Who's laughing now

Risk of recession

This morning I woke up to news on the radio, and I almost laughed myself silly.

Okay, not really, but I could have.

For the past six month, I've been predicting that both the New Zealand house market will cool down and that the Reserve bank's OCR (offical cash rate) will come down, and neither of them happened. I was so convinced in my predictions that I have moved all my family's investments to long term products to protect them against low interest rates. Since I did that, the Reserve bank has raise the OCR twice, and made me looked like an idiot.

My vengeance came this morning, when ANZ announced their survey results suggesting an economic recess is in sight. I really shouldn't be happy about this, but I couldn't help. I've been wronged for too long by the two biggest idiots in New Zealand.

In a normal market, people borrow more when the OCR is low, and the borrowings more often than not go into the real estate market. And I predicted that both the housing market and OCR will move down. So you might wonder now, why would I make two contradicting predictions?

The key, you see, is that those two things are not really related in New Zealand. Most of money banks lend to people as home loans in New Zealand come from overseas, and whether there's a lot of money available domestically (as determined by the OCR) has no influnce over home loan at all.

Why the housing market will cool down has been discussed widely by economist (who looked as stupid as I did), so I'm going to skip that for now. Meanwhile, the OCR has to decrease because of a few reasons:

1. The New Zealand economy has been relying on foreign capitals for the past two decades, and the amount of foreign capital coming in is likely to decrease in mid-term because of reduced immigration (which at one stage brought in 7 hundred million annually) and (supposedly) cooling down real estate market, which will result in less return for foreign investors (remember, those are the guys who are funding all the new house purchases.). In order to keep the steam going, the Reserve bank has to increase domestic productivity, which often requires a low OCR.

2. One of New Zealand's biggest problem right now is that mounting foreign deficit, which is largely due to NZD's overbloated strength, which attracts foreign investors, which in turn causes foreign deficit to increase. Well you can the how the vicious cycle works. The cycle exists for consumer spending on foreign goods as well.

3. The OCR is at, if not past, its historical high for the past 15 years; and we all know the days of 20% interest rate will not come back again. Therefore, from a technical standpoint the interest rate has to go down.

But it didn't happen because:

1. The NZRB operate on the principle that its main purpose is to curb inflation, but it didn't have any weapon against the inflation we've been seeing for the past couple of years, which was caused by raising oil prices and a hot real estate market. However, Alan Bollard was so afraid that he might lose his job if he didn't have inflation under control (which he didn't, and couldn't) that he's gone out and violated pretty much every rule you could learn in Macroeconomics 101. This made him the second biggest idiot in New Zealand.

2. Bad fiscal policies, which often go with a Labour government. If you think about it, any change the Labour party could make to its fiscal policies will only make it look bad to its supporters (less public spending, less taxes, etc), and their have enough trouble getting votes as it is. Seeing how far Labour was willing to go to form a government, I don't think they're too concerned about screwing up the economy to keep themselves in power. Michael Cullen is the biggest idiot in New Zealand for this because he doesn't seem to know that fiscal policies could affect the economy. [edit: He just said today, and I quote: “Tax has nothing to do with growth”. Seriously, did this guy even graduate high school? Is his PhD in physical Ed?]

So what the two idiot did was basically making it very difficult for New Zealand businesses, who are great affected by a high OCR, to operate or expand. As stated in the link, low business confidence is a self-fulfilling prophercy, and with OCR up in the sky, a recession seems unavoidable. For all their shouting and FUD in the past year, the two idiots didn't do anything to effectively reduce NZ's foreign deficit or lower the NZD exchange rate, but ended up causing an economic recession. The housing market would have come down anyway without their interferences. So essential we ended up with the worse case scenerio. Great work guys.

All these will have great political implications, and yet another vengeance of mine. But that will be another post.

Anyway, here's the conclusion: Economic predictions are only correct if we don't put idiots in charge.

