Outrage on the Internet

Recent high profile events show that a type of political consumerism can be effective.  For example, the Clipper's owner Donald Sterling has come under fire for some racist comments he made.  Many basketball players and coaches have spoken out against it and are calling for action such as boycotting of Clippers games.  The CEO of RadiumOne, a large online advertising company, recently had to step down after being found guilty of domestic abuse.  The Mozilla CEO also had to step down after furor over his donation to Proposition 8, the campaign against legalizing gay marriage.  What's interesting about these controversies are that many of the people who objected aren't end consumers but rather employees (like basketball players) or other companies.  It seemed that the leadership of other companies were motivated to speak out because of the attitudes of their employees.  Is political consumerism more effective when the employees are more powerful?  The employees in these cases were basketball players or software developers.  Many of Mozilla and RadiumOne's downstream consumers are also in the tech industry.  Both of these groups happen to be in extremely high demand.  Large public forums (eg. Twitter) seemed to facilitate these events.

Controls in Policy?

Every so often, someone advocates for making the tax bracket indexed on the level of inequality.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/13/business/better-insurance-against-inequality.html?_r=1

Is this the ramblings of an out-of-touch academic?  Maybe.

Sign up for Oroeco!

http://www.oroeco.com/

I'm still not sure what we're useful for, though, actually.  Hopefully we will figure that out soon through looking at user data.

Big Data and Data Science

Big data and data science have been generating a lot of excitement lately.  Excitement is great and all, but more importantly, more substantive articles about its limitations and uses have also been cropping up.  Here are some moderately substantive ones.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/07/opinion/eight-no-nine-problems-with-big-data.html?_r=0

Highlights the general problems with 'big data' but actually it's more about data science as it's practiced in tech firms these days.  The problems aren't explained that comprehensively.  What's nice is that there is an example for each one, though.  

http://www.wired.com/2014/04/your-big-data-is-worthless-if-you-dont-bring-it-into-the-real-world/

This is a bit more substantive.  It makes the argument that big data needs to go from 'thin data' to 'thick data,' where 'thin data' are just traces of activities that are getting collected inadvertently.  'Thick data' is more information about the context of actions.  'Thick data' is probably more useful for making decisions but takes more effort to college, probably requiring one to get out and talk to people.  Then again, it's written by someone who sounds like an advocate of 'the humanities,' who perhaps is trying to justify all the 'qualitative analysis' skills she learned instead of big data analysis.  In fact, its main argument is interesting but largely unsubstantiated.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/523646/the-power-to-decide/

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/523651/startups-embrace-a-way-to-fail-fast/

Good old MIT Technology Review.  The March/April issue had a Business Report on Data and Decision-Making.  It had several articles about trends in how businesses are using A/B testing.

aside : Yes, committing to blogging about an article (that takes more than 20 seconds to understand) is the only way I will ever actually read it much less remember what it said.

Corporate Social Responsibility

I'm taking a class this semester called Governance of Global Production with professor Dara O'Rourke.  He is a cofounder of Good Guide.  http://www.goodguide.com/about

It just occurred to me that he kinda looks like nerdier version of the lead singer of Tool, James Maynard Keenan.

They could be brothers!  or maybe just cousins?

Anyway, I was going to riff on the readings I did this week about corporate social responsibility.

In the past decade or so, the idea that a business should be more concerned with creating "shared value" has been gaining momentum.  This means that businesses have a responsibility to stakeholders beyond their shareholders such as their employees, their local community, and the global environment.  

So far, the prevailing attitude among most business leaders and investors is still that the most important thing to do is to maximize shareholder value.  I think it's safe to say that for the most part, corporations are only interested in sustainability as a way to increase the stock price through improving reputation and thus increasing the value of the brand.  

Even so, within a corporation there are likely to be champions of corporate social responsibility for its own sake.  And there are notable leaders in the corporate world who seem to be truly committed to CSR and sustainability in particular.  O'Rourke specifically singles out Unilever as one of them.  http://www.sustainable-living.unilever.com/

Those committed to CSR wouldn't say (admit) that CSR may sometimes reduce profits.  Instead, they would point out two concepts that change the perspective.  The first is that every corporation exists as part of an economy, where it depends on the well-being of the citizens.  So it may be true that their CSR initiatives actually benefit all companies in their industry not just themselves.  The second concept is that the corporation is planning on sticking around for many years to come.  In terms of game theory, it's a repeated game which can make it beneficial in the very long run to internalize more costs and take others' interests into account.  This is only slightly different from increasing brand value in that it is a more future-oriented perspective.  The brand value motivation would only justify CSR initiatives that would help the corporation get recognition in the near term.

