Guitar Exercise of the Week

This week's guitar exercise is by request: faithful Stationary Waves reader ZK asked me to put together a sweep picking exercise, which I have done.

We will call this the first of two sweep-picking exercises. The reason I'm splitting this up is because, in my opinion, the major difficulty with sweep-picking (i.e. playing arpeggios across sequential strings in a single up-stroke or down-stroke) is not the sweep itself, but rather the transition.

So, when I developed this exercise I decided to focus on passages that would emphasize the transitions, rather than the sweeps. Focusing on these transitions should give you better control over the plectrum. You won't simply and wildly be trying to sweep, resulting in a garbled mess. When you get this exercise down right, it should sound pretty good at both slow speeds and high speeds. Sometimes it can actually be more difficult to sweep slowly than quickly, because you have to have a lot of picking control to give each note the proper rhythmic duration. That tight, metronomic accuracy is what makes the difference between a killer sweep-picked arpeggio and a garbled mess.

Exercise #6: "Turning Heads"
The only real oddity in this exercise is that it begins with an upstroke. This may seem illogical to you at first, but when you start cycling through this exercise over and over, you will eventually understand why it's more comfortable to begin with an upstroke.

For those of you unfamiliar with the notation, the "v" in tablature indicates an upstroke. The squared-off "u" indicates a downstroke.

Here it is, without further ado:

Start this one slowly, at something like 70bpm (or maybe even less, depending on your skill level) before you start tackling the high speeds. Remember, the goal here is picking control. You'll have better success if you make each note sound very nice at slow speeds than you will if you try to burn through this one too early. We want a clean, appealing passage, not a garbled mess.

When you're comfortable with this one, I'll post a second sweep-picking exercise that involves more strings and more notes. You'll find that one much easier if you have a good handle on this one.

This exercise also functions as an excellent warm-up.

Good luck!

Discussion

I only have one rule when it comes to comment moderation: No robots. This means, I delete anything that looks like mindless spam. I don't mind if someone advertises their own blog or website on my blog, but only if a human being does it. If it's a line of code, it most likely gets deleted automatically by Blogger. The few that occasionally filter in get deleted by me most of the time.

I do not delete any of the following:

• Comments with which I disagree
• Comments that lead to tangential discussions
• Comments by specific people or members of particular groups
• Jokes, profanities, vulgarisms, etc.

Thinking about it just now, I imagine I would probably delete an embedded picture if it could be deemed offensive by some of my readers. (A link to the same picture would be okay by me, though.)

The point is, I don't delete comments. I don't believe in it. 

I have occasionally had my comments deleted from other blogs. Given that I never post vulgarities or obscenities, this has always been due to a simple disagreement: the owners of the blogs in question disagree with my opinion so profoundly that they do not even want their readers to encounter it as a comment.

I go back and forth on this. It seems to be either dishonesty or fear, or some blend of the two. I commit to avoiding any blog that deletes my comments more than once for no good reason. I don't mind that some blogs have a "no advertising your own blog" rule (like EconLog). I play by those kinds of rules. That's fair.

But when some bloggers repeatedly delete peaceful, calm, but well-reasoned counter-arguments to their posts, I basically stop reading their blogs altogether. I have no reason to try to engage with individuals who refuse to engage with me in an honest way, who will only agree not to delete my thoughts on the condition that they reinforce their own.

One More Thing (Important)

Some of you have experienced having submitted a comment to my blog, but it did not appear. I have received reports of this behavior many times, and frankly I cannot figure out what the problem is. I suspect it is a web browser issue (I use Chrome, which works fine for me, but Blogger and Chrome are both Google products), but I don't know for sure.

If you have experienced this, please accept my apologies and know that I want you to post your comment. In the worst-case scenario, you can always reach out to me via email, Google+, Facebook, etc., and I will attempt to post your comment myself. 

You Don't Have to Stir

Why waste a spoon? If you put the cream in first, and the coffee in second, then no stirring apparatus is necessary. I wish more people understood this.

The Endurance Base, or Endurance Basics

As you know, Stationary Waves is no place for absolute fitness beginners. Just by way of refresher, let me explain that this is not because I am hostile to beginners or dismissive of their efforts - we have all been beginners!

Rather, it is because I feel there is enough advice out there for beginners that it isn't a subject area I feel inclined to explore. I have often been disappointed by the lack of internet distance-running content aimed at the intermediate-to-experienced runner. Therefore, I have decided to fill that niche myself. It's not advice, it's a discussion. If you have a couple of years of running under your belt, join the dialogue!

