Fluorescent Fixtures

reas into one school is of any significance. It may be a charming eccentric ity, but it's irrelevant to the matter we were discussing.

and I corrected you.

In fact Winfield Hill claimed - in his author;s biography in AOE - to have dropped out of grad school - in Chemical Physics. He didn't say where he go t his EE degree, or what it was.

You claim to have found evidence that he was subsequently accepted back int o the Harvard grad school in a different subject area, which wasn't "correc ting me" but rather adding additional information.

You should be smart enough to understand that you didn't "correct" me but r ather supplied the information that I'd pointed out that you should be abl e to access.

ferent departments in the same grad school. If you were half as smart as y ou think you are , you would remember what we were discussing. Well I actua lly think you knew what we were discussing, but wanted to post something so you did not look to be wrong.

If Harvard organised itself like most other universities, Winfield Hill wou ld have had to switch between schools/departments rather than between depar tments of an umbrella graduate school. The practical point is that the swit ch would have been a big deal - as Win acknowledges when he says he "droppe d out" of Chemical Physics - rather than some kind of administrative adjust ment.

I've certainly made some sloppy word choices, but I don't think I've got an ything significant wrong, and you are struggling to claim anything differen t.

e:

hool". James Arthur presumably didn't go to graduate school so doesn't unde rstand how they work. If you swap subject areas in graduate school - partic ulary in the US where graduate studies involve a lot of course work - it's a big deal.

ol of Arts and Sciences. It is obvious to tho most casual observer ( But n ot to Bill ) that it would have all the subject areas that are in that grad school.

rent subject areas, even if they are all under the umbrella of a single "sc hool".

n't seem to be sufficiently well-informed about the process to take this on board.

You've demonstrated my point.

Win's academic accomplishments a) aren't relevant to anything, or b) any of our business.

This entire irrelevant non-topic is an offshoot of your effort to suggest Dan lied about going to a better school than you did, a thoroughly appalling, disreputable quest.

orking,

oo. :)

ed idea of "smart" -

ince he can't understand why Keynesian pump-priming deficit spending works to get a country out of recession, has decided that any Keynesian would bel ieve that it would work to simulate the economy even when the economy wasn' t in recession.

Yet another example of your defective analysis. You're second-hand dealing in other people's thoughts, both mine and Keynes here, understanding neithe r.

ng fanatic - he's the kind of right-wing fanatic who can find endless stati stics to support his point of view, while failing to see that non-right-win g observers will realise that he's been selective in what he's looked at.

Since you insist, and so often insist your superiority entitles you to make others' decisions for them, I'll explain why Dan's objectively right--he's obviously smarter.

It's perfectly obvious in your writings Dan grasps concepts more rapidly, more fully, and appreciates their ramifications better than you. You're unable to see through the fog to the core, and you're oblivious to frank contradictions (such as arguing that socialism is specifically to benefit the poor, arguing that you may be wealthier than Dan, and also arguing your entitlement to decades of public assistance).

As further evidence re: lacking original thought, you argue questions of objective fact by authority, citing authorities you do not understand as if merely reciting their names should over-awe. E.g., Keynes.

Continuing, Dan solves problems better, understands issues better, & often expresses the nut of a technical thing in a lucid, concise phrase where you ramble, self-aggrandizing, directionless and incoherent.

You're dogmatically literal, unable to generalize from the specific when there's a general relationship, but more than willing to extrapolate when there isn't. That shows a failure to understand the general relations between things.

All these are various measures of intelligence, abundantly clear in your po stings.

If those weren't enough, separately, you posted your IQ years ago, which Dan estimated recently quite accurately, and which, without denying, you tried to distract from with the usual bombast and misdirection.

Dan has nothing to prove with me. If Dan says his IQ is higher I easily believe him--it's not really a question. Let's call it a 'no-brainer.'

But it only matters because you try to project authority over authenticity, arguing imperiously rather than empirically.

venue.

Cheers, James Arthur

ote:

school". James Arthur presumably didn't go to graduate school so doesn't un derstand how they work. If you swap subject areas in graduate school - part iculary in the US where graduate studies involve a lot of course work - it' s a big deal.

hool of Arts and Sciences. It is obvious to tho most casual observer ( But not to Bill ) that it would have all the subject areas that are in that gr ad school.

ferent subject areas, even if they are all under the umbrella of a single " school".

don't seem to be sufficiently well-informed about the process to take this on board.