I'm 2048 hero!!

I managed to avoid playing it most of the week, but I still had time to hone my strategy even more!!  I actually got kind of close to 8192...

Anyway...I'm not allowed to play again until the rough draft for my paper is done next week.

Carbon Metrics for Investors

Interest in measuring the GHG footprint and the GHG intensity of investment portfolios is growing!  On the one hand, it's not saying much since so few investors cared in the first place.  Still, it's enough to sustain a growing industry for generating these carbon metrics such as Trucost (and CAMRADATA?).  In fact, Bloomberg terminals (computers for traders) now have a Carbon Risk Valuation Tool.  For the investors that don't care, activist organizations such as 350.org have started calling for them to divest from fossil fuels.  There are also (maybe?) individuals who want to better understand the carbon impacts of their own savings, investments, and retirement plans.

There are several different ways to calculate the footprint for investments, often referred to as financed emissions.  There are then several different ways to calculate the carbon intensities of investments, where the carbon intensity is the carbon footprint normalized by something such as revenue.  This report by the 2 Degrees Investing Initiative presents a good overview of these different metrics.

Really, the metric one uses depends on what it is being used for, what decision it is informing.  These decisions depend on the investor (activist's) theory of change and ethics.  For example, an investor making decisions on how to allocate funds might be purely motivated to minimize exposure to carbon risks.  In other words, it is an investment strategy based on the theory of change that regulations and other future events will make carbon intensive companies less profitable.  The investor behavior is not based on the ethic that it is immoral to invest in carbon intensive companies.  It makes economic and professional sense that this investor should use a metric that will highlight the exposure to carbon risk.

An individual whose money is managed by said investor might think that it is immoral to invest in carbon intensive companies just as they might think it's immoral to invest in tobacco companies.  Then, regardless of what investment strategy was actually pursued, they might care about how much emissions his or investments are "responsible for."

I am working on a report that claims that the carbon metric used by investors to allocate investments doesn't have to be and in fact probably shouldn't be the same one used to evaluate the ethical (social?) responsibilities of the investments.

It Puts the Statistics in the Data Science

Data science is a trendy buzzword.

That doesn't mean I am not interested in it, though.

I'm reviewing my statistics by walking through this tutorial, which will soon be a book 'Statistics Done Wrong.'

I am finding it really helpful.  It highlights several common pitfalls of interpreting statistics.  The language is approachable and clear.

Yaaay!!!

ec-discuss 2048

Someone made an ec-discuss version of 2048!!  It's pretty awesome, although admittedly just a bunch of inside jokes.  I won!

Background information on ec-discuss.  It's actually a very large MIT undergraduate mailing list of the undergraduate dorm East Campus.  At MIT, mailing list permissions can be set so that anyone can join the mailing list so as a result there are many non-residents and alumni still on the list.

Someone might ask about getting help on homework or borrowing hair dye.  These innocuous requests might then snowball into a giant discussion or flame war.  The long email chains are semi-regular occurrences that usually pick up before finals' week or other stressful times when people really want to procrastinate.

In the past few years they have tended to be more inane and jocular in nature.  Some popular topics (regardless of the starting topic) are wanting to unsubscribe, Vlad the Impaler, and stud-finder finders.

2048

got obsessed with this game

http://gabrielecirulli.github.io/2048/

trying to get 4096

i've gotten pretty close...

there are other things going on in my life, but this one is the easiest to blog about.  haha

Environment and Labor Classes at UC Berkeley

I am starting to look at interesting classes I'm interested in at Berkeley.

The Governance of Global Production would be pretty interesting.

This graduate seminar explores critical policy and theoretical questions regarding the governance of global production. The seminar engages current trends in the restructuring of industrial production, distributions of environmental, labor, and social impacts from this production, and new strategies for democratic governance. The course presents existing theories of regulation and governance, assesses market and state “failures,” and critically analyzes emerging responses to the limits of traditional regulation. Using cases from the wood products, electronics, garments, shoes, coffee, food, chemicals, and oil industries, the seminar explores the potentials and limitations of new governance strategies, including: corporate voluntary self-regulation, codes of conduct, multi-stakeholder monitoring systems, certification and labeling schemes, fair trade programs, transparency and reporting initiatives, legal strategies, and international accords and agreements. The course seeks to evaluate why these new institutions and policies have emerged, how they function, and when and under what conditions they can be effective in mitigating environmental, labor, or social impacts of production

Complimenting Girl Brains

How to talk to little girls

Visitors

Last week Amandar and Smark came to visit me in Florida. Here we are with the photographer's dog!

