Years ago, I found a recipe on the internet for building your own Tempurpedic, and I did exactly that. It was precisely what Cortopassi described: a 5-inch-thick base layer of high-density foam (the density is important) topped with a separate 5-inch-thick piece of memory form. As I recall, the auth...

That's right. It's totally counter-intuitive. The correct result still doesn't set well with me, and the only way I was able to reason my way through the problem was by knowing in advance what the correct answer was and working backwards. It's interesting that this problem tripped up even the mathem...

Seriously, Maddy, you figure this stuff out when you can't sleep at night? Not only that, I got out of bed and went to the computer to write it down while it was still fresh in my head. That's more than a little OCD, wouldn't you say? I really need some sleep tonight, so I shouldn't even be thinkin...

If you like this kind of stuff, there's a very neat book out there called "The Drunkard's Walk." I began reading it probably two years ago but got sidetracked with other things, always intending to pick it up again. It examined a large number of similarly counter-intuitive probability-rela...

The article didn't provide an explanation that made any sense to me. Nor, apparently, did it make sense to the majority of readers who commented on the article and who continue to insist that when Door 3 is eliminated, the probabilities become 50/50 that the car is behind either of the two remaining...

In memory of Monty Hall, who died yesterday, I give you the following: Imagine that you’re on a television game show and the host presents you with three closed doors. Behind one of them, sits a sparkling, brand-new Lincoln Continental; behind the other two, are smelly old goats. The host implores y...

. . . And old people can't operate Facebook.

This was the first time I had read this thread, and what a wonderful post! Thank you!

Really? Is it your position that the ONLY thing that could cause a systemic collapse is "unsustainable" national debt? But you're not even able to articulate exactly how it's even a problem. Off the top of my head, here are some things: * War * Famine * Plague * Demographic problems (see ...

I'm not saying that a collapse would be a result of the debt. I'm saying precisely the opposite: there may be a collapse, but it won't be because of the debt. It'll be because of actual, structural problems with the real economy, and will occur regardless of whether there's debt or not. Help me to ...

Xan's initial post in this thread summarizes things as well: The key difference between this and the "simple, old-fashioned way of seeing things" is that dollars are completely disconnected from gold, and from anything else. As Moda used to say, they're like points on a scoreboard. Watchi...

On the one hand, you think federal government debt is bad. But when presented with a scenario under which the debt is paid off [by creating the money out of thin air], you don't like that either. That makes absolutely no sense. Debt has consequences. Debt bad because consequences bad. You know, the...

Xan wrote:It sounds like everyone just agreed that the national debt doesn't matter, then.

You guys have lost me.

I'd just as soon the red bell pepper that they wanted $4.25 for yesterday (I put it back) didn't go up to $6.25 next year.

How, exactly? Suppose the Mint did create twenty 1-trillion-dollar coins and gave them to the Treasury. The national debt would suddenly be zero. Nothing in real life would change. If things are the same, regardless of whether the national debt is twenty trillion dollars or zero, then it seems like...

To you and me: Hell yes How, exactly? Suppose the Mint did create twenty 1-trillion-dollar coins and gave them to the Treasury. The national debt would suddenly be zero. Nothing in real life would change. If things are the same, regardless of whether the national debt is twenty trillion dollars or ...

So the answer to the question "Does the debt matter?" is. . . [drumroll]. . .

To the government itself: No
To the multinational corporate monopolies that run this country and to their whores in Congress: No
To you and me: Hell yes

There must be a limit to this process, but I don't think we're anywhere close to it yet. I'd like to think that we could see it coming, but considering how things are interconnected, especially through derivatives, it's hard to say what might set things off. The spark could come from the most unlik...

If you're relying upon the "freezing" of your credit report to protect you, consider this: The "unfreezing" of a credit report requires no verification of identity other than knowledge of the very same information that was released in the security breach. https://krebsonsecurity...

Money doesn't represent a claim on hard assets. At least, dollars don't. They used to be backed by gold, at least in theory, but now they're not. Dollars are valuable because a) people believe them to be valuable, and b) because taxes must be paid in dollars. Maybe not literally, but ultimately mon...

There's no doubt that there are many ways for the government to print its way out of its debt, but that can't change the fact that there is a finite limit to the hard assets upon which all this money represents a claim. The game works so long as everybody closes their eyes and pretends that there's ...

If you're relying upon the "freezing" of your credit report to protect you, consider this: The "unfreezing" of a credit report requires no verification of identity other than knowledge of the very same information that was released in the security breach. https://krebsonsecurity....

So, I would say, yes, the Fed is always there to buy. And the Fed *creates* the cash to pay for them? That strikes me as an entirely fictional market, and I'm not sure why it should inspire confidence on the part of any ordinary investor who is required to assume that the Fed will be there to buy t...

Tenn, I gather you're implying that you now (six years later) think differently about the question whether exponentially-increasing government debt is sustainable? What, in particular, changed your view? Again, I'm speaking as someone who is about as economically illiterate as they come. I simply do...

Libertarian666 wrote: Maybe I'm just getting too old to get excited about anything?

Learned helplessness. You know, the reaction of the laboratory rat that gets shocked regardless of whether he presses the bar. I'm feeling that way about damned near everything these days.

I see it this way... You've got this very complicated system (the government, its spending, its budgeting process, its borrowing, etc.). In the absence of a constraint, there is no catastrophic reaction. However, if you add a constraint, there *is* a catastrophic reaction. To me, that says that the...