Blessed by the Potato

Thesis progress was once again abysmal this week. In fact, yesterday featured negative progress as I got into a discussion with my supervisor about some previous prose that I may now have to rewrite… Can’t wait to be finished this thing. Weight was down: only one pound, so it could just be measurement error, but at least it wasn’t up again!

Patrick of A Loonie Saved has finally put a post up, discussing the P/E-10, which right now is suggesting that the market is over-valued, in contrast to my earlier ambivalence. In the comments, Patrick links to another blog by Saj Karsan that suggests the P/E-10 may be skewed a bit by a large number of share buybacks over the years, and by the effect of two recessions (the -10 part of P/E-10 is supposed to give an idea of P/E over a full business cycle, but the last 10 years catches two bottoms instead of just one).

Harper once again shows he’s a class act.

Now even Paul Krugman is very worried about a Canadian housing bubble. The Economist has an article titled “Bricks and Slaughter”. “An even bigger reason to beware of property is the amount of debt it involves. Most people do not borrow to buy shares and bonds, and if they do, the degree of leverage usually hovers around half the value of the investment. Moreover, when stock prices fall, borrowers can usually get their loan-to-value ratios back into balance by selling some of the shares. By contrast, in many pre-crisis housing markets buyers routinely took on loans worth 90% or more of the value of the property. Most had no way of bringing down their debt short of selling the whole house.”

Michael James has some very sensible advice on looking beyond the next 5 years in the eternal fixed vs variable debate.

There have been a couple good reports on the fox domestication program in Siberia (watching that Nova episode was the source of the current tagline in the masthead: “50 years ago, Soviet scientists set out to…” “That’s how all the best stories start.”), but I haven’t tracked them down on the web to link to them. Here’s National Geographic, Nova Science Now, and Nova: Dogs Decoded.

Wired has a nice article up on why trivial decisions can sometimes seem hard when there’s an abundance of choice. I seem to recall another article from a few years ago on choice paralysis in investing, and that company pension plans were much better utilized when fewer options were presented.

I was feeling a bit down as my thesis progress has been so slow, and what has progressed has seemed to be won at such a high cost. So I took the Sad Panda meme image and made it my avatar on various social networking sites, but then realized it wasn’t sad enough for the PhD thesis woes. So I made it even sadder by turning it greyscale and adding a watercolour painting effect:

Since I don’t know who to credit for the original image, I can’t presume to claim any rights on the derivative, so have at it.

One downside to working late I hadn’t considered is the possibility of a large-scale power outage. I don’t know what’s going on, but I can see out my window here that there are no lights stretching for several blocks between the hospital and the river (but there are some lights on on the other side of the river). I’m freaking exhausted here now, and more than ready to head home… but I don’t want to leave the hospital (where there’s power and internet) and walk home in the pitch black. It’s been dark for about 25 minutes now, and it’s starting to freak me out (the sleep deprivation and general anxiety is not helping matters there). On the other hand, I really don’t want to be in the hospital if they decide to conserve the generators and cut off power to this wing… The streets are dark and slippery, but the hospital is creepy.

Yeah, you can probably skip this post. Self-evident word game.

First 3 random words to make a post from: banana, lawnmower, turtle

haiku banana
no need for a lawnmower
turtle can do it

On many gas-powered lawn mowers there are usually two speed settings: turtle, and rabbit. Even on turtle though, you don’t want to slip on a banana: that would be most unpleasant.

If you want to blend a large number of bananas for banana bread, I don’t recommend putting them out in the yard in a big pile and trying to run the lawnmower over them: you’ll have little chunks of bananas flying everywhere, and before you know it you’ll have a turtle infestation. Though I suppose if they’re trained in the ninja arts, they might help you patrol the neighbourhood and keep down crime and/or super-villainy.

Of course you’d be just as likely to get monkeys… but with enough bananas and patience, you could perhaps get your monkeys to mow the lawn for you, if you locked the lawnmower into turtle mode — the last thing monkeys need is speed and (for them) heavy machinery, given their propensity towards mischief. And if we throw in actual turtles into the mix, well, let’s just say the expression “to be turtled” is a hilarious game to monkeys high on bananas and lawnmower fumes.

Next 3 random words: shipmate, tallow, gyre

months in a gyre
a hold full of tallow but
shipmates don’t use soap

I would have thought tallow to be mostly produced and consumed locally, not normally the thing that would fit with the other two nautical words for a haiku, but the spill in the Houston ship channel recently seems to indicate otherwise. I had to wonder though whether shipmates caught in an ocean gyre for an extended period of time could make tallow from what they had on hand, and it looks like they probably could if they had some lye (which I guess sailors would?).

One more set for tonight: personification, why, magic

winter is magic
cold personification
why hello snowman

Now with words like these, a blog post on who is the very personification of magic and why practically writes itself.

Here, I’ll get you started: NPH is the very personification of magic. Why? […]

Unrelated to the above: I <3 Molly Lewis. (and check out her haiku shirt in this one — I have that now ;)

Nikki made a dangerous gamble, going for a healthy oatmeal pumpkin cookie with raisins (blech) against my tried-and-true brownie cookie with peanut butter chips. Both were soft-textured cookies, so no one could get the upper-hand based purely on texture.

The judges were impressed with both cookies, and smiles were to be found all around. Several people independently reported that Nikki’s cookie was “like a muffin”, and mine had an “incredible brownie quality while still being a cookie.” I have to say, for a healthy cookie with pumpkin no less, Nikki put up a fierce fight. While I picked out the raisins, I was nonetheless pleased with the taste and texture of her cookie. Surprisingly this was her first cookie battle — but no mercy is shown upon the newblars purely for being new. If there was, well… this might have turned out to be a very different match-up.

In the end, experience prevailed and I got to keep my title, with two of three judges picking my cookie. It was by the skin of my teeth though: though the judge that voted for Nikki’s cookie admitted that it was the health benefits that gave her the edge, the other two judges said that on purely taste merits alone it was a tough call to make. I can’t rest on my laurels any more, assuming my best cookie ever title is unassailable.

I think the lesson we learned here today is that in a cookie showdown, everyone is a winner.

Nikki made a cookie.

A big cookie.

A giant, beautiful cookie that deserves respect. And I will pay my respects, right now: that was a damned fine-looking cookie. But then the respects went too far: “Best cookie ever!!” Sam exclaimed. Hey, whoa there, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. It is a most excellent and large cookie, but, I told them, I hold the title to best cookie ever… unless this is a bake-off challenge?

“Bring it, beeyatch.” – Nikki.

The oven mitt has been thrown down, and the challenge is on! May the best cookie win!

My bork-bork-bork-fu is strong, and at the risk of falling into hubris, I think I’ve got this one in the bag. I’m going to be bringing my chocolate brownie cookies to this battle.

See you tomorrow.