After he read my paper, Anthony told me something that I already knew — that the Discussion section was brief, and the Conclusion sudden. I had been both sick of working on the paper, and having trouble thinking about it in natural language. So those parts were… lacking. Anthony's gentle remarks increased my sense that they were inadequate.

I have expanded and reörganized the Discussion section (cannibalizing part of the Conclusion), and added to the Future Work section between it and the Conclusion. In that context, the Conclusion should seem less sudden, and I have added some thoughts to it (as well as having taken one from it).

Anthony also suggested that the paper could be made more accessible by discussion of the historical background of the problem, and of real-world examples. But, as I told him, I fear to alienate experts by such discussion; and I have since learned that I am already bumping-up against the size-limits for a submission to the journal of my choice.

Anyway, the latest version of my paper is at

The mathematical expressions that appear (tiled) in the background of this 'blog; are from a paper on which I have been working (off-and-on) over a long time. I'm far from perfectly happy with the present state of the paper, but I've finally put-together something like a complete draft of it, in PDF, at

There are some temporary issues with presentation of this draft:

• The layout needs to be fixed, by the insertion of page breaks, so that things such as section headings are pushed to a next page, rather than orphaned.
• The OpenOffice formula editor does not support use of the relational symbols ≻, ≽, ≿, or ⪰. (For now, I am representing strict preference with pref and weak preference with wpref; later, I will output the paper as LAΤΕΧ and then tweak the formulæ to give me ≻ for strict preference and one of the other three for weak preference.)

At this point, I welcome comments, from experts and from non-experts, both on the underlying content and on how I have expressed myself.

Up-Date (2009:04/08): Professor Gamst of UCSD caught an error in what had been formula (10). It was easily patched. I have up-dated the on-line version of the paper.

Years ago, a friend of mine used to regularly listen to right-wing talk radio. (I imagine that he still does.) I was often a passenger in his car, and there usually had to listen to this programming as well. What I heard drove me up a wall. These commentators didn't usually target people with whose views I agreed, but they routinely misrepresented the arguments that were used by their opponents, made ridiculous universalizations or near-universalizations about the motivations of these opponents, and pretended that the only alternatives to the views of the political left were those of the political right. And the abiding emotion was hate.

For the past few days, I have been visiting my parents. Nearly every evening, they watch MSNBC, and I catch some of it whenever I visit them. What I hear drives me up a wall. The commentators of MSNBC don't usually target people with whose views I agree, but they routinely misrepresent the arguments that have been used by their opponents, make ridiculous universalizations or near-universalizations about the motivations of these opponents, and pretend that the only alternative to the views of the political right are those of the political left. And the abiding emotion is hate.

For example, during this latest visit, I heard Rachel Maddow mocking William Kristol as ostensibly claiming a few weeks into the invasion of Iraq that the war was won, when what Kristol had actually said was that every battle had been decisively won. Were I now to claim that, a few weeks into the American Civil War, every battle had been decisively won by the Confederacy, I would plainly not be claiming that the Confederacy had won the war.

(Maddow was more generally concerned to pretend that the neoconservatives were trying to reposition and to repackage themselves as supporters of the war policy of the Obama Administration. The truth is that, in actual practice, this policy far more closely resembles that of the later Bush Administration than it does the policy described during the Obama candidacy. The neoconservatives, then, don't have to reposition much, though they plainly need to repackage if they are to regain active influence, since their persons and past organizations are anathematized.)

On top of being bothered by all this hate and misrepresentation in-and-of-itself, I am bothered that my father seems to be at least amused by this rubbish, and that my mother sort-of waves-away the fact that there's a stream of misrepresentation, and refuses to acknowledge that the hate is on a par with that of right-wing talk radio.

I end-up closing myself into the principal guest room, away from the television but also then away from my parents.

Amendment (2009:04/10): My father stated, last night, that while my mother likes Rachel Maddow, he finds Maddow unpleasant. Now, if only he would reject some of the other folk on MSNBC.

This story

is not getting much attention from the main-stream media.

I will be working on a Gadsden-flag bumper-sticker for my car.

In the past, I've asserted that San Diego is seriously over-built. Hillcrest, the neighborhood in which I live, has many commercial sites that have been empty for some time. As an œconomist, I naturally wonder why the landlords haven't lowered the rent to a point where some party takes occupancy.

One possibility would be that the landlords were hoping for an up-turn in the economy. The possibility would make them more reluctant to commit to long-term leasing contracts at what would be present market-clearing rates, and might make them reluctant to even rent month-to-month, as there would be difficulties getting short-term renters out as quickly a more desirable renter might want to begin using the site.

Part of what would make it difficult to remove month-to-month renters would be local and state laws and regulations governing evictions. And other interventions in the market could be holding rents and vacancies at unnatural levels. For example, the structure of tax law might make sometimes make it advantageous to leave a property idle.

In any case, the numbers of vacancies, and durations of some of them, would be difficult or impossible to explain based simply on reference to market forces.

---

308 Washington Street, half-a-block from where I live, was a Hollywood Video rental store when I first moved to Hillcrest. (Most or all of their wares were VHS tapes at that time!) At some point, they hived-off perhaps a fifth of the site for digital electronic game rentals. Eventually, this section became a separate store, 302 Washington Street, and then Hollywood Video vacated that section, which was then rented to a UPS franchise store. Some time in late 2007 or in 2008, Hollywood Video shut down the store at 308 Washington Street. Since then, the building has stood about four-fifths empty, with a large sign advertising its availability.

Finally, yester-day, I saw a crew in the site gutting things in what I take to be the first stage of a renovation.

