Teddy Bloggie Blog Blogging

Bosch Platinum+2: Worst sparkplugs ever.
NGK Laser Platinum: Stupendous.

Spent $36 on 6 Bosch plugs and took the time to install them since I didn't know the last time they were changed and had a smog check due (why BMW do you have individual coils on plugs that are locked down with so many non-arthritic-friendly bolts?). After the swap, the car started misfiring under load and idled a bit erratically, but it still passed the smog test. The misfiring under load and the idle worsened. Could it be bad coils? Did I mess up the wiring harness during the swap? I was worried, but I thought it had to be the plugs since it's hard mess up a coil or wire harness changing the sparkplugs. Convinced of this, it was $45 more on 6 NGK laser platinum plugs, and lo and pat myself on the back, everything was fine again. This was for a 1999 BMW 323is (E36).

After pulling the Bosch ones and comparing the plugs, it was obvious the Bosch ones were made with inconsistent gaps between the two electrodes (it used to be that one electrode was plenty) while the NGKs had consistent gaps around the four electrodes. The NGK Laser Platinum plugs also looked and felt much higher quality, like a forged knife versus the floppy ones you get at IKEA (knifes by Bosch?).

I used to think that all sparkplugs did the job with the more expensive ones lasting longer because of platinum plating, etc. Bosch used to make quality auto products, perhaps before money diverted from engineering to the advertising department, but now it's apparent that they make some overhyped landfill stuffers.

Before splitfire, v-groove, multiple electroded plugs, everyone bought copper sparkplugs for $1 each and they would all work fine, like one-bladed razors; does the job. Who needs 4 blades on a razor to wear out all at the same time? I think it's appropriate to recognize that the quality of some products have gone down, the money that was invested in high quality products syphoned off by corporate overseers and spent on gimmickery, advertising and packaging instead. Why tempt the honest man about quality with unnecessary features and glossy magazine ads? I don't know why they have such contempt for the easily misled proletariat. I'm just your average shade tree mechanic who just as often breaks a part to fix a part but I've now learned this: Don't buy fancy Bosch sparkplugs -- buy those fancy NGKs!!!

Lesson sort-of learned.

I expected the answer to be: "THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER."

Systemic risk exists when individual action seems reasonable but aggregated individual action is detrimental to the system. Systemic risk is bad, right? Well, not if you know how to play the game.

Today, Dendreon (DNDN) was trading in the $24 range when it dropped to the $7-$8 range before trading was halted at around $11. This happened over a period of two minutes. What happened? Let me give a little bit of background. Today, the company was set to release the data from its stage-3 clinical trial at a conference around 1:30 CDT. Trading was set to halt during that conference as material information is made public. Instead trading was halted around 11:30 CDT because huge (~3million) trades were executed dropping the stock price some 64%. Was bad news about the results leaked in advance? No. The result of the study was promising: The drug extended survival in patients b 4.1 months and showed a 22.5% increase in survival after three years. Was it a rumor of bad results? No, I don't think that was it either.

So what really happened that could push the price down so far so fast?

I don't know, but I have a guess. Because everyone was awaiting news, it was highly likely that investors had placed stop-loss orders with their brokers. Stop-loss orders would have initiated a sell order if the price dropped past a predetermined point. If I were a Robber Baron, out to enrich myself and using my wealth as leverage, I would have put in a huge market order to sell in order to drop the price a few dollars. This would have triggered those stop-loss orders and so the sell pressure would have snowballed, cascaded. As the snow ball gains momentum, the Robber-Baron would purchase the shares as the stock price plummets. Having a lot of uncertainty in the market for DNDN today was an additional factor that made this strategy effective. A large sell order might convince other participants that the large and dramatic sell order was caused by leaked information coming from the scheduled conference.

So a stop-loss is a good private mechanism for reducing losses, but if lots of people have stop-loss orders it could make the situation worse for everyone. Someone took advantage of the built up systemic risk in the stock and came away very, very rich.