Let's Talk About The Endurance Base
The unsung secret to having a seamless, injury-free training season is the building up of a good endurance base.

The phrase "endurance base" means exactly what you would expect it to mean. Prior to undertaking a major training regimen (for example, an 18-week marathon training regimen), it is customary for experienced athletes to spend anywhere between one and four months increasing their bodies' cardiovascular endurance.

The goal is rather obvious: The more punishment you can handle, the harder you can train; the harder you can train, the faster you can run.

Building Blocks
Let's think about it this way:

If you've never run a step in your life, your first undertaking is just to get outside and give it a try. That's the first building block.

Once you've tried it out enough times and you've decided you're interested in it, the next step is to learn how to save your energy for the full distance in question. You go from sprinting as fast as you can and then walking the rest of the way, to developing a sense of pacing that takes you from a few hundred meters all the way up to several miles. That's the second building block.

After you get used to controlling your pace for an extended period of time, you discover that alternating the length and speed of your daily run can result in increased speed and increased endurance. Before long, you've exposed yourself to comprehensive training philosophies and you've undertaken to engage in some event-specific training (like a marathon). That's the third building block.

Building an endurance base is simply the next link in the chain (if I may mix metaphors). Once you have some experience with event-specific training, it's time to pre-train (for lack of a better term). In anticipation of the coming training regimen, we start slowly building on our weekly miles run, acquainting (or reacquainting) our muscles with long-distance running and simply getting used to running again. At this point, there is no pressure, and no need to run too fast. Endurance training is a nice, relaxing process of iteratively adding to what your body can handle.

Astute Stationary Waves readers may have noticed that the building blocks I've listed above represent a progressively lengthening cognitive time-horizon.

How to Build an Endurance Base
If you have never built any kind of an endurance base before, then my recommendation is to keep things as simple as possible. Sometimes common sense is the best approach: Start with what you know you can do, and then just get comfortable doing it. When you're finally ready to take on a training regimen, go for it.

That simple approach should get you started. Of course, the more thought and planning you put into it, the better off you'll be.

The options here are virtually limitless, but there are a few important things to keep in mind:

1. The primary goal is to avoid injury. The whole benefit of an endurance base is in being able to subject your body to more strenuous training down the road. If you injure yourself, that is clearly the opposite of the intended effect. To avoid injury, take on only moderate mileage to begin with, and increase your weekly miles by no more than about 10% per week. So if you start with 30 miles per week, add three miles per week on Week #2...
2. Forget about speed for now. There will be time to wow yourself and others with record-breaking speed. Now is not that time. This goes right along with number 1 above. If you go too fast, too soon, you can risk injury. You'll also fatigue your muscles too early in the game, which will make it a challenge to steadily increase your endurance. Remember, we are extending our cognitive time-horizons here, so don't take on future speed training before you've built your base. Always run at a relaxed pace; resist the urge to hold yourself to a specific pace. For now, I'd even suggest you leave your watch at home.
3. Give yourself enough time to reach your goal. If your first week of serious marathon training involves some 50 miles of running, then your endurance base should build up to at least that much mileage. Building up even more mileage in the pre-season will be even better, of course. But if you want to get to 50 miles per week and you're starting from zero, this will take you some time. Be realistic about the amount of time it takes to build up the endurance base you're aiming for. If you're increasing your mileage by 10% per week and starting out at 20 miles per week, do the math. This will take some time. Start early, and don't be afraid to hold yourself to it. 
4. If your body tells you, "This hurts!" then back off. You may still end up with sore joints, tendons, and muscles. You may get some shin splints or a little tendonitis. Don't worry! This is the pre-season! You're not training yet. If your body hurts, back off a little. Take a few days off and try again later. Your training has not yet begun. Don't take on too much too soon.
5. Get in the habit of stretching. If you don't stretch regularly, I would not suggest you even attempt a marathon. Stretch every day. Learn to love it. Stretching improves your body's capacity for muscle-building and elongates your muscle fibers, helping to prevent injury. This is incredibly important!

I might add that this fifth point is vitally important. The reason I pulled a muscle last season and had to bail on the Montreal Marathon is because I wasn't stretching enough. Take that seriously.

