Double Blind

There is a fairly active market on Intrade whether Alberto Gonzales will announce his resignation by June 30. I have taken a significant position (approximately $750) that he will not resign by that date, for a potential reward of approximately $1300 profit if he does not resign.

I think it is real clear now, even after his lukewarm performance in front of the US Senate judicial committee, that he will not be resigning. Bush won’t call for his resignation either – Gonzales’ was one of Bush’s right-hand men when Bush was the governor of Texas, and if Gonzales resigned now, the US Senate would have to confirm a new appointee. As the senate is controlled by the Democratic party, Bush knows he wouldn’t be able to get his own applicant through. As a result, I think this contract is offering relatively good value for money.

The liquidity of this market was kind of surprising – I actually managed to deploy enough capital on an unusual contract to a degree where liquidity wasn’t the limiting factor on the bet size. The limiting factor turned out to be the fraction of available capital. I’m guessing I could have poured in about double what I have without upsetting the market materially. Still, I have single-handedly contributed 1/7th the volume of this particular contract.

Game 7 odds:

Vancouver Canucks to win -123 (55.2%)
Dallas Stars to win +113 (47.0%)

I’ll likely be watching this game and staying out of downtown by the time that it is over!

Ever since I installed the WordPress comment timeout plugin, the amount of spam traffic on my weblog has decreased considerably – I haven’t had to manually nuke a spam comment since I installed it. I’ve also noticed the visitor traffic has decreased considerably and this was a pretty good indication that the majority of traffic coming to this site was from bots wanting to spam the site.

I was just going over the BC Government’s Earth Day press release and noted the following:

If you Caulk and weather strip your doors and windows, you can save up to 25 per cent of your heating costs

While this might be true (reducing air circulation prevents hot air from escaping and cold air from rushing in), has anybody been able to make a link between allergies and dust-borne household contaminants and the decrease in home circulation?

A follow-up from my previous post.

Prediction #17: Partial. I will give this one partial credit mainly because the cost of education is low enough that people can afford it. Of course it won’t be at a place like Harvard or Yale, but the educational system, in its current form, is relatively generous to people of all strata. While it isn’t free, it is at a nominal cost. And while one might laugh at etiquette and housekeeping being taught in the classroom, well, I think it should be.

Prediction #18: Completely correct. The prediction of prevalent communications seem to be well thought out.

Prediction #19: Mostly correct. I think the intent is that technology will change music and the delivery of music. I know the author anticipated that there would be more “live” recordings than are currently performed, which is where this prediction lost marks.

Prediction #20: Mostly correct. While coal’s availability hasn’t decreased to any significant degree as anticipated in this prediction, it is getting more expensive to use (at least in terms of getting it from the ground and the environmental liabilities associated with it). Coal rarely is used for heating and power, unless if you count on the generation of electricity from power plants (which is a huge exception and probably one of the primary modes of coal consumption). The emphasis on hydroelectric power is just coming into fashion and while we haven’t developed “every” river or creek for hydro power, the 20th century has seen a ton of development with these projects (look at BC, for example) and we’re now working on harnessing wave/tidal energy.

Prediction #21: Partial. I don’t think the author anticipated that central house heating would be centralized to each house and not a giant public utility providing this purpose (although if you lived in the USSR, this prediction certainly turned out to be very correct). If you liken the “air tap” concept to be the equivalent to a thermostat, this prediction is correct.

Prediction #22: Partial. The obvious analogy here is that pneumatic tubes were replaced by the Internet, and that courier companies provide the servicing of products from “stations” (i.e. distribution warehouses) to the homes. Maybe mail-order delivery was the anticipated prediction here? But the prediction was too vague to give better credit.

Prediction #23: Mostly correct. This was an interesting prediction about how people will be eating. To realize the context of this prediction, one has to realize that the purchase and acquisition of food in the 1900′s was not nearly as cheap and reliable as it is today. However, I think it is relatively true – mass produced food can make it cheaper to purchase it than to eat in, and the mass production of food is done in assembly-line format instead of in a kitchen (with a chef). In highly urbanized places, a lot of people don’t cook and just eat out all the time.

Prediction #24: Correct. I think the author was trying to link together electricity with agriculture, and if you consider the invention of hydroponics together with the greenhouse, you have a fairly close confirmation of this prediction.

Prediction #25: Failed. Oranges are not growing in suburbs of Philadelphia, nor do I anticipate this being the case during the next century. I think the author failed to anticipate that the growing season in a place like central California (the “breadbasket of America”) could produce nearly anything and that market forces are much more of a consideration whether a food gets grown rather than an inherent need to bring in “summer produce from the south”.

Prediction #26: This was a copy of Prediction #13. I guess the person that transcribed the predictions just copied it by accident.

Prediction #27: Mostly failed. The author got the medical imaging part correct, but the rest of it was totally wrong. I think he didn’t anticipate that drugs would be a very prevalent form of treatment and that medicine is still a heck of a lot more invasive than anticipated, despite the fact that our procedures to image the body have become very non-invasive.

Prediction #28: Failed. The only thing resonating true is that certain animals are selected for resource-producing capabilities only – such as hens that can lay eggs. That said, farmers are cognisant of the fact that as soon as you start favouring animals in one particular direction too much, diseases and other disorders tend to appear to moderate such evolutionary direction.

Prediction #29: Totally failed. Other than the lack of anticipating the passenger aircraft, the author seems to be describing a hybrid between a catamaran and a submarine, both of which are completely inconsistent designs with each other.

So the total predictions include the following:

Totally correct, correct, or mostly correct: 9
Partial: 7
Totally failed, failed, or mostly failed: 12

All in all, considering the predictions were a century old, the author didn’t do a bad job of it at all. It was very fun to analyze these.

