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When you learn to snowboard you make a commitment before you begin whether you will ride regular or “goofy.” Goofy means you place your right foot in front. As the name suggests, goofy footers are the minority. Since snowboard bindings must be fixed in place for regular or goofy foot, somebody who doesn’t know whether they are goofy will more likely start out regular (because its the best guess and because most rental boards will be setup for regular foot.) Even if they are naturally goofy, once they invested a day learning, they are unlikely to switch and try it out and so may never know.
A surfboard is foot-neutral. Anybody can ride any given surfboard whether they are regular or goofy. And jumping up on a surfboard for the first time happens so fast that you have no time to even think which foot is going forward. So a surfer is very likely to find his natural footing early on, unless he learned to snowboard already in which case he will naturally jump to the footing he is used to.
We should be able to see the effect of this by comparing a regular-foot snowboarder who first learned to surf with a regular-foot surfer who first learned to snowboard. The first guy is going to be better at snowboarding than the second guy is at surfing.
What will be the comparison for goofies?
Will…You…Play…Black Knight Again??
There is a reason I live in Winnetka and not in Evanston. And it’s not because, as Sandeep would put it, I like to get up 30 minutes earlier than otherwise so that my daughters can put their hair up and dress like beautiful little dolls to match all the other dolls in their classes. No, its because after all the dolls are asleep we get to go to their parents’ mansions for parties and there’s always at least one parent who makes a living doing something incredibly interesting.
Tonight I met the guy who once made a living designing the classic pinball machines. And he designed the two pinball machines, Black Knight in 1980 and High Speed in 1986 that are bookends for a period when the most important stuff I was learning about life was learned within a few feet of at least one of these machines.
It turns out these were also major turning points in the history of pinball itself. In 1980, pinball went digital, multi-ball, and multi-media starting with the game Black Knight. Black Knight brought pinball to a new level, literally speaking because it was among the first games with ramps and elevated flippers, but even more importantly because it brought a new challenge that drew in and solidified a pinball crowd. In doing so it also set the pinball market on a path that would eventually lead to its demise.
In 1986, Williams High Speed changed the economics of pinball forever. Pinball developers began to see how they could take advantage of programmable software to monitor, incentivize, and ultimately exploit the players. They had two instruments at their disposal: the score required for a free game, and the match probability. All pinball machines offer a replay to a player who beats some specified score. Pre-1986, the replay score was hard wired into the game unless the operator manually re-programmed the software. High Speed changed all that. It was pre-loaded with an algorithm that adjusted the replay score according to the distribution of scores on the specified machine over a specific time interval.
The early versions of this algorithm were crude, essentially targeting a weighted moving average. But later implementations were more sophisticated. The goal was to ensure that a fixed percentage, say the top 5% of all scores would win a free game. The score level that would implement this varies with the machine, location, and time. The algorithm would compute a histogram of scores and set the replay threshold at the empirical cutoff of 5%. Later designs would allow the threshold to rise quickly to combat the wizard-goes-to-the-cinema problem. The WGTTC problem is where a machine has adjusted down to a low replay score because it is mostly played by novices. Then anytime an above average player gets on the machine, he’s getting free games all day long.
The other tool is the match probability: you win a free game if the last two digits of your score match an apparently random draw. While adjustments to the high-score threshold is textbook price theory, the adjustments to the match probability is pure behavioral economics. Let’s clear this up right away. No, the match probability is not uniform and yes, it is strategically manipulated depending on who is playing and when. For example, if the machine has been idle for more than three minutes, the match probability is boosted upward. You will never match if you won a free game by high score. And it gets more complicated than that. Any time there are two or more players and they finish a game with no credits left, one player (but only one) is very likely to match. Empirically, the other players will more often than not put in another quarter to play again.
(The tilt tolerance, by contrast has always been controlled by a physical device which is adjusted manually and rarely in response to user habits.)
Pinball attracted a different crowd than video games like Defender (my new pal designed Defender and Stargate too,) and this is the fundamental theorem of pinball economics. Pinball skill is transferrable. If you can pass, stall, nudge, and aim on one machine you can do it on any machine. This is both a blessing and a curse for pinball developers. The blessing is that pinball players were a captive market. The curse was that to keep the pinball players interested the games had to get more and more intricate and challenging.
Pinball developers struggled with this problem as pinball was slowly losing to video games. Video games competed by adding levels of play with increasing difficulty. Any new player could quickly get chops on a new game because the low levels were easy. This ensured that new players were drawn in easily, but still they were continually challenged because the higher levels got harder and harder. By contrast, the physical nature of pinball, its main attraction to hardcore players, meant that there was no way to have it both ways.
