A “god’s eye” of human behavior the wall street journal calls it. An amazing interpretation of data collected by the transfer of information between out smart phones. They look into social networks and see how we can influence each other choices and moods one by one until we influence half of the population in the United States. That is as amazing to me as knowing that there exist a printer of objects, which I want to have one of.
On the other hand, I read this morning an article of the economist (from the edition with the bamboo cover, referring to china), that the government in china was increasing its military spending in double digits as a response to some messages suggesting that people would revolt. I understand the strategic move for the dominant forces of the government, but also I take it as a serious sign of fear. The article said that only around 28% of the people in China is happy (oh-ow). It reminded me about the academic article I was reading, about the forces behind the French revolution by Javier Calderon, in which he argues that it was the “unfairness effect” sentiment that the peasants had towards governance, reinforced by “the men of letters” appealing ideas of equality. It all goes back to Deirdre McCloskey lecture at the APEE’11 conference about the importance of ideas in the development (not only growth) of societies.
After all I just have one mind where everything mingles together, and I thought wow, we just need a powerful idea in Mexico and we could spread it big time (social networking) and we can influence (for better) the decisions and moods of the people.
An idea that I think would definitely change the world, the importance of economic freedom, the beauty of the market and the better outcomes and increased individual liberty we can obtain from it. I don’t know why people aren’t so enthusiastic as I am lol, but I know there must be a way to create a sparkle of light, that has potential to be a bonfire and spread it. I think again it should be with the use of technology, but obviously we need minds that understand the concepts to use their talents to influence society. Ideas, ideas, ideas… we need to make them available and decrease the costs of getting them. We’ve got to stop educating our population with silly programs like soap operas and do something as amusing to the mind, with a better content. Again, if we know so much about our brain, why don’t we create things that we would love, but with the ideas worth spreading? Or just make inception in everybody’s mind… which is just as difficult, but is it impossible? Lol…
http://online.wsj.com/video/a-god-eye-view-of-the-world/9403A74F-92AD-434F-8E69-2384F101992A.html?mod=WSJ_Article_Videocarousel_1
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
A comparison of conferences... C-USA '06-'10 vs. Economics '11
Lately, it has become impossible to stop comparing my old routine of being a student-athlete to my non-eligible student-athlete one. First of all I have discovered the life of a college kid that really likes school lol. We the students are so spoiled because we have all we need to learn at the University, and can submerge in the system to get out as different people with a better understanding of the environment . As a student-athlete I could not realize that, I couldn’t see it… school was like this interesting thing that made me come up with some ideas and creative applications of some concepts learn in the classroom, but everything happened in a fast-forward mode. Obviously by running in and out of school, now I feel like I only learned enough to get an A or a B in the class, not to mention my C in theatre and the 4th accounting class (I obviously found golf more interesting at the time)… but even when I could get the A I really didn’t learn (the real knowledge) of whatever I could potentially extract from the class… I think this is important, to get involved with the subject and continue to do research to further understand whatever you feel intrigued by, during your own time. (I guess that’s why I’ve always like demanding professors, because they forced me not to just run away get an A easily, and during my stay at UTEP I did learn a lot in their classes).
One of the reasons why I’ve been having this nostalgic thought of my past life as an athlete, is the traveling I’ve done lately. I have been sponsored to attend two conferences about economics during this month, and things are way different than when they sponsored me to play golf lol. I was super surprised that even when we were two girls among the group members, they gave each of us a different room because it was a “business trip” and we had to get ready to present, and they felt we needed that personal time for ourselves. I was obviously shocked because before we needed to draw from the golf hat the numbers that will dictate who was going to sleep with who and if anyone get to sleep alone twice .
In the mornings it was a mess!! Coach loved to be at the host club like half an hour before sunrise, so we had to wake up way early in the morning, many times we saw 5:00 am in the alarm, sometimes we wanted to gain some sleep and would wake up at 5:04, that way we don’t have to run into people in the bathroom; other times we saw 4:30, 4:35 am… no breakfast, so we’d better have some milk in the trash can full of ice that will melt during the day… we ran the risk of getting sick the next morning lol… although we never did. All to get to the club and not get out of the car for the time that the club was closed… we were always the first team yey!
Anyways, it is hard to get a trophy in collegiate golf. It is definitely not the same to play golf in sunny El Paso than to play in rainy-cold north carolina in October at 3+’s ºF lol. I surely had to wear lots of layers that will barely keep me from getting a cold while I had wet socks on from all the heavy and wet rough. Compared to that is the conference attire, “tropical-casual” was the last one, and business formal was the other one right… Therefore I could dress comfortably in order to sit there and learn from my colleges and professors. Incredible, I could not have a better life! Lol. I had the great opportunity to compete in a research competition for undergrads, where my college and friend Avilia and I presented a paper about economic freedom and migration flows from Mexican states to the U.S. As we won 3rd place I thought, man this was easier than golf… and Avilia looked at me an said, it wasn’t so easy! Ugh… maybe not lol, but at the moment it did feel easy when I was wearing my polo and kakis (that I could potentially be wearing at the tournament underneath some layers lol… another option would be my pajamas).