Not Outside Enough

Why I have bad eyesight

I KNEW IT

Although, I have to say, it's not like I never played outside. I used to play tag all the time. But I did not play any sports so I guess it wasn't enough. I don't wish I played sports as a kid, though.

Screw sizes

Useful link about screw sizes for future reference.

Environmental Policy Research Interests

I am planning on approaching some professors at UC Berkeley about research positions. I think I might want to try to sample different projects so that I can get more experience.

I think I am most interested in environmental finance, technology policy, and wealth inequality.

Environmental finance
One thing I've been interested in for a while is the impact of cash flow constraints on environmental resource use in private industry. I think that we could use data from the 2008 financial crisis and look at changes in resource use. There has been a lot of focus on the impact on labor (unemployment) but not labor, energy, and resource use together. I am not sure what results I am expecting. We know that resource use went down, but the question would be whether all the decrease was due to lack of demand, lack of cash flow, relative surplus of labor, or shift in technological development.

Some more conventional lines of research in environmental finance would be evaluating asset and stock pricing according to environmental impacts, defining new financial instruments to fund sustainable business, and evaluating the impact of different accounting practices on environmental asset prices.

The kind of business I am most interested in financing are solar and wind power manufacturing, transportation projects, energy efficient appliance manufacturing, and building projects.

2012 Popularity Contest

Candidates are starting to prepare for the 2012 US Presidential election.

One thing that bothers me is how candidates like to talk about "common sense," and voters say they want someone who has "common sense." Yes, we do want someone who is rational who has priorities aligned with voters' interests, but when people start making policy recommendations it is clear that they are in over their heads. This is especially true when talking about fiscal and monetary policy. A lot of economic policy is actually really technical. There are a lot of qualitative decisions about how to tackle income inequality and long term goals for research or education. However, things like tax rates, budget cuts, and determining interest rates require careful quantitative analysis, not "common sense."

Saying we need a president who just has "common sense" is as ridiculous as saying that we can design a cell-phone using "common sense." Who needs an engineering Phd??? Obviously we just need an antenna, some kind of processor, a screen, a battery, and some buttons. How hard can that be? MikeyP said people would call for "faster radiowaves." Really, that is exactly the kind of thing nontechnical people say when making engineering suggestions.

We need expertise not "common sense." Voters only seem to appreciate this when it comes to national security issues and foreign policy. When will it apply to domestic policy?

Women Are Different...

Male politicians have more sex scandals. Why? Discuss!

Lithium Cell Balancing

Nice article about balancing Lithium Ion cells.

The Backstory : Aggressive Accounting

These days I've also been reading The Great Unraveling by Paul Krugman. It is his NYT columns from 2000-2002 mostly about how bad George W. Bush is. Today I was reading his columns about aggressive accounting and corporate governance. There are two things of note.

In 1995, Congress overrode a veto by Bill Clinton to pass the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act, which made lawsuits against companies and auditors "that engaged in sharp accounting practices."

In 1997-2000, after-tax profits stalled, but the S&P 500, the profits reported to investors grew 46%. Krugman attributes this to the changes in management theory and the advent of "principal-agent" theory. What's sad is that it is a well-meaning idea where managers' pay depends strongly on stock prices so that they have more accountability. I can see how before it may have seemed like managers were inefficient, maybe sometimes too generous to employees, and maybe out of touch with the needs of the company since they did not have as much invested in their own companies. Unfortunately, tying their compensation to stock prices gives them a big incentive to artificially boost those prices regardless of actual performance. The problem is that the real performance of a company will always be somewhat qualitative. It will always be some kind of combination of factors. Any quantitative measure can always be manipulated. That is something Deming said, too.

We are still trying to deal with the effects of these issues today. Back in 2001 I was still in high school and I had no idea who Paul Krugman was. All these things were happening, but I didn't really know. I just knew that Reaganomics and tax cuts are irresponsible. It is kind of weird to get the back-story now, especially knowing that I was there, too. It is a different sensation from reading about things that happened longer ago or in different countries. I am glad that I think I will have a better understanding of things happening going forward, but it's also a little strange knowing that millions of other people will continue to be unaware and just minding their own business as I was.