-working,

too. :)

cted idea of "smart" -

since he can't understand why Keynesian pump-priming deficit spending work s to get a country out of recession, has decided that any Keynesian would b elieve that it would work to simulate the economy even when the economy was n't in recession.

her.

I think I can claim to understand Keynes thinking on the subject. Your's is sufficiently incoherent to be essentially incomprehensible, so I can be le t off having to understand that.

wing fanatic - he's the kind of right-wing fanatic who can find endless sta tistics to support his point of view, while failing to see that non-right-w ing observers will realise that he's been selective in what he's looked at.

ke

Attempt to explain ...

Your claim to be in a postion to judge is vitriated by the fact that I've n ever claimed to be wealthier than Dan - the point was the more subtle one t hat since Dan doesn't know how much money I've got, he can't realisitically claim to know that he is richer than I am.

If you missed that point you've failed to see "through the fog to core" on at least one significant point.

You would like that to be true, and don't follow what I post closely enough to realise that it isn't. Respect for John Maynard Keynes is widespread am ongst economists who know what they are talking about - as opposed to the f lat-earthers you cite with such enthusiasm - but nobody (least of all me) t hinks that he was super-human, hence the post-Keynesian concensus (which yo u don't happen to know much about).

Example?

You'd prefer that I accepted your fatuous generalatisions, and get fractiou s when I show them up.

postings.

Actually, they are indications that you think - or to be more accurate, fai l to think - in krw's style, where everything that he agrees with is fine, and everything else is willful lies.

I posted a score on a do-it-yourself IQ test from a book I'd bought and rea d as a kid. I happen to be intelligent enough to be aware that IQ tests are a rather poor proxy for intelligence - Mensa exists to prove the point. Yo u seem to be less well-informed.

Dan's IQ might well be higher than yours - or mine. He's still not impressi ve in putting arguments together, or reacting to the main line of an argume nt. He's not quite as enthusiastic at throwing up rhetorical smokes-screens as you are, which might suggest that he isn't as bright, but then again he might have moral objecdtions to that style of argument.

y,

Don't be silly. I cite my authorities, and I know enough to know what's aut hentic - while you have a long history of citing bogus web-sites which exis t to propagate right-wing nonsense. You once told us that Hoover's last eco nomic initiative had ended the Great Depression - when in fact it had sunk without a trace before he been ejected from office - and supported this abs urd claim with a link to a demented web-site. That was a particularly horri ble example of arguing from a false authority - if you think that you ever caught me in anything half as fatuous, do remind us when it was. If that's the best line of argument you can come up with, you need to get b ack to abuse school - I'm more amused than offended.

ote:

school". James Arthur presumably didn't go to graduate school so doesn't un derstand how they work. If you swap subject areas in graduate school - part iculary in the US where graduate studies involve a lot of course work - it' s a big deal.

hool of Arts and Sciences. It is obvious to tho most casual observer ( But not to Bill ) that it would have all the subject areas that are in that gr ad school.

ferent subject areas, even if they are all under the umbrella of a single " school".

don't seem to be sufficiently well-informed about the process to take this on board.

Win's academic accomplishements came up because Dan claimed that Win had gr aduated from Harvard, to which I reacted by pointing that I was unaware tha t Win had ever made such a claim.

The implication was that since Win had never felt the need to advertise, wh y would Dan feel such a need?

When we dug into the publicly available biographical material, all I could find was a reference by Win to having dropped out of graduate school at Har vard. According to Dan's private sources, Win ended up graduating from Harv ard's graduate school in the subject area of Electrical Engineering.

I got bored with Dan's persistently reiterated claim, and pointed out that he hadn't provided any publicly accessible information to support his claim . He still hasn't. I don't see why he wants to bother to make the claim - h e is presumably compensating for some childhood feeling of inferiority or t he like.

- since he can't understand why Keynesian pump-priming deficit spending wo rks to get a country out of recession, has decided that any Keynesian would believe that it would work to simulate the economy even when the economy w asn't in recession.

ing

ither.

is sufficiently incoherent to be essentially incomprehensible, so I can be let off having to understand that.

I can sum it easily: taking money from some and giving to others who did no t earn it, does not create more money, and does not incentivize greater production by either group. Rather, it discourages both groups, and production overall. (You can't spend your way to prosperity.)