Gotta go to school… this all seems a bit funny to me. I wanna go to another research competition and bring my clubs to play before the opening speech!!!
One of the reasons why I’ve been having this nostalgic thought of my past life as an athlete, is the traveling I’ve done lately. I have been sponsored to attend two conferences about economics during this month, and things are way different than when they sponsored me to play golf lol. I was super surprised that even when we were two girls among the group members, they gave each of us a different room because it was a “business trip” and we had to get ready to present, and they felt we needed that personal time for ourselves. I was obviously shocked because before we needed to draw from the golf hat the numbers that will dictate who was going to sleep with who and if anyone get to sleep alone twice .
In the mornings it was a mess!! Coach loved to be at the host club like half an hour before sunrise, so we had to wake up way early in the morning, many times we saw 5:00 am in the alarm, sometimes we wanted to gain some sleep and would wake up at 5:04, that way we don’t have to run into people in the bathroom; other times we saw 4:30, 4:35 am… no breakfast, so we’d better have some milk in the trash can full of ice that will melt during the day… we ran the risk of getting sick the next morning lol… although we never did. All to get to the club and not get out of the car for the time that the club was closed… we were always the first team yey!
Anyways, it is hard to get a trophy in collegiate golf. It is definitely not the same to play golf in sunny El Paso than to play in rainy-cold north carolina in October at 3+’s ºF lol. I surely had to wear lots of layers that will barely keep me from getting a cold while I had wet socks on from all the heavy and wet rough. Compared to that is the conference attire, “tropical-casual” was the last one, and business formal was the other one right… Therefore I could dress comfortably in order to sit there and learn from my colleges and professors. Incredible, I could not have a better life! Lol. I had the great opportunity to compete in a research competition for undergrads, where my college and friend Avilia and I presented a paper about economic freedom and migration flows from Mexican states to the U.S. As we won 3rd place I thought, man this was easier than golf… and Avilia looked at me an said, it wasn’t so easy! Ugh… maybe not lol, but at the moment it did feel easy when I was wearing my polo and kakis (that I could potentially be wearing at the tournament underneath some layers lol… another option would be my pajamas).
Gotta go to school… this all seems a bit funny to me. I wanna go to another research competition and bring my clubs to play before the opening speech!!!
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Maybe next week?
Listening to Gal Zauberman on an interview that was called “Yes… Damn” I have learned about the the most stress-free strategy for decision making, focused on social events I guess. (Obviously I have not implement it, since as I right this, I gotta leave to take a shower because my friend will pick me up to go to the movies, because I ultimately said yes to his invitation, thinking I would have absolutely no problem to leave whatever I was doing and sit there for 2 hours!)
The idea is that we normally think that in the future we will have more time than today, or tomorrow. In a way this is why we say yes to invitations like the movies, or dinner or coffee… as long as they are next week. It always ends up happening to me, I sometimes I have to say you know, I thought I was going to be available but I’m not, and also it becomes the reason for stress when the day of the event approaches me and I’m yet again, busy. What happens is that even when we think that next month looks pretty open, the day before that day will come ( precisely the day before tomorrow), and life will throw at us plenty of unexpected little things that makes it interesting but hard to schedule.
The brilliant strategy becomes then to schedule your activities for whenever they would be, like if they were going to take place tomorrow. If something is really that important for us to make room for it in tomorrow’s schedule, then it will probably be easy to do the activity in a week or a month. The speaker also mentions that by having a strategy it becomes O.K to say NO lol… it kinda becomes allowed, and you don’t feel bad about it. I wanna do this see if I can relieve some stress, even from things that should be fun and end up taking some time from some other activities that I’d rather be doing. For the economists, this strategy kinda changes our opportunity cost to a more real one, since we are measuring it in more comparable utility units I guess. Now, I feel that I’ve been measuring things wrong…
The idea is that we normally think that in the future we will have more time than today, or tomorrow. In a way this is why we say yes to invitations like the movies, or dinner or coffee… as long as they are next week. It always ends up happening to me, I sometimes I have to say you know, I thought I was going to be available but I’m not, and also it becomes the reason for stress when the day of the event approaches me and I’m yet again, busy. What happens is that even when we think that next month looks pretty open, the day before that day will come ( precisely the day before tomorrow), and life will throw at us plenty of unexpected little things that makes it interesting but hard to schedule.
