FIRE Alarm

For some time, these endeavors have discussed data analysis, and the (somewhat) artificial divide between micro and macro versions. There is the real difference, in that micro analysis (nearly) always has population data: all the products, inputs, customers, and the like. Macro analysis, on the other hand, nearly always is limited to sample data. What the alt-right call fake news, when the numbers don't fit their pre-determined result. What the non-stat literate don't or won't admit is that large sample theory kicks in with a rather small number of observations. Macro data sets easily exceed such requirements. The problem is that macro data is seldom actually used in setting policy. Policy is set by political favor-making, irrrregardless of the data. Sigh.

Along the lines of macro data, I've implored gentle reader to dig into FRED data. In particular the simple fact that FIRE has burned down the economy. Not a lot of mainstream pundits have picked up on this. Until today, of course.

In the postwar era, finance has grown enormously as a share of the global economy, often feeding debt-fueled bubbles. In 2015, the economist Alan M. Taylor and his colleagues looked at data going back 140 years for 17 leading economies. Before World War II, there were 78 recessions — including only 19 that followed a bubble in stocks or housing or both. After the war, there were 88 recessions, a vast majority of which, 62, followed a stock or housing bubble or both.

This leads, of course, to

Today, global financial assets (including just stocks and bonds) are worth over $250 trillion and amount to about 330 percent of global gross domestic product, up from $12 trillion and just 110 percent in 1980. Traditionally, economists have looked for trouble in the economy to cause trouble in the markets. But the ocean of money in financial markets is now so large, it's possible that ripples on its surface could trigger the next big downturn.

The End of Civilization

The 19th and 20th centuries gave us things like the steamboat, standardized rail networks, the periodic table, vaccines, and the dishwasher. Today Apple gives us

One of the other features for the technology shown by Apple was the ability to generate a face mesh and map new textures to it, such as new SnapChat 'masks', or animated emoji in Message. The hardware will map 50 muscle tracking points, and a user can choose one of twelve animal emoji (fox, cat, dog, pig, unicorn, poop emoji) and record a ten second message where the 'ani-moji' will mimic in real-time how the user is moving and speaking in order to send to the other person. Apples plan here is to open the resources up to developers to use in their own applications.

If any of you dear readers have doubted these endeavors' insistence that we've reached the asymptote of progress, doubt no more.

Thought for the Day - 13 September 2017

In case it hasn't been obvious, Donald J. Quisling has been very, very busy not draining the swamp. In fact, he's been very busy stocking it with alligators and other predatory critters.

Tens of thousands of former students who say they were swindled by for-profit colleges are being left in limbo as the Trump administration delays action on requests for loan forgiveness, according to court documents obtained by The Associated Press.

Putting the crooks in charge isn't draining the swamp, of course.

In August, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos picked Julian Schmoke Jr., a former associate dean at DeVry University, as head of the department's enforcement unit. She also has tapped a top aide to Florida's attorney general who was involved in the decision not to pursue legal action against Trump University to serve as the agency's top lawyer. More than 2,000 requests for loan forgiveness are pending from DeVry students.

Isn't just such corruptions what you would expect from a convicted crook?

Other Trump administration agencies also have hired staffers who previously worked on behalf of the industry they now regulate. For example, Nancy Beck, deputy assistant administrator at the Environmental Protection Agency, used to work at the American Chemistry Council, the industry's leading trade group.

And, of course, the creme-de-la-creme of corporate enablers, Scott "To use time and effort to address [climate change] at this point is very, very insensitive to this people in Florida" Pruitt running EPA.

I Thought So

From the first track that showed Irma making a hard 90° turn north, I wanted to know why. Not one of the dozens of forecasters mentioned why. My suspicion was that a low pressure system would set up to the north and west of Florida about the time that Irma got there. The reason, as all armchair meteorologists know, is that lows spin counter-clockwise and would thus sling-shot Irma up the peninsula.