Eventually, to keep the pinballers playing, the games became so advanced that entry-level players faced an impossible barrier. High-schoolers in 1986 were either dropouts or professionals in 1992 and without inflow of new players that year essentially marked the end of pinball. In 1992 The Addams Family was the last machine to sell big. By this time, pinball machines used a free-game system called replay boost. After any replay, the score required was increased by some increment. Apparently, only hardcore pinballers were left and this was the only way to prevent them playing indefinitely for free.
Today Williams owns Bally but they make slot machines and video poker. There currently exists one botique manufacturer of pinball machines but its fair to say that innovation stopped in 1992.
My new best friend has a basement full of Black Knight, High Speed, Defender, Pac Man, Asteroids, and everything else you inserted quarters into when you were 16. Now I just have to find a supplier of C45, Djarums, and gooney-birds and I’ll be ditching class to hear sirens and “Pull Over Buddy.”
Summer is over. But that’s old news. My buddy Dave maintained a tradition of polling us for the album of the summer around the time that the season was drawing to a close. Of course in SoCal, summer never really ends, but at some point you have to start climbing the fence to get into the neighborhood pool and that’s as good a demarcation line as any.
The album of the summer is not necessarily one that came out that summer. Its not even necessary that you listened to it that summer. But it should be the album that will always remind you of that summer whenever you hear it. This summer I had my midlife crisis and the background music was Seven Swans by Sufjan Stevens.
I spent the first 25 years of my life a few miles from the Pacific Ocean and never really learned to surf. I am a fine body surfer and boogie boarder but around the time that most of my buddies got into surfing I was spinning my wheels playing chess (I suck.) I turned 40 last fall and now I live on the shores of Lake Michigan. There’s no surf here.
Fortunately I spend a month in California in the summer and this summer it was time to learn. My buddy Dave gave me a surfboard. It’s about twice as tall as me and weighs more than my 8 year old. Its also about 5 inches thick which made it impossible for me to get my arm around it to carry it like a regular cool surfer dude. I looked like a dork carrying it on my head.
But I can’t imagine a better board to learn on. Its more like a canoe than a surf board. It was hilarious to me looking at all of these really cool surfer guys sitting on their tiny little boards that sunk from the weight until they were submerged nearly to their shoulders. Meanwhile I could dip my toes in the water as I lounged around on my Steve Behre (pronounced berry) cruise liner waiting for waves. Dave said “It’s massive, its dangerous, and its embarrassing but just in terms of having fun surfing… the next one’s going to be a lot better.” Thanks Dave.
I got myself a wet suit. The water stays around 70F in San Diego in August so I probably could have got by without one but (again relying on Dave’s advice) since I was going to be surfing in the morning and since, thanks to Steve Behre, my most temperature-sensitive parts would be afloat and exposed to the morning air, I broke down got myself a spring suit. When I tried it on, the dude at the surf shop (Rusty’s in Del Mar) says “Its a little loose in the arms, but you’ll grow into it.” He either thought I was 13 years old or he could just tell that I was going to grow tremendous muscles from paddling.
So I was set. Every morning at 5AM I would start my day with these objects:
You will notice the Advil which is pretty much indispensible when you are a 40 year old man trying to paddle a barge through crashing waves by yourself in the dark. OK not exactly dark, but I was in the water every morning before sunrise. I would surf until about 7:30 and then head back to the apartment, usually before the kids were awake. Parenting advice: arriving at breakfast with your wetsuit on and harrowing surf tales makes you the coolest Dad in the world. Not to mention the tremendous muscles.
I stood up the very first day. Fleetingly. By the end of the first week I could consistently catch waves and stand. They were small waves thankfully. I was bragging to my buddy Storn and then I got this email back.
If you are just standing in front of the whitewater after the wave has broken then it doesn’t technically count. (Not that it isn’t fun.)
How did he know?? In my defense, the Steve Queen-Behre was almost impossible to turn. I guess that’s the tradeoff. Storn came down from the Bay Area and he brought his board, which while still technically a longboard was about half the width and weight of mine.
We swapped boards and I could actually get my arm around his (that’s me on the left.) Didn’t catch any waves though. Turns out that if you want a surfboard with some degree of maneuverability, you also have to paddle with some finesse. I put that on the todo list for next summer and went back to my trusty Steve Buoy. (When you can’t catch a wave you can’t ride the last one all the way in. “The paddle of shame” is what Storn called it.)
