In today’s New York Times, David Leonhardt writes, of a sixteen-year-old economics paper:

In the paper, they argued that several financial crises in the 1980s, like the Texas real estate bust, had been the result of private investors taking advantage of the government. The investors had borrowed huge amounts of money, made big profits when times were good and then left the government holding the bag for their eventual (and pre­dictable) losses.

In a word, the investors looted. Someone trying to make an honest profit, Professors Akerlof and Romer said, would have operated in a completely different manner. The investors displayed a “total disregard for even the most basic principles of lending,” failing to verify standard in­for­ma­tion …continue.

Bay Tanner is a young widow and aspiring private in­ves­ti­ga­tor from wealthy South Carolina stock. When a hitherto unknown shirt-tail cousin (fifth half cousin, specif­i­cal­ly) bursts into Bay’s life, she brings havoc in her train.

As one of the characters says, the plot sounds like a made-for-TV movie. Still, Bay is a feisty heroine and the background is not one that has been mined deeply.

We were watching An Engineer’s Guide to Cats on YouTube when I looked out the front window and spotted these two looking in. They climbed up the six-foot gooseberry frames to the windowsill.

Meet Whiskey and Guinness, from next door. They think they own the place. When it’s hot in the summer, they’ve been known to stroll in and wander around our living room—while we’re in it.

I left the back door open for a few minutes one Saturday morning, while packing the car. I came back in and found Whiskey just inside the back room. He scarpered when I yelled at him and I slammed the door behind him. It was then …continue.

We saw The Seafarer at the Seattle Rep this afternoon. Two brothers, Richard and Sharkey, share a house in north Dublin. There’s little love lost between them. Richard, recently blinded, is con­trol­ling and wheedling. Sharkey is trying to stay off the gargle and it’s not easy when Richard and his crony Ivan drink like fishes.

Sharkey’s old rival, Nicky, arrives on Christmas Eve, bringing a stranger with him, Mr. Lockhart. They settle down to a game of poker and Sharkey privately learns that he’s met the stranger once before. For Mr. Lockhart is the devil and he wants to collect the old debt that …continue.

Vim has had syntax high­light­ing since version 5.0 in 1998. It quickly became in­dis­pens­able. It’s hard to go back to looking at mono­chro­mat­ic source code after you’ve become accustomed to syntax high­light­ing.

The syntax high­light­ing is tied into Vim’s support for col­orschemes, which define colors for the fun­da­men­tal syntax groups like Number, Comment, and String. The syntax high­light­ing for a particular language defines custom syntax groups for specific language features, such as cppEx­cep­tions or htmlEndTag,

The custom syntax groups are linked to the underlying fun­da­men­tal syntax groups. Hence, if you change your col­orscheme, your syntax high­light­ing is updated au­to­mat­i­cal­ly.

The re­Struc­tured­Text syntax high­light­ing in Vim 7.2 has some short­com­ings, in my opinion. For example, *italic* shows …continue.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Who Watches the Watchmen?) asked Juvenal.

Answer: we do. The Watchmen movie, that is. Peter, Carol, Raven, Iain, Emma, and I are all going to see the midnight initial showing at the Pacific Science Center IMAX.

I’m not sure that I’ve ever been geeky enough to watch the midnight opening of a movie before. But it was Peter’s idea.

Peter and I shared an apartment in 1990–92 when we were both grad students at Brown, and it was his copy of Watchmen that I first read.

And so the loop closes.

As promised yesterday, we saw the initial midnight showing of the Watchmen movie at the Pacific Science Center IMAX. And, lo, the geeks came in their numbers and they were greatly pleased. Some were dressed as Rorschach, one came as a smurf; no, I lie, he was Dr. Manhattan.

I summarized the plot in my review of the book. That still holds: the movie was largely faithful to the book. In many scenes, it was clear that the book had served as a storyboard. Too faithful in some ways at 165 minutes long. Some subplots were elim­i­nat­ed; no doubt they will resurface in …continue.

Zits. Somehow all those ads on TV for acne cream never quite tell you that zits continue after your teenage years.

This post was brought to you by the small but annoying pimple that appeared yesterday. Feh!

I knew three of my grand­par­ents; they all died after I reached adulthood. My mother’s father, George Victor Clery, died 12 days before I was born, on March 3rd, 1965. I was to be named Vincent after my father, [Charles] Vincent Reilly. Instead, I was christened George Vincent Reilly. I was the first grandchild for both the Clerys and the Reillys. I think I must have been a welcome dis­trac­tion.

Ironically, my parents had gotten married on his birthday, March 30th, the previous year, and he didn’t live to celebrate their first an­niver­sary. The timing was partly in his honor and partly because it was Easter Monday. Catholics were not allowed to marry …continue.

A few years ago, after watching one too many whodunnit TV mysterys, I coined my

Law of Economy of Characters

The killer is in­nocu­ous­ly introduced in the first 20 minutes.

In real life, the killer may not be known until late in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion—if ever.

In a TV mystery, any non-recurring character who gets more than a few lines has to be a potential suspect—to the audience. The character is not there gra­tu­itous­ly. Their salary is being paid for a reason.

It’s not uni­ver­sal­ly true, but it works more often than not. It’s less true in books, where throwaway characters are easy to introduce.

Googling around, I found the following, attributed to Roger Ebert:

Ebert’s Law of Con­ser­va­tion …continue.