Loser cruisers

There three kinds of vehicles on New Zealand roads you should always avoid. Here's a list of them and why:

1. Gray Toyota Hilux/Hilux Surf/Nissan Safari and any Japanese 4WD that's over 15 years old. Here's the reason: Murder accused appears in court. For some reason social scums/rednecks/transients here in New Zealand really like those god awful trucks. Probably for the same reason social scums/rednecks/transients in the US drive their 20 year Ford Broncos. If you ever dare to pass on of those trucks on the open road, be prepared to see some fingers, if not worse. You should not park near them either, because they're very likely to give you dirty looks if you don't look like them.

2. Gray Mazda Familia(323) hatchback/Nissan Pulsar hatchback and any puny Japanese car with ridiculously big wheels. Here's the reason: Police name driver of car in horror smash. You see, putting a turbo in a puny 1300CC Japanese car and make it go twice as fast as it was designed to be was never a good idea. Unfortunately these are about the only cars the average Kiwi teenager can afford, and after they bought the wreck and made a turbo out of a traffic cone and some fans they have no money left for irrelevant stuff like brakes or even tires. Speed didn't kill those teenagers - stupidity did. Also, the rims on those cars often cost more than the car itself while the tires cost less than my Subway lunch. You shouldn't park near them for the same reason above, plus they might break into your car if the circumstances are right, which oddly usually means if you have a similar vehicle and park in a dark place. Punks here for some reason don't go for new and nice cars.

3. Nissan Serena. This is more of my own opinion. Jeremy Clarkson once said that owning a MPV is a sign that you've completely given up with life. I think life has given up on anyone who owns a Nissan Serena. For the non-car-obsessive, Serena is a puny Nissan van that's based on a very small platform and uses a very small engine, but you can fit 6 people in there, if you don't mind that the top half of the car ends up being heavier than the bottom half. People who buy a Serena are people who can't afford a proper MPV, but decided to ahead and have more kids than the average rabbit anyway. They also tend to think that no one should go faster than they do on the open road and enjoy leading a line of cars at 70 km/h. Don't park next to them because the kids will bang you door when they open theirs and their ice cream will always end up on your car.

As you can see, losers here in God's Own seem to have a strong affinity for gray cars. I'm not sure why, but it could be because they're all really lazy and gray cars don't show dirt. Oh, and it is a rule that a loser here mustn't have more than 0.5 mm tread depth on their tire. I guess that's God's way of eliminating those losers when the roads are wet.

Not something to be proud of.

BBC: NZ legal first on HIV disclosure

New Zealand has claimed a lot of World First title, the most famous of which being that it was the first country to give women voting rights. It is also (I think) the first country in Asia-Pacific to allow same-sex civil unions. But being that first country in the world to encourage HIV-positive people to hide that fact prior to sex - well, that's just nothing to be proud of.

For those of you unclear on this: AIDS is a serious disease, and there are solid scientific evidences to suggest that HIV leads to AIDS in the vast majority of cases. In recent years, with the advancements in therapy, drugs, and (possible) vaccines, people seem to start considering AIDS as some kind of allergy - inconvenient, but controllable. Recent there's even an semi-scientific clinical study that suggested that HIV is weakening. I have nothing against researching physicians, but there's a reason why Nature and Science don't EVER publish any clinical studies - they're sort of scientific, but never quite there. Pretty much all the articles in medical journals work under one assumption: in the population involved in the study. And no matter how big your research grant is or how many patients are involved, a clinial study is unlike to cover even 1% of the potential patients. Most important of all, clinical studies report what they see - they usually don't investigate the underlying mechanisms or causes in a scientific manner. Unfortunately most people don't know about this, so they consider clinical studies to be of equal value as proper scientific studies, which often then lead to stupid health guidelines and policies being made.

But I digress.

HIV is a serious and potentially deadly virus, but there are some people who wants to downplay this fact - those who have it. They do that for good reasons, too. HIV-positive people are often unnecessarily discriminated at work, school, and other benigh environments. In those cases, revealing their condition do much more harm than good. There are exceptions, of course, people who have close contact with other people, e.g. nurses. But there are cases where HIV-positive patients should be required to reveal their conditions, like when they go to a dentist, and, obviously, when donating any kind of body fluid.

