Some thoughts on the Cost Disease
Saturday 18 February 2017, 06:40The lovely and talented Scott Alexander has a posting on Cost Disease: the costs of some things, notably education and medical care especially in the USA, have increased in the last few generations to a really unfathomable extent. He gives detailed statistics, but it's typically about a factor of 10 after accounting for general inflation. Why has this happened? He gives some hypotheses, and in a followup posting shares some ideas contributed by readers, but it's not at all clear what's going on. And it seems like knowing might be valuable, because the fact of this phenomenon's occurrence (whatever the cause) is causing a great deal of misery for a whole lot of people, bearing on many other important issues.
I don't know either, but it made me think of some things.
Dongguan Wizbang
Thursday 9 February 2017, 18:44Here's another update on what's up with my new life and new business. In general, there's progress being made, but I'm still facing a lot of annoying delays.
Introducing North Coast Synthesis Ltd.
Wednesday 11 January 2017, 19:43The synthesizer project has reached an important milestone: my business is now incorporated, under the name North Coast Synthesis Ltd. The Web site will be at northcoastsynthesis.com, which currently just redirects to a password-locked Shopify storefront, but will become public and have some real content in the near future. Watch this space, that site, or my Twitter account, for further updates as they happen.
Circuit-Macrosで回路図を書いて
Wednesday 14 December 2016, 10:34僕の新しい仕事がアナログシンセのデザインです。 LaTeXでユーザーマニュアルを作りたいです。 ドキュメントの中で回路図を書きたいです。 今日、Circuit-Macrosで回路図を書き方の勉強しましょう。 よろしくお願いします。
これはTeX & LaTeX Advent Calendar 2016に僕の寄贈です。昨日はmarimo-nekomimiさんの日です。 明日、Yasuhide Minodaさんの日です。
Setting up shop, and shopping
Wednesday 30 November 2016, 07:45On the 30th of last month, I was on vacation in Hokkaido, Japan. One month before that, I had just arrived in Sweden for a short stay between leaving my apartment in Denmark for the last time and my return to Canada after living abroad for just over two years. One month before that was my last day of work at ITU Copenhagen, and possibly my last day of paid academic work ever, after 15 years in the research business. Now I'm in Toronto writing a Web log entry; and one month from today, I expect to be on the West Coast visiting my family for the winter holidays. Five consecutive 30ths in five very different geographic and cultural spaces.
Moving in
Monday 7 November 2016, 11:33I wrote my previous update on the train back to Tokyo. My trip to Japan was basically over, but I still had a substantial amount of travelling to do.
Japan 2016: days 8, 9, 10, Hokkaido and back to Tokyo
Monday 31 October 2016, 22:57On my second full day in Hokkaido (Sunday), it started snowing very lightly as I set out in the morning. The flakes melted as soon as they hit anything solid, but it was interesting to note. I spent the morning walking through the local parks and making a leisurely way to the Bankei Ridge Winery, which is the oldest (established 2001) and also the smallest winery on Hokkaido. It's not exactly a major wine-producing region; grape wine isn't all that popular in Japan to begin with, and the climate (similar to coastal British Columbia) is such that growing grapes isn't easy.
Japan 2016: day 7, Maruyama and Kissyou
Saturday 29 October 2016, 17:18Saturday was my first full day in Sapporo. I started with the hotel breakfast, which was pretty good. They had a good selection of Japanese-style breakfast items and even some limited Western-style breakfast food. Someone who refused to eat Japanese-style breakfast would at least not go hungry, although such a person would probably have plenty of trouble with the language, and the little Japanese-only card you're supposed to place on your table to show whether you're just temporarily away at the buffet, or have finished and left.
Japan 2016: days 2-6, SISAP and shinkansen
Friday 28 October 2016, 15:44At last update I was preparing for the start of SISAP 2016, likely my last conference as a working academic. I gave my talk there and did other conference things, had one day of free time in Tokyo, and then spent a day travelling to Sapporo. Now it's early morning and I'm gearing up for the main "vacation" part of my trip. Remember that you can usually find photos and more up-to-date commentary in my Twitter stream.
Japan 2016: day 1 and previous
Sunday 23 October 2016, 07:26I'm in Japan to present a talk at SISAP 2016 and do some vacationing. That limits my Net access and time for writing updates here, but it also means I have plenty of stories to tell, so I'm going to try to post more or less regularly (maybe not every day) during my trip. Brief updates and photos, usually more current than the entries posted here, will be on my Twitter stream, which see.
