Benjamin Tegarden

Environmental topics:

Which is the lesser evil: coal or nuclear power?

Is “shelter-in-place” home-building the solution to California’s annual wildfires?

Education reading:

Is education a placebo?

Yes, it’s still possible to be successful without going to college.

Judging the USPS by comparison to kiwifruit.

Speaking of food, people pay less for it nowadays.

Monday mockery:

H. L. Mencken’s obituary (certainly not a eulogy) for William Jennings Bryan.

Using quotes from the Founding Fathers against modern-day politicians.

Some finance-y stuff:

In defense of algorithmic trading. Of course, I’m not exactly a disinterested third-party on this topic .

It’s one thing to claim the existence of a bubble, it’s quite another to predict when the bubble will pop. We’ll need to wait another month to see how it all turns out, but so far this seems to have been pretty spot-on with a ~20% drop so far. [6-month graph]

Blogs ’bout banking:

Visualizing failed banks.

Speaking of failed banks, maybe it’s time to dismantle the Fed.

Long-ish computer-related stuff:

All about Moore’s Law: where does it apply and why?

A good broad introduction to the P vs. NP problem, one of the most important unsolved problems in theoretical computer science.

Thoughts on sports:

Can we estimate the maximum running speed in humans?

While Usain Bolt has improved the world record in his sport by over 1.6%, Takeru Kobayashi improved the world record in his by nearly 115%!

New York Thursday:

All about manhole covers.

Even the hot-dog vendors are paying an arm and a leg to be here.

The Chinese economy:

Does 8% growth mean China’s economy is healthy? Not necessarily. Excerpt: “However, many of the households that purchased washing machines, or were virtually given such machines, have found them unusable because their homes lack either the running water or electricity (or both) necessary to make use of a modern appliance.”

Thinking about China’s provinces. Longer, but worth the read. Excerpt: “[China's] population is roughly equivalent to the entire Western world; that is Europe, the Americas, Australia and New Zealand. Talking about the Chinese economy is about as meaningful as talking about the “Western economy,” and thinking it fits both Switzerland and Bolivia.”