Footnote URLs

So, one thing which annoys me a bit about writing blog entries is the way the horrible markup for links screws up the formatting of the entries as I see it in the editor. It makes a couple of words take up a whole line, and screws up the word-wrapping, and makes things unreadable. Which sucks. So I wrote a cool new plugin that lets me instead write things like:

... So I wrote a <#1>cool new plugin</#1> that lets me instead write things like: ...

<!-- links:
#1: http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/blosxom/plugins/footnoteurl/
--!>

Which seems much more pleasant. I had actually thought there was already a plugin that did this, but apparently not. I certainly can’t see anything like it now.

Yay Me

Hey, there’s my submission! How bizarre though, that they seem to have printed out the (126kB) PDF that I sent them, then scanned it back in as a new (906kB) PDF. Arguably it makes sense to make sure that people looking at the website are getting exactly what the review are reading, but even so.

Currently there’s 65 public submissions (if the scrollover doesn’t work, just look at the source). We might see about doing a summary of some of them later. Many of the comments are pretty predictable just based on the organisation doing the submitting. Booooring. Not overly surpising though.

Economics is so interesting

Cypher was a fun movie, twisty and a little noir, with some suspense and revulsion and action and sexual tension and everything. The only problem with it was a strange mis-step in the script: a couple of scenes were about incredibly boring lectures at conferences, and while they at least weren’t so out of touch to try setting it at a Linux conference, one of their topics was enthralling enough to make me wish they could’ve drawn out that scene just a little longer.

Ah, central banks and monetary policy, so thrilling.

Also intriguing is this article on experimental economics. This is the theory that was behind the “market in terror” that got shot down by knee-jerk ignoramuses not too long ago.

IN ONE EXPERIMENT they create minimarkets, with real cash rewards, that allow employees to bet on future sales and revenue. So far these internal futures markets have done a better job of forecasting than polls of top executives. The disruptive implications for the corporate pecking order, and not only at Hewlett-Packard, arent lost on anyone.

In other news, did you know that Governor Schwarzenegger has an economics degree and an honorary doctorate?

An Open Letter to Paul Krugman

Read it. Bookmark it. Read it again, beforehand, next time you choose to argue about something.