Any seemingly pointless activity which is actually necessary to solve a problem which solves a problem which, several levels of recursion later, solves the real problem you're working on.Basically, YSRs are ways of solving common problems using tools that were developed form other purposes.
Yak Shaving Razor #39 (from the Evangelical Outpost)
Joe Carter has the latest collection of Yak Shaving Razors up at Evangelical Outpost. In case you didn't know, a Yak Shaviing Razor is
Cool!
The phrase "cool" has been, well, cool for longer than just about any slang. Here's a very cool history of cool.
HT: Newmark's Door who for a middle aged economist is actually somewhat cool himself.
HT: Newmark's Door who for a middle aged economist is actually somewhat cool himself.
This Week's Carnival of The Capitalists
This week's COTC is up at AnyLetter. Sorry for the delay in linking, but blogger was down last night. In any event, here are my picks of the week, late but not forgotten:
First off, Daniel Harrison at The Global Perspective does a takedown of a particularly bad piece of journalism about IPOs. This was my favorite piece of the week - suitable to give to some of my students. Well done- he's getting an MBA, and he'd be welcome in m y class any time.As usual browse around when you've read these. There's always lots of good stuff at a Carnival, and everyone's tastes (and needs) are different.
Joy Levin is guesting at Small Business Trends, and has a great piece on doing marketing research. Good advice, and lots of resources.
FMF at Free Money Finance tells us to Make Sure Your Financial Advisor is Not a Loser. Sounds like good advice to me.
Most bloggers figure stuff out as they go along. Steve Nipper at The Invent Blog has been blogging for two years now, and he shares a few things he wished he'd known when he started.
Jeff Cornwall at the Entrepreneurial Mind has some good thoughts on the importance of forecasting revenue accurately for a new venture.
Dan Melson at Searchlight Crusade has another great piece on in his continuing series titled Should I Buy A Home? Part 3: Consequences.
James Hamilton at Econbrowser discusses the latest employment data and finds it good.
TT at Retire at 30 the story of an English kid who turnd a crazy idea into a cool milion in Million Dollar Idea - Pixels for Sale.
Resolution Update - Week 6
Here's the latest in the continuing saga of my New Year's resolutions.
First off, still not getting myself out of bed by 6 - I only managed it three times this week. Again, I need to get to bed by 10:30.
I'm still holding on to the research resolution. In fact, I'm now up to 35 straight days in which I've spent at least an hour of research each day. I only managed an hour on four of the last seven days (as you might recall, we had some hectic stuff going on), I put in 3 1/2 hours one day, and 6 another. So, I only managed about an hour and a half a day, but as I've heard, it's the "zero productivity days that'll kill your output. Most of the week was dedicated to putting together a research grant for the summer (due tomorrow). It still has a few wrinkles to iron out, but should be done by tomorrow noon. Then it's on to other projects.
I worked out four times this week (once inside on the wind trainer for 20 minutes, and thrice outside). So far, I've been doing an eight mile route. It's not that much, but it's a start, and it's beginning to get a lot easier. I've come to the conclusion that wearing a wind breaker is like a drag chute when you open the zipper. On Friday, it got up to 60 degrees, so I got out the tight bike shirt. With the lower wind resistance, I rode about 2 mph faster with a lot less effort. Once it gets warm enough to go without the windbreaker, I should start adding miles pretty quickly.
And, since it;s now 10:30, time for bed.
First off, still not getting myself out of bed by 6 - I only managed it three times this week. Again, I need to get to bed by 10:30.
I'm still holding on to the research resolution. In fact, I'm now up to 35 straight days in which I've spent at least an hour of research each day. I only managed an hour on four of the last seven days (as you might recall, we had some hectic stuff going on), I put in 3 1/2 hours one day, and 6 another. So, I only managed about an hour and a half a day, but as I've heard, it's the "zero productivity days that'll kill your output. Most of the week was dedicated to putting together a research grant for the summer (due tomorrow). It still has a few wrinkles to iron out, but should be done by tomorrow noon. Then it's on to other projects.
I worked out four times this week (once inside on the wind trainer for 20 minutes, and thrice outside). So far, I've been doing an eight mile route. It's not that much, but it's a start, and it's beginning to get a lot easier. I've come to the conclusion that wearing a wind breaker is like a drag chute when you open the zipper. On Friday, it got up to 60 degrees, so I got out the tight bike shirt. With the lower wind resistance, I rode about 2 mph faster with a lot less effort. Once it gets warm enough to go without the windbreaker, I should start adding miles pretty quickly.
And, since it;s now 10:30, time for bed.
"It's the [something], stupid" (via Vegreville)
Many people remember the "It's the Economy, Stupid" phrase from the Clinton campaign. It was a good way of focusing the campaign on what they though was the one key issue. The idea was that they had one message that they wanted to keep pounding home, and the sentence was a good reminder.
Unfortunately, it's too easy to forget this idea when we're preparing a paper, a lecture, or a talk. Every time we're preparing for one of those, we should have a "It's the [something],stupid" sentence in mind.
Vegreville has a post that's hits this topic dead on. He also a great line to put in a referee's report:
Unfortunately, it's too easy to forget this idea when we're preparing a paper, a lecture, or a talk. Every time we're preparing for one of those, we should have a "It's the [something],stupid" sentence in mind.