Sex should be one of those conditions.

The reason behind the judge's ruling in the Dalley cases was that he wore condom during the intercourse. Any respected physician - neh, anyone other than hopeless optimistists and condom makers, will tell you that condoms are not 100% effective, even when used properly. In real life, condoms have a 93% success rate at preventing conceiving. That's at preventing something (sperm) 5 orders of magnitude larger than the HIV for coming in contact with another person's body.

Moreover, the judge said, and I quote: "The evidence of health experts in the area is that the use of a condom for vaginal intercourse is sufficient for the prevention of the transmission of HIV and that this can be met without the requirement for disclosure,". So does that mean anal or oral sex are completely safe from possible HIV transmisson? Again, anyone who didn't sleep through their highschool sex-ed would tell you that's not true.

I welcome any changes to make our society a fairer and more open one, but one like this that potentially endangers any sexually-active members of the society, should be made with carefully considerations.

Star Trek TNG versus Me: Which matured more in 7 years?

I used to be a big TNG fan. I dreamed one day when I can be like William Riker, flirting with my co-worker all day, or like La Forge, always coming up with crazy ideas with little regard to physical laws, or when I'm old, be like Jean-Luc Picard and take a gigatic star ship into the unknown space, or even like Data, but not for reasons you'd imagine.

Okay it was his ability to control every muscle in his body. I mean EVERY muscle. It can be very, very useful under some circumstances.

But I only really watched the last two seasons, because for some reason I decided to buy the DVDs in reverse order. Not all episodes were great, but most of them made sense.

Last week I downloaded the entire first season, and I found myself very annoyed by the (lack of) logics in the plots. And judging from her performance on the Enterprise in the first few episodes, Bev Crusher has to be the worse medical chief, too. She failed to wear protective clothing when in contact with a patient KNOWN to have contracted some mysterious illness on a strange planet. After the patient (La Forge, by the way) started acting strangely, she left him unconstrained in an unlocked room.

If I were Picard I'd have ordered her ejected out of the star ship at once.

Which left me think, it was around 5 or 6 years ago when I was a really big fan of TNG. I'd like to think I'm past the rapid changing days of adolescence, and I don't think I've changed that much over the past 5 or 6 years. Yet when I watch the first season of TNG now I think it is the most childish thing. It is more likely then, that the writers for TNG grew better at incorporating logic and common sense into their work. Unfortunately none of that seemed to have carried into the last Star Trek Enterprise series, or even DS9 for that matter, which is why I don't follow them.

Back from the hiatus

Amazing how fast time flies when you're not paying attention. It only seemed like yesterday when I was crazy about blogging and sharing my thought with the world.

Well, yes, a new girl friend might have that effect.

But apart from that, when I looked at my old posts, I don't feel like I've changed that much. I still love Mahler and Mac. I'm just as cynical, if not more. Even the my favorite links haven't changed. So what has changed?

What no longer exists, is my desired to be noticed, to be listened to, to be cared about. It didn't vanish, but it was quenched. For which I'm deeply grateful to my girl friend, Christina, who helped me see love again.

What is anew, is my desire to consolidate my thoughts. For one day I might look back, and discover how much I have grown, and how little I have improved.

Thus, for whoever is reading, this blog is back.

Review on Rattle's two 10ths

Time now for another review. This time it's Rattle's two recordings of the 10th. I've owned Rattle's 10th with Berliner Philharmoniker for a long time and love it very much. I have long believed it to be the best version of this symphony, even tho I never did any comparison. Earlier in this thread DarkAngel mentioned that he likes Rattle's recording with Bournemouth SO better, which haunted me for weeks, wondering if I'm missing out an even better performance. So I ordered a used copy from Amazon and after a few days of listening produced this review:

Overall: Sound quality wise, I found the BSO version of be more exciting, It sounded more forward and instrument separation is almost too good. I suspect it might be a studio recording (too lazy to look up in booklet), but the amount of ambient noise suggested otherwise. This, however, doesn't mean the BP version doesn't sound good. It is very neutral and packs an amazing amount of detail. Performance wise, BP was much more balanced, which I think is more appropriate. I've read reviews that state the BSO version to correspond to Mahler's later chamber music-like style better. If so, then the ensemble must have been made of a bunch of bullies as solo instruments were constantly battling each other. They jump out whenever they have a chance, leaving no space for the instruments exiting the theme. In retaliation the exiting instruments lingered around for a little longer. The outcome was rather disasterous, IMHO.

