I try not to blog Sarah Palin, but this passage, reproduced on Andrew Sullivan's blog, caught my interest for non-Palin reasons:
"Everybody in the family played Scrabble and took great pride in hoarding Ks and Qs and slapping them down in long, fancy words on triple-letter scores." -- Going Rogue, [...]
2. European arts philanthropy continues to grow.
3. Cookbooks aren't about cooking.
4. Magma bleg: is there anything to these jokers? Please let me know.
5. Is our universe optimized for spaceship travel?
[...]It's not what I had expected:
Observing an old and curious Navajo taboo, Narbona was not allowed to look at his mother-in-law, nor she at him. It was a custom designed to keep the peace and, apparently, to avoid sexual tension. In fact, many mothers-in-law in Navajo country went so far [...]
Humans are animals, so every hipster will try Cannibalism. Perhaps we'll just eat people we don't like, as author Iain M. Banks predicted in his short story, "The State of the Art" with diners feasting on "Stewed Idi Amin." But I imagine passionate lovers literally eating each other, growing sausages [...]
A number of readers wrote me this morning and asked what I thought of Paul Krugman's column today. Krugman writes:
As Gary Gorton and Andrew Metrick of Yale have shown, by 2007 the United States banking system had become crucially dependent on “repo” transactions, in which financial institutions sell assets [...]
From A Brief History of Black Friday:
In 1939, the Retail Dry Goods Association warned Franklin Roosevelt that if the holiday season wouldn't begin until after Americans celebrated Thanksgiving on the traditional final Thursday in November, retail sales would go in the tank. Ever the iconoclast, Roosevelt saw an [...]
This year my three favorite books were:
1. The new Gabriel García Márquez biography.
2. Chris Wickham's The Inheritance of Rome, and
3. Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence, read it slowly in small bits.
A very good gift book is Eric Siblin's new The Cello Suites: J.S. Bach, [...]
2. Via Arnold Kling (do read his new book), Presidential cabinets: prior private sector experience.
4. Via Bruce Bartlett, French government still paying off a 1738 annuity.
The rhythm of the nation’s kitchens can also be parsed, on an hour-by-hour basis.
At Allrecipes.com, pie searches got the most action on Wednesday morning. But by 10 a.m., people began earnest hunts for sweet potato casserole and stuffing recipes. By noon, 100,000 people had searched for mashed potato recipes. [...]
Dubai World won't repay its debt on time and the government of Dubai won't pick up the bag, raising doubts about its credibility. Who would bail out Dubai itself? Maybe it will be an "interesting" weekend:
Banking stocks tumbled on concern about their potential exposure to Dubai. Indeed, the [...]
Ezra Klein asked Dan Ariely for Thanksgiving advice:
"Move to chopsticks!" he exclaimed, making bites smaller and harder to take. If the chopsticks are a bit extreme, smaller plates and utensils might work the same way. Study after study shows that people eat more when they have more in front [...]Here's all you need to know about the real estate market in Michigan: The 80,000-seat enclosed Silverdome, built for $55.7 million in 1975 to house the Detroit Lions, has sold for $583,000.
And you thought your home had lost its value during this recession.
Think about it this way: $583,000 will get [...]
1. Reprogramming predators, and maybe a pan-species welfare state too.
2. The six great fantasy novels?
3. Forum on the new Robert Pozen book on the financial crisis.
4. Do you wish to hear the other side? Here is George Selgin's case for deflation, now on-line and free.
5. Ezra [...]
University of Akron demands DNA sample from faculty as condition of employment.
Dating sites use your DNA to find a perfect love match.
Hat tip to my true major histocompatibility complex match.
[...]Not just the rich:
...cosmetic surgery is now primarily consumed not by the rich, but by the working and lower-middle classes, sometimes even by the poor. According to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ASAPS), about 1/3 of cosmetic surgery is consumed by people who make less than $30,000 a year. About 70% [...]