Vegreville has a post that's hits this topic dead on. He also a great line to put in a referee's report:
"This paper does not kick any ass. Sorry."To steal a phrase, "heh"
Mortgage Resources (from the WSJ)
Today's Wall Street Journal has a piece titled "Getting Wise to Mortgages" that mentions several online tools geared towards helping consumers better evaluate their mortgage options:
The article makes a good point - once you get outside the "plain vanilla" 30-year fixed mortgage market, a mortgage loan can be an extremely complicated product. It becomes very hard to compare all the facets of a loan. So, good resources are golden. I have a finance Ph.D., and I'm a bit of a research junkie (it comes with the academic turf - people like me often end up in the academy, since we don't fit anywhere else). But, even with those advantages, getting my first mortgage was extremely frustrating.
The best option is to have a good, honest mortgage broker on your side. Unfortunately, since it's a complicated product, it's not just hard to evaluate the product, but also to evaluate the competence and honesty of the person selling it to you.
Having checked out the www.mtgprofessor.com site, I'd definitely recommend it. Another good site is Bankrate.com, which has a wealth of resources.
Finally, there are a couple of bloggers that I regularly read that have a lot of good mortgage-related content - Searchlight Crusade and Pacesetter Mortgage. Of course, as I mention them, I realize that I've been reading them for months, I never got around to adding them to the blogroll. Sorry guys, you're on now.
A few entrepreneurs are developing new tools to help home buyers tackle one of the most confusing projects they face: figuring out whether a mortgage is a fair deal.Click here for the whole thing (Note: online subscription required.Comparison-shopping for mortgages has long been a job only a masochist could love -- a world of "points," "ARMs" and a barrage of surprise fees. In recent years, it has become tougher amid the proliferation of complex new interest-only mortgages and others designed to enable buyers to delay more of the pain of paying off that debt.
Now, as interest rates climb, it is important for mortgage borrowers to aggressively shop around for the best terms. Over 10 years, a difference of just 0.125 percentage point on the mortgage rate on a $500,000 loan can rack up more than $6,000 in extra interest payments.The problem for borrowers is that lenders have a vested interest in making it tough to compare rival offerings.
"The general public, they think they know how to shop for mortgages," says Mike Stoffer, who owns a mortgage brokerage in North Canton, Ohio. "They have no clue."
Some entrepreneurs are stepping in to give consumers some added muscle. One of the quirkiest tools available is a Web site, www.mtgprofessor.com, by a maverick retired finance professor who has made a hobby of skewering mortgage lenders. The site is a compilation of tutorials, calculators and a glossary defining everything from "balloon mortgage" (one that is payable in full at an early date) to "right of recission" (your right to back out of a refinancing within three days of closing).
The article makes a good point - once you get outside the "plain vanilla" 30-year fixed mortgage market, a mortgage loan can be an extremely complicated product. It becomes very hard to compare all the facets of a loan. So, good resources are golden. I have a finance Ph.D., and I'm a bit of a research junkie (it comes with the academic turf - people like me often end up in the academy, since we don't fit anywhere else). But, even with those advantages, getting my first mortgage was extremely frustrating.
The best option is to have a good, honest mortgage broker on your side. Unfortunately, since it's a complicated product, it's not just hard to evaluate the product, but also to evaluate the competence and honesty of the person selling it to you.
Having checked out the www.mtgprofessor.com site, I'd definitely recommend it. Another good site is Bankrate.com, which has a wealth of resources.
Finally, there are a couple of bloggers that I regularly read that have a lot of good mortgage-related content - Searchlight Crusade and Pacesetter Mortgage. Of course, as I mention them, I realize that I've been reading them for months, I never got around to adding them to the blogroll. Sorry guys, you're on now.
Bad News
Blogging's been a bit light lately because of some bad news in the Unknown Household. As some of you may recall, our son was diagnosed with Neuroblastoma in October of 2002 (at age 4). After three years of treatment (chemo, radiation, surgery, and some very experimental stuff), he went into remission this last fall, to cheers all around.
This week, we found out that the cancer has recurred. The latest set of scans showed a small spot on his right femur (large leg bone). It's one of the sites where the cancer previously manifested (in fact, it was the last one to "clear"). At present , he shows no visible symptoms, and probably won't for some time, but it is pretty disheartening. Not unexpected, since cases like his often relapse, but disheartening nonetheless.
We're fortunate in that we've previously met (and even had the boy treated by) many of the top people in the field, and in fact we'll be consulting with one of them next week. So, blogging will likely be a bit sketchy for a while what with the medical stuff combined with beginning-of-semester madness and a few major deadlines. It never gets easy.
We're probably in better shape emotionally than you'd expect, for a number of reasons. One is that we've been here before, The other is that (without going into too much detail), we have what most would describe as a "spiritual" view of the world. In any event, prayers are appreciated if you're so inclined. We're big believers in it.
Of course, in typical bloggy fashion, I'll keep you all up to date as things unfold. Stay tuned.
This week, we found out that the cancer has recurred. The latest set of scans showed a small spot on his right femur (large leg bone). It's one of the sites where the cancer previously manifested (in fact, it was the last one to "clear"). At present , he shows no visible symptoms, and probably won't for some time, but it is pretty disheartening. Not unexpected, since cases like his often relapse, but disheartening nonetheless.
We're fortunate in that we've previously met (and even had the boy treated by) many of the top people in the field, and in fact we'll be consulting with one of them next week. So, blogging will likely be a bit sketchy for a while what with the medical stuff combined with beginning-of-semester madness and a few major deadlines. It never gets easy.
We're probably in better shape emotionally than you'd expect, for a number of reasons. One is that we've been here before, The other is that (without going into too much detail), we have what most would describe as a "spiritual" view of the world. In any event, prayers are appreciated if you're so inclined. We're big believers in it.
Of course, in typical bloggy fashion, I'll keep you all up to date as things unfold. Stay tuned.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)