I recommend a fixed height standup desk. Like the Jerker from IKEA. This setup cost $160.

I fidget. A lot. I prefer a stool to a sit down desk. I can stand, lean, sit, stretch, dance, whatever. I got this horrible stool for free.

Your knees will appreciate a cushion floor mat, as shown, $30.

I first used a standup desk about 10 years ago. On the advice of my chiropractor. Helped me lose 30lbs, strengthened my back, made me feel important. Many of my coworkers followed suit.

The most comfortable height for the work surface is just below my elbow, when I’m standing upright.

(IKEA discontinued the Jerker model, sorry.)

Solution: Use cell phones to estimate crowd sizes.

The location of mobile devices are being tracked in real-time. There have been various pilot projects for real-time (vehical) traffic monitoring using cell phones.

Use known crowd sizes, like sporting events and concerts, to calibrate the estimating technique. Gather data over time, to adjust for changes in cell phone adoption.

Grennwald suggests that any one who believes corporations are not people should answer these questions.

Here’s my reply:

From: Jason Osgood
Date: January 25, 2010 21:48:46 PST
To: GGreenwald@salon.com
Subject: Are Churches People Too?

Hi Glenn-

“Do you believe the FBI has the right to enter and search the offices of the ACLU without probable cause or warrants, and seize whatever they want? …How about your local business on the corner which is incorporated?”

Churches can be incorporated. Are churches people too?

Organizations (groups of people) are different from individual persons. Maybe those differences need to be spelled out.

Cheers, Jason

I recently had sinus surgery. The situation became urgent. My surgeon needed records and images held by another specialist.

I had to call ahead, request the records, drive across town, fill out some paperwork, and then hand deliver my records to my surgeon. It slayed me. If only these people were using my software.

Our healthcare information systems have a lot of room for improvement.

FYI, Dr. Mary Starkebaum (GP), Dr. Karen Lin (ENT), and Dr. Leonard Altman (Allergy) are all awesome. Also, the people at Northwest Ambulatory Surgery Center are top notch; they took great care of me.

Seems like a pretty straight forward problem.

The current official unemployment rate is based on people. That’s wrong. Doesn’t account for overworked, unemployed, multiple jobs, shared work, etc.

The correct way is to measure how much work could be done if everyone worked full time (40 hours per week) vs how much actual work is done.

What would that look like? Hmmm…

How many people are capable of working? What I’d call the working age population.

How many hours could they potentially work? Maybe assume 2040 per year.

How many jobs are there? Should be easy to determine from tax receipts.

How many hours are worked? A bit harder. Assume salaried employees are overworked.

Adjust the numbers for students, the disabled, vacations, sick leave, etc.

Plug in the numbers, turn the crank, and voila: a ratio showing actual vs potential hours worked.

Nice and simple.

All the types of unemployment economists (and policy makers) use just muddy the waters.

We definitely have the computing power to figure this stuff out in near real-time.

The idea is to prevent whaling. How would you do that? Easy: neutralize the whaling boats.

You’ll see from the video that Sea Shepherd tries to block the whaling vessel. Direct physical confrontation. Dumb idea. The little boat is no match for the big whaling vessel. The Japanese also have fast harpoon boats and security vessels, outnumbering Sea Shepherd. (Plus use satellite tracking to find the protesters. Those Japanese are serious about killing them whales.)

To be effective, Sea Shepherd needs to adopt guerrilla tactics. They also need to stop the whaling without damaging property or hurting people. Easy. Here’s my idea:

Attach water-filled balloons to the boats. Then the boats can’t move (easily).

Attach the balloons as far below the water line as possible. Once attached, the balloons inflate, acting as drags on the boat. The balloons need to be water filled, so they’re not buoyant, preventing easy removal. The goal is to force the boat to return to dock.

Deploy the balloons with a mix of strategies. Torpedoes for hit and run attacks. (Don’t just stand there and let them use their water cannons on you. Duh.) Mine fields if you can predict where the whalers are going. Robot submarines if you want to attach the balloons while the whaler is still in dock. (Trigger the balloons once the boat is at sea.)

Balloons could be developed and manufactured for far less than those stupid trimarans. Make it a design competition and get free help from bored engineering students.

I have lots of meds. It physically pains me to toss the empties in the trash.

Even better question:

Why even have bottles? I’d be fine with zip lock baggies or something. The script details could be printed directly on the bag.

I’d support any innovation to reduce the amount of packaging material. Ditto making that packaging recyclable.

There should be a design competition.

Fine. The correct response is to place a 100% tariff on Chinese imports.

China needs us more than we need them. We can make our own stuff. Whereas China has no one else to buy all their stuff.

China owns ~$800b of our debt. As we learned from Donald Trump, borrow enough and you own the bank. Let the dollar crash. China’s advantage will disappear. A lower dollar leads to more American exports.

China will cry uncle when the economic pain causes more social unrest than they can manage. Perhaps 400m unemployed, angry Chinese citizens will suffice.<p>
Then we say: Oops, big misunderstanding. Tell you what. You agree to meet these new improved aggressive emission reduction targets, we’ll drop the tariffs. Everyone will be happy again. Deal?

Cross posted to WashBlog here.

Another good reason to move to all mail balloting for our elections.

Background

The service an exchange provides to the market is liquidity. More than matching buyers and sellers, more than clearing transactions, an exchange’s “specialists” have their own cache of stocks so that there’s always some available for potential buyers.

Current exchanges operate as continuous double auctions. Meaning buy and sell orders are processed as they come in, as fast as possible.

The Problem

Because transactions are continuous, in near real-time, there’s huge incentive to have the fastest, closest computers submitting buy and sell orders. It’s an information technology “arms race”. The result is unfair advantage for the traders that invest more in their communications infrastructure.

The Solution

Replace the continuous system with repeating discrete double auctions. Create a series of auctions for each listed stock.

Auctions could last 5 seconds or 1 hour, adapting the frequency (and duration) of the auctions in response to trading volume.

By predetermining the auction deadline, no trader could have a communications infrastructure advantage (e.g. bigger, faster, closer pipes).

Commentary

Exchanges have opening and closing auction. The mismatch between these auctions and the continuous trading causes heartache. Having repeating discrete double auctions would simplify matters.

Transaction processing for auctions would be more simple and robust, compared to continuous trading.

Setting a minimum auction duration, e.g. no shorter than 5 seconds, might prevent or forestall a computing arms race.

The proposal of repeating discrete double auctions is only meant to address the uneven playing field resulting from the communications and computing arms race. I don’t know if it helps or hurts other identified issues, such as high volume trading, automatic trading algorithms (heuristics), specialists “leading” the market, etc.

This is just a blue-sky idea. I know almost nothing about stocks, finance, trading, etc. I started to read about it. Alas, it’s really not my thing, so I stopped. But I wanted to post this idea, just in case it’s original or helpful.

I couldn’t come up with a better phrase. “Recurring auctions” was on the list.

MMORPGs and other event based simulations have a virtual clock. So would an auction system, I imagine. It’d please me tremendously if game technology found its way into the world of finance.