Shell-games with debt and deficit spending fool you, but not the population in general, nor do such artifices change the inevitable outcome: production is discouraged, which reduces the national standard of living.

You posit exponential over-unity returns, which is easily refuted with mere logic, but also more than disproved with past and present empirical data. (Such as the impulse-response of GDP to recent stimulus spending--nil.)

t-wing fanatic - he's the kind of right-wing fanatic who can find endless s tatistics to support his point of view, while failing to see that non-right

-wing observers will realise that he's been selective in what he's looked a t.

make

e's

y,

it

never claimed to be wealthier than Dan

Pointless quibbling / hair-splitting.

money I've got, he can't realisitically claim to know that he is richer tha n I am.

A (lame) point that Dan amply addressed.

n at least one significant point.

gh to realise that it isn't. Respect for John Maynard Keynes is widespread

s/Respect/Mindless worship/

Argumentum ad populum / ad verecundiam.

ody (least of all me) thinks that he was super-human, hence the post-Keynes ian concensus (which you don't happen to know much about).

And there you go again... posturing, self-aggrandizing, arguing by authorit y, etc.

It's vapid.

Cheers, James Arthur

l Physics graduate program at Harvard University, and obtaining an EE degre e, he began his engineering career at Harvard?s Electronics Design Center."

ve got a degree from there - and certainly wouldn't have got a graduate deg ree. Where he got the EE degree isn't spelled out - Harvard would have been the likeliest place, and you should be able to get better evidence than I can via the Harvard alumni association - but so far your original claim is not proven, and you seem to be having your usual problems with comprehendin g the the implications of what you have posted.

ate school?

mation - here's a link to the web-page I cut and pasted from.

w on the up-take.

y, but then changed to Electronics and got a graduate degree in EE. The Har vard website says he got a degree from the Graduate School of Arts and Scie nce in '67. Dropping out of Chemistry is not necessarily dropping out of g raduate school.

dropped out of Engineering and graduated in Physics.

Dropped out of Engineering and graduated in Physics? (shocked) well I gues s he really enjoyed Physics :)

I dropped out of Biochemistry and graduated in Chemical Engineering... is t hat bad? :D

Michael

ess he really enjoyed Physics :)

that bad? :D

John originally was going to major in Engineering. But decided he wanted t o be a doctor. In order to get his pre-med requirements , he switched to P hysics. I think it was because Engineering required taking an economics course and Med school wanted people to take Organic Chemistry.

Anyway he graduated with honors and went to med School. But after a couple of years of med school, he found that a lot of what you learned in med sch ool was facts , not theory. So he dropped out of med school and got his Ph d in Molecular Biology. And then did some post graduate work at Cambridge before becoming a professor.

Dan

guess he really enjoyed Physics :)

is that bad? :D

to be a doctor. In order to get his pre-med requirements , he switched to Physics.

d Med school wanted people to take Organic Chemistry.

le of years of med school, he found that a lot of what you learned in med s chool was facts , not theory. So he dropped out of med school and got his Phd in Molecular Biology. And then did some post graduate work at Cambridg e before becoming a professor.

Ph.D in Molecular Biology (Biochemistry)! Fun :)

I decided I wasn't cut out to be a doctor, so I did the exact opposite, lea ving Biochem for Chem Engr. Ended up working in Project Management / Contr acts.

Michael

swathes of irrelevance snipped

Don't you 2 have anything useful to do?

te:

e:

nd - since he can't understand why Keynesian pump-priming deficit spending works to get a country out of recession, has decided that any Keynesian wou ld believe that it would work to simulate the economy even when the economy wasn't in recession.

aling

neither.

s is sufficiently incoherent to be essentially incomprehensible, so I can b e let off having to understand that.

not

Interesting that your "summing up" doesn't include the word "recession". Ke ynesian deficit-funded pump-priming spending is a purely a device to get an economy out of recession, so a "summing up" which doesn't mention the word isn't all that useful.

And you can spend your way to prosperity. Over the last few centuries our s ociety has spent a lot on mechanising manufacturing and agriculture, and qu ite a lot on universal education to get a working class that can operate th e new machines. Our current prosperity depends on that spending. Your unrea listic enthusiasm for the unfettered free market wants to constrain this ki nd of spending to areas that appeal to individual capitalists.

For most of the people who take it on, university education is a rather ris ky investment - half of them won't emerge from the tertiary system with a d egree.