What Will I Do?
If you still need a bit more of a real-world example, I'll give you an idea of what I'll be doing to build my endurance base, starting today.

For the past few weeks, I've been running about 30 minutes a day. This week, I plan on doing at least that. Perhaps I will go for 35 minutes if I'm feeling a little ambitious. Nothing more than that, however.

From there, I will add about five minutes of running per week. Now, bear in mind that I'll be travelling out of the country for two weeks in December, and during that time, I'll be lucky to get out for a run at all. So I may lose two weeks there.

Regardless, I should be up to about 50 minutes of running per day by mid-January. More, if I'm lucky. I'll be taking it easy, enjoying the sights of the city, keeping my head up, and trying to stay warm in the cold Ottawa winter.

The Appalling Hypocrisy of US Drug Policy

Some of you may remember that I chronicled the killing of energy drinks in one of my "Things That Used To Be Legal" featurettes. You may also remember the relatively recent scandal involving highly caffeinated beverages that were mixed with alcoholic beverages at bars throughout the United States.

Surprise, surprise: Today a product called Blowfish hits store shelves. Blowfish is an effervescent beverages that combines aspirin and caffeine in sufficient quantities to kick hangovers.

Apparently drinking caffeine mixed with alcohol presents major health risks, but taking a caffeine-laced hangover remedy is A-okay!

Is it any wonder that people in the United States and elsewhere complain of "crony capitalism" and the corruption of the FDA? In one breath, the government bans caffeine and in the next they made it available over-the-counter from their pharma friends.

The system is broken. We have abandoned all reason. 

Manliness: Courage

I have blogged about fear before. I have defined it on my Lexicon. I have gone out of my way to promote the idea that fear is perhaps the single most destructive force in human psychology. Of all the truly evil things in the universe, fear is the least dignified and most ubiquitous. Fear slinks into your life through the back door, incapable of attacking you head on; it weasels itself inside any situation it can, because your defenses are down, precisely because you have nothing to fear. Once it finds a way in, it quietly acts to destroy. Think of all the truly reprehensible things in society, and it is likely they can be traced back to fear.

Now, before you start to think that I'm about to have a Donnie Darko moment here, let me assure you that fear's cure is not love (although, heyyy, why not?). At the risk of sounding a little thick, eradicating fear requires simply being fearless.

What I mean is, there is no trick. There is nothing you can fall back on, no mantra you can recite to yourself, no deity to which you can appeal. It's not something you're born with or without. It's not a choice or a way of thinking.

No, eradicating fear means simply being aware of its destructive potential and "striking it from your heart."

Manliness and Fear
One of the worst things about fear is that it is a rational emotion. Typically, the things we fear are credible threats in our lives taken so seriously that we start to obsess over them. With things like drugs, it's easy to talk about how irrational bad behavior is; we can't do that with fear. Fear comes from a very logical place in your mind. This is why I say there is no trick to getting rid of it.

Traditionally, it has fallen on the man of the household to stand as a lone protector against the things the women and children fear. The man was responsible for providing safety and security to the others.

If you're a woman, you can certainly be fearless without the risk of being mannish. Similarly, men can demonstrate "traditionally womanly" character traits. No problem. Manliness isn't about gender, nor is it about fulfilling traditional gender roles. At the same time, gender roles are a time-tested aspect of human psychology. They're not going anywhere any time soon. They evolve with the age in which we live - but that is not an argument against gender roles. To a large extent these norms and mores define the boundaries of our behavior, or at least give us some useful guidelines.

I am certainly not a traditionalist, but the fact of the matter is that for us men, fearlessness is a bit of a job requirement. Courage is manly. As a man, you will encounter situations where you must act as the family's calming mechanism. Take this seriously. It is likely that in most families, no one but the man will rise to the occasion, and if someone else does, some will question why it wasn't you. This, too, will feed your fears and insecurities.

So, fear is something men have to face. Get used to it.

What's the Worst That Could Happen?
While fear is logical in most cases, the good news is that courage is, too. You never have to fight fear with irrational thoughts, behavior, or actions.

That is pretty important, so let me repeat myself a bit: No matter how bad life gets, we never have to seek solace in irrationality. That will only make our situation worse. Even though fear itself is logical, we still need not run to illogical thoughts or behaviors to get us out of a scary situation. Courage is logical.

