This is the website of Abulsme Noibatno Itramne (also known as Sam Minter).
Posts here are rare these days. For current stuff, follow me on Mastodon
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Ah, what might have been… just looked at how a bunch of the stocks I bought during my last couple years in New Jersey and Pennsylvania have done over the years since then. Just the ones I bought on my own, not retirement plans or options and grants and the like. Lets take a look at how they all have done over my initial cost basis. (Not counting dividends, which on a couple were pretty significant.)
GRMN, up 348%
WAB, up 201%
AAPL, up 127%
MER, up 117%
BAY, up 109%
PWI, up 72%
SPY, up 20%
DIA, up 17%
and then I did have three stinkers…
QQQQ, down 12%
TIVO, down 60%
VIGN, down 97%
Overall, not that bad…
Of course, thing is, a lot of those gains were in the last 2 years. And, well, in 2004 and 2005 I was strapped for cash and had to sell my stocks to live and such. I didn’t want to, I had to. Part of that whole thing with the previous job never coming through with what they had promised.
In any case, I didn’t sell it all. I actually kept one single share of each of the above. Just to say I still have some. So I can still be happy when they make new highs! And I still made out OK, most of them were up when I sold them, but not by all that much. I would have been a lot happier if I’d managed to hold on to what I originally had of each of those!
My original intention was to hold onto all of them for decades, but that just was not to be. :-)
I haven’t bought anything new outside of 401K’s for several years now. Once the house is sold and things are stabilized again, perhaps I’ll start buying a little bit of a few things again.
Of course, the very instant I do that will be the signal that the market has topped again, and we’re due for another correction for a few years… :-)
My “remember to blog” list has gotten too long. So here is another Minitakes. This time, for times sake, I’m thinking just links. I’d like to comment on each one, but I’ve got other things I need to do. In any case, these are all items I saw in roughly the last week or so that I thought were worth the read:
Courts With No Law
(Andrew Sullivan, Daily Dish)
Roomba And The City
(Gizmodo)
MPAA Offers To Settle (Again)
(Shawn Hogan, Shawn Hogan Fan Club)
via Digg
A Baker Walks Into A Dinner, Again
(Ryan Singel and Kevin Poulsen, Wired)
via Digg
Dinosaur Shocker
(Helen Fields, Smithsonian Magazine)
via Digg
Actually, that’s five, which is enough for the moment. I’ve got other things to do. I’ve got more though. Perhaps later.
Another example of interesting Constitutional stuff:
Executive constitutional interpretation
(Dale Carpenter, Volokh Conspiracy)
There are plenty of examples of presidents who opposed/vetoed legislation, thinking that the legislation was both unconstitutional and otherwise bad policy. Andrew Jackson’s veto of the Second National Bank is an example of this: he said in his veto message that he believed it was unconstitutional, but he also opposed it on policy grounds.
Both of the above scenarios involve presidents whose policy views lined up with their purported constitutional views. No conflict presented itself.
But here’s a challenge for bloggers and commenters everywhere: give an example of a president who opposed/vetoed legislation on the ground that he believed it to be unconstitutional, even though he otherwise supported it on policy grounds? Here the president’s view of the proper meaning of the Constitution would be opposed to his view of good policy. To put it in less abstract terms: it would be as if Andrew Jackson had loved the idea of a Second National Bank, but nevertheless vetoed it because he thought it was unconstitutional.
In the comments, very few examples of this could be found. And the most recent one was Woodrow Wilson.
See, the thing here, this should be a lot more common than it is. Presidents should view one of their primary goals as upholding the law of the land (especially the constitution) and that should take priority over their own policy viewpoints in the cases where they contradict each other. Lets review the oath of office:
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.
Oops. This should mean that if Congress passes an unconstitutional law (never mind the Congressional oath) then it shouldn’t have to wait to get to the Supreme court… the President should veto it out of principal EVEN IF HE/SHE AGREES WITH THE GOALS OF THE LAW.
Of course, not only does that not happen these days, but the executive seems to just routinely do whatever the hell they want, with no regard to the Constitution, Congress, or pretty much anything. So looking for an executive that would even consider vetoing a bill they agree with on policy grounds because it is unconstitutional… It may be another 100 years before it happens again…
Someday, I’ll properly alienate all my classmates
(Greg Haverkamp, Otherwise Occupied)
Some us apparently believe in freedom of speech and its concomitants, while others merely believe in it until a politically correct topic is adversely impacted by that right.
…
But that is hardly the point, anyway. This is about the freedom of expression. And while I can only gather that you believe only in freedom of expression for those expressing views you feel are “right,” I’m having difficulty understanding why you think the SBAWVC should be forced to express a view that it’s okay to be openly homosexual and Irish. Neither you nor I nor the Supreme Court should tell people what they must believe. People have the rights to be bigots in this country, and they have and must have the rights to express whatever bigotry they so choose.
…
Or, you can take away the more meaningful idea that freedom of expression is critical, that parades are inherently expressive activities, and that groups that organize parades, whether their views are popular or not, should have the right to determine was messages their expressive activity will send.
I love reading this sort of thing from Greg. In this case I agree with Greg completely, but in more general terms I like listening to debates about Constitutional law and the such. I find it all intensely interesting. Enought that occationally I find myself thinking that law school would be a hell of a lot of fun.
