It is a bit annoying something that you’ve been shouting from the rooftops for years (and thinking about for decades) is finally taken up by someone with “credentials,” only then is it taken seriously.

Not that I have anything against credentials. They are more valuable and useful than not, and as social signals are even more valuable (though far more counterproductive used in that way). Principally, they serve to sort out the complete crackpots at probably a bit better than the rate of chance. And that is valuable.

I don’t have the stamina nor the interest in pursuing any sort of degree, as the things I can learn from books I can learn much more quickly if I just read them myself and don’t pay $1,200 and a quarter or semester of time for something I can spend 25 hours and $0 learning.

What’s that, most people can’t do that?

Good thing I am not most people, then.

Well in the end it doesn’t bother me that much that I’ll never get credit for the ideas that I had well before the academics who will get the discovery thereof attributed to them, as I have made my mark (and will continue to do so) in the Real School of the market, where it doesn’t matter what credentials you have – all that matters is your P&L.

And at that I have a fucking PhD.

If this post sounds a tad bitter, I am really not. The ideas aren’t that revolutionary (in fact they are obvious), I just had them and took them seriously before I saw anyone else do so. No one stole them from me – like most discoveries, they were in the air. The difference is that I sniffed the air sooner, and in fact when I first started writing about these ideas contra accepted economics, my contentions were considered laughable. Now they are becoming mainstream.

I’ll be glad when this shoddy article quits being cited, about how men and women just can’t be friends.

Fucking Christ, only cloistered academic geeks can credibly produce and cite bullshit like this as they spend so little time in the real world.

Every other normal person in the world ever has had a female or male friend to which they aren’t attracted – and so what if you are attracted? Does that make the person any less of a friend somehow?

Attraction doesn’t mean action, and it doesn’t even mean the desire for action.

At least one commenter utterly destroys the article.

The SciAm summary hugely misrepresents the published data.

For instance: "The results suggest large gender differences in how men and women experience opposite-sex friendships. Men were much more attracted to their female friends than vice versa."

Um, no. On a nine point self-reported scale men and women on average rated their attraction between 3.9 and 4.9. Though men were very slightly more attracted. Similarly:

"[M]ales on the younger end of the spectrum were four times more likely than females to report romantic attraction as a benefit of opposite-sex friendships, whereas those on the older end of the spectrum were ten times more likely to do the same."

Uh, yes. Because merely 10 percent of middle-aged men and 1 percent of middle-aged women listed "the possibility of romance" as a benefit of same sex friendship, the men were technically 10 times more likely. But the real headline (which I find much more surprising) is that 90 percent of middle aged men and 99 percent of middle aged women did NOT find "possibility of romance" to be a benefit of friendship. So treat this article with some caution.

It’s amazing how results can be twisted to fit the societal narrative, even when it makes no sense at all or flatly contradicts them.

A more valid interpretation of the results would be, “Most normal men and women can be just friends, and do so all the time.”

I highly recommend Beasts of the Southern Wild.

It’s a rare film that takes the perspective of a child and treats it as a serious and valid viewpoint. Children after all are not automatons and many of them are smarter and more observant than most of the adults around them (I certainly was).

And it’s an even rarer film – even now – when that child whose viewpoint is adopted is not a boy.

Quvenzhané Wallis as Hushpuppy is amazing and fierce and yet vulnerable and precocious in a realistic way in the film. She really dominates the screen much as Elle Fanning did in Super 8.

And the film itself blends elements of magical realism with harsh reality in a way I’ve not seen before.

We live in times just as mythical and myth-filled as any. I don’t know if that’s the lesson the work was trying to impart, but that’s what I took from it. Very much worth watching.

If I negotiated my salary at work like Obama and the Democrats negotiate for things, I’d be living under an overpass eating banana peels and discarded fast food wrappers.

It’s a general principle in negotiating that you at first ask for much more than you think you are likely to get – rather than as Obama does to make massive concessions from the beginning in the hopes of bringing your opponent to you.