Courage isn't about being stupid and putting yourself in danger just to prove that fear has no impact on your sense of self-preservation. Courage is simply knowing that every situation is best served when you think clearly and reasonably about how to solve your problems and then act toward resolution. Courage is action and dignity in the place of paralyzing doubt.

When you act on your courage, you reclaim your dignity. You will not always succeed in solving every problem you face, of course. Courage isn't about being perfect. But courage allows you to know that whatever situation you faced was met head-on with the nobility of a man who accepts his responsibilities to himself.

So what is the worst that could happen? You could fail. You could still be afraid. Everything you think might happen, may actually happen for real. Every threat that you face could come to pass.

But how is that different than if you are afraid of it? It isn't. Remember, there is no trick. Bad and scary things can and will happen in life, most of which we cannot control.

Courage as an aspect of manliness is a choice to claim your dignity and at least try.

You might succeed. That's the one difference.

A Perspective on Environmentalism

My Assertions
As a human being and an economist, I assert the following:

1. Time is a valuable resource that is worthy of conserving if we want to make the most of it.
2. Money is a valuable resource that is worthy of conserving if we want to make the most of it.
3. Making the most of our money and our time allows us to have more of the things we want, including more vital things like food and medicine.

I would be surprised if any environmentalist - or anyone at all, for that matter - objected to the above assertions.

I Accept the Following

The following are a list of beliefs held by environmentalists with which I entirely agree.

1. Clean is better than dirty; less pollution is better than more pollution.
2. More bio-diversity is better than less.

Trade-Offs

I believe almost all reasonable people agree with all of the above assertions. Anyone who feels otherwise is at best irrational and at worst insane. I think we can all agree on that much. Obviously, where self-proclaimed "environmentalists" diverge from those who do not proclaim themselves to be "environmentalists" is in weighing all of these assumptions against each other.

For example, which is preferable: A year of your life or a California Redwood tree? If you had the opportunity to, say, gain a promotion at work at the expense of one acre of tropical rainforest, what would you take? The more favorably you weight the rainforest, the more we can describe you as "an environmentalist." 

If you could permanently feed one starving child for every 5-gallon bucket of radioactive water you poured into Lake Superior, how many buckets would you pour?

Keep in mind, the answers to these questions are entirely subjective. Some people would never chop down an acre of rainforest under any circumstances, and would rather pour zero buckets and let children starve. That is a valid perspective.

Who Gets What

In economics, we routinely state that we live in a world with limited resources and unlimited human need. Based on what we human beings need, we produce things. 

When we needed furniture, we used to go into the woods, chop down some trees, haul some lumber back home, and build the furniture. That we now face some level of deforestation is a predictable result of our need for lumber. That we exist as human beings means we produce some waste that has to be thrown away in either a garbage dump or a sewer of some sort.

Every aspect of human life requires some combination of time, money, and natural resources. The very best aspects of human life require the minimum amount of time, money and natural resources. But competing technologies and methods cost different amounts of time, money, and resources. So, we all make choices for ourselves about how much of each should be minimized or maximized. 

Conclusion

Environmentalists tend to minimize environmental impacts at the expense of time and money. Nonetheless, they should keep in mind that by neglecting to minimize money or time expenditures, their actions adversely affect others. 

Time and money are resources worth minimizing, too. Technologies that save us time and money at the expense of the environment feed children and make our lives more convenient. Non-environmentalists are "environmentalists of time and money." We believe that the starving children of the world are best served by modern technologies that free up time and money that can be spent on feeding them.

I believe that if more people understood these trade-offs, human society would be very different.

Immigration: Important Concept

Last night's GOP debate was all abuzz with immigration talk. I was glad to hear Romney emphatically laud legal immigration. Even though I don't believe him, it was still somewhat encouraging to hear pro-immigration rhetoric. The other candidates were less enthusiastic, and of course Ron Paul was not given an opportunity to discuss the issue at all.

When we're talking about immigration, we have a tendency to assume our rhetorical outcome in advance. What I mean is, before we ever present our arguments in favor of or in opposition of immigration, we decide who we want in and who we want out, and then present examples consistent with that assumption.

Us Versus Them, Us Versus Us
Take the example of a hypothetical would-be immigrant. Should we allow this person to immigrate? Why or why not?

As you might immediately notice, the question assumes an intrinsic "us versus them" framework. The question seems to be, under what conditions should "us" allow "them" into "our" country. Whoever does the talking seems to own the country. We all seem to want to dictate the migration over the imaginary line that separates millions of people who are nothing like us from millions of other people who are also nothing like us.

