1.21 Gigawatts!

Wouldn't it be nice?

2007-03-06T14:23:00.000-05:00

If a tax on gasoline consumption led directly to a reduction in global warming. That a policy instrument as elegant as that (often referred to as a Pigouvian Tax) probably wouldn't work should be self-evident. From Alex Tabarrok:

The result is a simple application of the theory of tax incidence. The burden of a tax falls on those who can least afford to escape the tax. The world's demand for oil is inelastic but the supply is even more inelastic. What is Saudi Arabia, for example, going to do with its oil except sell it? The oil is already fetching a price well above cost so if there is a world tax on oil that's like a tax on land - Saudi Arabian land to be precise - and a tax on land is born by land owners not by consumers.

More here. He doesn't mention, moreover, that the marginal cost of consumption (in terms pollution) is most likely higher in less developed countries because they are least likely to have developed or atleast be using relatively more efficient technologies.

2007-03-06T12:38:00.000-05:00

Facebook Infomercial Parody

So true.

[HT: Karisa (yes, she is a Facebook friend)]

Yay Baseball season!

2007-03-03T15:37:00.000-05:00

"Daisuke is the pitching master!" said Boston Globe baseball columnist Bob Ryan, hopping from one foot to the other as he described videotape footage of Matsuzaka's otherworldly pitching power and control banishing a flock of evil, conniving, left-handed-batting carp-spirits to the netherworld during a 2003 Seibu Lions game. "His Ultimate Galactic Dragon Gyroball Pitch Power Explosion breaks three feet inside before cutting sharply toward the dugout, where falsehood and cowardice are forced to shrink before it!"

Rest of the story here.

Matt Drudge as the Long Tail?

2007-03-01T18:19:00.000-05:00

This piece on ABCNews.com (by Michael Malone) takes an honest and humiliating look at what exactly is news, and who should be the ones purveying it. This section grabbed me:

We are in a perpetual race to get to the news as early as possible....The result is a behavior that I can only describe as "surfing upstream". That is, we surf the cable stations on television even as we race around the net, trying to capture the latest update the instant it appears.

...The problem is that in going this far up the news cycle, we are also usually by-passing all of the standard intermediators that we normally depend upon to do our filtering for us... Needless to say, that's led to a lot of disenchantment with the traditional media. And rightly so.
Yet, by surfing ever further upstream, we go past not only analysis to news to breaking news, but all of the way to the raw information streaming off the event in real time.... Downstream, in the world of long, leisurely feature stories and news analysis, the current is wide and slow and fairly predictable. But up at the source, information and data is blasting out of spillway like an immense firehose; all is confusion, energy and chaos.
Most of have neither the time nor the inclination to navigate against this torrent; yet, that is precisely where most of us want to be. The result is a paradox, and one that is rapidly destroying traditional media.
Put simply: we want the news as it happens, but we also want it to be intermediated by some sort of objective, professional news filter. The Internet, cell phones and digital cameras have gotten us unprecedentedly close to the real-time unfolding of news events around the world. But only rudimentary institutions - notably the blogosphere — have yet appeared to deal with the problem of filtration. Thus, our current behavior: channel surfing cable news, dropping into places like the Drudge Report fifteen times per day, and bouncing around the Web to the blogs we trust the most.

I think that's about right. [HT to (who else?) Matt Drudge]

"Please be sure to answer all questions."

2007-03-01T14:29:00.000-05:00

Oscar predictions

2007-02-25T16:50:00.000-05:00

3 hours or so til showtime. We'll see if I'm correct.

Best Picture: The Departed
Director: Martin Scorsese (The Departed)
Best Actor: Forest Whitaker (The Last King of Scotland)
Best Actress: Helen Mirren (The Queen)
Supporting Actor: Eddie Murphy (Dreamgirls)
Supporting Actress: Jennifer Hudson (Dreamgirls)

Sources of my predictions here.

