Journal Journal: Bonneville Speed Week '09 9
New JonesBlog update. Bonneville Speed Week 2009
New JonesBlog update. Bonneville Speed Week 2009
I posted this here: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1318879&cid=28869075 and decided I liked it so much, I wanted to save it, and point to it every time someone starts saying that we shouldn't have regulation of blah blah blah.
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In a TRULY free market, the government wouldn't have power to establish currency, protect ownership, extend licensure... all sorts of things that the economy depends on.
The "hypothetical free market" requires perfect information, perfect competition, and perfect mobility. As none of these are feasible to attain, government regulation is required to simulate them or compensate for their lack. For example, legal definitions of what "organic" produce is, and establishment of certifying bodies (which are private enterprises, but have some sort of charter or something from the government that establishes their certification as adequate for usage of the term "organic") help compensate for the lack of perfect information about farming practices. Without them, someone could say "Yeah, my produce is organic!" after spraying it with tons of pesticides, and you wouldn't really have any way of verifying that unless you traveled out to their farm yourself and watched them for a while... or brought your own lab kit to the market.
So, markets that work on the scale we expect them to will always require SOME amount of regulation, and insofar as there is such regulation, there will be disagreements about how that regulation should be put in place. Some methods would favor the producer or the consumer. Hence, there's a business interest in attempting to shape the regulatory process.
I'm all for making lobbying illegal... but that, some say, is over-regulating the market.
New JonesBlog update. Its spelt F-L-Y
New JonesBlog update. USS Toledo SSN-769
New JonesBlog update. A Computational Framework for Ultrastructural Mapping of Neural Circuitry
We have just published a manuscript in PLoS Biology where we describe how to build a complete and accurate neural network. This of course is one of the long standing holy grails in neuroscience. So, this effort meets two goals: 1) It meets the goals of building a complete neural connectome (we'll be finished collecting all of the data with cell identity, physiologic response and all synaptic connectivity in approximately six days) and 2) It defines a workflow whereby investigators from around the planet can download and use the tools we are providing to build their own connectome projects using existing infrastructure. We are making those tools available here to enable other groups to assemble, browse and annotate the terabyte sized datasets required of connectome level projects.
1) They have perfectly ordinary and reasonable first names, but last names that appear to be semi-random assemblages of letters in a vaguely pronounceable order. (These are probably approximate transliterations of their true alien names.)
2) Dislike for pizza and ice cream, but strange affection for haggis.
3) Internet presence appears to date back to 1997, but hits only reference memes from 2005 or later.
When I find out more, I'll let you know.
New JonesBlog update. Desire...
New JonesBlog update. Urban Deer
New JonesBlog update. Photowalking Utah Hill AFB Museum
New JonesBlog update. Happy Holidays 2008
New JonesBlog update. Full Moon
New JonesBlog entry on a visit to the Korean DMZ here.
This is a glimpse at an environment that hopefully will be rapidly changing, but with North Korea going through a spasm of Communist retrenching and the uncertainty of Kim Jong Il's health (or even if he is still alive), things in the DMZ appear to be just as tense as they have been for years.
New JonesBlog update. Red Flag
New JonesBlog update. Broad-tailed Hummingbird
One of the chief duties of the mathematician in acting as an advisor... is to discourage... from expecting too much from mathematics. -- N. Wiener