Preliminary results are in, and they suggest it has helped with math skills but not with reading achievement, as measured in the 4th and 8th grades. Via Thomas Dee and Brian Jacob:
The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act compelled states to design school-accountability systems based on annual student assessments. The effect [...]
I missed this one while traveling, so I am grateful to the loyal MR reader who pointed it out to me:
... the psychological effect may not actually exist at all. It is hard to find much evidence that retailers are ferociously simplifying their offerings in an effort to boost sales. [...]
There have been many posts on this topic lately, start with Paul Krugman and Brad DeLong if you need to catch up. Today I have a few simple points:
1. Even if "it is fine to borrow more" is the most likely scenario, it is not the only scenario. Let's take [...]
Here is a fun, easy and effective experiment that instructors can use to illustrate the gains from trade. The instructor puts chocolate bars ("fun-size") or other candy in bags, one bag for each student. (Alternatively, you can use the type of small items that you can find at a dollar [...]
This possibility had never occurred to me:
Racial attacks like the ones behind the arrest of 32 suspects in Denver are part of a trend spreading across the country, gang experts said Saturday.
As part of the trend, black gang members videotape the assaults in trendy tourist districts and sell them on the underground [...]
I've had many readers emailing me, asking what I think of the "trove" of emails unearthed from climate change researchers. I'll admit I haven't read through the rather embarrassing revelations, I've only read a few media summaries and excerpts. I see a few lessons:
1. Do not criticize other [...]
Bryan offers the most extensive version of his view I've seen him blog. On overall method and meta-ethics, I'm not so far from Bryan (and someday he will get a post in praise of him). But I usually disagree with his applications of the method. For instance he seems [...]
I know of three very good books on the actual (or sometimes hypothetical) application of economic ideas to real world problems:
1. Alex Tabarrok's Entrepreneurial Economics: Bright Ideas from the Dismal Science.
2. Some other book I haven't read and can no longer remember.
There is now a third:
1. Ben Casnocha reviews Kling and Schulz.
2. Are better-looking athletes more likely to win?
3. "Mozart was a Red" -- Murray Rothbard's satire of Rand, here is the full text. It doesn't seem that funny to me.
The new (old) labor market idea -- you can call it fifth best perhaps -- is hereditary jobs:
It is a problem many a company faces in these tough times: how to replace older – and costlier – workers with younger, cheaper ones.
A Rome bank has what it thinks is the solution: to [...]
I have many favorite topics which I don't blog much or at all. One of these, taken from my time in Mexico, is the history of corn. I very much enjoyed this recent article on the topic. There is this good bit:
The sequencing revealed that an astonishing 85 percent [...]
Matt Yglesias writes:
The bill contains provisions that have front-loaded positive impacts on the deficit and also have provisions that have back-loaded positive impacts on the deficit. The bill, rather intelligently, seems to balance this out well leading to net deficit reductions in the short-, medium-, and long-terms. The bill [...]
1. Air Genius Gary Leff is hailed by CNN.
2. Good post on interest rates (though I am not sure I agree with it). Brad DeLong comments. Critically important stuff and two of the best recent economics blog posts, in some time.
A gang in the remote Peruvian jungle has been killing people for their fat, the police said Thursday, accusing the gang’s members of draining fat from bodies and selling it on the black market for use in cosmetics...
Three suspects have confessed to killing five people for their fat, said Col. Jorge Mejía, chief of [...]
1. How much will U.S. taxes ever go up?
2. Useful lateral thinking and how it is described by the lateral thinker.
3. The biological bases of business and entrepreneurship.
4. One hour show with me in Second Life; they even did up a Tyler Cowen avatar. [...]
As long as we are on the topic of slavery, why not consider fiction? This science fiction novel has an intriguing economic premise: you're born a slave and you're not free until you can buy yourself back from your owner (which may be a corporation).
It may sound funny [...]
My fondest memory of Robin Hanson is when we interviewed him for a job and, during his on-campus visit, I gave him some papers I had been working on. Later he emailed me back, before getting the offer I might add, and told me the papers weren't very good and [...]
