Lightning

Posted on by David Wright

I find it weird that we don’t know what causes lightning.

There are two hypotheses noted by Wikipedia:

Cloud particle collision hypothesis

According to this cloud particle charging hypothesis, charges are separated when ice crystals rebound off graupel. Charge separation appears to require strong updrafts which carry water droplets upward,supercooling them to between -10 and -40 °C (14 and -40 °F). These water droplets collide with ice crystals to form a soft ice-water mixture called graupel. Collisions between ice crystals and graupel pellets usually results in positive charge being transferred to the ice crystals, and negative charge to the graupel.[14]

Updrafts drive the less heavy ice crystals upwards, causing the cloud top to accumulate increasing positive charge.Gravity causes the heavier negatively charged graupel to fall toward the middle and lower portions of the cloud, building up an increasing negative charge. Charge separation and accumulation continue until the electrical potential becomes sufficient to initiate a lightning discharge, which occurs when the distribution of positive and negative charges forms a sufficiently strong electric field.[14]

Polarization mechanism hypothesis

The mechanism by which charge separation happens is still the subject of research. Another hypothesis is the polarization mechanism, which has two components:[34]

  1. Falling droplets of ice and rain become electrically polarized as they fall through the earth’s magnetic field;
  2. Colliding/rebounding cloud particles become oppositely charged.

There are several hypotheses for the origin of charge separation.[35][36][37]

Here’s a cool video of lightning captured at 7,207 images per second. Light travels at something like 300,000,000 meters per second so it doesn’t break down the ‘big flash’, but it shows a lot.

Here’s another quote:

How does lightning form? Evidently we’re still trying to figure it out! It all starts in the clouds where both ice crystals and hail stones form:

Scientists believe that as these hail stones fall back through the rising ice crystals, millions of tiny collisions occur. These collisions build up an electric charge which is stored in the cloud like a battery. ”A cloud is very much like a battery, but a battery with a much higher voltage than your typical flashlight battery… not 1.5 volts but 100 million volts.”

But what scientists don’t know is exactly how this electric charge generates lightning. “What remains a major meteorological mystery is how it is that ice particle collisions result in the generation of lightning. We’re very much in the middle ages on that problem.”

From the Discovery Channel’s “Raging Planet” series.

Patents Roundup

Posted on by David Wright

Here’s Posner, here’s the ruling on Samsung. Don’t even get me started on genetic patenting. That’s outrageous. I’m outraged.

There’s some great stuff by Posner:

There are a variety of measures that could be taken to alleviate the problems I’ve described. They include: reducing the patent term for inventors in industries that do not have the peculiar characteristics of pharmaceuticals that I described; instituting a system of compulsory licensing of patented inventions; eliminating court trials including jury trials in patent cases by expanding the authority and procedures of the Patent and Trademark Office to make it the trier of patent cases, subject to limited appellate review in the courts; forbidding patent trolling by requiring the patentee to produce the patented invention within a specified period, or lose the patent; and (what is beginning) provide special training for federal judges who volunteer to preside over patent litigation.

Patents are abused, notably by Apple, but don’t hate the player, hate the game. It’s silly that judges are the ones driving change.

Incidentally, though, it’s interesting that judges ARE a channel for real regulatory / legal change. I was really surprised at how Russ Roberts and Stiglitz mostly agreed with each other in this podcast, except that Stiglitz is optimistic of our ability to change society through the government and Roberts isn’t.

Will someone sue the Federal Reserve in court claiming that they aren’t fulfilling their dual mandate? Is that even possible?

What’s the Difference Between Chris Rock and Allen Iverson?

Posted on by David Wright

Chris Rock cares about practice. Iverson desn’t (commentary).

