Sentimental Heart

A New Year…  A great song from She&Him…

 

Cried all night ’til there was nothin’ more 
What use am I as a heap on the floor? 

Oh what can you do with a sentimental heart 

Cried all night ’til there was nothin’ more 
What use am I as a heap on the floor? 
Heaving devotion but it’s just no good 
taking it hard just like you knew I would 

O-o-old habits die hard when you got, when you got a sentimental heart 
Piece of the puzzle, you’re my missing part 
Oh what can you do with a sentimental heart? 

Cried all night ’til there was nothin’ more 
What use am i as a heap on the floor 
Heaving devotion but it’s just no good 
Taking it hard just like you knew I would 

O-o-old habits die hard 
When you got, when you got a sentimental heart 
Piece of the puzzle, I’m your missing part 
Oh what can you do with a sentimental heart? 
Oh what can you do with a sentimental heart? 
Oh what can you do with a sentimental heart? 

PDF Library

I’m taking the short break to arrange my PDF library using BibDesk. What an amazing program! Not only will it re-arrange my files, name them with a consitent naming convention, it will allow me to generate bibliographies at will, and search through my many, many PDFs…

The upside here is that i get to see what i’ve been downloading for the last three years… It’ll be good to revisit the past…

It’s Just Like Telling a Joke

From the O*Net database, i learned something today — oral skills presentation is the most important attribute in an economist is oral communication. We joked about this in seminar today, but in a sense its true. Once you’ve written a paper, you must explain it to people. 

This reminds me of a joke told by Conan O’Brien when he was on Leno’s show. Conan shares something he learned from Stan Laurel (Laurel and Hardy) about telling a joke: ”Always do this. Tell the audience what you’re going to do. Do it. And then tell them it has been done.”

Tell them what you are going to do! How is the paper related to other papers? Lots of people ask this question. You want to reassure people that your work is part of the larger story of scientific advance. This is also a practical thing as well: when you want to come up with new work, you look at whats been done and think of ways to extend them.

 Do it! What is the motivation? Really good papers are of the small model kind — present stylized facts and construct a model as a way to interpret the data, and then test your interpretation. Its good to have some kind of empirical regularity at the heart of your paper. There are exceptions, such as pure theory or pure empirical/econometric work.

Tell the its been done! What is the intuitive interpretation of your model? Relate your model to the motivation you were talking about earlier, and to the results of the papers that inspired you that you copied from.

google chrome is fast!

lemme join the chorus — google chrome is fast!

3 AM

SFO International Terminal, Departure Lobby at 3AM

Stolen!

Arghh! my three year old bike got stolen! Arghhhhh! Luckily i have a road bike, which i will now nail down to the ground everytime i use it.

Nora Ephron confuses me

Wasting time today i stumbled onto this Op-Ed by Nora Ephron in the NYTimes. The writing itself is a witty diversion, while not saying anything profound or offensive. This is what an ‘Ephron-ish’ romantic comedy is all about and is generally what happens during a first date.

She writes winningly about incorrectly inferring causation:

THE other day I felt a cold coming on. So I decided to have chicken soup to ward off the cold. Nonetheless I got the cold. This happens all the time: you think you’re getting a cold; you have chicken soup; you get the cold anyway. So: is it possible that chicken soup gives you a cold?

I was confused with her second paragraph:

I will confess a bias: I’ve never understood the religious fervor that surrounds breast-feeding. There are fanatics out there who believe you should breast-feed your child until he or she is old enough to unbutton your blouse. Their success in conning a huge number of women into believing this is one of the truly grim things about modern life. Anyway, one of the main reasons given for breast-feeding is that breast-fed children are less prone to allergies. But children today are far more allergic than they were when I was growing up, when far fewer women breast-fed their children. I mean, what is it with all these children dropping dead from sniffing a peanut? This is new, friends, it’s brand-new new, and don’t believe anyone who says otherwise. So: is it possible that breast-feeding causes allergies?

Huh?

To be clear, the essay is supposed to be silly and she doesn’t have anything against breast feeding, or chicken soup. What i’m confused about is the logic of her second paragraph.

Got Power!

Yahoo! 

No Power! 2

Still no power. I managed to speak with a power customer service person. They say they don’t know when power will be restored! Incredible. I visited the nearest safeway, and they too still have no power. I don’t mind not having power, except for the damn cold and rain. I have water, and i suppose food is about a 10 minute bike ride away. I can shower at the nearby gym and i have internet access at the university. I need to get rid of all my stuff in my refrigerator, which by now is warmer than the outside. I got a couple of candles, so at least i can read by candlelight tonight. Without heat, it gets to about 50 degrees, which is just fine.  

No Power!

There hasn’t been power where i live since 7 am. (at least -thats when i woke up and checked) I’ve been given assurances that this probably won’t last the night. Thank the powers up above for Univeristy power.