In order to get enough of the university graduates society needs, we have t o encourage people who have got a less than even chance of completing a deg ree to spend years of study on trying to make it. It's not an investment th at a rational free market agent would make.

The Keynesian investment in improving business confidence is much more rati onal, though it does depend on appreciating that actual free markets don't behave entirely rationally.

Keynesian deficit-funded pump-priming spending is a purely a device to get an economy out of recession, so a "summing up" which doesn't mention the wo rd isn't all that useful.

Interesting that you think that deficit spending only has an effect during a recession. Can you explain why you think " Keynessian defict-pump-primin g " only works to get an economy out of a recession. I think that Keynes thought it would work during a depression too.

Dan

. Keynesian deficit-funded pump-priming spending is a purely a device to ge t an economy out of recession, so a "summing up" which doesn't mention the word isn't all that useful.

g a recession. Can you explain why you think " Keynessian defict-pump-prim ing " only works to get an economy out of a recession. I think that Keyne s thought it would work during a depression too.

Obviously the economy is in recession during a depression - IIRR a depressi on is merely a sustained recession.

Deficit spending has effects whenever it happens. During a recession the ne t effects are positive, but when the economy is running at or close to full capacity deficit spending doesn't increase production to any useful extent and rather creates inflation.

All of this is economics 101 (unless you learned your economics from the fl at-earthers who taught James Arthur).

net effects are positive, but when the economy is running at or close to fu ll capacity deficit spending doesn't increase production to any useful exte nt and rather creates inflation.

A simplistic view. You left out all the times the economy is not in a rece ssion and also not running at close to full capacity. I.e. where the eco nomy is now. Not in a recession, but in an extremely weak recovery.

Your post needs a slight correction. It should read " During a recession t he net effects MAY be positive." During the last recession there was almos t no effects because the economy is no longer mainly confined to the U.S. The U.S. is still deficit spending , but there is no significant inflation.

flat-earthers who taught James Arthur).

I took economics in college in a course with Kenny G. So where did you tak e economics 101?

Dan

Is this a trick question? :-)

Cheers, James Arthur

. Keynesian deficit-funded pump-priming spending is a purely a device to ge t an economy out of recession, so a "summing up" which doesn't mention the word isn't all that useful.

g a recession. Can you explain why you think " Keynessian defict-pump-prim ing " only works to get an economy out of a recession. I think that Keyne s thought it would work during a depression too.

There's an amusing anecdote in one of the editions of "The Road to Serfdom."

"In the 1930s John Maynard Keynes was in full flow. He was the most famous economist in the world, and Hayek was his only real rival. In 1936 Keynes published his infamous General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. Hayek was tempted to demolish this nonsense but he held back, for a very simple and very human reason.

Two years earlier, a now forgotten Keynesian tract (A Treatise on Money) had been ripped apart by Hayek in a two-part journal review. Keynes had shrugged off the attack with a smile, saying as they passed one day in Clare Market: ?Oh, never mind; I no longer believe all that.? ?

Hayek was not about to repeat the demolition job on The General Theory in case Keynes decided, at some future point, that he no longer believed in ?all that? either ? a decision I heard Hayek regret often in the 1970s."

The Road to Serfdom, F.A. Hayek Free download:

Rather like when someone pointed out to him that his strategy didn't work long term, to which Keynes infamously replied "In the long run we are all dead."

Great rationale for short-term gratification, eh? Blow up the debt and damn tomorrow, today it's time to PARTY!

Cheers, James Arthur

. Keynesian deficit-funded pump-priming spending is a purely a device to ge t an economy out of recession, so a "summing up" which doesn't mention the word isn't all that useful.

g a recession. Can you explain why you think " Keynessian defict-pump-prim ing " only works to get an economy out of a recession. I think that Keyne s thought it would work during a depression too.

Since Bill doesn't understand theory, I'd be more than satisfied if he could post a graph of the impulse response of the economy to Keynesian stimulus.

I already did that, and the answer is 'nil,' but Bill couldn't grasp it. He doesn't seem able to understand graphs or spreadsheets.

Japan has been trying to spend themselves out of debt since the 80's. It didn't work then, it didn't work in the Great Depression, and it didn't work in 2009.

Borrowing gobs of money from everyone's future to give to a bunch of some community disintegrater's favored cronies does not benefit the economy at large. Rather, only the cronies, and at everyone else's expense.