When beginning to work on a new show, Rock picks venues where he can experiment with new material in very rough fashion. In gearing up for his latest global tour, he made between forty and fifty appearances at a small comedy club, called Stress Factory, in New Brunswick, New Jersey, not far from where he lives. In front of audiences of, say, fifty people, he will show up unannounced, carrying a yellow legal note pad with ideas scribbled on it…

In sets that run around forty-five minutes, most of the jokes fall flat. His early performances can be painful to watch. Jokes will ramble, he’ll lose his train of thought and need to refer to his notes, and some audience members sit with their arms folded, noticeably unimpressed. The audience will laugh about his flops— laughing at him, not with him. Often Rock will pause and say, “This needs to be fleshed out more if it’s gonna make it,” before scribbling some notes. He may think he has come up with the best joke ever, but if it keeps missing with audiences, that becomes his reality. Other times, a joke he thought would be a dud will bring the house down…

For a full routine, Rock tries hundreds (if not thousands) of preliminary ideas, out of which only a handful will make the final cut… By the time Rock reaches a big show— say an HBO special or an appearance on David Letterman— his jokes, opening, transitions, and closing have all been tested and retested rigorously. Developing an hour-long act takes even top comedians from six months to a year. If comedians are serious about success, they get on stage every night they can, especially when developing new material. They typically do so at least five nights per week, sometimes up to seven, and sweat over every element and word. And the cycle repeats, day in, day out.

Interview With John Seo

Posted on by David Wright

One of the most impressive person in the Insurance Linked Securities market. One of the most impressive I’ve ever met, period. He’s more thoughtful, knowledgable and just plain nice than I think I ever have a chance of being.

Here’s an interesting comment:

Lehman publicly disclosed a minimum risk capital commitment of US$500 million via Lehman Re, but we had authority to go much further than that. That was the largest risk-taking ILS group in the late 1990’s that I am aware of.

The rest is here. Here’s a Michael Lewis profile of John. I didn’t really like it much.

Two Quotes of Quotes

Posted on by David Wright

Galvan noted that the response pattern of teen brains is essentially the same response curve of a seasoned drug addict. Their reward center cannot be stimulated by low doses—they need the big jolt to get pleasure.

and…

Then Axe faced another big problem. Insecure high school students had been so convincingly persuaded that Axe would make them sexually appealing that they began completely dousing themselves in it. After all, if Axe = sex, then more Axe = more sex, right? According to CBC News, “Some boys have been dousing themselves in Axe, apparently believing commercials that show a young man applying the deodorant and being immediately hit on by beautiful women.” It got to the point where the students were reeking so heavily of it that it was becoming a distraction at school. So much so that in Minnesota, school district officials attempted to ban it, claiming that “the man spray has been abused, and the aerosol stench is a hazard for students and faculty.” The principal of one Canadian school started actually confiscating bottles of Axe. “They spray it all over their heads and their necks,” one teacher said. “They don’t realize how powerful the odor is. . . . They have no idea how much it takes to be a walking stink bomb [which is] basically what they are.”

All from Eric Barker.

The Twilight of Catastrophe Modelers

Posted on by David Wright

One interesting idea in Kevin Kelly’s *What Technology Wants* is that technologies undergo a life cycle where they are at first specialized and poorly designed (they just don’t effing work right) and progress to the point where they are ubiquitous.

I am reminded of that by this article on cat models (via Jim Lynch):

Speakers at several recent insurance conferences stressed the need for property insurers and reinsurers to develop their own independent views of catastrophe risk, rather than outsourcing their risk views to third-party vendors. But they differed on exactly how to get to there.

While experts observed that reinsurers and insurers are increasingly using multiple models to inform their views of cat risks (with the smallest insurers enlisting the help of reinsurance brokers to accomplish this), Peter Nakada, managing director of RMS, a Newark, Calif.-based firm, suggested that a multi-parameter view is preferable to a multi-model view…

“Pick one of the giant simulation things and then force the modeling firms to give you the secret sauce from inside the models,” he advised, suggesting that users can then select “multiple points of view on the parameters that run the model” to develop a range of estimates.