1. Scott Sumner's most absurd belief: India as #1 in gdp by 2109.
2. Click "play" and watch unemployment grow.
3. Who is Hollywood's most overpaid star, relative to box office returns? Will Farrell is #1 it seems.
4. Markets in everything: NYC McDonald's with sleek Danish furniture.
5. [...]
1. "Self-recommending": the very nature of the authors and project suggest it will be good or very good. This also often (but not always) means I haven't read it yet. I am reluctant to recommend *anything* I haven't read, but I am signaling it is very likely recommendation-worthy and I [...]
Because the program would begin taking in premiums immediately but would not start paying benefits until 2016, congressional budget analysts have forecast that it would generate a nearly $60 billion surplus over the next 10 years, cash that would help the larger measure's balance on paper.
Not long ago I filed this under [...]
That's the title of the new and self-recommending book by Arnold Kling and Nick Schulz. This work has text by the authors, interspersed with interviews with famous economists, including Robert Fogel, Robert Solow, Joel Mokyr, Doug North, Bill Easterly, Edmund Phelps, Amar Bhide, William Lewis, and Bill Baumol. Here is [...]
Here is the abstract and it has to do with a Smithian theme, namely division of labor:
Using the large variation in the inflow of immigrants across US states we analyze the impact of immigration on state employment, average hours worked, physical capital accumulation and, most importantly, total factor productivity and [...]
I've been trying to find out what Obama ate in China and this is the closest I can come:
"We're also hosting a 'Stars and Stripes' week featuring iconic American cuisine," said a hotel spokesperson, who declined to give her name due to company policy.
"The White House guests may want to enjoy [...]
I think of the biographer as standing up and demanding that economists take their own method seriously. Surely the economist should at some point be required to explain something in the life of an actual human being.
That is from my (favorable) review of E. Roy Weintraub and Evelyn L. Forget, [...]
1. Strange China video of the day.
2. Do men live longer if they marry smarter women? (No, I haven't checked if the original paper deals with the identification problem in a reasonable way.)
3. Another review of *The Big Questions*.
4. Daron Acemoglu in Esquire on economic growth.
5. [...]
The feverish but resilient Megan McArdle refers us to a problem in signaling theory:
Slate ponders how to communicate the danger of radioactive waste to the far future. The problem is, if they can't read English, or recognize the radiation trefoil, anything you do sounds more likely to intrigue future anthropologists [...]
Sheikh Mohammed oversees a cadre of undercover mystery shoppers...They pose as prickly members of the public seeking the government's help. Their reports are instrumental in firings and promotions. No bureaucrat can be sure the demanding customer across the counter isn't secretly reporting to the boss. Once in a while, Sheikh [...]
Only in economics are floors above ceilings! It might be better to say "a minimum allowed price above the market price" and "a maximum allowed price below the market price," although that is a bit of a mouthful. I find that the floors and ceilings language does work, however, if [...]
Today's bizarrely fascinating cultural nugget from Japan: Chindogu. Literally translated as "weird tool," Chindogu is the Japanese art of creating deliberately complex devices that solve simple everyday problems.
Here is one example:
The Dumbbell Phone
People cite "lack of time" as the number one reason they don't work out more. With the dumbbell [...]
Ezra Furman takes his music personally. He doesn’t want to just write songs, he wants to change lives, and in the process have his life changed as well.
Which is why the 23-year-old Evanston native is doing something (take your pick) outlandish, heroic, Quixotic, exhausting, ridiculous. He’s writing a song for every [...]Ezra Furman takes his music personally. He doesn’t want to just write songs, he wants to change lives, and in the process have his life changed as well.
Which is why the 23-year-old Evanston native is doing something (take your pick) outlandish, heroic, Quixotic, exhausting, ridiculous. He’s [...]Alex and I will be there for the Southern Economics Association meetings, along with many other economists. I don't know the city well, as I've been there only once. There might be a bit of free time. What should we do? Where should we eat?