Let's rephrase the question a little. Consider your next-door neighbor. Should we throw him out of the country? Why or why not?

If you think this isn't a fair question, then you're not being ideologically consistent.

If We Can Keep Them Out, We Can Throw You Out
The fact of the matter is that if you think you have a right to determine who moves over the imaginary line that separates millions of people who are nothing like you from millions of other people who are also nothing like you then you have already assumed that you have the right to determine who's in and who's out. That means, as imaginary dictator, your power to keep people out is also the power to throw people out.

I need not further point, I hope, that if others can be thrown out, so can you.

So, you think I'm making this up? I hate to play the Hitler card here, but isn't this precisely what happened in Germany all those decades ago? One day, "us" decided that "them" was a real burden on "us's" society, so "us" went ahead and threw "them" out. And then tried to exterminate "them."

Germany is a poignant example (probably because Jews are light-skinned and cook food that looks and smells a lot like our own food), but it's not the only example. Japanese internment camps in North America are also a good example of legal immigrants being rounded up and harmed, or expelled, or both.

Most nations have some sordid experience with xenophobia, and it's not always about the people on the other side of the imaginary line. Often it has everything to do with people on our own side of the imaginary line.

A Revolutionary Idea: People Are A Good Thing
I start from a crazy idea: people are good, more people are better, human civilization is a net positive.

From there, I add another crazy idea: All people should be treated equally under the law. I know that one is falling out of favor these days, but I think it still has enough intrinsic value that I need not spend precious blog time "proving" it.

Combine the two elements, and you get my take on immigration: Let people in. That's it. Just let people in. Illegal immigration occurs only because legal immigration is prohibitively difficult. We can solve that problem by making legal immigration easier. We also have the added benefit of denying the state any power or philosophical justification for throwing out its own citizens.

One Last Point
In general, the arguments against illegal immigration boil down to one thing: People don't want illegal immigrants crossing the border and subsequently becoming wards of the welfare state.

I ask: Is this a problem with people crossing borders, or is this a problem with the welfare state?

As we see time and time again, welfare and socialism breed conflict among individuals in our society. Were there no such thing as social welfare, who in their right mind would care who moved over the imaginary line and who didn't? It is only because we have a socialist welfare scheme that we care who has the legal power to request state support.

Thus, once again, we see that socialism is the true source of the ugly kind of nationalism, that socialism is what pits us against each other. The free-flow of individuals across imaginary lines is a free trade issue as well as a peaceable assemble issue. Socialism is antagonistic to both.

The Curse of Terminology

One of the primary obstacles Ayn Rand faced in her work was the way used language. Even today, people have a tendency to take her at her most literal when she used terms like "good" and "evil." Her most fervent supporters are often the most guilty of this, lending Rand fans that infamous "cultishness" that is now married to every popular citation of Rand.

To really understand her ideas at the level they were meant to be taken, one has to develop a familiarity with Rand's written tone and unique use of language. I would speculate that this is what lead to the creation of The Ayn Rand Lexicon. Everyone has their own unique voice, and Rand was no different. But a person's unique way of expressing himself/herself shouldn't get in the way of the ability to contribute to a discussion.

Consider a Hypothetical Situation
Let's say you know a man named Bob, who always and consistently refers to the color blue as "grargh."

The first time you meet Bob and hear him use the word grargh, you will be taken aback. You will ask what he means by that. You will speculate that he is talking gibberish. You will not want to hear him remark about how grargh the sky looks today, nor about the savory taste of the grarghberries he recently picked up at the local farmer's market.

Eventually, though, using the context in which he uses the term grargh, and noticing that he is always and everywhere consistent in the use of that word, you will figure out that grargh = blue.

Once you figure that out, it is your responsibility to understand what Bob means when he says grargh. Were you instead to take his every use of grargh as an opportunity to lament that he is not saying "blue," you would not be contributing anything to anyone. You would not be making Bob's life better, nor would you be making your own life better. Furthermore, you would be hindering any discussion being had by anyone who knows and understands what Bob means when he says grargh.

You, not Bob, would be the jerk.

My Lexicon
When I write on my blog (and communicate elsewhere), I use the terms listed on The Stationary Waves Lexicon. It was entirely voluntary that I compile a list of the terms that I frequently use and define them for the benefit of my readers. I felt that doing so was important first, because it helps ensure that the writer and his audience share a common understanding of what's being said, and second, to help formalize certain concepts and build on them in the future.

