Swinging on the penduum

The Monkey Cage wants us to consider the correlation between Federal House seats and State house seats.

The explanation is simple, this reflects a pendulum swing back and forth between central and local authority.  It is part of the Ramsey Search for the optimum subgraph of government goods,  It never settles.

A victory for the Split Government Party?

Kling cites some evidence that the party unfaithful swung the election.

Getting the informatin revolution, one economist does.

Ed Glaeser for one., when dicussing the affect of Facebook on persons in proximity:

For example, surveys of Facebook users have found that the use of “Facebook to meet previously unknown people remained low and stable” and that “students view the primary audience for their profile to be people with whom they share an offline connection.”

Further research should reveal that Facebook allows friends to meet less often, but for longer periods. The affect should be GDP growth below potential.

Silly economists

Discussing tax policy, David Leonhardt wants to extend the cuts and offset the wealthy tax loss with equal spending cuts

One option for Democrats is to accept the cuts for the affluent only if they are offset with deficit savings elsewhere.

 He wants to lower the price and reduce demand.

The high speed digital option for US460

Tollroad News brigs up the subject of building a toll road out of the US460-Business the old highway in Virginia.  This is an 83 mile stretch, and I would propose the same technology I propose for I-15, obviously.

Making US460, east of Petersburg, an IT road solves the funding problem because utility goes way up, toll charges likely to go from 7 cents to 20 cents/axle-mile, as speed improves to 100 MPH.  I would again take the center lanes, 1.5 of the center lanes and build two high speed narrow lanes, and put up barriers along stretches where speeds exceed 90 MPH.  Under traffic control, an with passing lanes every so often, an average speed of 100 MPH for lane guided cargo and commuters is easily within the cost estimates.  Vehicle design for cargo and passengers could be based on standard BRT framing with multiple sections.  A high tech highway there should net out $100 million /yr in tolls and add $300 million in value  per year to the region.

The trick is keeping human auto drivers out at high speeds and require robocar technology for the vehicles.  This is one of those golden corridors which have their value triple with the addition of technology.

Bernanke: Digital Cash, the ultimate End of BankingTimes

Ben should announce his support for perfect digital cash. The size of a credit card, but it works exactly like a wallet full of cash. The idea of transfering money is to tap your digital card against a like minded digital card and one can trasfer any amount with the proper taps. I even have a stolen motto:

Tap tap plastic, a fantastic way to shop

Tap Plastic cards communicate securely when one taps the other. So one can tap the dollar, quarter, dime or nickel icons to transfer. Works anywhere, anytime; no connectivity needed.   The counterfeiting code is built into the internal hardware, and not known by man, and never revealed during production.I should patent this, is their prior art?

The navigation market today

The big dealamong traffic information aggregators is to be part of whatever traffic management framework emerges. From a consumer perspective, what are these applications?

Well, the user can mount their smart device on the dashboard and get a running traffic map. From that same device, they can purchase a path from source to destination, with transaction time proportion to price. They are guided along the route using an acurate traffic map and communications with traffic management. Thes same devices will be in general use for HOT lanes, and they can show drivers when a lane guided bus is coming up behind. So these devices can guide the driver among higher priority, higher speed traffic.

So, we can expect that market to organize, Skymeter, Navteq, TomTom,Google, How? I think that the Android OS can support more than one format, and more than one supplier. So, I think the market might just adjust within the Android framework, giving Android a big boost in the standards battle.

My Tea Party credentials

I say to the Tea Party, the more damage you do to Republicans, the more likely I will vote for them.

The origins of the Internet

Lotta folks think the internet is a case of government done good.

Actually, strictly speaking, the Internet is about 20 web pages describing a message exchange protocol, written by about three authors or so in the 70s. More generally, this Internet is one of about four proposals at the time, and the collapse of all the proposals into a single one happened because the technology was too simple in any proposal to quibble the details. In fact, X25, an alternative coexisted with the Internet for five years. The real inventor of packet switching was Samuel Morse; today the microprocessor automated the procedure.

Looking at Navteq

They are modeling the worlds traffic network grid a relational database.  But they include the details needed for a robot to understood.  This is fairly important, morelater.
Streetline is making the parking meter metwork
Somewhere in England they are doing this:

Active traffic management, such as imposing variable speed limits and use of hard shoulders, involves use of digital signage and monitoring to minimise congestion. It also relies on extensive use of cameras, both for checking the variable speed limits used, to monitor usage and to watch for breakdowns when hard shoulders are used for traffic, as a way of providing more capacity without building new roads or lanes.