Academic Earth

Academicearth.org seems like a pretty impressive webpage. It doesn't have much new, and still has far too few courses on it, but it does do a good job of finding college lectures and courses from around other sites, and it also does a good job of rating talks. It is fairly easy to locate the best of the lectures and avoid the worst.



This physics lecture is really how physics should be taught. Most physics courses seem to get bogged down in mathematics without ever giving you much understanding of the world around you. He seems to move seemlessly from talking about abstract concepts, to real world examples of how we have used the ideas.

And the Index Funds win again

I have been convinced for some time that managed mutual funds are little more than a scam. They don't do much better than index funds on average, and the fees you pay for them are high enough that the need to do a lot better than managed funds to make any sense at all.

I therefore cheer on yet another study showing this to be true.

American Environmentalism

It has been pretty clear to me for some time that America is not as far behind Europe in environmental issues as most people seem to think. For example: we produce more electricity from Geothermal, Wind, and Nuclear power than any other country; our experiences with the dust bowl have resulted in us taking soil conservation far more seriously than much of the world; we have developed some of the most effective pollution control systems such as the sulfur trading credits. A newsweek article I just ran into makes this point pretty effectively:

California, with its 37 million people, emits 20 percent less CO2 per dollar of GDP than Germany. It generates 24 percent of its electrical power from renewable fuels like wind and solar, compared with only 15 percent in Germany and 11 percent in Japan. It also has the world's largest solar-power plant (550 megawatts in the Mojave Desert), the largest wind farm (7,000 turbines at Altamont Pass) and the most powerful geothermal installation (750 megawatts at The Geysers north of San Francisco). Although California isn't immune to the economic crisis—its finances are on the brink of collapse, which could translate into growing support for those who argue that green measures cost jobs—its green accomplishments put it at the head of the pack. If California were a country, its economy would rank as the world's 10th largest and could lay claim to be one of the world's greenest.

It seems to me that our main issue is we just use too much oil and coal. We certainly do more of that than Europe does. Once we get that under control we aren't doing so bad though.

Real Estate Supply

There seems to be a commonly held idea that it is population increase that is the primary driver of housing construction in America. For example in the New York Times today I ran into the following statement:

Consider housing starts, which have fallen to their lowest level in 50 years. That’s bad news for the near term. It means that spending on construction will fall even more. But it also means that the supply of houses is lagging behind population growth, which will eventually prompt a housing revival.

This idea while seemingly common sense is actually rather off base. The median sized home has more than doubled in size in the past fifty years, at the same time as the median household size has decreased by about one person. We are living in a lot more space than ever before. The times when the normal family lived in a one room farm house are long gone. This means that it is how much space we want to pay for that will judge how much housing we need. Predicting how much that will change is a far more tricky problem than looking at population growth, and assuming we will need more houses. What if we just decided we wanted to work less hours, and live in smaller houses?

Another way to look at it: It is quite likely the United States population will never double again. Right now it has something like a 72 year doubling time, and almost all of that is from immigration. The birth rate is at the replacement level, and if what has happened in Europe is any guide it is as likely to drop below replacement level as go above it. If however the population does double at the current rate, and we didn't build another house for the next 72 years, just maintaining what we have, than there would still be enough housing for us all to have the amount of square footage that the average American had in 1950. Because population is likely to never double a second time just maintaining what we currently have, and replacing homes destroyed by disaster or neglect, we could get by just fine without ever having to build another home.

Of course, since homes seem to have turned into little more than status symbols we might just decide we can't get by without 5000 square foot homes. Still, I feel safe in saying that Americans would be no happier if we doubled the size of our homes, than if we halved it.

Poor Stock Market

I just ran into this Business Week article. It is pretty stunning just how bad a decade the stock market has had:

During the darkest 10 years of the Great Depression, from September 1929 to September 1939, the stock market dropped roughly 50%, adjusted for inflation. With today's drop in the stock market, the U.S. has now matched that unfortunate milestone. The Standard & Poor's 500-stock index, adjusted for inflation, is now down about 50% over the past 10 years from Feb. 17, 1999 to Feb. 17, 2009.

Of course all the Great Depression comparisons are still pretty silly when we don't even have double digit unemployment rates. Still, it is shocking to me just how bad the stock market has been hammered. Many really safe investments are starting to sound like a better, and better idea because of it.

Deep inside me though lurks a voice screaming "buy low, sell high!" I thought the same a year ago though since the stock market had already had one of its worst decades ever. Apparently having one of the worst decades ever does not imply that it can't get much much worse. Still, I have trouble believing that there really will be another decade drop like the last one.

Gratuitous Graphs

Looks to me like the real estate crash is a little more than half way over. In most cities the best bet for when it is over is when the prices reach their inflation adjusted 2000 levels. Why 2000? Because that was the price people were paying for homes before they expected them to be such amazing investments. Since no one is fooled into thinking homes are a good investment right now they will pay what they think they are worth as a place to live. I could see them getting cheaper than they were in 2000 but outside a few cities that really did get a stronger job market(Merced?) I really can't see them settling at a price higher than it was in 2000. Also the supply of housing in America is particularly high right now because we have been building so much. This factor could easily drive the price of a home to a level lower than it was in 2000, but will make it difficult to justify a higher home price than 2000 in most areas.

Anyways, here are a bunch of graphs from zillow.com. Orange is for the particular city, green is the national average:

Chicago, IL:


Detroit, MI:


Miami, FL:


Los Angeles, CA:


Merced, CA:


Fresno, CA


Clovis, CA


San Jose, CA:


San Francisco, CA:


Las Vegas, NV:


Ithaca, NY:


Buffalo, NY:


Rochester, NY:


Syracuse NY:

Bill Gates

This TED talk from Bill Gates is really quite impressive. It is clear that there are good reasons the man made so much money, and that the world will be a better place because he amassed such a fortune. We absolutely should be making the changes to our education system that he suggests. It is amazing how much time has been wasted forcing teachers to spend more and more time getting degrees that don't help them be better teachers, while ignoring real changes in our system that could help.