Graduate Education

So graduate education makes you stupid. I think this is sadly true for everybody. Except for me, of course.

Question of the day

Q:How stupid you have to be (even for an American) to watch Fox News?

A: Obviously a lot:

Back in the day – you know, when presidential candidates were respectably white – news organizations called potential first ladies “wives.” But now that black folks are running, we can get all funky fresh with the lingo, yo. So it’s basically fine for Fox News to use “Baby Mama” for Michelle Obama, slang that implies a married 44-year-old Princeton-educated lawyer is, to use an Urban Dictionary definition of the term, “some chick you knocked up on accident during a fling who you can’t stand but you have to tolerate cuz she got your baby now.” Because the Obamas are black! And the blacks, they’re all relaxed about that shit, yo. Word up. And anyway, as the caption clearly indicates, it’s not Fox News that’s calling Michelle Obama “Baby Mama,” it’s outraged liberals. Fox News is just telling you what those outraged liberals are saying. They didn’t want to use the term “Baby Mama.” But clearly they had no choice.

This is John Scalzi at Whatever.

Just so that you know. This shit happens here every single day. And Fox News has a motto: "Balanced News" (and variations thereof). Sometimes, I feel like I'm going to spend a long time in the bathroom after just seconds of these "balanced" news.

Why revenue sharing failed

It was a nice experiment. Apple sells the phones for almost full price and gets a share of revenues from those who subscribe to AT&T. The AT&T did not suffer badly - it pays only for those who actually use its services. At first, it looks pretty good, especially for Apple. It is a nice example of market segmentation (discrimination). If warranty and safety is valuable (or service provided by AT&T does not seem much worse than others), you pay full price. If you do, you still pay for the phone. Apple gets less, but more than if you would not buy at all.
What did not work well is that more people choose to unlock and jailbreak than anybody expected. In the profit equation, revenue was probably high enough, but the share of people delivering this revenue was too small.

Too good to be true

When something sounds too good to be true, it usually is. New IPhone, 8GB, GPS, 3G, whatever, for $199? This beats every phone in Czech Republic on quality or price and most phones on both. Sure, if you HAVE to subscribe to AT&T for $70/month, total cost to ownership are around $1900 (I pay basically zero for voice), which is way out of my league.

Time Inconsistency

There are things I really don't like doing, yet I know I should. And since I know I should, I schedule them well in advance in a way that it is basically impossible to call them off. I don't really mind - it is far away, so it does not seem to be that bad. But as it is approaching, I realize how unhappy I'm doing that particular stuff. Yet, I cannot call it off, so I keep thinking "I won't do it next time". But I know I will...

Americans are babies

Or to be more precise, some Americans have mentality of teenagers. Most flagrant symptom is not being able to deal with things that you need to be dealt with.
Let me give you an example. Mr. W. is responsible for doing thing A. This thing needs to be done so that people XYZ can do thing B, which benefits Mr.W. and that he asked for. They are ready and waiting for Mr. W., yet he says "I'm not willing to deal with it right now". Or even worse "I don't feel like dealing with A right now". So he leaves other people waiting, which costs them time and money.
Other examples are credit card debts ("I don't want to think about it"), mortgage payments and so on. I have seen people to go on shopping spree after they lost their job and thus a significant amount of money and expected revenues.
Of course, you can ignore problems for a while. But they come back and then they are much bigger. In the meantime, the responsible people around you suffer...

Worst ever

I was not inclined to talk about Vista without first hand experience. Now I have it, but I'm not able to talk. Basically, it is the most annoying, worst designed operating system ever. Probably even Windows 3.1 were better.
I'm not sure I'm able to go through many details - the pain is too recent. But let me say this: if you can turn something on, you should be able to turn it off, if you provide "Help" button, it would be great if it actually led to the Help. If you say that by pressing X+Y something happens, then it should. And why the hell do you keep asking the programs MADE by Microsoft, on which I just clicked? If you think I might judged that they should not be run, maybe you need to give me some information useful to make that decision!
I could go like this forever, but I won't. I won't also be buying one any time soon...

Working Papers at CERGE-EI

There is a plenty of rules for submission and evaluation of Working Papers at CERGE-EI. Most of them attempt to smooth the process and limit its length. It is all governed by one person I will not name, because this person changes and for another reason that will be obvious in a minute.
This person receives the paper, selects the referee from CERGE-EI faculty, usually based on suggestions provided by the author, sends them the paper, collects the reviews etc. The referees are supposed to be done in 3 weeks. There are no limits on how fast they need to be chosen. So check this:

This is a submission email:

Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2008 13:33:33 -0700

And this is an email send by that person to the referees:

Tue, 06 May 2008 12:51:54 +0200

Yes, it took him 2 weeks to send a 3 line email. Given our history, I guess it is personal...

Emptiness

I sent my third paper to my dissertation committee and I'm await comments. Even though I'm probably still far away from finishing the dissertation, I experience a strange feeling of emptiness. I surely have what to do (some magazines and fiction books to read), or I might even work, but I feel strange anyway. I actually did start looking for fourth topic, but I was google old idea solved in a few seconds. But I also don't feel like I need to - I'm not looking for a job at a university, and I don't even plan to continue the research. It's probably time to polish existing texts.
P.S. I'm required to have three papers to finish my dissertation. Thus, I'm quite close, unless my committee rejects the paper.
After two weeks of waiting, first comments came. They are positive. Two more to go...

Ice Cream

I love Ice Cream (who doesn't?) and America is the country of Ice Cream. But coming from country, where finding chocolate ice cream means you have a lucky day, I'm having troubles. On average supermarket shelf in San Diego, there is about 25 different flavors of Ice Cream, usually from four or five different producers (brands). But, finding the simple chocolate ice cream is not easy. It does not exists. Oh, there are flavors that contain chocolate (chocolate mint, double chocolate cookies fudge, or whatever - I mostly have no idea what the name means), but no simple chocolate.
In large stores, you can find "Best of both", which contains both Vanilla and Chocolate. This is a good substitute, if you like vanilla.
The point of the story is that too much of horizontal differentiation is, uhmm, too much :-)