But I have yet to find anybody else to marvel at it with me.  (With the possible exception of Paul Krugman)

This is a story about an anonymous investor throwing 100s of thousands of dollars trying to affect the Intrade President's Race "stock" markets.

When I posted this elsewhere, someone said they didn't care but that I could explain why I found it interesting if I wanted.  I don't think anybody was interested enough to read my description of that, either, but I'm putting it here anyways.  If you would like to discuss, I'm open.

My interest stems from related points:

1- The Intrade system itself, whereby people can by "stocks" on just about anything, in this case the winner of the presidential election
-This is a novel occurence in and of itself
-This is more interesting because such markets have consistenly proven more accurate predictors of the events they cover than polls and other measurements.
-Interesting Discussion: Why is that?

2- The article in question presents a case study related to the above issues. Namely, some unknown investor repeatedly sank hundreds of thousands of dollars into the Intrade presidential markets for seemingly no other reason than to make them appear more favorable to John McCain.
-That's a fascinating decision for the anonymous investor to make, isn't it? Spending several hundreds of thousands of dollars to affect something that is ultimately non-binding. Like spending money to affect an espn poll asking people which baseball team would win the game that night.
-Related to this, how much effect DO the apparent odds of your candidate winning an election have on the results of that election
-Related to this is Obama's growing concern that complacency among his supproters will weaken turnout.
-How rich must this motherfucker be? Was it worth it?

3- The ultimate ability of the person to affect the markets is a great example of well functioning capitalism.
- The guy's efforts were worthless. All he managed to do was lower the price of the Obama shares, which other investors quickly picked up at their deflated prices. The result is those investors made a quick buck as the prices returned to the appropriate market levels
-The notion of "Appropriate market values" here helps answer the question in point 1- why are these markets good predictors?
-These markets are based on simple "commodities." Everybody involved understands exactly what they're buying- basically betting on one candidate or the other. Because of the simplicity of the commodity, everybody has the same information. Even if you work for one or the other campaigns inside info doesn't help. This level playing field means that the values of the traded assets will be more or less absolutely defined by the market.
-Whereas an individual would have a hard time handicapping the election with complete objectivity, using a large body of investors who are using their own money (therefore are less likely to delude themselves or cause chaos for its own sake), the "noise" of individual bias is cancelled out, meaning that the average of the human intelligences involved end up processing all the information in what turns out to be an objective manner. The collection of minds is able to assign an actual, factual value to individual pieces of information as well as entire swaths of information
-The self-regulations of this market are as close as you will find to an example of a Perfect Market Economy. Such a system willwork perfectly, everybody will have perfect information, and acting in bad faith is all but impossible (the guy trying to affect the results ended up losing a shitload of the money invested).
-The differences between this example and what happens in the stock market can be used to show why the stock markets as a whole do not behave as this ideal, and can be an introduction into a discussion about how to improve our systems.

I made this to see what a bunch of these circles things I made would look like together.

Each actual square is a about 8" across and is made of masking tape I used to paint designs on canvas. Once the paint is dry, I take the tape off the canvas and stick it to bristol. This bristol is then cut into forms and collaged together. In this instance I did circles because my printer is as broken as my camera so my compass was the best stencil I had.

I like how this looks but think it looks better here than it would in real life. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with these. Frankly, I'm not sure why I spent so much time on them, but that's what passes for my "method."

This isn't even a to do list as much as a list of projects I am working on or would like to work on.  I've had it for a little while, but since I haven't posted anything in a while I thought it might be of limited interest to people to see into the compounding idiocy I call my "process." 

Some of these things are barely conceived.  Some have been near completion for around a year, I just never get around to the final stage.  Some I hope to finish very soon, others I may never bother with. Some things are more maintenance to allow me to work on other stuff, but most are their own pieces.  Some day I'll be able to post real art again, but also some day the sun will expand and boil off the Earth's oceans.

