Monthly Archives: September 2008

Scale Matters vs. The Invisible Hand

Posted on by

Bear Stearns, the Macs, AIG… all were Too Big To Let Fail.

So, the question that has been bouncing about in my brain for a few months now is… if they’re Too Big To Fail, are they just Too Big?

I’m a fan of capitalism. I think that Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand is a primarily benevolent force. But I also believe that time and time again, Scale Matters.

You shouldn’t fear that radiation will cause a preying mantis to grow to 50 feet tall and begin smashing buildings, because Scale Matters, and the exoskeleton structure just doesn’t work at those sizes.

I was going to say something about spider-web (strongest natural fiber in the world) not scaling up, but maybe it will.

Wal-Mart succeeds so spectacularly because Scale Matters.

So… does Smith’s Invisible Hand formula become unstable when certain elements producing the Hand become oversized?

I feel like some mathematics need to be brought to bear on these large companies. When the numbers get large enough to threaten systemic failure, does the Hand need a nudge from regulation? In addition to Monopoly laws, do we need Size laws?

Size Laws would be complicated to be sure. A Bear Stearns-type failure might be more “impactful” than a WalMart-type failure, even if they had comparable sums of money involved.

Or is the press just Chicken Little-ing because folks who report on P/E ratios all day long are hungry for the Big Story? Is the government stepping in and preventing a severe but manageable correction (handleable by the Hand) to prevent folks from panicking in an election year?

I don’t have enough data to form a confident opinion. But it seems on the face that Too Big To Fail is To Big To Be.

Uncle Grampa’s Hoo Dilly Titles

Posted on by

For those of you who don’t know, I do a show at a local theater in Atlanta (Dad’s Garage Theater) called Uncle Grampa’s Hoo-Dilly Storytime.

The premise is that a monkey, a robot, a man in lederhosen, their butler and a guest character1 all get together in the Hoo Dilly house2 to act out an improvised story for the kids, with copious amounts of audience participation. The title for the episode’s story is taken from a spinning wheel with four potential titles on it. A kid spins the wheel, so if the story doesn’t work out, it is that child’s fault. Or so we say backstage.

We usually make up the titles in the green room before the show. But one of the cast members, in preparation for our opening on September 27, started throwing out title ideas via email, and I responded with same:

Sneakers The Crime Solving Dog
Once Upon A Time in Cleveland
The Princess and the Peanut
Ol’ Uncle Crabby Gets a Unicorn
Mouse Trouble
Once Upon a Time In Space
Oh no, it’s Vikings!
Bizz Buzz in Hive Five!

The Hopscotch Bandits
The Princess of Candy
The Super Duper Spies and the Mystery of The Whatzitcalledagain
Four Days Before Christmas
The Snow Day and the Yeti
Pony Loses His Saddle
Monster School
Disaster! The Musical

Got any ideas? Put ’em in the comments.

_______________
1 New to the cast this year will be a donkey and a duck.
2 Left to the man in lederhosen by his Uncle Grampa, who is played by a former president of the United States.

Book Log – Electricity: A Novel

Posted on by

Electricity: A Novel by Victoria Glendinning

Fooled, I was, by the title and cover of this book. I envisioned it as a Difference Engine/Baroque Cycle Trilogy bit of historical fiction with a female protagonist. Really, it’s a Romance novel that half-heartedly uses electricity as metaphor.

To be sure, there’s some presumably well-researched realism in the early days of electricity as the husband of our lovely protagonist is an electrical engineer hired to electrify the manor of a handsome, rich gentleman. You can guess where that’s going.

I read the first two-thirds in fits and spurts, then set it aside for months and months when more attractive fare appeared on my bookshelf. The last third has almost nothing to do with electricity, and instead delves into the mystic/medium scene for a while.

Ho hum.

It is small and portable (fits in my obligatory factory lab coat), so I threw it in the bag for my trip to Juarez to knock it out in my many, many spare moments I have here. And thus I have.

An Open Letter to Wired

Posted on by

Dear Wired,

Had Wired been around when Alexander Graham Bell asked Watson to join him from the other room via electrical current, would you have called it a flop because the sound quality was poor and he should have read Shakespeare instead?

Give Esquire a break. An E-Ink cover is brutally cool, regardless of the simplicity of the animation.

My guess? Either you’re in a snit because you, the technology magazine, didn’t do it first, or you’re bitter that you can’t get dates with the people who write for Esquire.

Just sayin’.

Regards,
ElectricRocket

________
ETA: Now THIS is the future. A flat sheet of plastic that is a book, or a newspaper, or a magazine, or whatever. Screw the Amazon Kindle.

Book Log – A Long Way Down

Posted on by

A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby

A book about four people who are thinking of killing themselves by jumping off a roof didn’t really strike my fancy.

But, Nick Hornby has a limited oeuvre just now… 5 novels (one of them young adult), some non-fiction focused on English Football1 and music, and of course the delightful Believer articles on reading. So, sooner or later, I’m was going to have to give A Long Way Down a try, since it seemed unlikely that he was going to go off rambling about football or music too much in it.

The book popped up as available on PaperbackSwap.com, so I dropped a credit on it. As a bonus, whoever had it last left a hand drawn index-card-as-bookmark in it. So it had that going for it.

If High Fidelity, About a Boy, and How To Be Good tie for first place, then A Long Way Down comes in a not very distant and very readable second. But I think it only keeps from being a distant second by the presence of one of the four main characters, Jess, the crazy teenage girl; She’s got enough Quirk to her to keep the story going and interesting. The other characters are fine, but would probably fall flat without Jess stirring things up.

Then again, that’s not unreasonable considering they’re all suicidal.

____________
1 I tried to read Fever Pitch. I really did. But it defeated me.