The last time that someone was poking-around in 308 Washington Street, I asked Scott, who works at the UPS store, lives in the same complex as I, and frequents the same coffee house (Babycakes) if he knew who the party was, and he said that rumor held it to be PetCo, which we agreed would be cool. Last night, Art, who lives in the same complex and works part-time at the coffee house express hope that the new store would be, er, a Denny's Restaurant, and didn't like the idea of a pet supply store there, in spite of being a dog-owner. Art sees PetCo stores as essentially big boxes like Wal·Mart stores. Well, there's some truth to that. On the other hand, Denny's Restaurants are open all day, almost every day of the year, and can be associated with a lot of traffic. Our immediate neighborhood could become more congested and louder late at night with a Denny's Restaurant. But I don't think them a likely renter there.

[Up-Date (2009:03/26): Scott tells me that word remains that 308 is to be occupied by a PetCo store.]

A few days ago, while barefoot in my apartment, I stumbled a bit, and came down wrong on the largest toe of my left foot, basically stubbing it on the floor, with most of my mass coming down behind it. It swelled and bruised darkly. Since then, its swelling and bruising has abated, but the bruising has been moving back, following the underlying skeleton, now to the first cuniform. If the earlier bruising and swelling hadn't been visibly diminishing, I would have responded to this backward movement of bruising by limping to one of the nearby emergency rooms. As it is, I look at it as a painful curiosity.

Yester-day, I got hit with a significant wave of depression. I'd been trying to dodge it, but it got me.

My parents are expecting a visit from me; in fact, they expected me to have driven there by sometime yester-day. But I've not got my ducks in-a-row to travel, and right now I'd rather just curl-up in a ball for a while.

One of the things that really upsets me in such a context is when people throw-away my maybe. I tell them that I plan to do something or hope to do something or some-such, and some people act as if I've said that I will or even shall do it. I generally choose my words, even in extemporaneous conversation, fairly carefully, and I resent people ignoring what I've said with the result of a spuriously implied commitment, even if they don't themselves recognize the implication.

Previously, I wrote of how a Jack Black® Pure Performance Shave Brush, with synthetic bristles, proved to be far better than the Burma Shave™ boar-bristle brush that I had been using.

I said that I would probably try, for the sake of comparison, an Art of Shaving® badger-bristle brush that I had, and there was some interest in my doing so.

That badger-bristle brush is not of the highest grade. Above it would be the best badger, and better than the best would be the silvertip badger. I'm not going to be trying a best brush or a silvertip brush, because I'm not going to contribute to the the deaths of more badgers. (Again, I got my boar-bristle brush in a state of ignorance, and my badger bristle brush was likewise got by someone who didn't know that badgers were killed for the bristles.) FWIW, I've read that there isn't much difference between an ordinary badger-bristle shave brush and a best badger-bristle shave brush, but that there is a remarkable difference between a silvertip brush and a best badger-bristle shave brush.

In any event, I found the Art of Shaving® badger-bristle brush much better than the Burma Shave™ boar-bristle brush, but the Jack Black® synthetic-bristle brush significantly better than the Art of Shaving® brush.

The Art of Shaving® brush still irritated my skin somewhat. I don't know to what extent that was a result of the overt texture of the bristles and to what extent it was an allergic reäction or something like an allergic reäction. The Black brush has no such effect.

Both the badger brush and the the Black brush have a much greater tendency to hold water than does the boar brush.

I've only tried the badger brush and the Black brush with a hard cake shaving soap. (I once tried the boar brush with a thick shaving cream from Lush, but that the experiment suggested that that stuff shouldn't be applied with a brush at all.) I have other shaving soaps with which I can experiment later, but I don't mean to conductive extensive further comparisons of these brushes.

---

For those who are interested, here is a list of the synthetic shave brushes of which I am aware:

• Jack Black Pure Performance Shave Brush
• Body Shop
• Culmak
• Delong (see also Delong brush heads)
• Gentleman's Shop
• Edwin Jagger
• Men-Ü (in America) (outside of America)
• Mühle: classic & modern
• L'Occitane
• Omega
• R.A. Rooney
• Cyril R. Salter (apparently same product as Rooney)
• Taylor of Old Bond Street (NB: Brushes simply marked imitation may contain some natural hair.)

Many of them have been reviewed at Badger & Blade.

In conversation to-day with the Woman of Interest, I said something that I have often said jocularly

I'm not so much a fool as you think.

It's actually a line in translation from a play, Policja, by Sławomir Mrożek. The line is spoken by the character of the General, after his paranoiac nature has kept him from being killed in an explosion.

I only saw that play once, back in late '71 when it was broadcast on WNET, with John McGiver in the rôle of the General. But that one line has very much stuck with me, and repeatedly been used by me, ever since.

I had an odd dream this morning. The Woman of Interest was in Mexico, for some sort of anthropological or archæological project. This was at-or-near a city named Juarez, but it was not the well-known Juarez; rather, it was at a lake in the center of the state of Chihuahua (about where, in real life, the city of Chihuahua is located). Anyway she was taken captive by rebels or by criminals of some sort.

I was in Texas (G_d knows why) when she was kidnapped. So I began trying to make arrangements to get to this dream-world Juarez, the nearest airport to which was a dreadfully named Hitler - Little Hitler International. The next and perhaps only flight to HLH Int from the (unnamed) airport nearest to me would be that of the Smithsonian Institution's airline. (No, the Smithsonian does not have an airline in real life.) I was scrambling to get my passport, and would then try to persuade the SI airline to sell passage to me. I wasn't sure what I was going to do about a visa, but I figured that I'd have to deal with that at HLH.