- Life Imitating Computer Games? (Oh I Hope Not)

Battlefield 3 is very nearly a perfect computer game for gun guys. There are hundreds of different weapons, each in different calibers, and with dozens of attachments, scopes, and other features available. Each attachment offers both an advantage and disadvantage. A suppressor for example will prevent you from showing up on the player map when you fire but will cause greater bullet drop at long range. A heavy barrel means better aimed accuracy but greater weight. It goes on and on like that.

Plus all the people you play against are other humans. I can't tell you how satisfying it is to have their sniper on that side of the ridge shooting at you while you're shooting at him from this side. Well... when you hit him it's satisfying. And I've gotten pretty good at that. But in truth, I'm really just an average player. I have too much going on in my life to be really good at computer games. Real dedication to them can take hundreds of hours.

Take this mildly frightening example. A man has played the classic Game "Civilization 2" for ten years. The game was extremely well regarded for it's complexity and similarity to the realpolitik world of global interaction. And the fact that he's played the game steadily for 10 years has allowed him to take the game far into the future. This says terrifying things both about him and civilization as well:

The year is 3991 A.D. Multiple nuclear wars have decimated the planet, melting ice caps and leaving the world useless for farming. The only land left for the three remaining superpowers to lord over are mountain tops. Those superpowers — the Celts, Vikings and Americans — have been waging war for 1,700 in-game years. And it doesn't look to be ending anytime soon.

"Peace seems to be impossible," writes Lycerius. "Every time a cease fire is signed, the Vikings will surprise attack me [he plays as the Celts] or the Americans the very next turn, often with nuclear weapons - even when the U.N forces a peace treaty. So I can only assume that peace will come only when they're wiped out. It is this that perpetuates the war ad infinitum."

Roughly 90 percent of the world's population is dead in the game, due to famine and nuclear fallout. It's not a pretty picture, though it is a totally fascinating one. But it gives rise to one big question: Who the heck would play a single game for nearly 10 years?

Maybe the Derb was right about his eternal pessimism on the future of mankind. Or maybe this guy is just nuts and needs to get out of the house a little.

Black Glutinous Rice Dessert

Originally a Thai dessert (I think), I made sure that the black glutinous rice is only just cooked (when they started to split), instead of cooking them until soft. The texture of the rice is crispy outside and soft (but not soggy) inside, making the dessert much more interesting to eat.

As many South-East Asian desserts, we drink the liquid as well, which is sweetened with sugar. Coconut milk is poured on top or mixed in the dessert, making it more creamy and fragrant.


Ingredients:

2 cups Black Glutinous Rice
1.5 - 2 cups Granulated sugar
1 can coconut milk


Method:

1. Wash the rice and drain the water. Add the rice to a large pot, and add cold water on top until it filled 1/2 of the pot.

2. Bring to boil. Turn the fire down to low-medium, and add 1 cup of sugar. Stir till dissolved.

3. Cover and boil for approximately 25 minutes, making sure that there is enough water to cover the rice.

4. Check that the rice is at the right consistency. The skin should have started to split. Then try a few. The rice should be done when they are crispy and slightly chewy but not starchy nor soggy.

5. Pour in more sugar until the right sweetness, and then add the coconut milk. Remove from fire and stir until combined.

6. Can be served hot or cold.

- What Exactly Does He Mean... Compromise?!

Eric Holder:

"I want to make it very clear that I am offering – I myself – to sit down with the Speaker, the chairman, with you, whoever, to try and work our way through this in an attempt to avoid a constitutional crisis, and come up with ways, creative ways, in which to make this material available."

What the hell is he talking about? Is there any valid reason for an Attorney General to withhold documents from a Congressional committee charged with oversight? When he says a "constitutional crisis" does he mean that tossing the obviously and openly racist attorney general out on his kiester for obstructing a duly authorized investigation into the death of US law enforcement officers, will cause some sort of constitutional issue?

The water's looking pretty deep for Eric from here.

- Discussing The "Smart Fraction"

I had a very interesting discussion with a friend this past week about something called "The Smart Fraction". The theory goes like this. On a nation-state level, per capita GDP and mean IQ correlate pretty well - even better if you exclude a few reasonable outliers like Qatar for its oil revenue and Barbados for tourism. This is true whether the economy is an advanced economy or a developing economy, and is independent of the size of the population.

