Mobile Phone Sites

Mobile versions of webpages are right up there with call centers staffed by people with poor English, excel automatically changing what I typed in because it thinks its a date, spell checkers automatically making a correctly spelled word incorrect, things not being where I put them and parrots in my list of most annoying things...

Iphones are quite capable of handling any website, but many major sites assume that on a mobile phone what we must want is a version of the website with big buttons but an eighth the information. They then forward me to this useless hell hole every time I visit. The only site smart enough to let me turn off this "feature" is wikipedia. Every single time I go to some sites they waste my time loading a scaled down version of the page that is useless, and make me find the hidden link that will turn it off... The only site other than wikipedia I have seen be rational is the San Francisco Gate. They make me click to enter the mobile site, not click to leave it. That way if there is someone who prefers a webpage with half the utility they can have it, while the rest of us don't have to waste our time. Best though are sites like the New York Times that treat phone users the same as PC users.

Grit

I have become increasingly convinced that obsessiveness is more important to success than IQ. I know many brilliant people who don't get much done, and less smart people who get a great deal done. The difference really does seem to be obsessiveness. Anyways there is a great article in the boston globe on the subject.

This explains many things: How can low IQ Austic people master such difficult skills? Why are adopted children closer to their adoptive parents in most measures of success(say college graduation), when they are closer to their birth parents in both IQ and personality? Why did I barely understand anything in Algebra or Geometry but go on to get an A in calculus and get a perfect score on the GRE math section? Whenever I have decided I am smart I inevitably go into decline. I can keep up with almost anyone but only if I am working as hard or harder than them.

Canadian Rolemodels

While it is an admittedly small sample size I have never met anyone who had spent significant time in both the U.S. And Canada who didn't greatly prefer the Canadian system. At this point we spend nearly twice as much as them and by almost any measure of patient well-being they beat us.

The LA times has a great article pointing this out.

Not quite bottom

I am getting pretty close to calling bottom in the housing market. It has really fallen a spectacular amount. There are a few facts still making me think it may go a bit longer though:

Default rates on mortgages in California are 9.5%. That number is huge! One in ten home owners can't afford, or refuses, to pay for their home. A recent historical figure is 60% of defaults go to foreclosure. That means it is reasonable to think that within the next couple years 6% of California homes will be sold as foreclosures. I can't imagine any sort of rebound under those circumstances.

Next, I am predicting the end of the bubble to be the inflation adjusted start of the bubble. Actually the trough before this bubble was in 1997 and home prices may have been legitimately too low at that point. So I have maintained that 2000 price levels are where the crash stops. There is no philosophical reason commodities beat inflation in the long run unless their supply is limited. Housing is no exception.

Looking at Case-Shiller(click on the graph if it is unclear), which follows individual homes as they are bought and sold and is therefore immune to the phenomenon that average home prices are being brought down because expensive homes just aren't selling at all, it is pretty clear we have a ways to go in the drop. We went from 225-150, and will likely settle at 100(I am not sure it is inflation adjusted, if not something like 125 may be bottom). Either way we are more than half way to the bottom.




Another way to see we are closer to the bottom than the top is the case shiller graph in percentages. The most rapid percent drop in prices is probably that peak a few months behind us. If my prediction is correct the area below the curve will equal the area above the curve from 2000-2006. That much of a fall would actually leave a surprising amount of gain since 1997 since during those years home prices were increasing by 4-10% a year. This means a worst case scenario would probably go farther than my prediction and meet 1997 prices.

Limiting health insurance companies

For some time now I have been complaining that one of the biggest issues in health care is that insurers need to be required to take any patient that wants in. Recently insurance companies have taken to refusing to cover people with pre-existing conditions, as well as trying to kick out those who are very sick. Allowing them to do so ruins the entire reason for insurance companies to exist. The healthy must pay for the sick in any reasonable insurance plan.

Luckily Congress seems to agree with me:

The House bill, for example, would require that all new policies sold on or off the exchanges must offer yet-to-be-determined “essential benefits.” It would prohibit those policies from excluding or charging higher rates to people with pre-existing conditions and would bar the companies from rescinding policies after people come down with a serious illness. It would also prohibit insurers from setting annual or lifetime limits on what a policy would pay. All this would kick in immediately for all new policies. These rules would start in 2013 for policies purchased on the exchange, and, after a grace period, would apply to employer-provided plans as well.

This one policy alone makes me support the Democrats plan. I am still a bit skeptical though for the plan as a whole. Any reasonable plan needs to ensure that the total costs of healthcare are kept down. So far I haven't seen any sign that the bills in congress take this seriously.

Obama has it made

There are few things better for a President than a recession at the start of his term. The reason is that whenever there is a recession everyone starts yelling about how the sky is falling. Then, usually, things get better fairly quickly. Judging by today's GDP numbers the recession will be over by the end of the year. After that much of a drop in GDP, the odds that GDP will be rising at the next election are really high. That gives Obama two years to look important, than walk into the next election able to talk about how he held off the second great depression.

Congress on the other hand.... Well there are reason's the democratic congress had approval ratings nearly as low as Bush. They seem entirely unable to craft anything without ridiculous amounts of silly pork. For example only about 10% of the stimulus money is being spent this year. Since the recession will probably be over by the end of the year that means that the stimulus bill did almost nothing to help. To be fair the republicans were no better, but Obama better start vetoing bills soon or he is going to get walked over by congress.

The only thing that this administration has done that is really impressive was the credit card bill. Even that will need a second round since there were a lot of loopholes.

Credit Reports for Hiring

I hope this bill goes through. The idea that employers can use credit reports for making hiring decisions is silly. It leaves too much risk that people get caught in a cycle where they can't get their credit to improve because they don't have a job, but can't get a job because they have bad credit. The idea that companies have to do this to protect themselves from fraud is silly. That is what they have criminal background checks for.