Author Archives: theusernamewhichismine

The American Challenge

The post-industrial societies shall be America, Canada, Japan and Sweden.  That is all.

I’ve been reading an interesting book from 1968 called The American Challenge by Jean Jacques Servan-Schreiber.  In it, the author notes that America and American companies had invested and profited greatly from the economic boom in post-war Europe.  Meanwhile, European companies had for a variety of reasons not reaped the same rewards (in the author’s opinion), and so by 1968 almost all the important multi-national corporations in Europe were either American owned or staffed by Americans rather than Europeans.  The author furthermore predicted that by the end of the (20th) century, American investments will push America to an unprecedented level of wealth and power, above and beyond what most of Europe could achieve.  He claimed that America would become a post-industrial society, one in which industrial revenue would skyrocket, labor productivity would skyrocket, and the coming cybernetic future would be used to build such wealth and power and to be almost unimaginable to the people living in his age.  

What he seemed to be getting at was the idea of a second great divergence.  The first “Great Divergence” was the economic divergence in the 18th and 19th centuries between Europe/North America and the rest of the world (Asia, Africa, and Oceania).  Within a relatively short amount of time, industrial Europe increased its GDP per capita many fold, enabling them to have more food, more goods and better services (things like trains) than any other place on earth.  It was the reason that in the 19th century, middle class Brits could travel all over the world by train or steamship and be warmed during the winter by gas heating piped into their houses.  These would all have been a huge luxury to people living anywhere else on the planet, and been almost unthinkable just a few centuries before.

This “Second Great Divergence” that Servan-Schreiber seems to expect would be similar to the first, in which some parts of the world experience rapid rises in living and technological standards, fueled by an economic system of “post-industrialism” (as he calls it) rather than industrialism. This post-industrial economic system would create a stark contrast with the industrial societies, which would include most of Europe. Post-industrial societies, he claims, will be to industrial societies as industrial societies are to per-industrial societies: richer, more leisure, more health, and able to control and dominate them in a semi-colonial fashion. Like the first Great Divergence, this second Divergence would be concentrated geographically, but unlike the first Divergence, Servan-Schreiber predicts that (most of) Europe will not reap its benefits.  His gloomy prediction in 1968 was thus: “[in 1998] the post-industrial societies will be, in this order: the United States, Japan, Canada, Sweden.  That is all”

Now, this divergence doesn’t seem to have happened, nor does it seem to have occurred that American businesses control all aspects of the European economy (as Servan-Schreiber predicted).  But it’s enlightening to look at the predictions he made half a century ago and see just what it was that made him think this was the future.  For the next week or so I will be going through parts of the book to analyze what he saw as the state of Europe in 1968 and why he thought it would lose so much ground relative to its peers.

More weekend venting about video games

Yesterday I talked about the first case in the second game of the “Great Ace Attorney” duology. Today I’d like to talk about the third case from that game. Yes the second case was also good but I don’t have my thoughts in order about it yet.

Once again, this is my thoughts about a murder mystery game, so total spoilers ahead!

I liked this case, 9/10.  The first day of the case built up to be better and better as it went along, although there were a few moments in this case as in case 2 where I didn’t know what evidence to give people in order to succeed.  They developers of this series have slimmed down everything in the game to give you more hints (Iris will directly tell you when you still have shit to do) but it can still be very illogical what things you have to show to which people to progress.

The investigation section for this case was incredible though.  Both days’ investigations built up so expertly to interweave so many competing threads.  Even though I guessed a lot of it early, I still had a wild ride and I didn’t guess everything.  The character work was also top notch, I found Van Zieks (the prosecutor for this series) a lot more boring during the game that preceded this one, he felt like a sub-par Godot (the prosecutor from Ace Attorney 3: Trials and Tribulations).  But getting to chat with Van Zieks face to face and hear his side of things really rounded him out, even if it’s a bit cliche that they gave him Ace Attorney Prosecutor Backstory A: dead family. 