Just thought I'd let you know

2007-02-22T17:01:00.000-05:00

In Atlanta today

You said it

2007-02-22T16:49:00.000-05:00

From Dana Stevens' Oscar predictions dialogue on Slate:

Best documentary: An Inconvenient Truth. This is a little unfortunate, given that it's the only doc in the category that doesn't need the word-of-mouth boost at the box office. But wouldn't it be a blast to see Al Gore step up and accept that award while the Hollywood establishment solemnly applauded the planet? Yay, globe! Sorry about that whole warming thing. [Emphasis mine]

Are movie critics becoming even more cynical? Is that even possible?

All good things shall pass: Eddie Murphy edition

2007-02-20T23:00:00.001-05:00

It probably isn't possible for a single movie to reverse all social progress made since the civil-rights era, but Norbit, the latest broadside from Eddie Murphy, does its best to turn back the clock. There's enough material here to add another hour to Spike Lee's "reel of shame" in Bamboozled.

--Scott Tobias, review of "Norbit," The Onion A.V. Club

Rotten Tomatoes has the movie at a solid 9%. Eddie Murphy is still a clear favorite to win Best Supporting Actor for his role in Dreamgirls. My guess is the more people who see Norbit, the less this will be true.

Chomsky meets Schoolhouse Rock

2007-02-15T23:21:00.000-05:00

"Pirates and Emperors." This is an animated video criticizing aspects of the US's foreign policy, inspired by the writing of Noam Chomsky. Agree or disagree, it's a pretty catchy tune.

"...cause there are pirates and emperors, but they're really the same thing..."

As you can imagine, the usual suspects make appearances: like Noriega, Hussein, Superman, and so on.

[HT: EspressoPundit]

2007-02-15T18:37:00.000-05:00

Team America II: The Invasion of Bonnaroo

The Police's announcement of a reunion tour, including a stop at Bonnaroo, reminded me of a highlight of last year's festival.

In the late afternoon, on the main stage before Radiohead came on, Beck gave one of his usually energetic, novel, and unserious performances. This time, as you may have seen on SNL, his band was accompanied by 1.5 ft. puppet replicas of the band members themselves--complete with the same outfits and instrument motions.

This is a video that played about half way through their set, about five puppets lost in the middle of Tennessee.

2007-02-15T01:06:00.000-05:00

Pi - The Music Video

By Hard'n Phirm. By the way, the song is exactly 3:14 long.

A Day with Chris Thile and Edgar Meyer

2007-02-14T01:36:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago, in a semi-semester tradition, Emory's music department hosted a reknowned musician or group to be the Coca-Cola Artists-in-Residence. Chris Thile (mandolin) and Edgar Meyer (upright bass).

As part of their stay, they usually do some kind of master classes, performance clinics, and finally a formal performance in Emerson Hall. Though I don't take playing guitar very seriously, I thought it would be a unique opportunity to get into the head of modern virtuosos.

Chris Thile you may know as the mandolin player for Nickel Creek, and more recently the How to Grow a Band. Everyone from Sam Bush to Bela Fleck sing high praises about this kid (he's only 26). Edgar Meyer is a regular collaborator with Bela, and has recorded muktiple times with the likes of Mike Marshall, Alison Krauss, and Yo-Yo Ma. Their performance to a packed house that night was the kind of dedication to an instrument that only comes at the expense of indulging less vigorous interests.

A couple pointers Chris and Edgar made that afternoon:

1. Picking is not the most efficient way to get sound from a string: a bow is. So you should keep that in mind in creating dynamics with a pick.

2. The "correct" way to hold a pick is that which economizes motion.

3. Nobody has really explored the technique of picking. It's sort of an afterthought, and even though some people do it well, few focus much energy figuring it out.

4. Part of being good at an instrument is playing the one that is most appropriate for your body size/structure.

5. Both the bass and mandolin, properly speaking are rather underexplored instruments. That is, there are no timeless etude books written specifically for either (especially mandolin), but rather they borrow heavily from violin and guitar. As such, this leaves both open to innovate more freely and achieve new levels of skill then say on violin. As Edgar put it: "I don't have to worry about waking up tomorrow and some 8-year-old Korean kid being better than me."

