I am a stud

Okcupid has a really neat blog about who does best on their site. Everything from the type of picture, to race and religion are discussed.

I can only conclude that I am a stud.

First I am white. White guys do the best by far.


So white guys are more likely to get a response to emails they send. Asian, Hispanic, and White girls are more likely to respond to them than any other race. We are never worse than third.

I am not religious.

Match percentage is a pretty annoying way to measure attractiveness. However it is true that on their site, people are more likely to contact people who have a high match percentage. So it is likely that dates are easier to get as an Athiest, Agnostic, Jew, or Buddhist, than a Muslim Hindu or Protestant.

I will be watching closely for when the graphs on profession, income, height, and other factors come out. I imagine that this site will be pretty impressive as time passes.


Other interesting data from the site:

Astrology is bullshit:



Half of men think they are a genius:




They just might be. Women are bad at math. They think 80% of men are less attractive than average. Men however are quite clear about who is of average attractiveness.




Men care a lot more about how attractive a woman is. They are quite good at identifying and contacting these woman. Women spend a lot of time talking to men they believe are less attractive than average.


Women unsurprisingly do worse the older they are:

That trend even holds true even if they girl is hot enough to put a revealing picture on the site.

Federal Spending

One thing Democrats do that I absolutely have never understood, is push federal spending on issues as opposed to state spending. For example, rather than having the individual states create socialized medicine programs, they are pushing the issue in the federal government. Why this is a horrible idea makes sense when you look at a map of how much states pay in federal taxes, verses how much money the federal government spends in them:



Source(click on image to enlarge)

Now look at a map of how states voted in 2008:


Source


Democratic states like Massachusetts, New York, Washington, Oregon, Colorado, Illinois, and California typically pay a lot more in taxes than they get back.

The only Republican states to do so are Texas, and Georgia and they come out almost even.

This has always struck me as remarkable. It is as if Republicans have used Democrats willingness to spend on big federal programs as a way to manipulate them out of their money(over-representation of small states in the senate explains some of it, but small Democratic states like New Jersey, and Connecticut do quite poorly) . That, and Republicans have never been shy about spending fortunes on pork, while pretending to be against big government.

So if Democrats were smart, they would push to cut every ounce of federal spending they could, crow about how well they did at balancing the budget, than rebuild the programs in their own states. They could save something like 20 cents on the dollar on average by doing so.

Government spending on young

This is a fairly impressive statistic:

"the federal government now spends $7 on the elderly for each $1 it spends on children."Source

I suppose that is what happens when old people can vote, and young can't/don't.

Cherokee Popcorn

All that really worked of my gardening last year was the popcorn. Since I still have all of the drip irrigation set up, I may as well put some seeds in the ground.

I am currently deciding between Cherokee Long Ear Popcorn, and Miniature Blue Popcorn. Probably I will go with the first.

Flash Cards

One of the primary techniques I used when I was taking AP tests for subjects that I was not taking as a class was flash cards. I would go through a book, and make flash cards for all of the important aspects. What I put on them would vary, names of important individuals in European History and all the bolded words in the Biology test prep book being the two I remember best.

This was a wildly sucessful technique. For the biology test about 500 flash cards were enough to get me a 5 on the test, while spending a tiny fraction of the time people taking the class spent.

Then I never really did it again. It was just too much work. More importantly teaching myself subjects became less important, and classes became more important. This technique can be done for classes, but typically a decent grade could be earned with far less effort.

I am starting to use this technique again though. I am once again faced with the problem of learning an absurd number of courses worth of information but don't particularly want to take any courses. So I have been going through an undergraduate text book on electrical power systems making flash cards about the most important definitions, conclusions, and equations.

Within a few minutes I remembered why I liked this technique. I have read Maxwell's equations dozens of times, but could never recite them from memory. Within five minutes of starting this, I could. Most equations can be memorized in just a few minutes, meaning it would not be hard to learn in excess of a hundred.

Before this, I never had memorized large numbers of equations. Physicists I have known typically look down on memorizing equations. They can look them up whenever they are needed. It is problem solving techniques they practice.

This doesn't really apply to undergraduate level equations as far as I can tell however. The reason is that so many books just assume you know that stuff cold. If you haven't memorized these prerequisites it is really hard to follow them.Also, a common issue I have is forgetting what all of the variables mean. Flash cards are about the best way around the problem.

79 years of appreciation

A friend of mine made the claim yesterday that we had fifty years of price appreciation in a five year period.

So I went to check it.

From 1950 to 2000 price appreciation averaged 0.5% after adjusting for inflation
From 2000 to 2005 price appreciation averaged 8.2% after adjusting for inflation
[Source]


I quickly did the math. At the 0.5% appreciation rate, it would take 79 years to cause the amount of appreciation we saw in this bubble. Isn't having smart friends wonderful? he even under-stated how bad it was.

Now, about half of that rise has gone away in the previous crash, but we are still only about half way to historical averages. I have no idea if that will happen from a few decades of flat prices, or a few more years of the crash; the December home sales data looked really bad though, so I don't think this market is done yet.

Indian Restaurant

I was invited to go to a Taiwanese beer house last night to celebrate an Engineer at work passing the EIT. At some point I was handed directions by someone, at the top they said simply "Indian Restaurant." My thought was pretty much, well it is early maybe we are getting Indian food, than heading out for beer.

We get there at 5:40 just to discover the place opens at 6pm. So we had some time to kill. Being one to show off my nerdy creation I decided to head back to my car, get my generator, and show people with it. I was not sure how this would go over, everyone in the group was an engineer, and most of them had taken power courses that must have showed them similar devices. I rather expected it would be something they had all seen dozens of times. Despite my expectations, I don't get the impression that many of them had seen anything like it before. Most of the night someone in the group of ten or so people was playing with it.

Anyways, eventually we go into the place. The first thing I see is a totem pole. For some reason it hadn't quite hit me what I walked into. I then notice the waitresses. Lets face it, it is hard not to notice the waitresses. They all Asian girls in matching black mini-skirts and red feathers in their hair.

So, apparently this is a Taiwanese beer house. There is something really odd about a place full of Asians dressed as American Indians.

They didn't seem to exactly serve normal meals, but they had skewers of meat of just about any type that could reasonably be expected. Frog legs, chicken hearts, rotton tofu, and so on. Most of it was surprisingly good, but I don't think I will be trying stinky tofu again. Yes, it does taste like it smells.

I don't imagine anyone I know is looking for an odd bar to go to in an Asian part of LA very often. But if you are, that makes for a fun one. Its reviews on Yelp are all pretty good as well so I can't be the only one who thought it made for an interesting place.