Williams-Sonoma, on the other hand, managed to lose my business. After suffering a catastropic coffeemaker failure last night, I had tasked the Insta-Daughter to buy a new one. She was snubbed by the salespeople, who skipped her to wait on someone older who was behind her in line. So she went to [...]
Yesterday I tweeted about how much I like the Missouri defensive linemen and linebackers. In the past two weeks, Mizzou has faced two of the best runners in the Big XII, both 1,000 yard rushers. Yesterday Mizzou held Iowa State's Alexander Robinson to 56 yards on 14 carries, a' [...]
USA Today is reporting that graduation levels are up in college athletics.
Nearly four of every five athletes — 79% — who entered Division I colleges and universities from 1999 to 2002 got their degrees within six years, according to an NCAA study released Wednesday. That's up a percentage point from a year' [...]
You've probably noticed that I've been writing more and more on college athletics in general and college football in particular. There's an app a reason for that. I have been reading up on the professional economic literature on college sports for a big project that I am working on. Whenever' [...]
Any construction contractor who would build a house by putting up the walls and ceilings before a solid foundation is constructed is asking for trouble.
Yet every semester I run across at least one student who wants to take classes concurrently although one is a prerequisite before the other. Prerequisites [...]
The consensus: examining a decision based solely on the outcome of the decision is not the best way to judge.
[...]The crisis has even reached into luxury suites, many of which have remained dark for months – either strapped buyers walked away from their deposits or they simply decided to cut their losses and save on finger food and drinks. But while the suites are dark, not all are unoccupied. [...]
The Pontiac Silverdome, built in 1975 at a cost of $56 million (over $200 million in today's dollars), was sold at auction yesterday for $583,000. Folks, houses in your neighborhoods sell for more than that!
The
city of Pontiac played host to the Detroit Lions in the Silverdome for
just shy of' [...]
Do you get a little testy when your team doesn't perform as well as you should? You are not alone:
Family violence is a pervasive and costly problem, yet there is no consensus on how to interpret the phenomenon of violence by one family member against another. Some analysts assume that violence' [...]
This is a common claim made by teams, but I'm skeptical.
According to economic theory, the value of any given player/coach/trainer on a profit-maximizing team is what that person contributes at the margin to the team and what fans are willing to pay for that marginal contribution. If, for example, Adrian Peterson contributes 1.5 wins [...]
This lasagna recipe went over well in our house last night. The kids even ate the mushrooms. It's based on this classic lasagna recipe from the always excellent Allrecipes.com and submitted by Allrecipes user Barb R. I changed the ingredients a little bit based upon my personal (and family's) [...]
How did former Kansas State Coach Ron Prince end up with a double-secret, super-stealthy $3.2 million buyout? The Shadow knows, but the KC Star examines the issue.
Steven Wieberg at USA Today describes the latest findings of an NCAA survey on athlete gambling.
More from USA Today: the good folks [...]
There's a bit of a flap in my state university system, the Minnesota State College and University system (MnSCU - pronounced "Min-skew"), over a news piece on sabbaticals in the system. The gist of the piece is that sabbaticals are paid vacations and faculty do little more than sit' [...]
Like the rest of the labor force, times have been awfully rough for teens. Almost 28% of the teen labor force is unemployed which puts a serious dent in not only their current prospects but their long term prospects. Ironman discusses recent statistics on this part of the labor [...]
In business, entrepreneurs look for opportunities. Whether the opportunities are in the form of creating new products, serving new customers, or cutting costs, entrepreneurs exploit them at the cost of the competition. But in the end the entrepreneur's customers and the entrepreneur himself gain. This is capitalism.
So it is in' [...]Prof. Whitehead notes a post that says that the claim that meat production generates 51% of greenhouse gas emissions is based on "addled" conclusions.
By the way, why does nobody mention beer (or any adult beverage, for that matter) along with greenhouse gasses? There's a reason they call those little' [...]
With all due respect to the Bears, the Mizzou loss to Baylor almost defies explanation. A 14-point underdog that had scored 34 points in 4 previous Big XII games, all loses, Baylor had only won one previous Big XII road game in the history of the league. After the stunning [...]
Fallacy of composition: whatever is true for the individual is also true for the whole. Example: if I stand at a football game, I get a better view if I'm the only one who stands up. If everyone stands up*, my view is probably no better or, quite possibly, worse. ' [...]