6. Audience member: "How do you avoid injury when you have to play several hours a day, every day?" Chris: "Look, this is what I do. If you play a couple hours at the end of the day and are sore, it's cause you spent eight hours doing non-music stuff. This is my eight-hours-a-day responsibility and I would probably get sore typing."

(A week later, we were fortunate to host singer Jon Hendricks. In April, we will have Dizzy Gillespie alum and nine-time Grammy nominee Kenny Barron).

Will the real Ayn Rand please stand up?

2007-02-14T01:00:00.000-05:00

[Ayn] Rand’s own choices seem less the product of a self-reliant woman comfortable accepting her own desires, and more the genuine confusion of a girl who refused to grow out of emotional adolescence. When Rand sensed that her lover’s attention might be directed elsewhere, she responded by writing a flurry of “papers” analyzing [Nathaniel Branden's] psychology in Objectivist terms. Branden, always the good disciple, responded with equally solemn “papers” that were equally beside the point – until he finally delivered one that attempted to explain, in “rational” terms, why he was no longer sexually attracted to a sixty-one-year-old woman.

[From "Randy Girls – Adolescent females love Ayn Rand – wonder why?" by Amy Benfer]

What is health care like?

2007-02-14T00:27:00.000-05:00

Somehow, health insurance has become a social fetish. I could travel to the far reaches of the globe, and almost everywhere I would find merchants where my credit is good and my dollars are welcome. But here at home, trying to enter a local hospital with nothing but a wad of cash and a credit card would be like urinating on the sidewalk.

[From "The Five Big Questions about Health Care" by Arnold Kling]

Inequality Fades (in three charts)

2007-02-13T15:40:00.000-05:00

[From Chapter 1 of the 2007 Index of Economic Freedom]

You've Been So Helpful -- Thanks!

2007-02-13T00:42:00.000-05:00

Thug teen: I wanna take out this fuckin' book.
Librarian: Okay, well, go to the check-out desk.
Thug teen: I got to go to the other fuckin' desk, mothafuckah?
Librarian: Yeah, motherfucker. The other fuckin' desk.

--overheard at the Brooklyn Library

From awkward freshmen to fake news anchor fresh

2007-02-05T21:44:00.000-05:00

I looked like a Peanuts character. Peanuts characters had terrible acne. But what I lacked in looks I made up for with a repugnant personality.
In 1981 I lost my virginity, only to gain it back again on appeal in 1983. You could say that my one saving grace was academics where I excelled, but I did not.

(From Jon Stewart's 2004 William & Mary Commencement Address)

Prince Reigns Supreme

2007-02-05T04:15:00.000-05:00

I may have been the only one in my Super Bowl gathering that wasn't ironically hypnotized by Prince's performance, but sincerely so. As Haahnster has pointed out, Prince probably doesn't get enough credit for his incendiary guitar playing, probably in part because it is consistently overshadowed by his theatrical on-stage presence.

Kalefa Sanneh registers her early edition thoughts at the New York Times. She basically mirrors my thoughts, but goes one step further to point out, that at age 48 Prince has defied becoming a novelty, having made "that familiar journey from pariah to American treasure."

UPDATE: Apparently Yahoo! Sports' Dan Wetzel was not as impressed.

UPDATE 2: The AP weighs in on the "is he?/he couldn't be" aspect of Prince's Cirque de Soleil-like phallic shadow dance. To begin, I thought that was intentional and more to the point, I was under the impression that it went without saying. Everyone around me while watching seemed to get it; but it may be solely to our uncontrollable instinct to snicker at public mention of sexuality. But come on, it's the Purple One--do we not think he knows what he's doing (atleast along these lines)? And shouldn't we expect this as a minimum...from the guy who brought us "Darling Nikki" and "Pussy Control?"

Stephen Colbert's reaction may be the best so far: "'They knew that they were dealing with a lustful, pansexual rock 'n' roll deviant,' said Colbert, who joked that the sheet hid (not enhanced) Prince's 'demonic guitar phallus.'"