That day was the only time I surfed in daylight so I had Jennie bring the camcorder. Here’s some shredding on video.
Not video of me, mind you, Jennie was too busy making drip castles with the kids. Anyway, I don’t need help from no jet-ski. By the end of the month I could turn and ride the shoulder.
Sufjan Stevens was in my CD rotation that whole month. It’s a powerful album and one that was made to be played before sunrise. In your rented Toyota Sienna with a boat strapped to the top:
What’s your album of the summer?
My mother tells me that where she lives there are cameras that will catch you if you don’t come to a complete stop at the octagonal sign. Your license plates will be photographed and you will be sent a bill in the mail. The fine is close to $500. That’s a lot more than I remember it.
Quiz: suppose the technology improves for detecting whether a violation has taken place. Should the fine increase, decrease or stay constant?
Start when he is 13 months old:
(sorry for the low quality. two years ago = ancient technology.) Yes at that age a child can be taught to float. In fact almost no teaching is required. You place the child on his back, he floats. He cries too, it turns out. A lot. That’s why its not me there teaching him to float. Instead it is a highly trained swimming teacher and one of the most inspirational people I have ever known. That year was our kids’ first year of swimming lessons with him and we have been spending the summer in La Jolla, CA every year since primarily because of him and these swimming lessons. 10 minute lessons, daily for four weeks.
Here is what he learned last year when he was 2. (rss readers probably need to click through to the blog to see the video.)
A 2 year, 2month old child can learn to kick with his face in the water, roll over onto his back when he needs to breathe, and then continue on. And at this early age he learns something which is subtle but which is central to swimming at every level: looking at the floor to point the top of your head in the direction you are swimming and getting a breath by rotating on that axis. The hardest thing to teach the child is not to look where he is going. Looking where you are going means tilting your head up and that pushes your body down and makes you sink. For a two-year-old that is a deal-breaker, but even among adults head orientation is what distinguishes good swimmers from the best swimmers.
Here is how you teach a two-year-old to look at the floor.
Many repetitions of placing the child in the water, putting your hand deep under water and tell him to swim and grab the hand. He has to look down to find your hand. The typical swimming teacher hold out his hands near the surface of the water which instead trains the child to look up, a disaster. This tiny difference has an enourmous impact on how smoothly the child can learn to swim.
It also teaches the child to go slow. Another subtlety with swimming is that moving your arms and legs faster usually makes you go slower. Slowing down all of the movements teaches him how to move more efficiently through the water.
This summer, at age 3 years 2 months he reached the stage where he could swim by himself without an adult in the pool with him, keeping himself going with the swim-float-swim sequence. Then he began to learn to swim with his arms.
Next summer: how to tech a four-year-old to snorkel.
I grew up in southern California which means that everything I ever needed to know I learned on the 405. Driving in traffic serves as a useful metaphor for a lot of life and it wasn’t until this morning that I made the connection and started to understand what Simon Johnson has been talking about all this time in blog posts like What Is Finance Really?
The parallels are clear between financial markets and driving in traffic. Arbitrage is the controlling force. For example, on the freeways arbitrage equalizes the traveling time across lanes, the commuters version of the efficient markets hypothesis.
You don’t have to have spent much time on the freeways to understand why arbitrage is not always efficient. An individual driver can get where he is going faster by changing lanes, but since there is a fixed capacity on the road this is always at the expense of somebody else. In equilibrium the total distance traveled by all is the same as if everybody were required to stay in their lanes. The arbitrage turns out to be a pure social loss due to the increased frequency of accidents.
Addendum: Calculated Exuberance has a nice take.
One of the best campus coffee shops I know is on the UCSD campus where I had the great fortune to spend a month this summer (much more on that coming soon.) The place is called Perks. Its not the coolest place to hang out. It shares space with the campus bookstore, the lighting is industrial, and the furniture is not conducive to lingering. But I don’t know of any other campus cafe so focused on the quality of the coffee.
The assistant manager’s name is Jason and he is a serious barista. It is apparent that he has also trained most of the regular staff. Their espresso roast is on the light side, a departure from the tendency toward over-roasting from Starbuck’s and Peets. They make drinks one at a time: the baristas are not multi-taskers. Listen to the sound as they steam milk. You don’t hear the usual bubbles-through-a-straw sound that must untrained baristas learn as the quick and easy way to make glue foam. And you see and taste the results.