Right now it is possible to get a trip from Vancouver to Calgary for $49. Round trip, that would be $98. Now, on Air Canada you can get an extra $15 off each direction if you choose to not claim aeroplan miles, check-in luggage or changes to tickets. So we’re down to $68 for the round trip ticket.

However, the following is added:
Navcan and Surcharges – $36
Canada Airport Improvement Fee – $30
Canada Security Charge – $9.34
GST – $8.60

So the total for the round trip is $151.94, or approximately 55% of the price of the ticket constitutes taxes. Incredible.

I found this page of 29 predictions made in 1900 to be rather fascinating. They tried to predict what would happen in the year 2000. I will comment on these predictions. I will rank them as one of the following: Totally failed, failed, mostly failed, partial, mostly correct, correct, totally correct.

Prediction #1: Failed. America had less than 300 million people, and most of the territory south of America will never join the union, mainly because there is a language barrier in place. There is zero chance of any of those countries joining unless if they adopted English as their main language. South America is also fragmented because the big country, Brazil, has a main language of Portuguese, while most of the rest of the continent speaks Spanish.

Prediction #2: Partial. I think the general intent was here, just not as large a scope as the author anticipated. I find the “The trip from suburban home to office will require a few minutes only. A penny will pay the fare.” to be rather amusing, but if they made Translink free to ride, at least the economics would be there.

Prediction #3: Mostly failed. We have the gyms, just that most people won’t use them.

Prediction #4: Totally failed. I think the writers were trying to anticipate freeways, but the future vision of the city was completely incorrect. Imagine showing them Los Angeles county, heading eastbound on the I-110 from LAX airport during the afternoon rush hour…

Prediction #5: Partial. They didn’t anticipate aircraft for passenger travel, and a world without aircraft might have looked something like this. I like the prediction of cars and trains being “artificially cooled” as well as the anticipation of electric rail systems.

Prediction #6: Correct. I will score this prediction as a success, especially considering the pervasive nature of automobiles in society today, and the revolution that occurred in agriculture. FYI, horses are more expensive than automobiles when one considers a typical horse would probably set you back $3000. When you consider maintenance expenses, it’s more expensive when you compare it to a used car.

Prediction #7: Mostly correct. The authors didn’t anticipate “air-ships” to carry people like they do today. They got the military and scientific applications correct, however.

Prediction #8: Partial. I like how this military prediction anticipated satellites, and tanks, although a lot of the actual mechanics (such as tanks being able to travel as fast as express trains on land) were quite off. But still, not bad.

Prediction #9: Completely correct. And of course instead of telegraph, we have the internet!

Prediction #10: Correct. I don’t think the author realized how decentralized this process can be (i.e. in order to use the internet, we can do it from the comfort and privacy of our homes instead of having to go to a movie theatre), but I think the intent of this prediction was clearly successful.

Prediction #11: Failed. This one hasn’t happened yet, although one can envision the Canadian government getting rid of mosquitoes from Manitoba if you gave them a hundred billion dollars and a blanket endorsement from Greenpeace…

Prediction #12: Mostly failed. Genetic engineering has progressed, but they still can’t make strawberries that actually taste any good, nor are they sized as apples (although this might be a valid prediction for 2100!). The concept of fertilizer is there, but just not the mechanism.

Prediction #13: Totally failed. This one is so funny, although it’s really a shame that they didn’t predict the invention of fast food chains and the “super size” option, as the obsession about sizes of fruit seem to correspond perfectly with the extra-large french fries order.

Prediction #14: Mostly failed. I will give credit to the multi-coloured roses, but the predictions about sizes were completely off-base.

Prediction #15: Partial. Foods in supermarkets today are surprisingly left “out to the elements”, and considering that canned food was invented well before 1900, I’m surprised there wasn’t an angle about that. But the prediction about refrigeration and its effect on the supermarket was absolutely correct.

Prediction #16: Totally failed. Apparently one of Teddy Roosevelt’s initiatives was to create a simplified English spelling system, which failed to make headway. The prediction about Russian being the second main language of the world is funny today, but back in 1900 Russia was actually a country with significant influence and not many people know that Russia was the third largest capitalized stock market behind the USA and the UK at that time. This prediction is a total failure (opposed to just a failure) because the authors clearly thought that a simplified English would be the basis of a global communication language. Instead, English today is the global communication language because English-speaking countries control most of the economy and the Internet.

I’ll cover the other 13 predictions in a future post.

I’ll hope to visit him one of these months…

The one thing I realized at that point about Japan is how prevalent their drinking culture. Back when I was in Canada, I would hardly drink at all. I’d have a drink probably 4~5 times a year. Since coming to Japan, I could easily do that in 2 weeks depending on the season (Christmas and New Year’s is especially bad on the liver).

Is alcoholics anonymous far behind?? :) Seriously, however, the study of alcohol in terms of a sociological (NOT sociopathic!) perspective is very interesting. Pretty much two seconds after the invention of agriculture came the invention of alcohol.

I didn’t catch Game 3 or 4, so I have no idea how well (or poorly) they played in their two victories. The same will be the case for game 5, as I am busy taking classes Tuesday and Thursday evenings until September.

Odds on game 5:
Canucks to win the game: -134 57.3%
Stars to win the game: +124 44.6%

Obviously if the Canucks win the game, they will win the series. If they do, my original prediction that they would win in five games will be true (and if I didn’t open my mouth after game 2, where I said at this point it looks like the Stars will win it in 6 games, it would have made the prediction look better).

You can obtain hydrological data from this site.