Mark Cuban was kept out of the running for the buying of the Chicago Cubs, but he's still interested in buying an MLB team. From the LA Times.
Mark Cuban, the high-profile owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks, said
Monday he would consider adding the Dodgers to his portfolio.
As
the unusually public [...]
How does this happen?
Mizzou’s women’s soccer team became the first regular-season champion in the Big 12 Conference to be excluded from the NCAA Division I tournament.Mizzou failed to secure one of the 34 at-large bids in the 64-team field.
The Tigers (13-6-3, 7-1-2) won the regular-season title but missed out on the conference’s automatic [...]
Baylor beat Mizzou this weekend in a 40-32 punch in the teeth and kick in the mouth. Not only had the Bears only scored 34 points in their previous 4 Big XII games without star QB Robert Griffin, they had only won one other Big XII road game EVER. That [...]
Link here. Money Quote.
Most investing is done by active managers who don't believe markets are efficient. For example, despite my taunts of the last 45 years about the poor performance of active managers, about 80% of mutual fund wealth is actively managed. Hedge funds, private equity, and other alternative asset classes, which have' [...]
From David Meltzer and Zhuo Chen (HT Greg Mankiw):
Growing consumption of increasingly less expensive food, and especially “fast food”, has been cited as a potential cause of increasing rate of obesity in the United States over the past several decades. Because the real minimum wage in the United States has declined [...]
Harvard has one of the most reputable Economics departments in the nation and the world, so Dick Armey's comment about Harvard (and Larry Summers) is just plain ludicrous. Greg Mankiw:
Okay, this has got to be one of the goofiest comments from a major political figure in recent weeks:
"I
don’t consider'" [...]
Abraham Lincoln (August 24, 1855):
When it comes to this, I shall prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty - to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure and without the base alloy of hypocrisy."
Full quote here (2nd gray block, 4th quote). Washington University, 2009.
The" [...]
Growing up in the potential firing line between the US and the USSR, the members of the metal band the Scorpions had special reason to celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall. Here is a video of their classic ballad Winds of Change which is about this historical event.
Here is [...]
"You men will come to no Christian end!" Rutgers vs. Princeton 140 years ago on Nov. 6th 1869, Allen Barra lays out a nice story on the first college football game ever played.
Note how the rules of the game were set.
Here's something I didn't know. Mr. Magoo, in a [...]
Link here. The final paragraph:
Sportz is everywhere. There's so much of it that it's contributed to the inflation of all the numbers and values in the sports industry, and as a result we now have a Sports Bubble. It's up to each of us to stand up to the TV or the [...]
Charles Gasparino has an interesting column in the WSJ in which he details the bailout mania that seems to have gripped the Feds over the past 30 years. He argues that repeated past actions by the Feds since the 1980's have shown that the next time that large financial [...]
In game theory, a pure strategy is where a player does not randomize between options. For many game situations, this is not an optimal way to play the game. Would a prison guard want to always to do his rounds in exactly the same fashion time after time after time? [...]
It's well known in economics that when price ceilings are in effect, leading to shortages, other rationing systems come into place. Queues are one example. I ask my students if price ceilings help direct a good to people who can't afford it. My answer is no, not necessarily. I ask' [...]
Tyler Cowen:
I was reading an NYT account of its finances and came across the following:
More radical moves, like dropping the sports section, have been rejected because they would undermine the quality of The Times or would not save much money, Keller said.
"Or"? Which is it? It would not undermine the quality of [...]
Consider the following data:
Six year graduation rates in percentage terms over the past 12 years: 12, 15, 22, 12, 16, 18, 15, 14, 16, 18, 16, and 13.
Where is this from? A Bob Huggins coached team? The University of Kansas' football team, the Fighting Manginos? Some other rogue athletic' [...]
Don Boudreaux on what ails public education in the US:
Suppose that newspapers were run by government and funded by taxpayers, and that each American was assigned to read only the newspaper published in his or her local area. Clearly, the resulting quality of journalism would be atrocious.
Would anyone seriously suggest that this [...]
OK, so the 9 jobs were given because, well, some number had to be entered into a government web form. Story here. Via Greg Mankiw.
My question is this: what is the value of resources wasted in answering questionnaires to be used for propaganda purposes?
[...]Congratulations to the Yankees and their fans for the Yankees' victory over the Philly Phil's in the 2009 World Series. Now that that's over, I predict we'll hear more calls for salary restrictions in the name of competitive balance now that the big, bad Yanks have returned to the throne. [...]