Nakada is fighting a serious rearguard action here. RMS overreached with their last update and modeled claims costs skyrocketed. Instead of recanting on their update (unthinkable), they instead downplay the importance of their technical view of the risk. And they’re right. But I wonder if they realize how much pushing the commoditization of their black box will fundamentally change their business.

Kelly would phrase it like this: what happens when open sourced cat models are ubiquitous? How does that affect the industry?

The day may well come when the ‘secret sauce’ of the cat models goes open source and the state of the art is free to all. In that world RMS goes from R&D shop to industry consultant. They’ll provide outsourced analysis and data cleaning services.

They’ll fight like rabid dogs to avoid the billable hour revenue model, since nobody gets rich in businesses that don’t scale, so they’ll need products. Maybe they’ll look to compete with ISO and offer some kind of master database of property values in the US, who knows.

Their heyday, though, is perhaps ending.

Short Cramer’s Picks

Posted on by David Wright

According to a detailed analysis published in October 2010, viewers who bought the stocks Cramer recommended the previous night lost money relative to the market overall. Even people who held those stocks for as long as fifty days lost an average of nearly 10 percent relative to the market. For those stocks with the highest overnight returns after Cramer’s recommendations, the fifty-day performance was even worse: negative 29.54 percent for the top quintile. In other words, according to this study, if you watch Mad Money and follow Jim Cramer’s top recommendations, you will lose almost one-third of your money in less than two months. Not very many people can afford to follow that kind of advice. The study also found that an investment in the stocks Cramer recommended significantly underperformed the market over the longer term.

That’s Barker. So just short his picks. Can it possibly be that easy?

Suckered Again by Great Writing

Posted on by David Wright

I am a fan of neither the NBA nor of movies, really.

But when I read Roger Ebert I want to watch movies:

Tom Russell was a 10-year-old Adelaide schoolboy when he made “Last Ride,” his feature film debut. I have run out of words to account for young actors. Untrained, they seem able to reach an instinctive core of natural truth. Russell is in almost every scene, as authoritative as the adult actors. They say in a film or a story that you must focus on the characters who change, and in “Last Ride,” all of Kev’s changes are behind him, but Chook is arriving at his young life’s turning point.

For director Glendyn Ivin, this is also a debut feature, although he won the Palme d’Or at Cannes for a short subject. Remarkable, how he begins with materials that could have given themselves so easily to a road movie formula, and finds such truth and beauty. He knows so surely where he’s going that he arrives at a perfect final shot, that tells us what we need to know about Chook.

And when I read Bill Simmons I want to watch basketball:

You know what saddens me? The funniest clip on YouTube is no longer funny. Yep, you can finally rest in peace, “The Heat Welcome Party” video. Thanks for giving us two sterling years atop the Internet comedy rankings. We’re replacing you with a bullpen by committee of old reliables like “I Like Turtles,” “Charlie Bit Me,” the “It’s Still Real to Me, Dammit” guy, Journey’s immortal “Separate Ways” video and even the “I Like Turtles” techno remix. You will be buried officially during Monday’s championship parade in Miami. We will bury you not once, not twice, not three times … just kidding, we’re only burying you once.

Let’s hope you don’t resurface as something else — something scarier, something more ominous, something on the level of Namath guaranteeing Super Bowl III or Ali promising to defeat Liston. See, the ceiling of “The Heat Welcome Party” slowly changed during the last two games of the 2012 Finals. It’s no longer about hubris or a suffocating lack of self-awareness. It might be more of an omen, a warning, a little like the Game of Thrones characters seeing a red comet streak across the sky and saying, Uh-oh, dragons are coming. I mention this only because, like every other non-Miami fan who attended the last two home games, I left that arena muttering to myself, “Shit … he finally figured it out.”

But whenever these great writers sucker me into their subjects, I am disappointed. I don’t have the patience to care about great movies and I don’t have whatever it takes to care about great basketball.

Luckily I don’t need to care for their subjects. Great writing stands on its own.