It's bizarre the "wealth-is-zero-sum" crowd can't see an actual zero-sum game when they themselves make it so.

Cheers, James Arthur

te:

n". Keynesian deficit-funded pump-priming spending is a purely a device to get an economy out of recession, so a "summing up" which doesn't mention th e word isn't all that useful.

ing .a recession. Can you explain why you think " Keynessian defict-pump-p riming " only works to get an economy out of a recession. I think that Ke ynes thought it would work during a depression too.

It's not so much that I don't understand the half-witted theories that Jame s Arthur esposes - they are simple enough to be perfectly comprehensible, i f rather too simple to be useful - as that I don't share James Arthur's fan atical enthusiasm for them.

Here are several

since they are included to demonstrate that the US economy did react postiv ely to the Recovery Act, which was a Keynesian stimulus package, you won't find them at all satisfactory. You haven't when I've posted much the same d ata from other web-sites in the past.

It wasn't as big a stimulus as it should have been - it took a while for th e actual magnitude of the sub-prime mortgage crisis and it's international implications to be appreciated - but it clearly reversed the decline in eco nomic output, though it took longer than it should have done to re-establis h real growth.

This is what James Arthur likes to believe. My actual answer has always bee n that no growth was a whole lot better than the sustained decline that ran for three years after 1929.

The US economy shrank by 1.6% in the last quarter of 2008 - which was rough ly the rate at which the US economy started shrinking in 1929 - but the dec line slowed down rapidly and the economy was growing again by the third qua rter of 2009.

Jsmes Arthur thinks that this is a 'nil' response, because that suites his demented ideology, but you have to well-indoctrinated before you can see th e data that way.

Japan - like Hoover in 1929 - didn't try hard enough.

In particular, they didn't accept that particular "zombie" banks and busine sses were unsustainable, and kept on lending them money to sustain them whi le they lost even more money. This isn't a mistake that Obama and his team made.

This is a hypothesis. It doesn't seem to be supported by much empirical evi dence, and is confounded by a lot more empirical evidence. Quite a few of t he "favoured cronies" were allowed to go bust in 2008, and James has compla ined here about the way the General Motors share-holders were treated - per haps he was one of them.

The problem is that if you ignore "investor confidence" as a manipulable va riable, you can't actually understand what's going on, and you definitely d on't.

te:

n". Keynesian deficit-funded pump-priming spending is a purely a device to get an economy out of recession, so a "summing up" which doesn't mention th e word isn't all that useful.

ing a recession. Can you explain why you think " Keynessian defict-pump-pr iming " only works to get an economy out of a recession. I think that Key nes thought it would work during a depression too.

??

d Hayek regret often

It might have been more difficult for Hayek to demolish The General Theory

- since he didn't actually do it, his conviction that he could have done mi ght have been less than well-founded.

The Great Depression shrank the US manufacturing capacity by 25%. The Great Recession doesn't seem to have shrunk it at all, though growth was slow fo r couple of years.

The difference seems to be down to a Keynesian stimuls package. That packag e did increase the national debt, but at least the economy hasn't shrunk, s o it's probably the lesser of the two evils - a 25% bigger economy can sust ain quite a bit more national debt, and an economy that has been shrunk by

e net effects are positive, but when the economy is running at or close to full capacity deficit spending doesn't increase production to any useful ex tent and rather creates inflation.

I'm not posting to an audience who show much interest in fine detail.

running at close to full capacity. I.e. where the economy is now. Not in a recession, but in an extremely weak recovery.

The US economy is now growing at close to the long term average rate for de veloped economies. There are problems, but most of them can be put down to the consequences of an unusually unequal distribution of income, which is a problem that started developing when Reagan came to power and has yet to b e tackled.

the net effects MAY be positive." During the last recession there was alm ost no effects because the economy is no longer mainly confined to the U.S. The U.S. is still deficit spending , but there is no significant inflatio n.

During a recession the effects ought to be positive, but governments can ma ke tactical errors in directing the stimulus money - if it goes mostly to p eople who can be relied on to spend it, it's more effective than if it goes to people who can afford to squirrel it away - as happened in the US when the Republicans got a majority in the House of Representatives in 2010.

e flat-earthers who taught James Arthur).

ake economics 101?

The same place I took electronics 101 - the university of self-education.

It's less rigorous than a well-taught course, but less vulnerable to hare-b rained instructors.