And so it is. Now, it's true that normal highs spin clockwise and lows counter-clockwise, and they interact to push each other around. Turns out, which should have been obvious but wasn't, hurricanes are very unique in terms of their internal wind and temperature vis-a-vis other types of storms.

"With a tropical cyclone, its very symmetric. The temperature differences driving it are vertical--there's warm, wet air below, and cool, dry air up above--so there's a vertical circulation, but it doesn't move in a horizontal direction," said Neal Dorst, a research meteorologist at NOAA's Hurricane Research Division.

"There's no impetus driving a tropical cyclone--it will have a tendency to stay where it is," he said. If a hurricane appeared on a globe with no other weather systems, it would drift northerly only at a couple miles per hour, thanks to the Coriolis effect. It would not move in any other way, he told me.

So that's why Irma isn't headed back to Texas.

Where In the World Is...

Being New Englander, born, bred, and mostly resident for most of my life; I have an inherent trust in pharma that live here. The Boston, Cambridge, 128 corridor companies especially. On the other hand, San Diego outfits seem to more often end up looking a tad shady. Or, at least, seem to fail more often. This is just the latest.

Otonomy (OTIC) stock crashed to a record low Wednesday after its Meniere's disease drug failed to reduce vertigo in a Phase 3 trial -- prompting the biotech to scrap its development.

Scrapping a failed drug is not completely unique; the worst offenders claim some subset responded very well, and the company will pursue the drug with further study. blah, blah, blah. Issue more shares, and the CxO class keep living well.

What's worse, sometimes (again, it seems epidemic in San Diego) a Phase III trial will proceed even when the Phase II was marginal at best. Here's what they had to say about the Phase II trial, that justified continued development of the drug:

Otonomy has completed a randomized, prospective, double-blind, placebo-controlled single-dose Phase 2b trial in a total of 154 Meniere's disease patients. Results indicate that OTO-104 narrowly missed the primary efficacy endpoint (p=0.067) but achieved statistical significance (p<0.05) for multiple prospectively defined secondary vertigo endpoints at multiple time points. Based on these results Otonomy intends to initiate two parallel Phase 3 trials, with one of the trials expected to begin by the end of 2015 and the second trial expected to begin during the first quarter of 2016. OTO-104 is also being evaluated in a multiple-dose safety study in the United Kingdom in patients with Meniere's disease, and enrollment has been completed with a total of 128 patients.

IOW, we missed, but we're going to plow ahead anyway. The Phase III came in with a p-value on the primary of... .62. That's not just a whiff. Very San Diego. I often wonder what scientists who work for such companies think about when they go to beddy bye at night? Same for the biostats who have to make a legitimate narrative from the data. When it's this bad, there's nothing to do but look for another micro-cap pharma in need of a number cruncher.

And, not for nothing, the drug was yet another old one re-purposed. That and Orphan Drug are the increasingly common paths in drugs these days.

We're Gonna Need a Bigger Sponge!!

That's, in essence, what enterprise IT managers have been saying since the invention of the commercial computer. For the better part of 60 years, we've gone from drums of 4 by 16 inches to 3390 washing machine sized discs (for the IBM mainframe) to now with the 3.5 inch sealed drive being the predominant norm. Even mainframes use them emulating CKD geometry. What's next?

This is Godzilla.

Migrating to flash is paramount, but existing SSDs do not match the form factor, interface, and power envelope of HDDs, forcing users to buy all-new systems. With ExaDrive, data centers can immediately rip-and-replace HDDs with flash. ExaDrive supports the standard SAS interface and is optimized to fully utilize the volume of the 3.5" form factor. As a result, ExaDrive-powered SSDs offer 5x the capacity of nearline HDDs in the same size and power budget, enabling a 5:1 reduction in rack space and power per terabyte.

Thought for the Day, 1 Sep 2017

Contempt for governance at the statehouse generally, and the local level specifically, is why Houston is wiped out. They did it to themselves in the name of "freedom". So, they want to be free to do as they please. The Blue states shouldn't send them a dime, because they'll just do it again.