[...]A lot of people think you have no right to criticize a bill unless you propose a better bill. I don't agree (if the aforementioned bill is bad on net), but in any case I will give this a try. These are not my first best reforms or even my second best [...]
Edmonton and Calgary are among the few metropolitan areas in the developed world that are not connected to comprehensive motorway systems.
Here is much more, on highways in Canada or rather the relative lack thereof. I am not convinced by his argument that a "bigger and better" highway system is [...]
1. Reverse remittances: Mexico to the U.S.
2. Will intelligent aliens look like us? (By the way, I say no.)
3. The most important law passed this year?
5. This is very dangerous information.
Controlling for location and time fixed effects, weather factors, the pre-game point spread, and the size of the local viewing audience, we find that upset losses by the home team (losses in games that the home team was predicted to win by more than 3 points) lead to an 8 [...]
In The Big Questions, Steven Landsburg ventures far beyond his usual domain to take on questions in metaphysics, epistemology and ethics. Beginning with Plato, mathematicians have argued for the reality of mathematical forms. Rene Thom, for example, once said "mathematicians should have the courage of their most profound convictions [...]
Max Kaehn, an occasional MR commentator, expressed a common sentiment when he wrote:
You think a voting system that sticks us with a two-party cartel instead of a diverse market in political representatives isn’t a major problem? Are you sure you’re an economist?
Here are a few reasons why political competition [...]
Michael Nielsen has two of them:
Question 1: What’s the most notable subject that’s not notable enough for inclusion in Wikipedia?
Let’s assume for now that this question has an answer (“The Answer”), and call the corresponding subject X. Now, we have a second question whose answer is not at all [...]
1. Only 35,000 viewers for Fox Business Network at a typical moment in time; MR content gets a bigger audience than that.
2. The economics of Second Life and Worlds of Warcraft: a discussion and comparison.
3. Atlantic books of the year.
In the face of greatly increased demand for services, providers are likely to charge higher fees or take patients with better-paying private insurance over Medicaid recipients, "exacerbating existing access problems" in that program, according to the report from Richard S. Foster of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Here [...]
I think we have to start thinking about the idea that humans in the last 30, 40, or 50,000 years have been domesticating ourselves. If we're following the bonobo or dog pattern, we're moving toward a form of ourselves with more and more juvenile behavior. And the amazing thing once [...]
The list is the origin of culture. It's part of the history of art and literature. What does culture want? To make infinity comprehensible. It also wants to create order -- not always, but often. And how, as a human being, does one face infinity? How does one attempt to [...]
1. Via Jura Stanaityte, Ten simple rules for choosing industry vs. academia. More simple rules here.
3. "Tell-all" book about IKEA.
4. Countercyclical asset: haunted house novels?
5. China's empty city (of the day). YouTube. At about 1:20 you will see [...]
Those who would sacrifice property rights to development end up with neither.
[...]My investigation has revealed that there are 132 teachers who have paid between Rs 25,000 and Rs 50,000 for their own suspension.
Here is the full story and I thank Dilip Rao for the pointer.
[...]Here is a WaPo piece which suggests it has to do with the transition from adolescence. I recall another piece suggesting it had to do with the female fascination with gay men (is there one?).
Vampires are hardly "my thing," but I do like early Anne Rice, The Night Stalker, [...]
As the system gets gamed, the costs will be much, much higher than the CBO is estimating.
Arnold Kling explains his words in more detail. Elsewhere:
If you think of the social cost of this bill it's well below $900 billion. If we could collect in tax revenues all the dollars [...]
That is Justin Fenton, the Baltimore Sun's crime correspondent.
The quote comes from a longer article by a British reporter who switched places with his Baltimore counterpart because he wanted [...]