With Teeth

2007-01-29T14:01:00.000-05:00

Apparently the breakout hit of this year's Sundance Film Festival is Teeth, about a girl with choppers in her vagina.

It sold for $2.5 million.

John Stossel on "Uncle Milton"

2007-01-24T21:01:00.000-05:00

Monday is Milton Friedman Day.

His interests were not narrowly focused on economics. He pointed out the folly of the government's so-called "war on drugs." His ideas helped create the school-voucher movement. And when the Vietnam war raged in the 1960s and early 1970s, no one argued more eloquently for ending the draft, and he helped bring about the all-volunteer army.

More on Milton Friedman Day here.

[HT: Carpe Diem]

Elevator of Death

2007-01-24T12:30:00.000-05:00

I've got this elevator at work that likes to scare the shit out of me frmo time to time. It rattles and shimmies. Soemtimes the doors don't open. Sometimes it almost crashes through the roof. When I step on the elevator from my [32nd], it sometimes drops a good inch or so. Freaky shit.

Here's some interesting info on elevator and escalator-related deaths and injuries:

Incidents involving elevators and escalators kill about 30 and seriously injure about 17,100 people each year in the United States, according to data provided by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Injuries to people working on or near elevators – including those installing, repairing, and maintaining elevators, and working in or near elevator shafts – account for 14- 15 (almost half) of the deaths. The two major causes of death are falls and being caught in/between moving parts of elevators/escalators. Incidents where workers are in or on elevators or platforms that collapse, are struck by elevators or counterweights, or are electrocuted are also numerous.

People save less in light of nuclear threat

2007-01-24T08:38:00.000-05:00

Well, duh. An economist posits that the U.S.'s notoriously low savings rate may be due to the risk of nuclear annihilation.

The hypothesis of this article is that the performance and, in particular, the rate of saving in the postwar U.S. economy has been influenced by the changes in the public perception of the threat of a catastrophic nuclear war. An increased threat shortens the expected horizon of individuals, and thus reduces their willingness to postpone present consumption in favor of investment. The hypothesis is tested by expanding a standard savings function estimation technique to include a measure of the perceived threat of nuclear war.

More here.

[HT: Greg Mankikw]

Why (most) CEOs deserve what they are paid

2007-01-23T23:49:00.000-05:00

Thomas Sowell explains what he calls "The 'Greed' Fallacy."

What price nostalgia?

2007-01-22T22:01:00.000-05:00

When will trade protectionists get the lesson: industries change and disappear. EspressoPundit has a succinct and eloquent elegy on the people and companies that will no longer exist:

Time's Running Out

This just in from Time magazine.

Time Inc., the country's largest magazine publisher, spent the morning telling hundreds of staffers their jobs were being eliminated -- in its latest and largest yet round of staff cuts -- for the company's good.

Meanwhile, the sale of the LA Times is going badly. An analysts on Public Radio's "Market Place" was asked to describe the auction last night and simply said "Ouch!"

We learned in high school that industries become obsolete and disapear--bugy whip makers, milk men and movie theater ushers are gone. The Oldmobile went the way of the Nash, but no one seemed to realize the speed with which the internet would wipe out businesses and indeed entire professions. Tower Record's business model became obsolete and it folded. My kids have never seen a "Record Store." Travel agents are nearly gone. Call a broker to buy stock? Give me a break.

Just as I marvel that a man in a green truck used to bring milk to my door each morning, my children will marvel that a someone used to bring a 5 pound stack of paper to our door step at 5:00 every morning.

I don't know what will surprise them more, that I paid to buy it, or that

We've got rankings (Beer drinker's edition)

2007-01-22T20:39:00.000-05:00

Top 50 Places to Have a Beer in America (2006)
by BeerAdvocate.com.

#15 is actually just down the street from me--a regular stop on our our semi-regular nights out.

I'm proud to say I've actually hit up three (in three different states) on this list; the others are #7 and #49. The remaining 47 give me something new to shoot for.

Anyone in Chicago ever been to the Map Room (#5)?