This never works.

For instance, the last time I was up for salary review I did something completely absurd – I demanded a 40 percent salary increase.

I am pretty good at my job and am a bit underpaid, so I can get away with things like that. Now I knew I’d not get 40 percent. But I knew if I didn’t fight for it, I’d get nothing — which is exactly what a lot of people did get.

In fact because my company did not have a great year last year mostly due to acquisition expenses being much larger than expected, most people did not get a raise above inflation nor a large bonus.

However because of my negotiating (and being in a position to do so) I got a raise above 9 percent and my bonus was larger than the year prior. In addition, I got a promotion I didn’t even ask for I think mostly due to my boldness.

That’s how you fucking begin negotiating.

What the hell Obama and team are doing I have no idea, but I’d use words like “sniveling” and “pusillanimous” and “spineless” rather than anything to do with how one should negotiate.

If I were to open a restaurant, I think I’d call it “Grills Gone Wild.”

Here’s what you voted for when you voted for Obama. I know, Romney was no better.

But this is the sentence that really stood out to me the most.

Everywhere the social gains of the twentieth century are either being eroded, or destroyed.

Yes. I’ve long suspected that in the long sweep of human history, the belle epoque might be now, or might have been some time in the recent past. It’s unlikely to be in the future unless we tame fusion (I’d say 20% chance of that) or something similar.

After Rome fell, it took Western society nearly a thousand years to recover. This time, we won’t have the convenient crutch of fossil fuels to depend on.

Christmas lights at the Florida Botanical Gardens.

Most people hate fantasy. I understand this – I don’t like much of it myself.

I am not sure exactly why I don’t like much of it, but I think for most people it is because it serves to painfully highlight the shortcomings and failures of their own lives.

But as I read review after review trashing The Hobbit, I thought most of them were rather likely coming from a perspective of hating fantasy than any particular flaws in the movie per se.

Oh, I am quite sure The Hobbit is not nearly as good as the other Lord of the Rings movies. In my opinion the first hour-and-a-half of The Fellowship of the Ring is the finest bit of moviemaking ever committed to film, and is likely never to be exceeded.

So walking into the theater expecting that is therefore likely to result in disappointment.

The fact is, I’d much have preferred the original idea for the Lord of the Rings prequels, which were to diverge from The Hobbit and to follow Gandalf’s adventures during the years between the first defeat of Sauron and his resurgence. That would have been amazing.

But do read this review and this review which I suspect are more fair to The Hobbit than the others trashing it.

I’ll let you know when I see the film myself.

I only like maybe 1/10 of Tegan and Sara’s music (but what I do like, I like very much). However, it’s to their benefit that they often look like futuristic android Blade Runner women. I can roll with that.

I’ve always thought Jaron Lanier was an irritating douchebag, and here he goes again demonstrating just why.

“I’d had a career as a professional musician and what I started to see is that once we made information free, it wasn’t that we consigned all the big stars to the bread lines.” (They still had mega-concert tour profits.)

“Instead, it was the middle-class people who were consigned to the bread lines. And that was a very large body of people. And all of a sudden there was this weekly ritual, sometimes even daily: ‘Oh, we need to organize a benefit because so and so who’d been a manager of this big studio that closed its doors has cancer and doesn’t have insurance. We need to raise money so he can have his operation.’

Does he not see the problem is worship of corporations and lack of things such as public health care, worker protection, and regulation of the power of corporate entities? Can he really be that dumb?

That’s not the only stupid thing he says in the article (in fact, everything he says is symptomatic of severe brain damage), but I do know if I were a budding band or musician I’d be doing everything possible to get my music on every file sharing service I could possibly find – as really the only thing valuable to a musician early on is exposure.

And the numbers I’ve seen bear this out, and firmly oppose what Lanier is stating.

I’ve always hated the guy, ever since I remember reading about him in the late 80s. He’s always been a putz, so I expect nothing less of him than this sort of thing.