Teddy Bloggie Blog Blogging

There's a new way to travel around Shanghai, and it won Popular Science's Best of What's New in the category of Engineering.

Popular Science | Shanghai Transrapid

While other countries argued over the feasibility of maglev trains, the Chinese went and built one. The Shanghai Transrapid is the world's most advanced ground-transportation system: Floating half an inch off its guideway, it whisks passengers along at 267 miles per hour on an ultrasmooth and remarkably quiet ride. Its $1.2 billion track runs from downtown Shanghai to the Pudong International Airport, and the 19-mile trip takes all of 8 minutes. The secret to its speediness? Electromagnetic levitation (or maglev) technology. Electromagnetic force is used to make the train hover, and to provide vertical and horizontal stabilization. The frequency, intensity and direction of the electrical current in the track control the train's movement, while the power for the levitation system is supplied by the train's onboard batteries, which recharge whenever the train is moving. By putting the propulsion system in the guideway rather than onboard, the cars can be lighter, which enables the floating train to accelerate to nearly 200 mph in about 2 minutes.

Apple - iTunes

Wow, this is one spiffy piece of software. The geeky side of my wants to continue using Exact Audio Copy to extract CD audio with LAME as my MP3 encoder, but iTunes is much easier and slicker...

update (11/15/03)

Unfortunately, iTunes doesn't work on win98, which is what I'm using on the good ol' laptop. Might as well, since winamp seems to do a good job with no loss of nostalgia.

The number of married graduate students is quite high, and it's strange to be around married people all of a sudden. They go home after classes to take care of the family... I can't even imagine. Yep, people lining up for extra responsibilty. But, you know the flip side of having peers that are married? Kids. I'm lobbying for married couples in the department to have kids so that they can get over the perverse state of being married without kids. I mean, what's the point in that?!

Actually, having little people running around the department is a lot of fun so long as I'm not responsible for them. I can't even be responsible for myself -- I still picture myself falling a few stories, off the chest-high concrete walls, whenever I jump on top and sit on them absentmindedly.

I hope the kids don't see me doing that.

The NY Times reports:

White House Moves to Impose Quotas on Chinese Textiles

The Bush administration, in a further escalation of trade tensions between the United States and China, announced Tuesday it had decided to impose quotas on three types of textile products in an effort to give the U.S. textile industry temporary breathing room from a flood of Chinese imports.

U.S. Rep. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., one of the lawmakers who pushed for the quotas, praised the administration's decision.

"We have to have the means to hold countries like China accountable if they refuse to play by the rules," DeMint said. "This decision will help level the playing field and ensure that trade will be both free and fair."

Unfortunately, nothing in the article stated what the unfairness was. The whole point of free trade is so that countries with comparative advantages can exploit them and everyone is better off for it. I don't believe wholeheartedly in unconditional free trade, but if you promote free trade in your speeches while putting quotas in place for political expediency, you'd be rightly called a hypocrite.

Along with the steel tariffs that have been ruled a violation by the WTO and our farm subsidies that kill agriculture markets in other countries, this textile quota will increase the perception that in the U.S., "free and fair" means "stupid mercantilist supremacy".

More on U.S.-China Trade

Trade Policy, Bush Style: Archive Entry From Brad DeLong's Webjournal

Trade Policy, Bush Style
Marcelo the Pygmy Chimpanzee writes:

BONOBO LAND: Let's all try to look surprised about the U.S.'s decision to impose quotas on the growth of certain textile imports from China.

All the obvious comments apply. No, this doesn't make any economic sense at all. Yes, the Bush administration is playing the "yellow peril" card for 2004. Yes, this might get uglier in the future, although, and five years ago I would have laughed at the idea, maybe we can count on the Chinese government having a tad more self-preservation and common sense than the American. So, with luck, we'll not get all caught in another trade war (first the EU, then China... who's next, Japan?). No, neither the WTO nor the IMF are amused. Yes, the dollar did go south on these news. No, this doesn't look good for the Miami talks in a couple of days either.

And, yes, this is a headache-inducing piece of news.

I very much hope that the Bush administration economists are thinking about where the line is after which resignation-on-principle is the best option...

I was archiving their earlier albums onto my computer tonight when I checked their tour schedule and found this:

11/20 Thu Sacramento, CA Arco Arena

Tonight's the last night of Simon & Garfunkel's west coast tour that I could possibly get out to.

Plus, this will probably be the last tour they will do together, both having turned 62 recently. I wish I could turn the clock back a few hours, scratched the idea of turning in my homework tomorrow and found a way to the Arco Arena.

Earlier today, while riding my bike around school, and having noticed the fallen leaves gathered, covering patches of grass and asphalt, I started singing S&G's "Leaves That Are Green" to myself:

I was twenty-one years when I wrote this song.
I'm twenty-two now but I won't be for long
Time hurries on.
And the leaves that are green turn to brown,
And they wither with the wind,
And they crumble in your hand.

Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello,
Good-bye, Good-bye, Good-bye, Good-bye,
That's all there is.
And the leaves that are green turned to brown,
And they wither with the wind,
And they crumble in your hand.

Found this by way of Prof. Brad DeLong's site.

Thomas Carlyle attacking the 'political economists'

The Origin of the Term "Dismal Science" to Describe Economics

Robert Dixon

The University of Melbourne

Generations of students and the reading public have been taught that it was Thomas Carlyle who gave economics (political economy as it was then known) the name "the dismal science" and that he did so as a reaction to the pessimistic predictions of Malthus in relation to population growth and its consequences. I shall demonstrate that, although it is true that Carlyle was the person who first described economics as the dismal science, he did not do so in response to the writings of Malthus (or Ricardo). We shall see that Carlyle first used the term in the context of a debate which was unrelated to Malthus's writings on population (indeed unrelated to Malthus at all) and that the specific context (slavery v. the market as an organising principle for plantation labour in the West Indies) is not only interesting but also uplifting. For this reason, the origin of the term "dismal science" is worth exploring with students.