In the first movement, BP was somewhat slower, which build good foundation for the entire performance since there are numerous references to the first movement in later movements (esp. the finale). Elements of terror gradually creep in and finally lead to the horrifying (literally if you're not expect a full out attack of brass) moment. This process works much better in BP's slower performance.

To be honest, I found the performance of BSO's strings in this movement to be more engaging, although a little fatiguing as well. I certainly could understand if someone prefers this recording because of the adagio. In his later recording with BP, Rattle seemed to have chosen a better integrated sound image, which resulted in a more subtle adagio. However, this approach worked very, very well for the last two movements, as will be describled later. Also, the more exciting strings of BSO also subdued the forementioned moment of horror.

As an interesting sidenote, at exact 23:00 in the BP recording, the marching drum appeared to be hit accidentally. If I was that guy in percussions I'd have dug a hole in the ground and hid in it (it was live performance).

My impression on the first scherzo is that BP sounded much more articulate. There's a lot of changes in tempo and dynamics in this movement, and BP navigated through them with ease. I think the difference in quality of those two orchestras is no more apparant than in this movement.

Again, BP's performance was splendid in purgatorio. There's no much difference in intepretation of this and the previous movement between the two versions (none that I could find, anyway).

The second scherzo is very powerful scherzo material. The alternation was despair -> cheerful waltz -> blend. The alternation between themes become more and more rapid and dramatic; creating an impression that the happiness was only superficial and never meant to last. Wood winds of BP incorporated into the overall texture much better. Brass winds played a very important role in the change of themes and BP really shined as well. As can be imagined, BSO's battling instruments didn't work too well and the transistions sounded stiff and harsh.

The last movement. As mentioned before, the BP recording was much better balanced. BSO's percussion stood out to an almost unbearable level and can be quite distracting. My comment about instruments battling each other was also largely from this movement. In comparison, solo plays of BP were of much higher quality.

A9.com

I've been using Amazon's A9 as my main search engine for a few days, and I must say I haven't seen so much innovation in a website for a long time. I'm a very fast computer user - anyone who's ever saw me using computers would agree. The problem is that I go through so much stuff very quickly, especially when using Google, that I end up spending more time sorting through stuff I found than actually finding them. One other problem is that since Google is so efficient, you find lots of useful stuff and would want to save them all. Soon enough you'll end up with a gigantic bookmark (like mine) that takes 5 minutes to open. A9 solves all that.

I'm an avid fan of Amazon. Living on this little island thousands of miles away from other civilization (Australia doesn't count. We're talking about CIVILIZATION here! ;) ), the only way I can keep my demanding spirit from dying from total boredom is the DVDs and books I get from Amazon. Plus I really like playing with their recommendation system, I enjoy tweaking it so it keeps coming up with stuff I already own but bought from somewhere else. Frankly speaking, if all marketing information gatherings work as well as Amazon, I wouldn't object them at all! Which leads us to another feature of A9 - it incorporates your searching activities with your Amazon recommendation. For an average person this would be a great idea, but for professionals it could be a nightmare. I do lots of my research with internet, so I put in lots of academical and technological terms into A9. I have already observed some bizzard effects from this. Just yesterday I logged on to Amazon, and found a textbook on quantitative financing on top of my recommendation list! I also noticed something strange, as there's a π/2% sign at where the Amazon logo used to be. I clicked on it and Amazon told me because I'm a regular user of A9.com, all my Amazon purchases are qualified for a π/2% discount! That is 1.57% for the uninitiated.

So there you go. A great search engine AND additional % off your Amazon orders!