I also think case 3 was a case where the writers sort of learned a lesson of what NOT to do from previous Ace Attorney games.  This case featured a defendant who helps the prosecutor (like Wocky Kitaki in 4-2) and a completely impossible “murder” (like Max Galactica flying away in 2-3).  And yet both of them are handled very well.  The defendant has a much better reason for “helping the prosecution” than Wocky Kitaki ever did, since this defendant truly believes his “teleportation” machine worked and that the murder that occurred was all just a tragic accident. Although he is “helping” the prosecutor by saying his machine worked, and that fact implicates him for the crime, his reason for sticking to his story are understandable. 

And although teleportation obviously isn’t real, pretty much everyone in this case knows that and it’s clear that they are sort of just humoring Van Zieks, who also at least presents genuine evidence of the defendant committing the crime besides “your machine did magic.” In this way we have an “impossible” murder mystery that doesn’t stray into parody territory with genuinely impossible plot points.

I do want to say that on day 1, the only underwhelming part of the story was Herlock Sholmes (the obvious Sherlock Holmes expy).  They’ve made him a lot more like a classic Ace Attorney protagonist, in that he has money issues. 

Ask Apollo, ask Phoenix, ask Athena, the Wright Anything Agency is always going on and on about how they have no money.  In the first game I thought Sholmes was absolutely loaded with dosh. He has a massive house filled with valuable trinkets and machines, and a partner who is constantly publishing his exploits in serialized form.  He has steady income and a lot of wealth, so why would he complain about money problems?  In this case though he’s a poor scrounger and on Day 1 that made him a lot less “fun” to be around, he was less bombastic and more pitiable.  I even thought the Day 1 “Great Deduction” was underwhelming. 

I think his Day 1 great deduction should have gone differently.  The first part of the scene is proving that Tusspell smacked a man over the head with an arm when he tried to steal, the second part is proving that what Sholmes thought was a real policeman was actually wax and what he thought was wax was a real policeman.  The two contradictions together demonstrate that a famous waxwork called “the professor” was stolen from Madame Tusspell’s waxwork museum. 

But… the deduction doesn’t flow to me.  It should be flipped: the first part should be with the policemen, and finding out that the wax one has a missing arm sets up a mystery of where the arm is, while finding out the other is on the case looking for something sets up another mystery.  Then part 2 solves both mysteries, she used the arm to KO a guy and she called the cops because “the professor” was stolen.  As it stands when we saw the wax cop missing an arm, I wasn’t surprised because I already knew where the missing arm was.

Day 2’s deduction on the other hand is the single best “anything” in Ace Attorney I’ve ever played. 

Ace Attorney usually doesn’t do these kinds of scenes well, I remember in GAA1 Case 5, where Gina gives you the disc and tells you not to give it to Eggs Benedict.  Both of them are yelling at you then the game just zooms out back to investigation mode.  The whole tension of the scene is lost because you now have to click on Sholmes to progress with the Great Deduction. 

But in this case the scene worked perfectly.  You bust down Drebber’s door and see a time bomb and upturned furniture.  Everyone’s scared but Sholmes’ deductions is that the bomb isn’t real.  Then you solve his deduction and use the crossbow to find the head of the “professor.”  But the deduction isn’t over!  For the first time we get deductions part 3 and find that Drebber is in the safe.  But it still isn’t over because the bomb was real!  And Sholmes disarms it and everyone says funny stuff.  I’m not describing it well but honestly this was the best Ace Attorney anything I’ve ever played, better than using the metal detector on Von Karma, better than using the Mood Matrix on Blackquill, this was just A++++++

This case was allllllllllllmost perfect.  I think my biggest quibble besides Day 1 Sholmes was when Ryunosuke had to name the accomplice to Drebber.  It was Courtney Sithe, but she was such a minor character that by the time I got to that point I had straight up forgotten what she had done up to that point.  When I finally named her I vaguely remembered the “500 scalpels” bit in her notebook, but that was not the part of the investigation that stood out to me.  If we’re going to make her part of this case she needs to be more involved, otherwise in such a broad ranging case like that she faded into the background of my memory and I was floundering to remember who she was and why she was in this case. 