Without making your eyes glaze from the math, the basic "Smart Fraction" theory states that in order to maintain a modern "developed" economy, you need a certain percentage of people with a higher than average IQ (average being the global average) to do those jobs that require an excess of intelligence.

Civil engineers, systems designers, doctors, chemists, bankers , software engineers and many other intellectually demanding jobs make up a set percentage of any modern economy. And the number of these jobs required to sustain your modern economy scales with population. So if the percentage of your population that meets that requirement is below a certain threshold, then there simply aren't enough of them to keep a modern economy going. Either you import the 'smart' people from elsewhere, or things just 'don't work'.

I had to confess, this had never occurred to me. I always assumed that if you have enough people you have enough smart people. But the data would reasonably lead one to believe otherwise. Think about Nigeria for example. It's Africa's most populous country and I know from personal experience that there are a ton of REALLY smart Nigerians. I've met dozens and worked with many on and off throughout my career. I'm exposed to brilliant Nigerians all the time. But the IQ of Nigerians is below the global average. And even though there are a great many brilliant Nigerians, the percentage of the population that's brilliant is actually quite small.

Since the percentage of smart people in Nigeria isn't high enough, they can't sustain a modern economy. Meanwhile, Nigerian culture is still dominated by it's lower than (global) average mean IQ. So instead of those brilliant Nigerians staying home and inventing Africa centric Facebook Apps, founding Lagos based Venture Capital firms, or developing the Nigerian pharmaceutical industry, they spend their time trying to figure out how to steal from one another, inventing online inheritance scams, or fleeing to London or NY where their brilliance will be rewarded.

As you can probably imagine, I found the idea very interesting.

So for a the sake of argument let's accept that premise - that a modern economy requires a certain percentage of above average IQ people working in highly productive positions in order to sustain it. If that's so, then I think this raises an interesting question about the future of our economy here in the US, particularly if we extrapolate the current socioeconomic trends. Imagine for instance that instead of doing productive things in the private sector, a great many of our intelligent people are deciding that there is a better future for them working in government instead. Government does not require a higher than average IQ (as is evidence by most of Congress), but it's employees can game the system to arrange for higher compensation than a free market would provide them. So instead of adding value to the economy, they only add rules for others.

Suppose at the same time, we also put social welfare programs in place that hand out a comfortable existence to anyone who applies - essentially importing a huge population of people who may not be below average, but are certainly not a part of the "Smart Fraction". Both of these policies will drive the 'smart fraction' down, lowering the per capita GDP. Theoretically it could be lowered enough to drive the world's dominant economy out of the 'developed world' and into the third world.

This is a long way from the most likely scenario of course, but it's at least reasonable speculation. But roughly a third of our population can't even discuss it (and must declare it an unspeakable heresy) because it represents uncomfortable truths for them. It's too ... controversial... too awkward. It points to facts that they are emotionally incapable of facing.

But that doesn't make the facts any less persuasive. And for those of us who are able to rise about our sentiments on such issues, I think there is opportunity in accepting the truth before others can. I think there is money to be made on this information. I'm not quite there yet, but I'm thinking about it. And I've found that people are able to accept anything if it is both 1: The Truth, 2: Profitable to them.

Maybe that's the key to accepting the facts on the issue of IQ heritability.

Clay's 1st Birthday Cake - Rainbow Cake

Ton Ton is our nick for Clayton

Although Clay's birthday was last month, we did a bigger celebration when we went to London to meet up with our family during the Jubilee weekend. As my parents live in Hong Kong, it's not often we get to gather together like this.

I was planning to make a 3D bear cake for his birthday celebration, but I had to do a last minute change of plan when we were hit by a heat wave. It was soooo hot I just couldn't bear the thought of making a complicated cake! So I went for the simpler option instead - Rainbow cake.

It wasn't quite a rainbow as I've only used 3 colours, but I thought it was quite nice for a 1st birthday, and it was made with my delicious sponge recipe with a cute marble/ rainbow effect.

Everything was perfect until I decided, yet once again, to touch the cake while it was still hot. I tried flipping it upside down, to get the bow shape the right way up. But because the cake was still soft, and the top was not flat, the cake fell apart after being flipped over.

I guess that just shows that sometimes you can improve your personality, but you can never change it! I patched the top up with whipped cream and decorations, and it seemed like no one has noticed. The cake was moist and soft, but probably a bit too colourful to eat?

Anyway, it was lovely to have everyone there for his first birthday, and he had a lovely time.