The brilliant strategy becomes then to schedule your activities for whenever they would be, like if they were going to take place tomorrow. If something is really that important for us to make room for it in tomorrow’s schedule, then it will probably be easy to do the activity in a week or a month. The speaker also mentions that by having a strategy it becomes O.K to say NO lol… it kinda becomes allowed, and you don’t feel bad about it. I wanna do this see if I can relieve some stress, even from things that should be fun and end up taking some time from some other activities that I’d rather be doing. For the economists, this strategy kinda changes our opportunity cost to a more real one, since we are measuring it in more comparable utility units I guess. Now, I feel that I’ve been measuring things wrong…
Saturday, April 16, 2011
Nerdy Meditation
Because I’m not a walking data base yet, and because I still carry with me the heavy socialist BUT humanitarian legacy built by the mexican society during history of Mexico, I tend to go back and forth between ideologies and theories of growth and development. I just read on a paper by Bergoeing, Kehoe, Kehoe and Soto (2002) titled “Decades Lost and Found: Mexico and Chile Since 1980”, that one of the main reasons why Chile recovered from the 1980’s crisis was the timing of their financial and bankruptcy reforms. What they basically say is that Chile “manned up” and retained the breath for a tough hit on the economy’s (out of shape) abs, by letting inefficient businesses die! Wow, how cruel of them huh? This cruelty let the door open for more efficient and technologically develop businesses to enter the market and create jobs in those fields. On the other hand, sweet mexico still subsidized ineffective businesses by giving loans at very low interest rates at the expense of tax payers, also they protected the dumb businesses incapable of remain profitable by having bad bankruptcy laws. Ho-ho like santa claus, maybe it was during christmas season, a very long one that kept the economy stagnated for a long period of time.
Going back to my mixed up perception of things that has been enhanced by doing a research independent study at the fed, and also by helping doctor Ashby with his studies about Economic Freedom of North America and the Mexican States, I think this is eye opening for a person like me! What? Really you mean those businesses back then were not too big to fail? You mean that the market rewarded the “manning up” of Chile back then and could potentially do it now? You mean countries that are increasing the economic freedom and therefore the standard of living are “manning up” too? Wow, amazing… I was thought by the Federal Reserve people that if they had not injected money in the economy we would still be in a recession…….. Oooh man, im starting to get mad…. Bernanke, argued that Japan’s bank was not active enough during its crisis and that is why they did not grow and stagnated… He had the possibility of putting in practice his theories and he did, he was active alright and the economy of the U.S seem to be crawling out of the recession… I mean they say it’s over but we see that is clearly not growing fast enough.
When I get to Dr.Ashby’s office and I tell him these new ideas that have been implanted in my mind after attending the lectures with economists at the fed, or simply reading the articles they hand to me, he tells me patiently that he thinks this is a wonderful experience and he believes that I will learn a lot because of the exposure to different ideas compared to his of course. He argues that he would like to see what would have happened if the the U.S would have “manned up”. I was very sad by thinking of the millions of jobs that could have been lost south of the border, you know, all those poor people that are building cars, parts and components maquiladora sector in Mexico. Oh man I said, if Mexico was hit by the U.S recession and was recovering even slowly, imagine what would have happened if the car industry which constitutes 3% of MX GDP had gone doooown… shh… well Dr. Ashby just looks at me right? I guess he was thinking that I would go to the APEE and increase my ideas of the free market by association lol… I think I did, but I’m still not a data set … but on the other hand, can someone tell Ashton Kutcher that I am interested on the idea of his movie “Butterfly Effect” and want to alter life by also altering a decision in one point in life. It had to have happened by someone clicking send, or pressing a button, or making a phone call right?… Now, I wonder what the crescendo of events would be in this field by the fluttering of a butterfly….
Going back to my mixed up perception of things that has been enhanced by doing a research independent study at the fed, and also by helping doctor Ashby with his studies about Economic Freedom of North America and the Mexican States, I think this is eye opening for a person like me! What? Really you mean those businesses back then were not too big to fail? You mean that the market rewarded the “manning up” of Chile back then and could potentially do it now? You mean countries that are increasing the economic freedom and therefore the standard of living are “manning up” too? Wow, amazing… I was thought by the Federal Reserve people that if they had not injected money in the economy we would still be in a recession…….. Oooh man, im starting to get mad…. Bernanke, argued that Japan’s bank was not active enough during its crisis and that is why they did not grow and stagnated… He had the possibility of putting in practice his theories and he did, he was active alright and the economy of the U.S seem to be crawling out of the recession… I mean they say it’s over but we see that is clearly not growing fast enough.