Without the Lexicon, I would simply refer to concepts over and over again using similar-but-not-identical language to kind-of-sort-of convey what I'm kind of getting at. Simply speaking, it would be impossible to discuss philosophy and ethics without a readily-available glossary of terms.

I concede that I use language in a way that is tailored to my own unique voice. I phrase things in a particular way and, without some background as to what I'm getting at - some context, if you will - it just sounds like a random, opinionated guy yapping all the time. That's not fun for anyone.

Reach Out and Touch Someone
This blog is not merely a vehicle for my own personal political opinions and the occasional song or workout. The idea here is not simply to speak my mind. Believe it or not (and my critics will find this one really tough to swallow), I'm actually getting at something here.

What *I* happen to be getting at is a philosophy for living, a way of approaching life from the standpoint of cardinal-but-secular virtues and free-and-cooperative interaction with other human beings via respect for private property, personal responsibility, capitalism, and acting in good faith.

What *OTHERS* are getting at is something else entirely. Some people express ideas that are complimentary to mine, while others are opposed. The agendas of some people have absolutely no relationship to mine whatsoever. And there is every combination of complimentarity, opposition, and ambivalence out there, because everyone has their own set of ideas that they hold dear. (And, yes, ideas matter!)

If we want to learn, we will not only let each other speak and communicate, but we will take people on the level at which they intend to be taken. That means listening to the point that you understand what the other person is actually saying, rather than just assuming they are saying something you don't agree with.

It shouldn't matter whether Bob says blue or grargh, so long as his meaning is clear and consistent. There is no shame in not immediately understanding what Bob means the first time he says grargh, but if the years go by and you still can't acknowledge the obvious, then you simply aren't listening to Bob.

Examples
If you need specific examples of what I'm getting at here, consider my notorious article about Amy Winehouse's self-abnegation. My point was a simple one: Drug use - even in absence of drug addiction - is a terrible act of self-destruction. The point that others understood was that anyone who makes mistakes deserves what they get. See the difference?

Another big one is the Aggregate Demand framework in macroeconomics. Most economists go along with it, although some dissent. These two groups should be able to communicate with each other despite their difference in paradigms, but instead what we observe is the orthodox community refusing to acknowledge the real meaning of the things the heterodox community says, instead "defeating" the heterodox arguments by an obtuse application of the AD framework. How is that communication?

Well, friends, listening is a two-way street. In order to defeat a person's argument, you have to understand it at the level on which it is intended.

Blue or grargh, if you don't take Bob at his words, you're the jerk, not Bob.

Impetus

I wrote this for the band a while back, but one way or another it just didn't quite happen. I finally finished the demo this weekend.

Enjoy.

The Answer is Yes

The question is do famous, rich people really care if their taxes are increased?

The supporting evidence is this.

HT to Tyler Cowen.

Most Anti-Climactic Science News Story In a Long Time

What has become of science?

The Register reports that scientists have made a "mystifying discovery!" As we all know, the majority of the Earth's core is made of iron. (If you didn't know that, you probably just forgot what they taught you in junior high school - no big deal. You knew at some point in time.) As you may not have known, the density of the Earth is inconsistent with a solid iron core, so scientists have concluded that there must be some lighter-weight material mixed in with the iron.

Up until now, they thought it was oxygen. Turns out, it's silicon. "Mystifying," eh?

For those of you with absolutely no prior geology knowledge whatsoever, I refer you to this table, courtesy the Physics Department at Georgia State University, showing element abundance in the Earth's crust:

Element	Approximate % by weight
Oxygen	46.6
Silicon	27.7
Aluminum	8.1
Iron	5.0
Calcium	3.6
Sodium	2.8
Potassium	2.6
Magnesium	2.1
All others	1.5

So it turns out, the second-most-abundant material in the Earth's core is also the second-most-abundant material in the Earth's crust. It required a great deal of lab work and government funding to uncover this startling mystifying discovery.

I was expecting something actually surprising. The fact that the "mystery material" turned out to be one of the most abundant materials in the solar system is not at all mystifying. The fact that the scientists were somehow surprised by this is stymieing.

Are we really the same species that invented set theory? 

Signal, Or Human Capital?

