I was one of those 'not so smart' kids that got in. I know this because I struggled mightily once I did get i to maintain a respectable GPA.
I think the system is most brutal on middle of the road students like me. If you know you aren't good enough, you get an out. Or if you are really smart you can coast in.
The average folks get hosed :)
I went through the IIT system 10+ years ago. At that point, it was 3,500 people to be selected from a pool of 250,000 or so. These ratios have remained the same over the years I think.
My hobbies were largely desk-bound/sedentary --- coding, trivia --- that I was able to carry out at a reduced pace, and resume after I cleared the exams. The pressure during the ages 15-17 was definitely quite intense --- I'd typically come home at 3 in the afternoon, and work until midnight with a few short breaks in between. However, I think I did create a narrative of what I was going through that led to me actually enjoying the reading and problem-solving (in spite of feeling stressed out). At that age, it can feel like a superpower to be given a list of chemicals and predict what structures would emerge in a chemical reaction, or be able to compute the motions of particles in an EM field. With over 10+ years of hindsight now, I feel the following ---
-- The notion of an "ideal" childhood being lost depends on how you define the ideal. (edit : There was no pressure to have a girlfriend or boyfriend at that age. No "jocks" bullying studious "nerds". The "nerds" were the "cool" kids all through in fact. ) Of course, I don't imagine that people killing themselves or burning out would count as normal in any culture.
-- I'd say the ability to slog things out for many hours of the day across weeks many is something that has stayed with me. At the same time, there are numerous great scientists and engineers who have developed this ability without having to go through this process (edit: at ages 15-17).
-- As one person in the article points out, yes, I definitely was very late to pick up many life skills that are likely second-nature to teenagers in the West.
-- While I could solve problems and apply concepts easily, it was from a shallow understanding of topics. I definitely did not develop a meta-understanding of why, say, Newton's laws are structured that way, or what consequences it has for the structure of physical laws relying on Newton's laws. These skills I had to learn much later on.
> The notion of an "ideal" childhood being lost depends on how you define the ideal. (edit : There was no pressure to have a girlfriend or boyfriend at that age. No "jocks" bullying studious "nerds". The "nerds" were the "cool" kids all through in fact. )
The study is conducted in mouse and human immune cells in a dish, and the purported link is between HFCS and inflammation.
Its also not clear to me if the concentrations of fructose used in the study reflect the dynamic range of concentrations of fructose in your tissues during day-to-day life.
A diet high in fructose is not advisable for people with an autoimmune disease. One study did that of people with a large number of specific types of autoimmune disease that can be caused by high fructose foods. This study showed that one diet was associated with a higher incidence of these autoimmune diseases in those with large and consistent levels of fructose intake. For example, in those with low body weight you might find a higher fructose intake and thus an higher prevalence of autoimmune diseases. So, to help prevent those type of autoimmune diseases, you might need to lower your body weight and eat a low fructose diet that gives you less carbs and so on. You can find more information here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22991621
Question: Does this mean honey and high fructose corn syrup are approximately equally [1] unhealthy? Or is honey an anomaly/enigma [2] in this respect?
[1] Apparently honey contains ~40% fructose, which about the same as “HFCS42” (a standard 42% fructose corn syrup product).
[2] I ask this because I’ve read many claims that honey is among the healthiest forms of sugar, with many studies cited that show all sorts of health benefits of honey (at least versus table sugar or HFCS). Is this pseudoscientific bunk that I’ve been mislead to believe?
[1]
Honey is bad if you've got issues digesting fructose.
For someone with IBS, or another digestive issue, the FODMAP diet recommends no more than 1 teaspoon of honey with a meal (ie every 4 hours). The FODMAP diet tracks fructose-in-excess-of-glucose as that is one of the common triggers of digestive issues. Its not saying that honey is unhealthy, but rather honey causes issues for some folks.
It sounds to me like fruit itself is implicated, so honey certainly would be. My rule is, anything that tastes sweet is probably bad for me, but I have some digestive issues. I would like to do nothing but greens, oily fish and some roots to round out the calories, but I am weak willed.
This depends a great deal on the quality of honey. Most honey at the supermarket is adulterated [1]. If you can find raw, unfiltered honey, then it will contain additives such as pollen, beeswax, and parts of bees. The additives have nutritional value, yes, but the overwhelming majority of honey is the nutritional equivalent of simple syrup.
Probably the "best" sugar you can use is date sugar, which is just dried, ground-up dates. But if you really want to eat healthily, then you should eat plants instead of rich foods.
It’s not the source of the fructose that matters (at least not much). My autoimmune processes go into overdrive due to biome activity that is exacerbated by all sugars including carbs. The source of the sugar is of second order importance.
Zero interest rate policies definitely make it more difficult for central banks to use interest rates as a tool to stimulate aggregate demand.
Sure, the massive bond-buying program of the Fed did actively push interest rates close to zero. But, in the process, it decreased long-term interest rates too, in particular, treasuries and T-bills. This decrease allowed the government to borrow more money during auctions.
Isn't this a case for QE enhancing the government's ability to borrow? Or is my crude understanding of monetary policy all wrong?
I'm pretty sure everyone's understanding of monetary policy is "crude".
What you say appears to be right, but it's also rare if not unheard of. As I understand it, normally, as the US (and I and my family) experienced in the '70s, these policies would be viewed by borrowers in such a way they'd demand more interest for lending their money to the government, through combinations of perhaps rising inflation and perceived regime risk (which rising inflation is an example of, by eventually liquidating debts for less real value).