The link I posted previously was somewhat outdated as it mentioned only that furloughs were under consideration. As a part of the recent budget agreement, the UC furlough is now a done deal. Here are some more recent stories.
I have heard that, system-wide, professors will take an 8% cut in pay. The word “furlough” usually means something like a temporary layoff. Here it means that workers will have shorter hours and commensurately lower pay. For example, UC non-faculty staff will have a few days off each month.
What are the marginal hours where Professors will be furloughed? Saturdays. That is, no classes will be cut, all administrative duties remain intact, pay is cut 8%. Presumably this means that my colleagues in UC system will be doing 8% more surfing the web when they are not in the classroom.
At Legoland, admission is discounted for two-year-olds. But a child must be at least three for most of the fun attractions.
At the ticket window the parents are asked how old the child is. But at the ride entrance the attendants ask the children directly.
The parents lie. The children tell the truth.
The Bagel Shack. There are two locations, the original in San Clemente and a second one in Mission Viejo off of El Toro. The bagels are big, toothsome, and fresh (due to their fast turnover.) I would go so far as to say that these are the best bagels I have ever had West of the Hudson River (and East of The Dead Sea.) I like that the bagels are shelved so that you can grab your own and quickly pay for them if you are not having them toasted or with cream cheese. Go for the jalapeño bagels.
Challenge: re-design speed bumps. They should still induce drivers to slow down, but without making them drive over a bump. How do you do it? Answer after the jump.
Read the rest of this entry »
The City of Oakland, Calfornia has become the first city to specifically tax the sale of medical marijuana. And The State of California is considering legislation to legalize the sale of (non-medical) marijuana an impose a tax of $50 per ounce. My sources estimate the current retail price to be about $300 per ounce. This is an early stage but that would put the tax at roughly the same rate as cigarettes in California (87 cents per pack which retails at around $7).
Other taxes are being considered:
Republican state Sen. Jack Murphy’s proposed “pole tax” would have charged patrons of strip clubs a $5 entrance fee. The bill was not approved.
See the press release here. The practical significance of this is that trade in IOUs is subject to standard regulation. Brokers or other intermediaries facilitating trade between buyers and sellers must be registered as exchanges with the SEC. In related news, the three largest banks in California will stop redeeming IOUs tomorrow. Its going to be a nice summer for the Check Cashers. Note that the IOUs pay 3.75% interest, tax free.
At the blog Everything Finance, Jonathan Parker breaks down the implications of the State of California issuing IOUs to rollover its debts, essentially creating a new currency whose value is pegged to the US Dollar. He makes a number of interesting points including the observation that since California cannot print Dollars, and cannot issue (conventional) debt, the IOUs place the State in a predicament reminiscent of financially-distressed countries having to defend a pegged exchange rate.
And unfortunately, the history of fixed exchange rates in practice includes lots and lots of these effective defaults. Governments that can issue these i.o.u.’s and have trouble balancing budgets tend to issue a greater value of their currencies than they have the will or ability to maintain. And default follows.
Prior to “maturity” will these IOUs trade at some market price reflecting the probability of default? One question is whether banks will be interested in buying IOUs, offering liquidity in return for the asset and a premium? The strategic issue is whether politically the State will find it more or less attractive to default if the IOUs are still largely held by private citizens, or instead mostly by banks?
My guess is that, in a crisis, a small number of banks would more effectively pressure the State to meet their obligations than if IOU holdings were less concentrated. If so, then I would expect banks to be buying IOUs at a steep discount. But does this create a Grossman-Hart style free-rider problem analogous to tendering shares in takeover bids?
Obama gave an interview yesterday on TV where he was asked about nationalizing banks. His response is an interesting look into the way the administration thinks about things, comparing the US to Japan and Sweden. You can read a transcript here.
What caught my eye was his use of the word “like” in the following excerpt (second sentence.)
So you’d think looking at it, Sweden looks like a good model. Here’s the problem; Sweden had like five banks.
This is the so-cal “like.” It stands for “about” or in this case “not many more than.” It lends an informality to the sentence which adds to its comical and therefore rhetorical punch. On top of that it brings the President further down to Earth even when talking about something esoteric like bank nationalization.
I like it. Is this the first occurence of the so-cal “like” in Presidential prose?
Be wary though, this mild version is the gateway “like” to more serious transgressions such as “We were discussing TARP and Geithner is like, ‘No way Larry, I am the Treasury Secretary and I say no caps on executive pay’ and then, like, Summers is all ‘Whatever.’ “
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