Bryan Caplan often blogs about his view that education is a signal of employability to employers, rather than an investment in human capital. What he means is that when we educate ourselves, we aren't amassing skill sets so much as we are demonstrating that we have all the right human qualities that employers want. I am sympathetic to this view point. Many other people disagree.

The more I think about this, however, the more ridiculous the "debate" about these two theories seems to be. Do any of us really think we live in a world where education is either an investment in human capital or an investment in market signalling?

It seems to me that education is clearly both. You could model it something like a classic Cobb-Douglas function: Y = [S^f] * [K^h]

Where:

• Y = expected payoff of education
• S = signalling returns
• K = human capital returns
• f and h = the extent to which each is important for a given course of study

Now obviously for people getting a certification in coding Javascript at a local vocational school f is nearly zero and h is very high.

For people enrolled at Harvard, f is extremely high and if h is greater than zero, well that's just gravy.

Clearly, every degree comes with some combination of market signalling and skills. An ideal education would be one for which f and h are both large positive numbers, but the reality of the situation is that for most of us with a generic business degree from a generic state college, our education consisted more of a dull signal than a large amount of human capital.

The question isn't "is education human capital or signalling," the question is, "for any given degree at any given university, to what extent is that an investment in a signal and to what extent is it an investment in human capital?"

The answer could vary between schools, degree programs, and potential employers. There's no reason to believe we have to choose between paradigms. They are not mutually exclusive.

Note: The majority of the above was posted as a comment to Bryan Caplan's most recent blog post regarding education.

Paul Gregory's Wisdom and More About Creeds

Paul Gregory writes:

Compromise is not possible when there is no middle ground. It seems this truth escapes domestic and world politicians and pundits.

And concludes:

In democracies, we hope that elections will resolve such impasses. In authoritarian states, impasses are resolved by violence, not by diplomacy. 

Every day we pontificate to our friends, families, and colleagues that "compromise" is the only way forward, that "the truth, as always, lies somewhere in the middle," that "moderation in all things" can save the day. Such pontification goes on endlessly.

It is our egalitarian nature, our profound desire to be nice guys to each other, that inspires us to champion compromise and centrism for its own sake. No one wants to be the judgemental a-hole who finds fault in his fellow man. We should all strive to judge not, lest we be judged. Let those who be without sin cast the first stone. In general, judging is bad, while peace, love, and understanding is good.

Gregory notes that there are limits to how far we can take this ideal. If we're talking about one-on-one personal relationships or the victimless decisions of acquaintances, it is incredibly easy to avoid judgement, to recommend moderation, and to cultivate a saintly centrism. But this charade evaporates when life gets serious.

And it is a charade. Evading every call to stand by one's creed, to speak up for right and wrong, all in the name of not hurting someone's feelings, is a charade we undertake to present the image of sympathy where in fact there is none.

For what is sympathy? It is the feeling of compassion or concern for another, the wish to see them better off or happier. Concern implies that the other person could be better off. Better off implies a comparison to their feeling otherwise. Their feeling otherwise implies the existence of a situation that would create that result. And the preference of that situation to this one is, my friends, that terrible awful thing we demonize so much in our society: A value judgement!

Part of the reason I keep this blog is to help promote an idea that I feel we've lost somewhere over the past century or so: Maintaining a strong, personal creed or code of ethics is a vitally important aspect of human happiness and positive human relationships.

Taking a moral stance, even a seemingly harsh one, isn't cruel. Lording one's supposed moral superiority over someone else is cruel, but having a strong ideology and creed is very definitely not cruel. It is the very thing that moves us to sympathy, that enables us to help other people, that allows us to make the world a better place.

And unfortunately for the "moderation police" and the "judgementalism police" out there, there can be no compromise on a person's core ethical identity - their creed - without a corresponding compromise in that person's fundamental happiness.

You don't have to hold the same moral values I have, but I hope for your sake that you never, ever compromise on your own core ethics. There is no nobility in that kind of compromise. There is no truth to be found in that middle ground, and nothing laudable about that kind of centrism.

Ayn Rand once wrote, "In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit." You're not doing anyone any favors by subverting your personal creed in an effort to avoid wounding another person's ego. The best, most inspiring way out of a bad situation is through a moral triumph. It's true that this sometimes requires taking a hard-line, but the long-run payoff for this is worth more than a few uncomfortable moments with someone who hasn't the courage to admit that morality implies judgement a priori.