Woodchuck mama and four young woodchucks

Yikes! i thought there was one, then two, then three- but there seem to be four baby woodchucks on this latest video. Darling until they eat the garden. I have several woodchuck posts on this blog, put woodchuck in the search bar to the right to view.

- They Will Ask, “What Do You Have?”

I have taken a quick look at some of the opinion pieces out there, which almost pray that the Supreme Court will save at least the popular parts of Obamacare.  I don’t pay much attention to the chattering class.  It interferes with the peace and serenity I find in my own little world, where I can read actual transcripts and Supreme Court opinions.  Then I can make my own guess how Justice Kennedy will decide whether the commerce clause can support the individual mandate. 

Tom has cautioned me to keep my writing “accessible.”  So I have tried to write as plainly as I can about how severabilitymay heave all of Obamacare into the dustbin of history.  I have also talked about how the judge made substantial effect on commerce test upset the balance our framers struck between state and federal power.   So now, being the kind of guy who confounds whoever tells him what to do, I will try to make the inaccessible accessible.  The conventional wisdom makes Justice Kennedy the swing vote in almost any case.  So the punditocracy impress each other by conjuring the middle ground of any old issue, and then saying which way he may swing.  Instead, I have looked at what seems important to Justice Kennedy - federalism. 

At the root of our federal system is the Westphaliannotion that the individual States possess inviolable autonomy to regulate economically, while the federal government ensures the peace by facilitating free commercial intercourse.  After all, our founders knew well that Europe’s then most destructive conflict, the twin Thirty Years War and Eighty Years War, ended in 1648 when the combatants recognized exclusive sovereignty of each party over its own lands.  They also knew Westphalian peace gave rise to a patchwork of German principalities that taxed and inspected commerce until they all impoverished their subjects.  As a result, the founders created an innovative American federal/state balance, which lit an engine of peace, stability and economic growth. 

I think Justice Kennedy understands the importance of federalism, because in his concurring opinion in U.S. v. Lopez (Yay!), he summarized the history of the Court’s commerce clause jurisprudence.  He then wrote that, “only concerning [federalism] does there seem to be much uncertainty respecting the existence, and the content, of standards that allow the judiciary to play a significant role in maintaining the design contemplated by the Framers.”  He mused that, “There is irony in this, because … federalism was the unique contribution of the Framers to political science and political theory.” 

He even quoted an opinion he penned, that states, "Federalism serves to assign political responsibility, not to obscure it."  FTCv. Ticor Title Ins. Co., 504 U.S. 621, 636 (1992).  There, the Court found title companies immune from federal price fixing regulations, because they followed state regulations: “Immunity is conferred out of respect for ongoing regulation by the State.”  Justice Kennedy understands, I think, that a clear and understandable division between State and federal power makes our national experiment more profitable, while he also observed in Lopez that commerce clause cases have not been marked, “by a coherent or consistent course of interpretation.”  History seems now to present an opportunity for Justice Kennedy to leave a lasting impression in an area of law he understands well, and finds attractive. 

I have stated many times that Obamacare stands apart from the rest of the commerce clause cases, because it requires Americans to enter into an unwanted contract.  Gibbons v Ogden notes that long ago the States were at serious odds, nearly taking up arms, because New York confiscated the boats and other property of New Jersey mariners involved in navigation, and therefore “commerce.”  So the Court had something meaty to sink its commerce power teeth into.  With Obamacare, there is no ongoing confiscation of property used in commerce, or anything of the like.  There are only healthy people, who don’t want to buy health insurance and who now are facing a fine because of it.  There is an "absence" of commercial activity.  The substantial effect on commerce came into existence, only after Obamacare was passed. 

So a collective shudder went through the punditocracy when Justice Kennedy asked Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, right out of the box, “Can you create commerce in order to regulate it?”  His later colloquy continued it:

And here the government is saying that the Federal Government has a duty to tell the individual citizen that it must act, and that is different from what we have in previous cases, and that changes the relationship of the Federal Government to the individual in a very fundamental way.

He also asked, “Can you identify for us some limits on the Commerce Clause?”  The answer is there are none, as long as Congress satisfies the substantial effect on commerce test. 

At the end of the day, all this boils down to whether the Department of Redundancy Department can make Johnny Strablerbuy health insurance.  I think Justice Kennedy will say, “No,” even if I can’t picture Anthony tooling down the road on a Triumph next to Meatball.