Another case of Plagiarism

Plagiarism

Doris Lessing on the Nobel Prize

Doris Lessing on the Nobel Prize.

Parakeets in Brittain

Fly.

How to get rid of roaches

There are very few reasonable sites on how to get rid of roaches. I had to combine a number of tips on the internet with my own ingenuity to succeed, after five years of numerous battles, in finally ridding my home of infestations.

Most of the tips that one can find are good, but largely insufficient. Only diligently applying the right combination can lead to success.

The first step is of course to rid the house of possible sources of food, but mostly, of possible sources of water. This means timing your dishwashing, and drying the sink before going to bed. The last step is one that is hardly stressed, and non-trivial to execute. Yet it is necessary. If you put a plate of poisoned fries next to a glass of beer, the risk exists that your plan will fail.

After having removed all other attractive items in sight, one should use a three-pronged attack.

Firstly, one uses traps (e.g. Kapo glue traps) based on bait and glue. This is ecological and will capture a large number of roaches. It is good to control the multitude of roaches crawling around the house, especially in the dark. (They do travel further then what is usually implied, moving from room to room, and from one side of the kitchen to another.) One needs to put the traps in dark or humid places, and one needs to set at least five traps simultaneously, perhaps preferably ten, such that one is forced to carefully step into the mind of the Roach to determine new plausible places to pose traps.

Secondly, I used professional poison Fipronil (0.05%) gel which is effective in killing the animals instantly, or even better, having them take poison home to poison their nests. Indeed, method number one alone will never reach the nests, and new generations of roaches will keep popping up. Put many little bait drops in the most infested areas (dishwasher, sink, toilet, door, drawers, ..) and choose the spots wisely. Whenever a single roach is spotted in an area, add a drop.

Thirdly, I used a mix recommended on a French site (that I unfortunately can no longer locate). One uses concentrated sugar milk (which you can find in the supermarket in tubes : it is milk or milk powder with a very high degree of sugar such that it becomes a paste -- apparently some people use this lethal concoction to cook), and mixes it with boric acid (easily obtained in your local pharmacy in sufficient quantities : just ask) to make a deadly paste. Roll little balls out of the paste, and place them once more in the right locations. (Along pathways, typically along walls, edges, dark areas, wet spots, ..) Again, make too many balls (e.g. 30), such as to be forced to enter in the Spirit of the Roach.

Only the combination of these three methods has convincingly worked for me, when applied simultaneously and rigorously. It has to be said that our infestation was particularly bad and that we live in a tower of appartments that is not known for its hygienic inhabitants.

Poison sprays are ridiculous but may be of some psychological help. Other common silly recommendations include using boric acid only, or glue traps only, or to concentrate on food, not water.

This post is to spread the word on how to get rid of roaches, efficiently.  It took me a while to finally identify an efficient course of action. It is clear that the professional industry has no interest in being too efficient, and that amateurs usually do not have the persistence to identify a winning strategy. If you live with infestations for several years though, one may develop sufficient motivation.

Google practices

It's hard to get around google :

http://sosconso.blog.lemonde.fr/2013/09/09/comment-google-detourne-les-internautes-de-leur-recherche-dhotel/

Whit Stillman

The films by Whit Stillman are excellent, and underestimated. Metropolitan (1990) owns much to Woody Allen, but renders Allen's humour younger and more socially and critically inspired. Stillman attempts to be relevant, and situates himself far left of American society, which admittedly, is close to the extreme right end cliff. Barcelona (1994) is the tale of a trapped outsider, fumbling for love, and the recent Damsels in Distress (2011) is a sharp and clean undercutting of the American college dream, telling the mind adventures of the Suicide (Prevention) Center on the college campus.

These films are up there, with American Movie, Sherman's March and Best in Show.

Thanks, Whit.

NSA, Google, Facebook et al.

It seems to have become standard practice in the United States that large corporations freely share our private data with intelligence agencies (presumably in return for support on the international, legislative and other fronts).

My Facebook account has been deactivated and deleted.

As one counter measure to the pervasiveness of Google in my life, I plan to use http://www.duckduckgo.com most frequently for my searches.

Google discontinued Google Reader : http://www.feedly.com is a reasonable alternative (though it bugs me tremendously that I cannot search through my articles - any recommendations ?).

Further changes of practice will presumably follow.

Economic theory and mutual funds

A few more decent books on economy :

* For those who wish to understand better why our intuition about standard economic theories being wrong is correct : "How Markets Fail" by John Cassidy. [Summary : the invisible hand does not automatically take into account all types of global social effects on and in society.]

* Extremely useful for anybody who considers investing in (mutual) funds: "Common Sense on Mutual Funds" by John Bogle. [Summary : invest in low cost index funds.]

Absolute numbers and ratios : macro economic data

A few economic orders of magnitude :

Gross World Product : 70 trillion US$.

Growth rates since 2006 : 5 (2006), 5, 3 ,-0.5, 5.3, 3.9, 3.5 (2012) (in percent)

Gross Domestic Product by Country in US$:

EU            16.5 trillion
US              15 trillion
China           7 trillion
Japan            6 trillion
Germany   3.5 trillion
France       2.8
Brasil        2.5
UK            2.5
Italy           2.2
India          1.9
Russia       1.9

Real growth rates (adjusted for inflation) for Western countries is between zero and 2.5.
For developping countries it can reach much higher numbers.

US inflation rates between 1914 and 2013 were between -10.5 and 18 percent on a yearly basis. (Negative inflation rates are rare.) In recent history it was 13.5 % in 1980 and -0.4 % in 2009. The last thirty years it has typically been close to 3%.

US market cap       : 18 trillion.
France market cap : 1.8 trillion.
Germany                : 1.5 trillion.

One measure of market valuation is the comparison between total market capitalization and GDP. Between 1970, this measure has fluctuated between 35 and 150 %. It is presently 110% for the US.
For France, for instance, it is much lower. (~ 65%). For Germany ~ 43%.

Price to Earnings Ratio (PER) for the US stock market for the last hundred years was between 5 and 45. Until 1990 it seemed to be around 15 (with large fluctuations). Taking also into account the highs of recent decades, it seems to be around 18 (with large fluctuations). It is presently at 21.37. PER seems inversely correlated with long terms interest rates which are at a historical low of 2%. (These long terms interest rates have been fluctuating between 2 and 16 % over the last hundred years with a baseline of around 4%.) PER DAX : 20, CAC : 23, S&P 500 : 19. (Note how this measure gives a
different picture than total market cap divided by GDP.)

Yet More Books on Mister Market

A few more books :

Excellent   : Barbarians at the Gate by Burrough and Helyar.

Interesting : The Snowball (Warren Buffett biography) by Alice Schroeder
                    Common Stock and Uncommon Profist by Philip Fisher

Average     : The End of Wall Street by Roger Lowenstein