When I get to Dr.Ashby’s office and I tell him these new ideas that have been implanted in my mind after attending the lectures with economists at the fed, or simply reading the articles they hand to me, he tells me patiently that he thinks this is a wonderful experience and he believes that I will learn a lot because of the exposure to different ideas compared to his of course. He argues that he would like to see what would have happened if the the U.S would have “manned up”. I was very sad by thinking of the millions of jobs that could have been lost south of the border, you know, all those poor people that are building cars, parts and components maquiladora sector in Mexico. Oh man I said, if Mexico was hit by the U.S recession and was recovering even slowly, imagine what would have happened if the car industry which constitutes 3% of MX GDP had gone doooown… shh… well Dr. Ashby just looks at me right? I guess he was thinking that I would go to the APEE and increase my ideas of the free market by association lol… I think I did, but I’m still not a data set … but on the other hand, can someone tell Ashton Kutcher that I am interested on the idea of his movie “Butterfly Effect” and want to alter life by also altering a decision in one point in life. It had to have happened by someone clicking send, or pressing a button, or making a phone call right?… Now, I wonder what the crescendo of events would be in this field by the fluttering of a butterfly….
Friday, April 15, 2011
Drawing the Solow Model, I guess...
During the Association of Private Enterprise Education I meet John Papola, the author of “Fear the Boom and the Bust” Keynes vs. Hayek video. He stated clearly that he was not an economist but had read many books and had listened to a lot of podcasts during his commuting time from his house to Manhattan. I have seen his video a lot of times, many of which were shown to us students at UTEP at every class at the business college. Professors wanted to share it because it really summarized intro to macroeconomics lol. Guess what? People get it! Amazing how they know that cool and creative things make us learn more… and they realize this things are scarce.
The author, that seem like a very cool guy to me, and who I talked to later that day, said he wanted to use his talent and devote it to this cause. Increase the cool material that people can use to teach economics. He threw out there the idea that professors should assigned the lectures for homework, yeah like by video or something, or the readings , and then come to class prepared to discuss about it, to challenge the ideas in the text or the lecture, and dynamically learn. Again, I loved the idea… Maybe that way we can associate things better in our brain and not forget them that fast. “The depreciation rate of knowledge” like my professor said, will be lower.
Also, I heard in this TED talk, that the way kids learn faster was to assign them tasks where they can creatively implement the concepts the professors want to get across. This is the new way of teaching, and since we all know that much about the human brain, why don’t the teaching programs change for the world to learn more?
The author, that seem like a very cool guy to me, and who I talked to later that day, said he wanted to use his talent and devote it to this cause. Increase the cool material that people can use to teach economics. He threw out there the idea that professors should assigned the lectures for homework, yeah like by video or something, or the readings , and then come to class prepared to discuss about it, to challenge the ideas in the text or the lecture, and dynamically learn. Again, I loved the idea… Maybe that way we can associate things better in our brain and not forget them that fast. “The depreciation rate of knowledge” like my professor said, will be lower.
Also, I heard in this TED talk, that the way kids learn faster was to assign them tasks where they can creatively implement the concepts the professors want to get across. This is the new way of teaching, and since we all know that much about the human brain, why don’t the teaching programs change for the world to learn more?
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Make me mad damn it!
I tend to remember those times when I have totally messed up in a athletic competition, according to my standards, and I wonder why can’t I be like the majority of people that just see it as a game and just let it go!?… Love and hate the attitude at the same time. Both behaviors lol, the easy going one and the angry me. However, I was listening an interview from the podcast “arming the donkeys” (experimental economics) with Dan Ariely, and considering that I listen to it while I’m doing the morning and nightly ritual of applying my daily lotion and night lotion, some times I miss a thing or two… but what I listened made complete sense to me. The interviewer said (I could not find the name on my podcast list), that things that made you mad also made you act. Yes, that’s right. Also, I just came back from the APEE 2011 Conference at the Bahamas, and I met the famous austrian economist Pete Boettke, great professor and speaker, super friendly person and most importantly a sports fan! Anyways, after the description I gotta say that he also mention that little detail about angriness… think about something that makes you mad and write about it!… it complements the argument that I just mention before, and complements also my intuition.
I always knew that losing therefore getting mad took me places. I knew next time I was going to do it better, harder and with the thought that I did not want to feel that again. This weekend someone also mention that some athletes keep playing and practicing not because they wanted to feel the joy of the victory, but because they did not want to feel like a loser instead. It really, really hurts!! I hate it so much, that I was telling one of my best friends the other day that the act of losing broke my heart with the same intensity that a boyfriend can brake it lol… not a joke.
I always knew that losing therefore getting mad took me places. I knew next time I was going to do it better, harder and with the thought that I did not want to feel that again. This weekend someone also mention that some athletes keep playing and practicing not because they wanted to feel the joy of the victory, but because they did not want to feel like a loser instead. It really, really hurts!! I hate it so much, that I was telling one of my best friends the other day that the act of losing broke my heart with the same intensity that a boyfriend can brake it lol… not a joke.
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