Politics, Journalists and Nerds

Recently, (OK, a few weeks ago), the NY Times published a little opinion piece showing how the stock market has faired under Republican vs Democratic Presidents.  Their conclusion was that the market does better under Democrats.

Enough buzz was generated around the "internets" (my wife hates it when I say that) that pundits on both sides of the aisle started attacking and defending the conclusions.  Some of these statements seems legitimate, some seem fallacious, but it seemed hard to pin down any sort of definitive answer.  Party loyalty seemed a bigger factor in these discussions than any attempt to find out the truth of the matter.

Enter the nerds.

Theodore Gray, the co-founder of Wolfram Research and professional math/computer nerd, grabbed a pile of data and started to analyze it.  Not any sissy journalist kind of analyzing in an Excel spreadsheet.  No, he went gang-busters and started to try to account for things like inflation, lag between a president taking office and when his policies were implemented and companies paying dividends.  The results showed that the choice of assumptions regarding these factors he included dramatically influence the results.   Change the lag between inauguration and impact on the market and the best party overall could change.

The most interesting result, though, was what stock returns looked like spanning both Democratic and Republican presidents.  In other words, choosing to invest in the markets regardless of the party of the sitting president.  (Which, to the best of my knowledge, is what most people do anyway.  I'll let you know if I here of anybody pulling money out of the market based on the result of this up-coming election.  Don't hold your breath.)  Check out the article to see the results.

The article demonstrates an opinion I've held for a long time: life would be better if we had more nerds.

Wall•E

Katie and I saw Wall•E this past weekend and we both loved it.  (We almost always see our movies at the cheap theater, thus the five month wait from its release date.)  The film is unique is so many regards but probably the most striking is the fact that very little dialog takes place the entire film.  Some reviews of the movie said this would make it less accessible to children, ostensibly the target audience.  Another blogger pointed out that the Road-Runner cartoons are 100% dialog-free yet seem very effective in entertaining the little-ones.  I concur.

From a photography nerd stand-point, the film also has a unique new visual style thanks to the use of a new virtual camera used when rendering the film.  This new camera brings a very strong traditional film-look to the film with things like zooms and shallow depth of focus strongly displayed through-out the film.  (I've got to get going to work or I'd write more, maybe in some other post).  

All told, a great film, undoubtedly the most worthwhile movie I've seen in past few weeks.  It is films like these that show just how mediocre most movies are today and how wonderful, enjoyable, and effective a well-executed story can be. 

Go see it for yourself.