Friday, February 20, 2009

1960s Redux

NYU student gentle reader Bill informs me that the 1960s have come back to life at that school. These people don't really seem to know what they want, but they can take over a cafeteria. What's next, actual hippies in Haight-Asbury?

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Narcissism and the Panic?

Bloomberg ran an opinion piece today about how narcissistic Ivy League MBAs killed Wall Street because they were too self-confident and trusting in their risk models. There may be something to that; the great book on the Enron collapse is titled The Smartest Guys in the Room, and, IMHO, the recent panic has rather a lot in common with the Enron collapse. However, I've also read that the risk models were adequate for evaluating the risks of individual security products, but did not take into account that CDOs, default swaps, and the like were really a chain of dominoes. All it took was a dip in the real estate market to start the dominoes going.

What I always wonder in the wake of ginormous economic collapses is why so few people seem to want to take a look under the proverbial hood, check out the engine, and ask the question, "how do these people make so much money?" It seems pretty basic. Actually, it is a question that Warren Buffet considers, and he will not put his money into anything he can't understand.

Saturday, February 14, 2009

Puddle of years

Good gracious, gentle readers; this blog turned five years old on Thursday. I suppose I might have a moment of self-doscovery were I to read all my posts from 2004 forward, but I don't really have the time.

Thursday, February 05, 2009

Congress on YouTube?

Wednesday, February 04, 2009

ABA in One Week?

This CNN article gives a pretty decent basic explanation of applied behavioral analysis, which is the most widely used autism intervention methodology. Based on my personal experience, I really have to wonder whether this ABA therapist was able to turn around this girl's behavior in a one week intervention. I vividly remember the day it took five adults to restrain both of my boys during in-home training, and A. still managed to bite a chunk of flesh from the psychiatrist. Moreover, most experts I've read speak in terms of years.