We had focused a lot on Asman (who was a con artist) and Harebrayne (who had been duped).  Either of them could have fit the description of “accomplice” with  a little tweaking.  Maybe Harebrayne was told to do things and didn’t realize he was accidentally moving the body?  Maybe Asman set up this whole get-rich-quick-scheme with Drebber but Drebber double crossed Asman at the last minute?  We had focused on them so I picked them before picking Sithe, about whom I remembered absolutely nothing aside from her short blurb in the court record. 

I feel although there isn’t anything totally illogical about who you’re supposed to finger for the crime, but I just had so little to go on that there isn’t a compelling reason to pick the character you’re “supposed” to pick.  Sure it works as a shocking swerve, but it isn’t as compelling in a narrative sense.

I also find Sithe as the accomplice incredibly lazy.  I’ve noticed a trend in AA games (and other mysteries) wherein making one of the cops or lawyers part of the guilty party gives carte blanche to explain away any and all inconsistencies with “well the people investigating the crime covered up their own misdeeds.”  My challenge to mystery writers (and Ace Attorney writers in particular) is to make an entire narrative where the law enforcement is never part of the crime. 

Using them to upend the entire mystery isn’t out of the realm of possibility, there have been real detectives who used their position to cover up their own crimes, but narratively it lets you ignore all the “impossibilities” that had been driving the case up to the point the law enforcement is indicted.  GAA1-5 was a great case, but it also did this.  As did Rise From the Ashes, which this case in some way mirrors.  It starts to get a little predictable when at least once a game they need to make law enforcement be the villain so as to allow themselves to change up the evidence of the case half-way through.  There are other ways this can be done, law enforcement wasn’t evil in 1-3 (Steel Samurai case) but the facts of the case changed naturally as the thing built up, without ever contradicting themselves or needing to bring in “someone changed the evidence.”

Final thought: this is the ONLY time so far that I have truly liked the Jury in these cases.  In GAA1-5 I thought they were acceptable, but this is the first time I’ve LIKED them.  On day 1 at least.  Day 2 they again just get in the way, but on day 1 they actually add to the trial in a dynamic way.

Weekend venting about video games

Ace Attorney is a wonderful series of murder mystery games that I’ve enjoyed for years now. A while ago they brought their “Great Ace Attorney” duology to Steam, with 2 games set in Victorian London/Meiji Era Japan. I really really liked the games overall and I urge anyone who’s a fan of murder mysteries to pick them up. But the first case of the second game really really bugged me and so I’d like to write about why.

Note: total spoilers ahead! This is a mystery game so read only at your own risk

The day after I finished Great Ace Attorney 1, I started Great Ace Attorney 2.  I really loved GAA1 and wanted to dive right in, but the first case of GAA2 was just so damn frustrating, that I left and didn’t return to it until months later.  I’ve pulled up the notes I wrote on this case, both months ago and today.  I enjoyed the characters, the main character (Rei) and her friend (Susato) had a great dynamic going, and I think Susato is a great character to play as, perhaps better than Ryunosuke (main character from the first game).  Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut…

I predicted this entire case from about minute 1.  The moment I saw the photographer taking pictures of the writer, I blurted out “are you the fucking killer?!”.  The moment I was allowed to inspect the fountain pen, I knew it had been used to administer the poison.  The moment I saw the first picture of the hut, I knew the victim was stabbed from outside it. It’s just that I felt a lot like this awkward zombie comic, which I never have felt much like before.

Normally I do not do a good job predicting these cases.  I get taken for a ride by the story and am as shocked as the characters when twists happen.  So I’m perfectly fine with being misled in a murder mystery story.  What I do not enjoy is being punished for being correct.  As soon as you are allowed to examine the fountain pen, you need to use it as evidence make a contradiction about the facts of the case. 

I tried to use the pen as a contradicting piece of evidence because I knew it was used to administer poison. However, because the game wasn’t ready for it to be used as evidence, I was punished for being correct even though I was correct.  I haaaaaaaaaaate when mysteries punish you for being correct, it’s one of the big reasons I hate LA Noire and do not at all consider it a good mystery game.  All mysteries want to have that moment like in the very first Ace Attorney game with the metal detector, where you go “aha!  this seemingly useless piece of evidence turns the whole case around!” but when the evidence is too obvious, then the player realizes what is happening long before the game is ready for it, and the players’ attempts to honestly answer the game with their knowledge turn into the game saying “no you’re wrong.”

I ended up playing this game in such a way where I always second guessed what I was saying, not because I thought I was wrong, but because I wasn’t sure if the game was ready for me to be right yet.  “This contradiction seems obvious, but the last obvious contradiction gave me a penalty, so is the game ready for me to be right yet?” is not a fun way to play. 

Finally I just didn’t think the mystery in this case logically flowed.  A lot of the contradictions they used to meander around (before finally letting us use the fountain pen) weren’t actual contradictions, and at one point I’m pretty sure the game contradicts itself.  It says that the victim in the case mentioned the poison while visiting a University, and the witness Soseki then demanded to see the poison.  Another witness, Professor Mikotoba said ok and showed the poison to them, but the reporter Menimemo was not allowed to go in and see the poison since access to it was restricted.  However later in the case it is necessary information that Menimemo DID go in to see the poison, because that was when he stole it in his fountain pen.

So in the end I was correct, the photographer killed her, he used his fountain pen for the poisoning and the characters were all great.  10/10 characters, -5 for case logic and general gameplay flow.  5/10 overall.  When I put down the case I would have said it was the worst case I’ve ever played, because no case before has ever made me put it down in frustration like that, but after replaying and finishing it, it’s ok just really clumsy.  A shame since as I said I really like Susato as a lawyer, and this is probably the only time we’ll see it unless Ryunosuke gets Maya’d (kidnapped) in the final case.

Should hedge funds be allowed to short a country’s debt?

A few weeks ago, I wrote about how credit rating agencies had cut their outlook for Italy, and how this was being blamed for Italy’s borrowing costs going up. Well, Italy’s borrowing costs continue to rise, and this time it’s being blamed on the hedge funds. Whenever I see an article like this make the rounds on social media, I invariably see some of the same comments come up: “hedge funds shouldn’t be allowed to bet against a country like that, they’re making money on other people’s suffering.”

First, I think the moral arguments are misguided. When two companies compete with each other and one drives the other out of business, the successful company could be said to be making money on the other’s suffering. But our capitalist system accepts this as the price we have to pay for an efficient economy, and so I don’t see the big difference between that and countries. Should people not have been allowed to short Lehman Brother’s because its collapse would likely harm the American economy? Surely not, so why should Italian government debt be protected in this way?

Secondly, it’s important to realize that the process of shorting is a mutually beneficial arrangement for both the entity doing the shorting and the one lending them the bond. In order for a bond to be sold short, it must be borrowed, then sold, then repurchased and handed back to fulfill the borrow. The borrowing of the bond generates interest, which must also be repaid by the entity doing the short selling. So bond-holders have an incentive to lend out their bonds to short-sellers because this lets them generate interest and therefore income on their bond. If they were not allowed to generate this income, then the bond would be worth less to them and they would not be as willing to purchase it. This would reduce the demand for a nation’s debt and thus would increase borrowing costs, which is something we’re trying to avoid by outlawing short selling.

Third, how would such a short-selling ban be implemented, and what would that affect? The processes that go into a short sale: the borrowing, selling, and purchasing of a bond, are all legal on their own. You would have to write a new, more complicated set of laws therefor to outlaw short selling but not also outlaw these individual practices which seem good and legal. So once you add this new complicated regulation to the market, how many entities will decide that it’s no longer worth it to invest in Italian debt (which has these complicated regulations attached to it) and will instead just invest in German debt (which doesn’t have these complicated regulations). And even if you could ban short-selling EU-wide, then many organizations would just pull their money out of EU bonds and park it into American, British, or Japanese bonds. People think that countries have all the power in the bond market, that they can set the rules because financial institutions need to buy bonds to make a profit. But countries’ bonds are competing with each other, there’s always another bond market people can invest in, and if you want to save Italian borrowing, then scaring money out of the Italian bond market doesn’t seem like the right way to do it.

Finally, short selling is a necessary part of price discovery. Without short selling, markets would not so easily discover the true price of bonds, and so would operate far less efficiently. Again, let’s say you banned short selling throughout the EU. Empirical evidence has shown that banning short selling only increases trading costs and lowers liquidity. That means that if you banned short selling, there would be less money in the market to buy bonds anyway, which again is counter-productive to Italy’s current predicament. In terms of Price Discovery, the failure of price discovery would mean that all prices would tend to converge together, as there is no strong discovery mechanism to discern them. That means the price of Italian debt and German debt would likely converge because investors would not be able to discern their true prices. This would be good for Italy, in fact it is exactly what some people want to accomplish by banning short selling, it might make it easier for Italy to finance it’s debts.

…but it would be bad for Germany. Germany currently enjoys a distinct position as having perhaps the most highly regarded debt in the Eurozone. That makes its borrowing costs very cheap and makes it easy for Germany to finance its obligations. Now, if the EU wanted they could always ask Germany to help out Italy, in fact years ago there was a call for Common European Bonds aka Eurobonds. This proposal would mean that member states could take out bonds which were to be paid back by all members of the EU together, making it easier for states like Italy to get cheap loans (because they were leaning on the German economy) while making it more expensive for Germany to get loans (because they were propping up the Italian economy). It is important to note that this Eurobonds proposal was soundly rejected by the EU and by the Northern EU member states in particular. Absolutely no one was willing to make Germany’s borrowing more expensive for the benefit of Italy.

So with that said, banning short selling would only accomplish what has already been deemed unacceptable. It would cause liquidity problems in the Italian borrowing market, and it could only help Italian borrowing if it also hurt German borrowing due to obfuscating price discovery across the EU. So why even do it? If Italy truly truly needs help financing its debt, the idea Eurobonds would accomplish exact what is desired without harming the bond market.

I wish PBS Spacetime would do more planetary science

For those who don’t know, PBS Spacetime is an awesome youtube series where real-life astrophysicist Matt O’Dowd discusses the most fascinating facts and theories about modern physics. They’ve had videos on everything from String Theory to General Relativity to alien spaceships buzzing our solar system. I’ve loved almost every video and topic they’ve discussed but one glaring omission that I’d love to see more of is planetary science, especially the formation of our solar system.

Our solar system is a weird and wonderful place, and there’s plenty to talk about that they haven’t gotten too. I’m particularly interested in the topic of solar system formation. When I read articles about exoplanets and foreign stars, they often discuss the Hot Jupiters and Super Earths that might be orbiting those. These stories make our solar system, with it’s cold Jupiter and it’s regular-sized Earth seem kind of lame. But how abnormal is our solar system? Are we out of the ordinary, or very ordinary indeed?

One really cool set of hypotheses I’ve read up on are the Nice Model and the Grand Tack. I don’t have near enough astrophysics background to explain these, but together they paint an exciting picture in which, during the early formation of the solar system, Jupiter and Saturn began to drift inward on orbits closer and closer to the sun. Eventually they got to orbits that are much closer to Mars’ orbit than what they have at present, before orbital resonances kicked them back out again into their present orbits. These theories propose to explain a lot of questions about our early solar system: the smallness of Mars relative to the Earth and Venus, how the current gas giants could have formed and reached positions so far away from the sun, and even perhaps explain the Late Heavy Bombardment of the inner solar system. I’ve often been curious if they could also be an explanation for why our sun doesn’t have a Hot Jupiter aka a gas giant orbiting very very close to the Sun. As stated, Jupiter and Saturn migrated inward before eventually turning around and migrating back out again. If they had not stopped, might they have formed a set of Hot Jupiters? Did the Hot Jupiters around other stars migrate inward to their positions, and Jupiter and Saturn once migrated?

It’s a tantalizing topic for me which is why I’d love to see a PBS spacetime episode on it?

I plan to do NaNoWriMo

For those who don’t know, NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month. It’s a simple challenge intended to get people writing instead of just thinking about writing. I know myself this is a struggle, I often feel like I have lots of good ideas but never actually act on them, it’s one of the reasons why I started this blog (although I’m realizing it’s harder than it looks to get good ideas out of my head and onto a document). The rules of NaNoWriMo are simple: write a novel of 50,000 words or more over the course of a single month (November, to be specific). I plan to try to do this myself, and might even publish on my blog the bits of my novel as I write it, if I think they are any good. I might not, who knows. But I feel like by writing my plans down here and now, I’m going to be much more likely to stick to them instead of planning in my head and then just… not doing anything.

Quick one today

its hard admitting that I failed and it’s hard to go back to the places where I failed but I still gotta keep pushing on. When I started a new job a few months ago I had dreams in my head of what my life would be like. When I lost that new job of course all those came crashing down. But what else can I do but try again? I’ll keep trying until I succeed, I promise.

Some questions about a new Miracle Cure for degrading “Forever Chemicals” such as PFAS

Earlier I was sent a wonderful article by the BBC about a new breakthrough in degrading “forever chemicals” known as PFAS. PFAS aka “perfluoroalkyl substances” are common chemicals used to make all sorts of houseware from paints to pans to wrappers. They are highly resistant to liquids which is why they’re so often used, but that itself makes them difficult to degrade. Because they are difficult to degrade, they stick around and have been linked to some harmful health effects if they are present at very high levels. This is why the new breakthrough is so important, the ability to degrade these chemicals before they build up to harmful levels would be very useful.

After reading the BBC article I went to the paper itself to understand the science behind the breakthrough. Now here’s where I have questions, because I am not an expert here I’d love if some actual science experts could help me understand this. To start with, PFAS is basically a long string of carbon atoms ending in a carboxylic acid, and attached to each carbon atom is a bunch of fluorine atoms. Prior research demonstrated that the carboxylic acid can be popped off using high temperature (120 degrees C) and a polar, aprotic solvent (water is protic, DMSO is aprotic, aprotic means that is can’t donate hydrogen bonds, which water does do easily). Once the carboxylic acid is popped off by this high temperature and specific solvent, then all the fluorine ions are readily removed by the addition of NaOH. In the main body of the research this step was simultaneous to the popping off of the carboxylic acid (aka at 120 degrees C), but later on the paper said that removing the fluorines could also happen at lower temperatures.

Now this is all very cool but one of my questions is: what happens to all those fluorines? And especially what will happen if we try to industrialize this process to degrade PFAS on a large scale? It appears that the fluorines remain as F- ions in the solution, but from my understanding if even a small amount of water gets into the solution, they will readily turn into HF, a very dangerous acid. If this process is scaled up, it seems conceivable that the concentration of PFAS will be increased in the reaction vessel to more efficiently use space and heat for degradation, meaning the concentration of fluorine following degradation will also be increased, meaning that the possibility for high concentrations of HF will also increase. So basically: is this process ready for prime time, or do we need to add another step to safely remove the F- ions? Fluorine as an atom is very hard to move around, requiring special permits and special containers, so I can’t imagine you can just package and ship it to some plant for re-use in new PFAS production. So what’s the next step? What’s a good way to remove or neutralize the fluorine so it can either be safely disposed of or sold for re-use? I’d love if any scientists could help me understand this.