Anyways, my current projects list:

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..P>

..P>

1...:NAMESPACE PREFIX = O />	Tommy's wedding gift ·        Finish White re-up ·        Pin white strands ·        Find suitable underlayers for white and multi-color 2 ·        Put together multi-color 2 hole ·        Put together white hole ·        Decide whether to join or leave separate
2.	Scott Commissioned 1: ·        Finish Tommy's wedding gift ·        Calculate number of rings possible ·        Figure layout ·        Put it together (using preexisting strands)
3.	Woven Weaves: ·        Decide whether to replace red square with white
4.	9 "Flat" Paintings ·        Buy 36 eight inch light weight frames to create nine 8 x 8 frames ·        Paint or locate/salvage paintings to attach ·        Construct frame for all of them
5.	Pope for Bats ·        Skirt ·        Additional components?
6.	Collages ·        Stock up on Gloss Medium ·        Stock up on images to use and made scraps ·        Create one solitary collage scraps piece ·        Use with other pieces.
7.	4 Quadrant Masked Dropcloth ·        Add inner circle ·        Don't work on Parallel Ribbons
8.	Jay Dilla ·        Finalize design ·        Cut circles into squares ·        Make collage elements as necessary ·        Put together
9.	Antigone ·        Finalize design ·        Make necessary masking tape squares ·        Draw necessary parts ·        Put together
10.	Rope/Wire ·        Take stock of what is already pinned ·        Figure out what the desired result is meant to be ·        Finish pinning and make the damned thing
11.	Blue Pinned Scraps ·        Figure out what the hell I spent the time pinning these for ·        Then do that
12.	Large Orange Scraps ·        Figure out what the final layout will be ·        Finish pinning ·        Construct
13.	Kareem v. Wilt ·        Figure out the proper template size ·        Finish it
14.	Min[[[[[[[[iframe]]]]]]]]s, several pieces ·        Buy more wood, make more min[[[[[[[[iframe]]]]]]]]s ·        Pin scraps and make more min[[[[[[[[iframe]]]]]]]]s ·        Once you have a large enough pool, start identifying good designs ·        Construct those designs
15.	4 Flowers ·        Uh, start. ·        Determine colors (Cream, white, black, ultramarine + med. Orange?) ·        Paint as necessary ·        Determine sizes, buy frames, cons
16.	Parallel Ribbons dropcloth ·        Stop painting according to need and just focus on the bits that need to be finished here (AKA put everything else on hold) ·        Touch up until it looks like it merited the time it took
17.	Nested Squares ·        Disassemble current state ·        Finish adding necessary woven touch ups to each piece ·        Figure out proper configuration and put it together
18.	Victoria Secret figure Drawing ·        Start ·        Finish
19.	Scott Commissioned 2: ·        Get size requirements ·        Finalize pricing ·        Start planning for long haul depending how big it is
20.	Aaron's Wedding Gift
21.	Loud:

Currently listening: Stakes Is High By De La Soul Release date: 1996-07-02

3:28 AM 

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Individual scraps, acrylic on canvas, each around 2 inches big in one dimension or other.

 26" x 12" Acrylic on Canvas with Safety Pins

16 Separate pieces combined together on a common frame.  Each is comprised of acrylic paintings that are torn up and safety pinnned into new configurations.  41" x 41"  

Details: 

I did this for a friend at work. I forget the precise dimensions but I think it's around 4" x 4".  Acrylic on Canvas, graphite on paper, safety pins.

I realized that I have some stuff I've forgotten to post recently.  This is a portrait of a friend's cat.

This is a method I'm still experimenting with. Lessons have been learned, but overall I'm happy with it. Here's a shot of the component pieces:

And here's something I made as a lark:

Uh, yeah, maybe a week late.  For my sister's birthday.

16 x 12 acrylic on canvas, with safety pins, stretched over several min[[iframe]]s that are then connected.

You know the drill.  Acrylic on Canvas, each 1.5" x 1.5"

8.25" x 11" Acrylic on masking tape on paper, cut up and reassemble with ample amounts of matte medium

 Here's a photograph from the side to get a sense of the depth of the layers.

Or rectangles.  Whatever.  Acrylic on Canas with Safety Pins.  Each piece is ~16" x 15.5"

Here's a detail Shot:

Tomorrow until Thursday.

I have a piece in this show:

(My name is two lines under "Third Prize.")

I'll be at the reception too.

This is the piece in the show:

See you all next week. 

Actually I probably still won't, but that doesn't mean I don't love you.

-???

I took apart the second "Test" piece (i.e. this:

and redid it with better planning to make this:

Does it work better?  Worse?  The same?  Since these are experiments, all feedback is useful!

This guy is only 10" x 10".  I wanted to see what happens if you try to weave scurved scraps of canvas together.  Answer: chaos ensues. 

This photo is darker but captures the texture better: