1. Paradoxes in measuring the coastline.
2. Is the thirty-year mortgage the result of government subsidy?
3. How do Republicans win elections?
4. The culture that is Brazil: central bank directive that banks can close during World Cup matches.
5. The opening of "Dostoyevsvky Station" is delayed – can you guess why?
6. Should the Kentucky Libertarian Party run a candidate against Rand Paul?
Richarson had a fascinating life. WW1 ambulance driver living in essentially hell. Spends two years working out a weather forecast for a day years before. He does this first mathematical weather forecast by hand. Then he loses the calculation in an attack and finds it again under some coal. Gets it wrong. Publishes it anyway. Figures out his work will be used to help gas people so quits his job. Spend the rest of his life trying to figure out the mathematics to prevent war.
What a double hard mathematician weatherman
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Fry_Richardson#Weather_forecasting
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18524831.500-histories-the-birth-of-weather-forecasting.html
“The culture that is Brazil: central bank directive that banks can close during World Cup matches.”
Not “during WC matches”, but only in the afternoons with matches featuring Brazil.
6. Of course. But don’t try to win.
Argentinian schools will let students watch important matches during school hours. Spain shuts down when La Roja plays against any rival of any importance.
Soccer is to most of the world what the Packers are to Green Bay.
Brazil stops in World Cup, but only in matches featuring Brazil. Everybody leaves work one hour before Brazil play. Banks and stores close their doors and in big cities, is common watch the games on a big screen in public squares. Only TV and others medias works. I have luck to be an economist and not a journalist.
What the Brazilian central bank directive says is that the measure was taken for security reasons and only during Brazil’s matches. I believe that is because, as another comment stated, streets are completely empty during these matches.
No, Dearie, because the length of a river is not defined by the length of its coastline.
Quick translation
The Director of the Central Bank decided to authorize financial institutions to alter their public schedule on the days the Brazilian team is playing in the World Cup this year. On these days, it will not be mandatory to have an uninterrupted schedule for banks between noon and 3pm. Beyond this, the minimum time a bank needs to be staffed will be reduced from 5 hours to 4. The new schedule should be posted in public with, at least two days notice. Similar measures were taken during the last World Cup and reduced security problems for banks and security companies transporting valuables during World Cup matches.
Typical Arnold Kling.
He starts out by saying the US is the only country with 30 years fixed rate mortgages.
Yet it just took a few minutes of goggling to find such mortgages offered in Canada, the UK, Australia and Japan.
I quit checking after that.
Spencer,
Please don’t stop there, go ahead and report the percentage of mortgages in other countries that are fixed rate for 30 years.
spencer,
Amortization over 30 years isn’t the same as a fixed rate for 30 years.
According to an immutable and unimpeachable source:
And a blog entry from the Wall Street Journal: “Outside of the U.S. and Denmark, 30-year fixed-rate mortgages are generally unavailable.”
Yes, they spelled it wrong it is: ДоÑтоеÌвÑкий
Transliterated you see Dostoyevsky, Dostoevsky, Dostoievsky, Dostojevskij, Dostoevski, Dostojevski or Dostoevskij
It seems to me, Ken, that you are almost 100% wrong. Your reference reports “The length of a river is very hard to calculate indeed. It depends on …..the scale of measurement of the river length between source and mouth.” In other words, it is fractal.
I have trouble taking any definition of most of the world that excludes both India and China seriously.
And the #3 country in population, and, to a lesser degree, the #4 country. Brazil is #5, and I don’t know much about soccer culture in Bangladesh and Pakistan.
The exact quote from Kling is:
“The U.S. is the only country with the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage”.
Kling did not say a word about how common the 30 year fixed rate mortgage is in other countries.
Yes, the bulk of mortgages in other countries may not be a fixed-rate,
30 year mortgage, but that is not what Kling claimed.
I’ll stick by my comment about him.
Josh, there’s a hidden assumption in the Wikipedia description of the coastline paradox, which is that the coastline is in fact a fractal. If that’s true, then the distance does diverge as you go to smaller and smaller scales; if not, it will converge.
However, to actually be a fractal, it must always be possible to go to a smaller distance scale. Since our universe is made out of atoms and has a Planck distance, the coastline can’t actually be fractal. All that aside, in practice surveyors have to choose some length scale above the subatomic, and you will get different lengths depending on that choice.
(BTW, I’m a different Ken from the one who appears twice above.)
China is coming on in football. The big European teams tour there in the offseason, Chinese players play in the European leagues. India seems to be sticking with cricket.
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