Watch Your Cash

So, I needed some cash when I was in Bratislava.  I spent nearly 10 minutes trying to get cash from this ATM.

But then the bellhop told me it was NOT an ATM, but a parking validation machine.  I suppose the coin slot should have been a tip-off...

3D printer for home fabrication a win?

Jackie Blue writes:


Dis true, Mr. Economist?

My response:the first commenter says what I would have said, only he says it better.

John: "25 hours per item, I will assume they already factored in the need for ventillation and power for the device and move to the real issue. Quality control, repairs and finishing are going to eat up many hours the first time each person creates an item with many mistakes along the ways likely requiring reprints and modifications before it will work. Between the labour cost and the material losses from each reprint, I very much doubt their estimates of cost per item. This is the same logic that people use to say I can renovate my own house for half the cost. It may be true if everything goes well but since they lack experience will end up doing everything twice and wasting alot of material through the process eating up most if not all of the DIY savings. 

Besides, most of the 3D printed items can be found in a dollar store, so unless you are comparing some high end spatula to a 3D printed one, there is no savings."

So, that's what I think.  But it might be true that it is a small business opportunity. A place that's remote from transport could have a person set up a higher speed printer, and then run it to fabricate a bunch of things that would be expensive to bring in. There are parts of Australia, and of course much of New Orleans, that are like that.

Guaranteed Income Scheme By Morgan Warstler

Each of us can do our part to provide guaranteed income to the less fortunate.

Auction the unemployed.

Smart

Is cognitive ability a liability? A critique and future research agenda on skilled performance

Margaret Beier & Frederick Oswald
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, December 2012, Pages 331-345

Abstract:
Over a century of psychological research provides strong and consistent support for the idea that cognitive ability correlates positively with success in tasks that people face in employment, education, and everyday life. Recent experimental research, however, has converged on a different and provocative conclusion, namely that lower-ability people can actually be more effective performers within special environments characterized by features such as time pressure, social evaluation, and unpredictable task change. If this conclusion is true, it has extensive implications for practices such as personnel selection, training design, and teaching methods. The current article reexamines and reinterprets this research within the context of well-established resource theories of cognitive processing and skill acquisition leading to a less provocative conclusion that serves to reiterate the benefits of cognitive ability for task performance. Following this reexamination, we conclude by providing a research agenda for examining the determinants of skilled performance in dynamic task environments, including the following: (a) broadening the range of abilities and task difficulties examined, (b) considering the role of nonability traits and goals in skilled performance (e.g., personality, learning, and performance goals), (c) investigating the processes (e.g., problem solving strategies) that people use in complex environments, (d) developing research designs and analytic strategies for examining adaptive performance, and (e) investigating how best to train for adaptive performance.

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Who Multi-Tasks and Why? Multi-Tasking Ability, Perceived Multi-Tasking Ability, Impulsivity, and Sensation Seeking

David Sanbonmatsu et al.
PLoS ONE, January 2013

Abstract:
The present study examined the relationship between personality and individual differences in multi-tasking ability. Participants enrolled at the University of Utah completed measures of multi-tasking activity, perceived multi-tasking ability, impulsivity, and sensation seeking. In addition, they performed the Operation Span in order to assess their executive control and actual multi-tasking ability. The findings indicate that the persons who are most capable of multi-tasking effectively are not the persons who are most likely to engage in multiple tasks simultaneously. To the contrary, multi-tasking activity as measured by the Media Multitasking Inventory and self-reported cell phone usage while driving were negatively correlated with actual multi-tasking ability. Multi-tasking was positively correlated with participants’ perceived ability to multi-task ability which was found to be significantly inflated. Participants with a strong approach orientation and a weak avoidance orientation – high levels of impulsivity and sensation seeking – reported greater multi-tasking behavior. Finally, the findings suggest that people often engage in multi-tasking because they are less able to block out distractions and focus on a singular task. Participants with less executive control - low scorers on the Operation Span task and persons high in impulsivity - tended to report higher levels of multi-tasking activity.

Nod to Kevin Lewis

Spreadsheets Cause Financial Panics?

This is pretty great.

Now, they CAN'T be serious.  Of course, there are some arguments that are not entirely nonsensical.

But still.

From Spirit of Inquiry Dinner

Duke PPE's Dr. Jonny Anomaly won the "Spirit of Inquiry" Award from the Pope Foundation for Higher Education, out of 100 entries.

And he did it looking shockingly like Freddy Mercury.

 

That's Not the Problem Here

Performance Support Bias and the Gender Pay Gap Among Stockbrokers

Janice Fanning Madden, Gender & Society, forthcoming

Abstract: This article analyzes organizational mechanisms, and their contexts, leading to gender inequality among stockbrokers in two large brokerages. Inequality is the result of gender differences in sales, as both firms use performance-based pay, paying entirely by commissions. This article develops and tests whether performance-support bias, whereby women receive inferior sales support and sales assignments, causes the commissions gap. Newly available data on the brokerages’ internal transfers of accounts among brokers allows measurement of performance-support bias. Gender differences in the quality and quantity of transferred accounts provide a way to measure gender differences in the assignment of sales opportunities and support. Sales generated from internally transferred accounts, controlling for the accounts’ sales histories, provide a “natural experiment” testing for gender differences in sales capacities. The evidence for performance-support bias is (1) women are assigned inferior accounts and (2) women produce sales equivalent to men when given accounts with equivalent prior sales histories.

Um.... fail. The fact that there is bias in stockbroker pay is not very interesting, because there is no objective standard to apply. The fact that stockbrokers get paid at ALL is astonishing. There is no basis for stockbrokers getting paid, except fraud.

Nod to Kevin Lewis.

Gilligan! Hold the Mayo!

Two grad school colleagues made good.

Tom Gilligan at UTexas

John Mayo at Georgetown

I'd try to make myself feel better by saying I knew them, but they'd both deny it. Because Angus and I...we've got stories.

(nod to Chateau. He's got stories about Angus and me)

Smart or Stoopid

The Smart or Stoopid Test.

I got a 27.  Apropos of absolutely nothing, since the test is not deep or difficult.  But it is fun.

Nod to the LMM, who thought Elvis died in 1957.

Shatners Frying Club

This has everything: explosions, turkeys, and William Shatner.

walking through a doorway increases chances of forgetting

Walking through a doorway increases the chances of forgetting what you were doing, or why you went into the room.

Okay, I went to the kitchen and got some coffee. Wait... why was I writing this?

(Nod to the Blonde)

Clueless white people

Aaaargh!!!!!

Why do so many white people love to take photos like this one???

That's LA Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw and wife with a group of Zambian orphans.

Even worse than the picture are his quotes. On Tosh.O there is a frequent segment called "is this racist"?

Well try this on for size:

“The people, as long as their basic needs are met — they’re not starving and they have shelter — are such a joyful culture,” Kershaw said.

“You come home and you see people striving to get more money, more cars, bigger houses and more possessions, thinking that will make them happier. You go to Zambia, it helps put things in perspective. You realize where happiness comes from, and it’s not from material goods.”

Ah yes, Africans are "joyful" and not materialistic. They don't want money, cars or big houses. I guess his evidence for that was that they didn't already have them?

I guess it's good that there are so many poor people in Africa. We need them to teach life lessons to self absorbed moronic celebrities!