1. Undercover economist eats with Naked Chef.
2. Genetics and success, from Atlantic Monthly.
3. List of hot people in Tokyo.
4. Terse answers from Uwe Tellkamp. I guess he is tired from having written an almost 1000-page book. I really liked this one.
Kapernekas, a 49-year-old New York art dealer filed a suit in federal court in Manhattan claiming an interest in the two Hirsts, which have been valued at an estimated $47.6 million, court documents show. The custody suit, involving their 8-year- old daughter, was being heard in New York County Family Court.
Kapernekas has agreed [...]
A few readers asked me to discuss range voting. Wikipedia defines it as following:
Range voting (also called ratings summation, average voting, cardinal ratings, score voting, 0–99 voting, or the score system or point system) is a voting system for one-seat elections under which voters score each [...]
1. Momofuku, by David Chang and Peter Meehan. This Nelson/Winter treatise on industrial organization teaches you the evolution of recipes and restaurants and (most of all) the mistakes made along the way. Smokiness is an important concept in Japanese food, pickling and fermentation are underrated cooking techniques, a cook can [...]
Every November I scour the critics' "Want Lists" from Fanfare, my favorite classical music periodical. Then I go and spend a lot of money. Here is the list of all the new recordings, from 2009, which were mentioned by more than one critic:
Someone once told me that there is nowhere we are more honest than the search box.
That's from still-a-Wunder-but-no-longer-a-Kind Ben Casnocha. Read the whole post (drawing upon Michael Agger), it's one of the best I've seen in some time. For instance:
There are some remarkable contrasts between "dumb" searches [...]
1. Felix Salmon also recommends the new Bob Pozen book.
2. Are dreams just exercise for the brain? I enjoyed this line: “I argue that dreaming is not a parallel state but that it is consciousness itself, in the absence of input from the senses..."
If you believed all the talk from Chrysler about how our tax dollars would help finance its fast-track electric-vehicle future, you're in for a big disappointment.
Chrysler has disbanded the engineering team that was trying to bring three electric models to market as a rush job, Automotive News reports today. [...]
"Twitter-equipped scale tells the world how much you weigh."
How's that for purchasing self-constraint? Or do you just stop weighing yourself?
For the pointer I thank Eric H.
[...]1. One calculation of implicit marginal tax rates on the poor.
2. The rise of Andrew Ross Sorkin at the NYT.
3. The problems of health care transition: "drop your bad risks ASAP" is another one.
5. "Salvaged [nuclear] bomb material now generates about [...]
Most of China's growth this year has been unsustainable, driven by stimulus. China's money supply has risen 29% in the past year. At the government's behest, banks have increased their lending by nearly $1.4 trillion, or 32%, during that time.
That flood of borrowed cash has been channeled into new infrastructure [...]
Eduardo Diaz, a loyal MR reader, asks:
A question for you...have you ever compared in the context of "trade repairs" (i.e. garage door repair, plumbing, etc.) the pros and cons of companies that offer free estimates or evaluations vs. companies that charge an inspection charge?
My intuition would make me [...]
With a lot more unemployed people, a lot more people are staying home, and they see more in their neighborhood," said Sgt. Thomas Lasater, who supervises the burglary unit of the police department in St. Louis County, Mo., where authorities recorded a whopping 35 percent drop in burglaries during the [...]
The NYTimes has a nice interactive graphic on unemployment rates and changes over time by demographic characteristic. I am in the category--white men ages 25-44 with a college degree-- with almost the very lowest unemployment rate (3.9%). Just to compare, as pointed out in the comments, black males 15-24 without [...]
If you want to get a sense of the zeitgeist but can only read one review, you might prefer Rene Rodriguez, whose low standard deviation from the mean review score makes him very nearly a living critical average. If you are interested in an alternative perspective, Mick LaSalle's high standard [...]
If China remains culturally closed, the Chinese Century will never come to pass. Instead, the United States--a country that has struggled with race and racism for centuries, and in the process has become more culturally open and resilient--will dominate this century as it did the last.
That's from Reihan Salaam, [...]