I believe that's what happened today and the most victimized are the ones with stop-loss orders (the ones who thought they were insuring themselves against large losses), because they are the ones who sold to the Robber-Baron for cents on the dollar. I fully expect Dendreon to re-open much much higher tomorrow, around $25 or more.

Disclosure: I own DNDN stock but didn't participate in today's drama.

The current dilemma seems to be whether we nationalize the banks and how to make the public accept the cost of the bailout so that the financial system doesn't completely crumple and have to be rebuilt from zero. This problem of head I win, tails you lose in the financial system has to be rectified in the process. It'll be hard to sell the public on the premise that the plumbers and gardeners and teachers need to pay to bail out what the bankers and leveraged homeowners did. We're talking trillions of dollars that taxpayers have to shoulder.

The solution I like is still the idea of creating a Tobin tax on financial transactions to pay for the bailout. It could be .0001 percent of transaction price. When the market moves trillions daily, this is an easily tapped source of revenue. This solution to create a source of revenue while overhauling the banking industry can be political feasible and economically sensible. It won't hurt personal investments but it will make investment banks and trading houses pause to think about their investments just a little longer. Yes, it might drive some financial transactions overseas, but I think smart people can devise a way to limit that effect. Yes, the government will have to borrow the funds today to bailout the banks, but creating a tax on future financial transactions can be a way to fund today's bailout, mitigate the hit to the treasury yield, and insure that future financial fallout will have a similar stream of revenue to turn to when the next banking crisis hits. Think of it as an FDIC for the un-insured part of the financial system. The tax will also lessen the day-trading and might make markets less bubble-icious. Even after this episode of economic turmoil, you can be sure that the next financial crisis will always be waiting. Moral hazard is a tough problem to solve. So I think better it be heads you win (and I get a piece) and tails I lose than the current system.

I'm not a habitual gamer (so this is new to me), but I just played the most innovative video game since Super Mario Bros. and it wasn't on the Wii or playstation... it was on the iPhone.

For me, the best games are not due to graphics or technical sophistication but how it interacts with the player. Most games get boring really quickly because you're constrained by how much you can manipulate the virtual environment. Here, your goal is to make a ball hit a star by drawing shapes such as rocks to hit it or catapults to sling it or buckets and ropes or seesaws to manipulate the ball toward the star. This game and others, with the same idea, have been available for other platforms prior to me discovering it.

Here's a video of Crayon Physics Deluxe a few days ago on Gizmodo:

The magic is the way it makes you feel like you can control every part of the game and change the way you want to solve each puzzle. There's also a level builder so you can build your own puzzle. Rare is a game that allows you to feel there are endless possibilities. You can spend hours build seesaws, swinging clubs, bucket and rope, etc. $5 on the iphone and $20 on the pc I believe.

The only hiccup is that you have to have firmware 2.2 to download the game and you have to restart the iphone after downloading; otherwise, it keeps telling you that you have to erase something before drawing more shapes. After the reset, it worked flawlessly.

Thanks to Petri Purho and Hudson for making it available. Petri was also trying to make a game a week and there are a lot of interesting ideas and small game downloads on his site.

Browsing craigslist today I almost bought the SB-400 flash for my Nikon, but the gentleman on the phone said his son just became the owner of a new D90 and so he was giving it to him instead of selling it. Disappointed that I wouldn't have a new flash to play with, I was inspired to make a ghetto bounce and diffuser for my Nikon D40x's built-in flash today. Inspiration came from the Smelfen and the Finnbounce found here. I also thought about buying a Gary Fong Puffer, but I wanted to see how well a DIY product would work. Warning: the following is only advisable if you eat cereal at night and watch TV from an old fashion CRT -- it's not the most glamorous setup for your DSLR. If you do this, your photo subjects might be smiling because you're taking their picture or laughing because you have a large cereal box and wax paper contraption in their face.

The basic idea is to use the built-in flash on digital SLR cameras to better effect by bouncing the light on to a surrounding surface (low ceiling or adjacent wall) or diffuse the light so that indoor flash photography wouldn't give such harsh lighting. If you buy a flash, you can point it up for the same (but even better) result. I also don't see why this freight-train-hobo procedure wouldn't work on point-and-shoot cameras with some slight changes.

The bounce card worked best and is what I would use as long as there's a ceiling or wall near:
Here's what I made using a 3"x5" card and some tin foil. Takes five minutes. Some of these shots are taken with my iphone so apologies for the poor quality.
The basic shape:

How it looks on the camera (slide cardboard stem into the hotshoe):

My first diffuser was made with 3"x5" card and a double layer of wax paper:

It works but not that well. The bigger it is the more diffuse the light would be and so I made a larger one out of a cereal box. I used a Cocao Pebbles box without loss of generalization. Cut the hole on the bottom like so:

Cut a large rectangle out and glue/tape wax paper to the resulting hole, add some tin foil to the back (why not?), and you get this:

Here's what it looks like on the camera:

I'll upload some before and after shots later...

Ok, here are some shots of me, not intending to make different faces, but soon to be replaced by a more interesting subject.

Here's the built-in flash (that face is mad at the harsh light):

With cereal box diffuser (slightly softer shadows and warmer colors):

With 3"x5" bounce card (almost no shadows -- and tada! I almost look pleasant):

According to Boston.com
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/12/the_year_2008_in_photographs_p.html
Among them, this one of lightning during a volcano eruption in Chile.

http://www.walkscore.com/

Rates the walkability of your neighborhood. I scored a 53.

Thinking about Miami Fever reminded me of one of the best sites for street photography:
The Sartorialist

Miami Fever via Design You Trust
Photography site of Miami night life, subjects are mostly girls and fast, expensive cars. Contrasty photo candy.

Bonus photo of swaddled cats at Design You Trust:

Not very. Right now, liquidity preference and risk aversion is at my lifetime high so it makes sense that everybody wants to park their money in the safest, most liquid place they can think of. Treasuries and T-bonds are sold at a discount, meaning the U.S. government agrees to pay out $100,000 in 3 months, 1 year, 5 years, 10 years, etc. People bid for them, say, $99,000. So the $1,000 would be what they earn on the Treasury bill or bond, or 1/99=1.01%. Recently the U.S. government have people bidding $100,000 for a promise to pay $100,000 and sometimes a little more than $100,000 for a negative nominal return (not even counting inflation -- real returns would be even more negative if inflation is positive).

But:

The oil-producing countries and China have parked hundreds of billions of dollars in U.S. Treasuries, bonds, etc. The former are reeling from oil prices tanking and China is experiencing a fall in exports for the first time in probably 3 decades. Both of these countries might start selling treasuries to keep their own economies from falling into a serious recession. With the U.S. government selling Treasuries to pay for its own stimulus plan and bailouts and a healthy sell-off by the Saudis and Chinese, the prices should drop. As prices begin to drop, the speculators in Treasuries will get out too, increasing the rate of Treasuries' descent. This descent will probably be accompanied by the a relative devaluation of the U.S. dollar versus Euro, Yen, RMB.

Via Calculated Risk

From Bloomberg: Treasury Bills Trade at Negative Rates as Haven Demand Surges (hat tip Justin)

Treasuries rose, pushing rates on the three-month bill negative for the first time ... The Treasury sold $27 billion of three-month bills yesterday at a discount rate of 0.005 percent, the lowest since it starting auctioning the securities in 1929. The U.S. also sold $30 billion of four-week bills today at zero percent for the first time since it began selling the debt in 2001.

My guess is the banks are parking the TARP money in short term treasuries - and that has pushed the yield to zero. The flight to treasuries is across all durations: the Ten year is now yielding 2.67% and the thirty year treasury just over 3.0%.

When rich people can't stuff millions and billions under a mattress because even their mattresses aren't big enough, and are willing pay .005 percent for the government to do it for them something new is happening. And we need a new word to describe it. I think we should call it a "mattress constraint yield".

Anyone who thinks a $500 rebate check from the government is able to stimulate the economy should also consider the effect of a switch to Digital TV, right? If each family on average spends $500 on digital TV equipment and every business involved in video production has to switch over to HD equipment -- does that stimulate the economy? Some broke blokes will get the DTV converter box for $20 w/coupon (like me -- for now), and some people are buying giant LCDs to hang in every room in the house. It's a liquid crystal arms race! Surely, some of the money would have gone into savings, deferred as a safety net in these volatile times, or gone for susie and jonny's Christmas presents (substituted for other current spending) if not for the DTV switch over, but I would think there's still a very large net positive effect on consumer spending. You wouldn't buy a TV instead of making mortgage payments, would you? And how many people will buy auxiliary goods like blue-ray players and order cable to complement the splashy new displays?

Beyond the economic impact, might DTV bump us to a better cooperative equilibrium with the government? When Sandy's and my TV, which couldn't get a single clear station with rabbit ears, turned noise free and clear with the Zenith DTV converter box, even Grinches in the room uttered the phrase: This is change I can believe in! Ring up some goodwill for the new administration (even though they had no part in coordinating the change). I can't remember the last time a government agency did anything with such immediate positive visible impact.

The bottom line is that in these tough economic times the timing of the DTV switch over is fantastic from both a macro-economic stimulus and government/public trust and coordination point of view.

Winners: tv watchers, cable/sat operators, flat screen installers, content owners, electronic manufacturers and sales, electronic recyclers.

Losers: Video firms struggling with upgrading equipment because of the capital expense or credit constraints. Other manufacturers (toys, other electronics during the holidays) or services that see a slight substitution away from their products and services.

Going extinct: People who like to stand on one leg while holding the rabbit ears to get a better picture.

Update (thanks Shen):

Ah, the free market, where everything is free. It's leading to free stocks and bonds of America's finest corporations. Some of you may have missed the fire-sale of Lehman and Bear Sterns. Don't fret. This Christmas, free GM stocks! Everyone will be able to own a piece of GM. Ongoing free stuff in the free market includes free capital injections from the Fed for qualifying banks. Better than free needle exchanges but the high is still temporary. Free market capitalism met 21st century minimalism and became free capital. Due diligence is overblown and too realistic. We want abstract paintings of blue lines for $200 million. Could I have derivative contracts with no financial backing for $200 billion, Alex? What are Sharks and bankers in formaldehyde.

I've been made honorarily gay by he passage of proposition 8. Fact is I woke up feeling more solidarity with gay people than straight because of the passage of prop 8, which amends the constitution of California to redefine marriage as between someone with a penis and someone with a vagina.

Separate but equal is inherently unequal and so civil unions will never be acceptable to the gay community as a separate but equal legal status, especially in California. This is California!!! The government should not intrude into personal relationships between two consenting adults and should treat everyone the same. The intrusion is especially discriminatory because it is based on physical characteristics, and the government should get out of the business of checking on what type of genitalia people have.

The fact that the proponents used the teaching of gay marriage to children as a scare tactic is depraved. No one is going to be saying "gay,gay,gay,gay,gay" in school. And in any case, who gives a fuck? Isn't school about learning facts? There are whales in the ocean, and there are gay people in the world. Teaching kids about gays won't turn them gay. Being around gay people won't turn them gay. Maybe we shouldn't teach kids about wizards just in case they turn warlock! Gay, gay, gay, gay, gay!

The demographics favor gay marriage in the future, but in order to get society to take a speedier path toward enlightenment, I'm going to say "gay,gay,gay,gay,gay" and patiently explain why this is a pock on California.

Obama 2008!!!