Seth's Blog

Tyler Cowen has written a short Kindle book called The Great Stagnation. I have a lot to say about it. This post is about the context, how it fits into a bigger picture. In a later post I’ll discuss its ideas. (more…)

In a comment on a previous post about lack of convincing evidence for climate models — the ones that predict catastrophe — I wrote:

At any time — right now, 5 years ago, 10 years, 15 years ago –” the people who work with those models and claim we should pay attention to their predictions could make/have made a set of predictions: next year, the year after that, and so on. Then, as time passed, we would have found out if the models predict correctly. The modelers haven’t done that.

From this talk by Richard Muller, a Berkeley physicist, I learned of two instances where the modelers did what I said they haven’t done. (more…)

The defense minister of Germany resigned after it was discovered that his doctoral dissertation (on constitutional law) was full of plagiarism.

In other news, the Canadian government has yet to revoke Ranjit Chandra’s Order of Canada. Oxford University has yet to say that Professor Leslie Iversen’s plagiarism violated their norms.

My friend Carl Willat writes:

Last June I went to the dentist for a checkup and cleaning, fully expecting my gums to be in great shape since I had been diligently using my Braun Oral B electric toothbrush.  To my surprise and disappointment the hygienist told me the pockets had actually become deeper and that she was seeing bleeding in many places, to the point where she was recommending I have my roots planed, a painful and expensive procedure I had undergone once before many years ago. So of course I went home and started taking the flax seed oil and ground flax seed ["a couple of tablespoons a day of oil, plus random amounts of ground flax seed"] as you had recommended.  I also started using a Sonicare toothbrush at that point so it’s hard to figure out the degree to which either variable might be responsible, but today she said my gums were much better, and had hardly bled at all during the measurement of the pockets. All talk of root planing was forgotten.

According to this, root planing costs $400-$1600. After Tyler Cowen started drinking flaxseed oil (2 T/day), he no longer needed gum surgery.

It is hard to get well-preserved flaxseed oil in Beijing (it goes bad at room temperature) so I now take 66 g/day ground flaxseed instead of 2 T/day flaxseed oil. I add it to yogurt twice/day. I don’t know if ground flaxseed is healthier or less healthy than flaxseed oil but it is much less trouble. Preservation is no problem (flaxseeds can be stored at room temperature) and ground flaxseed requires zero willpower to eat with yogurt. I had to push myself a little to drink the oil.

Andrew Gelman links to this post about intellectual working conditions. It reminds me of something I do every day that still amuses me. I keep track of whether I am working or not — and I count making tea as working. This helps me get started: I start by making tea. The opportunity to mislead myself (appear more efficient than I am, get something for nothing) makes me want to start working.