It is a Blog Wyrm tradition to remind ourselves, during the month of November, of the real significance of the Thanksgiving holiday.  Usually, we note that it was the dissolution of communal farming in the Pilgrim community and the adoption of private ownership that led to the years of plenty.  But this year, we’ll also point out that it was that same ideal of personal ownership, compounded many times over, during the decades since the watershed event, that has led to the achievements that has brought the world the wonderful standard of living it currently enjoys.  As our poster child of exceptional achievement, we’ll note that it was during this particular month of November that the Lucy mission had a close flyby of the Asteroid Dinkinesh.  While the planetary science of the mission is important, far more important is the way of life that led to the mission being proposed, built, and flown.  It is for that way of life that we should all be thankful.

Now onto the columns.

To paraphrase a famous running joke in the western The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, there are two kinds of people in this world; those who want to know everything available before making a decision and those who just jump in.  And there is a lot of debate surrounding which strategy works best.  Clearly dealing with events as they come to pass is an important skill for any agent, be it natural or artificial.  Aristotle2Digital embarks on a new study of various strategies a rational agent might employ in analyzing time series data as it becomes available.  First stop is sequential statistical estimation.

There is a fundamental reason why economists look at the incentives built into any piece of legislation or policy.  It is because people always find rational ways of working their own self interest into whatever new rule is thrust upon them.  As CommonCents shows, the failed gun buyback program of the City of Oakland is one such case.  The city spent millions thinking its new program would make it harder to prevent gun crime only to find that when executing it they made a gun market bonanza where sellers could unload guns they couldn’t move otherwise and where sellers had a chance to find merchandize they wouldn’t have found otherwise.  Well, at least they tried.

The concept of an operator proves itself to be useful in quantum mechanics, general relativity, and a host of other physical applications.  However, the mathematics of operators can often seem obscure and inscrutable.  UndertheHood delves into how certain operator inverses can be formally built out of a certain infinite series with far greater ease than at first might be thought by simply following the same  steps one follows when dealing with functions of simple numbers.

Enjoy!