From the Orlando Sentinel:
The economic model for major college
athletics is collapsing like an overmatched offensive line under a
relentless blitz. That's the unmistakable message from a recent survey
of university presidents.
The survey for the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics found
that less than a quarter of 95 presidents at universities with the
largest' [...]
that is to places with the most economic freedom and more limited government.
More important, the key group leaving New York and other so-called "youth-magnets" comprises the middle class, particularly families, critical to any long-term urban revival. This year's Census shows that the number of single households in New York has reached record' [...]
President Barack Obama's economic recovery program saved 935 jobs at the Southwest Georgia Community Action Council, an impressive success story for the stimulus plan. Trouble is, only 508 people work there.
The Georgia nonprofit's inflated job count is among persisting errors in the government's latest effort to' [...]
People respond to incentives. When a product is profitable, that gives people an incentive to develop substitutes. These developments do not magically come about. They are the result of hard work, luck, and opportunity, and sometimes it takes awhile. From the Wall Street Journal:
From the time of the California [...]
The University of North Texas is going to build a new 30,000 seat stadium with luxury suites (of course). It's scheduled to open in 2011.
"If you look at America's great universities, you'll see that they all have the three A's in common: great academics, great arts and great athletics," said UNT [...]
It is hypothesized that college athletics bring interest from potential students. Some of the research I have been reviewing on sabbatical provides empirical support to this. If true, we should find a price effect (second paper). Donald Alexander and William Kern in the International Journal of Sports Finance.
This [...]
Ever wonder what happens under the pile during football games? This video ain't got nuthin'.
"It just depends on what team you’re playing, but some guys are dirty out there," Weatherspoon said of the action that unfolds under the pile. "I won’t say any names, but some guys, when you’re just standing around the" [...]
From Yahoo! News:
A 35-mile rift in the desert of Ethiopia will likely become a new ocean eventually, researchers now confirm.
The crack, 20 feet wide in spots, opened in 2005 and some geologists believed then that it would spawn a new ocean. But that view was controversial, and the rift had not [...]
From Capital Ideas comes this discussion of Emily Oster's research with Robert Jensen on the status of women in India. (HT JC Bradbury):
Jensen and Oster found large effects of cable on both of these variables. Women who live in villages that introduce cable see large declines in both the number of' [...]
King:
Health insurance is a basic human right ... which is why Congress proposes to leave 18 million people still uninsured in the year 2019 (source). I’m getting more and more confused by our politicians. A lot of them have offered beautiful speeches about how it is both a tragedy and [...]From the New York Times:
Just as Le Corbusier's white cruciform towers once excited visions of the industrial-age city of the future, so Vélib', Paris's bicycle rental system, inspired a new urban ethos for the era of climate change.
Residents here can rent a sturdy bicycle from hundreds of public stations' [...]
From the Denver Post:
Tennessee police said a mechanic was drumming up business by tampering with parked cars, then charging to help start them. Police arrested 41-year-old Christopher Walls of Johnson City on Thursday night.
Investigators said Walls disabled cars parked at restaurants, waited for the owners to try to start them and then offered [...]
The economics of horse racing looks a lot like the economics of other sports. There are the usual costs of ownership. There is prize money. There is the focus on competitive balance. There is revenue sharing. This LA Times article presents some numbers that show how difficult it is [...]
Many moons ago, Doc asked me to post my recipe for chili. I've been pretty generous with my recipes here on this blog, but I couldn't part with the intellectual property that is my chili recipe.
Yes, I actually own a piece or two of intellectual property. But I digress.
Here, [...]
From the Denver Post.
The federal government reported Friday that Colorado created or saved 8,094 jobs through grants, loans and contracts funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
Problem is, the figure is wrong, according to an analysis of recovery.gov data by The Denver Post.
Although a Colorado Springs Head Start program [...]
Stanford economist Edward Lazear describes the jobless recovery this time around. He makes two skeptical points that I will highlight (but read the whole thing).
After reporting GDP, the government released new numbers claiming that the stimulus programs have "created or saved" over a million jobs. These data were collected from responses [...]
Say what you want about their music, but the members of KISS have never shied away from trying to make a buck and giving their fans something in return. This time it's the KISS Potato Heads.
They'll look great next to the Kiss plush [...]
We're bloggers. That means we carry our laptops with us when we travel.