And then I remember that I have the memory capacity of a walnut, and if I can’t derive what I am supposed to remember from first principles I am hopeless, so if I had to remember case references and specifics of laws and procedures without having them right in front of me, I’d be done for. And then I also remember that I get incredibly frustrated when looking at precident that I think was stupid, but is now completely entrenched. (Like most Supreme Court decisions since the Civil War… OK, exaggerating just a tad.. but…) And of course I also remember that I have absolutely no interest in actually bieng a lawyer. I just like some of the debates… and more to the point, some of the underling political and ethical philosophy issues which underlie and inform some of those debates. Fun stuff.
OK, a bunch of you out there have done statistical stuff more recently than I have (although I did read that stats text book a couple months ago). Anyway for those of you who have done stats calculations any time in the past five years or so (Chad? Greg? Randy? Chris?) could you please check this? I am really rusty at this and could easily have made a fundamental mistake…
Here is what I am trying to analyse. In the last post I mentioned that big long chain of ancestors. That long chain all hinges on a connection with a Jane Gillham born in 1773.
All the sources that I can find that mention Jane Gillham being married to John Minter and having kids that result eventually in me give Jane Gillham’s birthday as April 21st 1773 in South Carolina.
Meanwhile, the document I can find linking a Jane Gillham to her parents, and through them eventually all the way back to King Kenneth and the like… lists her birthday as October 21st 1773 in South Carolina… and has no mention whatsoever of John Minter… but also not of any other information that would contradict her being the same Jane… other than the birthday.
My hypothesis is that at some point in the last 233 years, as the Gillham records that show who Janes parents are were copied over and over again, April at somepoint got miscopied into October. (Someone couldn’t read it, recreated it from memory, whatever… )
Basically, I think these “two” Jane Gillhams are really the same person. But there is no proof of course, so I want to figure out the odds…
Here is the analysis I did… please check me and point out any math or logic errors I may have made:
- South Carolina population in 1773 was about 250,000 (based on 1790 census so this is actually bigger than reality)
- Live births were approximately 50 per 1000 population in the late 1700’s (based on stat in “Encyclopedia of the New American Nation”)
- This gives about 12500 births in South Carolina in 1773.
- About 6250 of those would have been girls.
- About 3% of those would be named Jane (based on Given Names Frequency Project for 1801-1810 time period)
- That gives us about 181 Janes born in South Carolina in 1773.
- We need to multiply by the percentage of the whole South Carolina population that were Gilhams.
- I have no idea what that number is. For now I will call it “G”. (As a fraction, not a percentage, to avoid the factor of 100 everywhere.)
- So the number of Jane Gillhams born in South Carolina in 1773 would be about 181*G.
- Now, we know pretty confidently that John Minter’s Jane Gillham was born April 21st.
- We could figure out the odds of a second Jane Minter being born on October 21st specifically.
- It would be 1-(364/365)^(181*G). This would be our lower bound on the odds. (Using math principles found on Wikipedia Birthday Paradox page)
- But… the hypothesis is that sometime in the last 233 years someone just transposed October for April in the Gillham family records.
- In that case we don’t care specifically about October 21st, but instead just the odds of a second person being born on ANY of the 21sts other than April 21st.
- That is because our hypothetical miscopier could have switched it with any of the eleven other months, not just October.
- In that case our odds turn out to be 1-(354/365)^(181*G). This should be our upper bound on the odds.
- This gives the chances of another Jane Gillham being born on the 21st of any other month besides April, given that our Jane Gilham was born on April 21st.
So lets run this with some possible values of G:
This shows the chances (X) of a second Jane Gillham being born on the 21st of another month, and therefore probably being an actual second Jane Gillham rather than the same person with the date miscopied.
Everybody in SC is a Gillham (G=1): 99.6%
1 out of 2 is a Gillham (G=0.5): 93.7%
1 out of 5 is a Gillham (G=0.2): 67.0%
1 out of 10 is a Gillham (G=0.1): 42.5%
1 out of 20 is a Gillham (G=0.05): 24.2%
1 out of 50 is a Gillham (G=0.02): 10.5%
1 out of 100 is a Gillham (G=0.01): 5.4%
1 out of 200 is a Gillham (G=0.005): 2.7%
1 out of 500 is a Gillham (G=0.002): 1.1%
1 out of 1000 is a Gillham (G=0.001): 0.6%
Reversing the calculation… and solving for G…
G=log(1-X)/(181*log[354/365])
Plugging in a few numbers there…
As long as there are fewer Gillhams than 1 in 108 you have over a 95% chance that these two Jane Gillhams are the same Jane Gillham and not seperate people after all.
If there are fewer Gillhams than one in 552 then you have over a 99% chance that these are the same Jane Gillham…
(And even if there were so many Gillhams that 1 in every 8 people in SC was a Gillham, you’d still have better than even odds that this was the same Jane Gillham.)
One in 108 would mean that there were about 2300 people with the surname Gillham in South Carolina around the time of the 1790 census
One in 552 would mean that there were about 450 people with the surname Gillham in South Carolina around that time.
So, this all depends on the number of Gillhams in South Carolina in 1790… but if there were any less than 2300 or so, I’d feel really confidant betting that this is only one Jane Gilham, and someone just miscopied her birthday at some point (probably on the Gillham side… although all the math is the same if it was the reverse.)
Thoughts?
Links to the sites I got stats and math from:
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