenticate user against the system.

From the governmental perspective, users should have access using separate (dedicated) network (i.e. not from computers on internet), physically only from their offices. Each officer would have access only to a portion of information relevant for his job. Each access would be logged and will be accessible to the person in question.

[Many small things would need to be done about security...]

Even though such system would simplify access to governmental service, it will take a long time before it could be the only access. Thus, people still would need to able to have physical access. Yet, I would be great to have such system. And it would be fun to develop details of such system...

Magic pill

Finally, there is a FDA-approved weight loss pill. It has one small glitch that make it VERY effective indeed. The pill works by blocking absorption of fat in your intestine. The glitch? The lower part of your intestine does not expect the fat to come, because it should have been absorbed in the upper part. This has seemingly unpleasant effects like "oily gas" and "uncontrollable oily discharge" which is exactly as bad as it sounds.
This makes the pill the ultimate treatment: to suppress the negative effects which follow the blocking fat, you need to stop eating fat.Thus, you will loose weight. Problem solved. In fact, at the end, you do not even need the pill! Just stop eating that fat!

Wow, I wish I figured that out first... Unfortunately, the idea that not eating fat helps is, as experience showed, ridiculous. The fat is substituted with corn syrup and starch, which add calories. But hey, it is fat FREE!

Studying all-night long? Think again

I always go to sleep when studying. I never do "all-nighters". Never. I believe that it is a stupid idea, mostly because staying up and learning are two different things and brain always processes new information during the sleep and moves it from short-term memory to the long-term one. So, if you do not sleep, the information is there, but it is assorted, unconnected to other information and it is very short term.
If you are also tired before the exam (and you need to wait for it, before oral part of the exam), I believe you do worse than if you are relaxed and fresh. Maybe you could have learned 2% more, but what you already know, you know well, you can reproduce it and comment it in the relevant context.
So I don't do all-nighters. And now there is a research that confirms that : http://www.wtop.com/?nid=316&sid=1310354

San Diego Zoo's Wild Animal Park

Here are the pictures from recent visit to San Diego Zoo's Wild Animal Park. The best part was probably the bird show (that's why there are so many birds' pictures). Definitely worth visiting, thought it is not as big as one could expect. In 5 hours we saw most of the animals. It was amazing!
BTW: This is not the famous Zoo in San Diego, but the "Wild" version of it, because the animals are mostly not in cages. The visit to the "original Zoo" may happen over the Christmas, so stay tuned.

IPhone and the others

IPhone seems to be a big success and every mobil phone producer is trying to find an appropriate answer. Some of them are slowly realizing on of the main advantages of the IPhone: lack of keyboard.
Yes, I mean it. Take a look at BlackBerry. It is big, the keyboard takes one half of the space and it is not even a good keyboard. Since there is a limit on the size of the phone (the size of the pockets in the suit), the screen has to be smaller if the keyboard is bigger. Yet, what for do you use a phone? I'm willing to bet that most people primarily read (and thus need big, clear screen), and maybe type a few short answers to the emails. Most email, blog posts and memos are written on the computer.
The phone is just a way to keep up with the recent developments when you are on a run (bus, train,...) and do not have access to the computer. Trying to create a reasonable good keyboard is pointless. The price is too high - smaller screen or bulkier phone.
I'm happy that somebody understood, let's just hope others will copy (as it is well known, the imitation is the sincerest form of flattery) soon and there will be choice for the consumers.
P.S. I'm not saying that the Apple was the first to completely give up on the physical keyboard, it just probably happens to be most successful one. Probably, as we know, good ideas do not always succeed at first...

Why oh Why?

Tyler Cowen:"The problem with realists is they can get depressed and feel they are not going anywhere.." via Marginal Revolution.

My feelings exactly...

International solution to the global warming

Let's assume that there is the global warming, that it is a problem, and that humans can solve it by reducing the emissions of CO2 (or something else). Also, let's assume that we know how much of CO2 the humans on this planet can produce to reduce the problem (Ideally, you would need to know costs and benefits to choose the appropriate level of emissions).
These are all strong assumptions, but let's say they are all satisfied. The tough question is, how do you reach a global/international agreement that will lead to enforcement of the right level of emissions? It is a very difficult thing to do, because poor countries want to grow (we did not care about emissions during technical and scientific revolution, which made our progress much faster, so why should they?), rich countries do not want to reduce their living standards (which would be an effect of a significant reduction in emissions). Morally, you cannot simply cap the emission on some historical levels - this is pure nonsense that would make poor countries poor forever. There has to be a solution that will allow smooth transition, allow poor countries to grow and rich countries to slowly adjust to the new requirements.
I believe there is. And it seems surprisingly simple. Take the right amount of emissions of CO2 and divide it by the number of people (according to UN or whatever). This is what every country can produce. Establish world market for these "permissions". Establish a system of enforcement (this is tough, too, but has to be part of every system). Voila!
Currently, the poor countries produce less emission that they are entitled to, so they can sell extra permissions to rich countries who produce (probably) more than they should. As the poor countries will grow, they will be selling less of these permissions. And as rich countries will finish their investments into low-emission technologies, they will need less of them.
The system would start best if there is a cushion, that is if we(all people) produce about the same amount of emission we should. Otherwise, some transition system (say small reduction every year till the "right" amount is reached) needs to be established.
Such system would, I believe, solve many problems and seems enforceable/acceptable (depending on reduction needed by rich countries) and also helps poor countries to get richer! This might help to solve poverty (hunger,...) problems, too!
It seems to me that such system would be superior to anything I heard so far. Will see whether somebody will come with something similar on the international level (or whether I will find a mistake in the idea).

Prague

At a local meeting of Fulbright Association in San Diego today, I talked to about 10 of ex-Fulbright scholars, mostly US citizen. Every single one of them visited Prague! They, of course, liked it.