The
internet access at hotels has been generally improving. It's usually
free, now - a change from even just a year ago. The hotels are also
doing better with the hardware (plugs and ethernet cable connections)
than they used to.
But no mouse [...]
Perfesser Whitehead responds to a reader of his blog:
But, I digress. Back to the Hokies:
Some faculty members interviewed for this story said that while there has been no official mandate handed down by the school, it has been implicitly suggested that they cancel afternoon classes before Thursday night games in order to [...]
Q: What do you get when you take the insides out of a hot dog?
A: A hollow weenie.
I'll be here all week.
' [...]As long-time readers know, this blog also serves as my recipe collection. This recipe is a simple yeast starter to help ensure that I have enough yeast when I brew beer. The starter is approximately of gravity 1.040.
2 cups water 1/2 cup dry malt extract (DME). The type of DME matches [...]Halloween can be bad luck for black cats.
Because of superstitions about the felines and witchcraft, several area pet shelters don't allow the animals to be adopted in the days leading up to Oct. 31. They fear the animals could be abused or killed by disturbed individuals.
Although reports of such incidents are rare, some shelter officials' [...]
As a child, Christmas was my favorite holiday for obvious reasons. Christmas still occupies a favored place in my mind, and raising two kids brings back the magic every year. But speaking purely as an adult Christmas takes third place in American holidays in my book. In first place is [...]
I had the pleasure of being in Chicago last week. One of the things I did was visit the Field Museum (named, by the way, for realtor Marshall Field). One of the displays at the Field Museum is a depiction of the skeleton of Lucy, a person who [...]
It appears that the measures I took to rid my computer of the Virtumonde trojan horse were successful. The pop-ups are gone, Windows Updater is still turned on, and my Google search results lead me to the correct page when I click them. Here's what I did.
Close the web' [...]Consider a typical demand curve. When the price of the good rises, it gives consumers an incentive to reduce the amount they'd like to have. In times of shortages, reducing quantity demanded is one way to alleviate the problem.
The supply side of the tap water market is controlled by public' [...]
While the H1N1 flu virus seems to be running its course here in Minnesota and in other parts of the US, the vaccine for the virus hasn't even hit the market. It's quite possible that the course will be run before the vaccines even come out.
Even though many will [...]
More power to George Soros. Disciplines move forward when they open themselves to skeptical questioning, even if the questioning involves questioning the fundamental freedom of people to contract with whom they please. Bring it on.
HT MR.
[...]When I buy a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup at Walgreens and spend a dollar, that's my expenditure. But that dollar becomes Walgreen's revenue and it goes to cover the myriad expenses that went into getting that candy into my hand. Short version of the story: your expenditures are somebody else's [...]
I was sitting in church this past Sunday morning listening to the annual stewardship sermon "... and money is not just a medium of exchange..." and I'm thinking "... amen preacher, it's also a unit of account and a store of value."
[...]
I spent Columbus Day in Sunnyvale, fittingly, meeting with a roomful of new arrivals. Well, relatively new. They were Indians living in Silicon Valley. The event was organized by the Think India Foundation, a think-tank that seeks to solve problems which Indians face. When introducing the topic of skilled immigration, the discussion [...]
Yesterday I posted about the problems I have been having with my computer, mostly unwanted pop-ups.
I am having trouble with Firefox and it's a problem that started this morning after my mother turned on the computer and opened the program. Whenever Firefox is open, I get pop-ups that I never' [...]
"College Presidents Want Change, Feel Powerless to Do It." They say that
The report said 85% of the presidents surveyed felt football and basketball coaches' salaries are "excessive in the context of higher education," and in a sentence italicized for emphasis: "Coaches' salaries are seen as the greatest impediment to sustainability" of athletics programs. [...]
I had the opportunity to talk to a young man who works for a company in Chicago that prepares traffic reports for out-of-town radio stations, including WCCO out of the Twin Cities. He said that his company has access to police scanners and traffic cameras that they can use in [...]
Is the remaining demand for newspapers elastic? It seems so if this article is correct.
Average daily circulation at 379 U.S. newspapers plunged 10.6 percent in the April-September period from the same six-month stretch last year, according to figures released Monday by the Audit Bureau of Circulations.
It's the largest drop recorded so far' [...]
I hope it doesn't come to that described in the title. But Missouri's performance against Texas in football on Saturday night was less than stellar, to be nice. You know your team performed poorly when your primary beat writer refers to your performance as genuflecting.
Third-ranked Texas is very good [...]