"This Time It's Different!", which they always say (and is the title of a recommended book on the subject, an 800 or so year study of this game). The theory I hold to as of now is that the world-wide nature of the Great Recession and other factors like the artificiality of the Euro have made the US dollar, and US government debt, the "least worst" place to put your money. Well, in any quantity at least, e.g. I remember tiny Switzerland (GDP ~1/32nd of the US) getting very concerned about "hot money" inflows into their franc and maybe taking some actions WRT to them.
The PRC is also something of a wild card: they watched the debacle of Indonesia, where a short term liquidity crisis was treated by the IMO as a typical 3rd World unsustainable government debt crisis, resulting in needless hardship and the ousting of its long term strongman. The CCP decided to make sure that didn't happen to them and have as a result acquired vast foreign wealth/debt holdings, including plenty of US government debt.
You've got some sound logic there, particularly on why the US is a popular place for investment. That is definitely a factor as to why T-bond yields have stayed low over the last few years. But, is inflation really that big a factor in determining bond yields during auctions?
With regards the '70s, you emphasized "normally" in your reply. Why was that? Weren't the '70s a time of unusually high inflation and unemployment in the US?
And thank you for the book recommendation! It looks really nifty!
It's my understanding that perception of future inflation is very important in determining bond yields. At the extreme, you want to get paid back in real terms, not "NuDollars" (hmmm, Heinlein assumed inflation of at least 3 orders of magnitude in the time Citizen of the Galaxy was set). Or why we talk about "real" interest rates, subtracting inflation. Of course, let's not get into how the government is scoring inflation nowadays, or how everyone admits that the cost of education and medicine don't track official inflation at all....
As I understand it, the '70s were "normal" in that that sort of response is what you really should expect from such policies. Check out the book, which I bought but have only glanced at.
The smashing of the Phillips Curve, the official, written into law as I recall, relationship between inflation and unemployment, wasn't considered normal at the time, e.g. the word "stagflation" was coined to describe it. But skimming the Wikipedia article on it suggests that it was never true, or at least not for more than the short term.
And the "'70s" economic agony was rather long term. E.g. you won't read it in Wikipedia, but LBJ closed the gold window to all but central banks in 1968, i.e. moving it much more to the political arena by cutting out "speculators" like George Soros. That was a near catastrophe of the "black swan" type ... at least to them, who thought we could afford both "guns and butter".
With a slow end in the early '80s, delayed in part by the phasing-in of Reagan's tax rate cuts required by the Democratic House, conveniently providing an "It's Morning in America" 1984 campaign theme as "Reaganomics" vanished from the vocabulary ^_^.
Your inflationary expectations point makes sense. Considering the US economy is in a period of low to zero inflation at this point, it is fair for bond yields to be low for 3-year terms and so. I completely forgot about NuDollars, hehe.
The bit I know about the '70s is also the US going off the gold standard, with Nixon putting the then Fed Governor, Burns, under immense pressure to keep interest rates low in the face of high inflation. Not to mention going off the gold standard altogether.
Much of my reading on economic growth has been rather lopsided on the side of monetary economics. I'm looking to pick up more on the influence of government policy such as tax cuts, etc.
Just a few mostly "I Was There" notes, you're headed in the right directions:
"Energy" was a prime issue in the '70s: the '68-71 ending of the gold window (BTW, prior to that it was illegal for US citizens to own gold) plus the Yom-Kipper War resulted mess up crude oil prices and supplies, and Nixon oversaw a fundamental change in regulatory policy that made everything in this and many other areas a lot more expensive (I highly recommend this book ttp://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0307453693/ which is where I learned about LBJ's closing of the gold window, and which actually doesn't feature much of Reagan until I presume the end, I'm still in the Nixon period).
And rather critically Nixon's wage and price controls were never lifted for oil and gas, and by the Carter Administration bureaucrats were determining where every gallon of refined oil went. My father actually set up a tank farm of 55 gallon drums, but that turned out to be needless because among other things the bureaucrats made damned sure farming regions were not lacking.
The "Energy Crisis" ended practically overnight when Reagan deregulated oil (gas might have come later). This was mightily helped by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Saudis at least signed on to the campaign to bankrupt the Soviet Union by keeping oil prices down.
By the end of the "'70s" inflation was as I recall flirting with 15% per year, and Volker's necessary high interest rate solution brought the prime rate above 20%, and the government had to borrow at ~20% when Reagan came into office, which explains some of what was going on then.
On the other hand, Reagan, the Senate Republicans, and Tip O'Neal, sort of a transitional figure between the older more responsible liberals and the current type, pretty much never seriously cut budgets, instead all the screaming was about decreases from an automatically increasing baseline. Some of those were of course cuts after inflation, but not by much, as usual, "domestic spending" was the price the Democrats/Left demanded for the Right (which at least here used to include a lot of Democrats) to be able to fight the Cold War.
Which of course Reagan won, not that very many people at all believed he would, or could fix our economy. The mood really was grim back then (there was also all that Malthusian "Limits to Grow" (apparently rified by the energy situation), Soylent Green, we're killing the environment and bringing on a new Ice Age, nonsense back then), the first iteration of today's "preppers" were the survivalists back then, I was one (starting from 2nd grade in 1968 when my mother became a Civil Defense Block Mother, back before it was decided "Crisis Relocation" was cheaper on paper and CD -> FEMA).
The government influence of tax rate cuts was profound. I went to college far away from my family in 1979, and at a distance watched my parents substantially shift their economic activity. One extreme of the "'70s" was their taking out a $50K note to computerize a bunch of doctor's offices, and only being able to keep it current, not paying it down, while interest rates were so high.
And everything was done with taxation as a primary issue. As/after the Reagan tax rate cuts were phased in, that became a much smaller issue, and their ventures became much more economically productive.
That today we have one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world is significant.
Anyway, have fun, and after this thread winds down feel free to email me (it's in my Hacker News contact info) if you have any more questions, desire for book recommendations, etc.