UofA Marching Band Covers Radiohead

2007-01-10T18:28:00.000-05:00

Anyone who watches college sports will know that the accompanying college bands have become incresingly progressive in their repertoire as of late. UofA's director and arranger Jay Rees (whom I've had the pleasure of meeting during my music days in Arizona) has no doubt been a big part of that. Exhibit A.

It makes clear how many Radiohead melodies sit comfortably among a large brass arrangement.

The Visited States of America

2007-01-10T17:43:00.001-05:00

A while back I posted an admittedly lame "graphic text" version of the map below, which represents the states I have visited. After this past Summer, I was able to color in a few more so here is my updated "Visited States" map (I'm counting only places that I've atleast stayed overnight in, not merely driven through).

Create your own visited states map. By my calculations, I'm about 60% done.

[UPDATE: The link has been fixed]

We've Got Rankings (Restaurant Edition)

2007-01-09T20:15:00.000-05:00

Most expensive restaurants worldwide.

1. Aragawa - Tokyo
2. Eigensinn Farm - Toronto
3. Arpege - Paris
4. Sketch - London
5. Petermann's Kuntstuben - Zurich
6. Tetsuya's Restaurant - Sydney
7. Vitrum - Berlin
8. Steirereck - Vienna
9. Yamazato - Amsterdam
10. Zalacain - Madrid
11. Bruneau - Brussels
12. Il Teatro - Milan
13. Vivendo - Rome
14. Pierchic - Dubai
15. Restaurant Savoy - Moscow

More here. This list, from 2005, is a bit old and (I hope) deliberately leaves out American shockers. Places like Masa and Alain Ducasse (both in New York) and the French Laundry in Napa Valley would easily beat out many of the indulgences in the above list. Detroit (Tribute), Atlanta (Seeger's), Chicago (Charlie Trotter's), and Houston (Tony's) would also have entrants into the expense account dining club.

First Best 2007 Jam

2007-01-02T23:07:00.000-05:00

Here's the first track from the upcoming Of Montreal release, Hissing Fauna are you the Destroyer? This tune just screams perfect opener. Grabs you by the balls and doesn't let up for 3 minutes. The whole disc is killer, and sounds like the new album The Shins should have made. It's out Jan. 23.

Of Montreal - "Suffer For Fashion"

Seconds:

Of Montreal - "Reject the Frequency"

How I wish I'd spent my New Year's

2007-01-02T17:35:00.000-05:00

From an article in today's (perpetually less journalistic) Chicago Sun-Times:

A 21-year-old woman was hospitalized for intoxication over the weekend after "continually providing wrong answers" during a game of Trivial Pursuit where participants drank alcohol and did drugs when they answered incorrectly.

Go ahead, you know you want to read the whole article.

Fact of the day

2007-01-02T13:21:00.000-05:00

Iceland has the highest percentage of broadband users in the world.

Optical Illusions

2007-01-02T12:44:00.000-05:00

A rather exhaustive list of animated optical illusions along with instructions and (sometimes rather technical) explanations. Many even have a bibliography! The site is put together by a German professor of opthamology.

Try "Biological Motion," "Missing Corner Cube," or "Hidden Bird." Start the tour here.

We've Got Rankings

2006-12-28T10:51:00.000-05:00

Take a gander at ESPN's rankings of the best Football states. Can't say I'm surprised to see Texas sitting on top. Indiana finished a respectable #20. Top 15 below, and full list over here.

1. Texas
2. California
3. Florida
4. Pennsylvania
5. Ohio
6. Georgia
7. Michigan
8. Louisiana
9. New Jersey
10. Wisconsin
11. Illinois
12. Alabama
13. Virginia
14. North Carolina
15. Missouri

Furthermore, can you believe that there are now national rankings for High School Football? Is it necessary to put national emphasis on very local teams? How can they even arrive at reasonably balanced rankings when most teams in the Top 10, 20 even 200 will rarely play one another?

Mega Death Gun

2006-12-28T10:31:00.000-05:00

Macky is back, though likely in small doses. Thanks for holding down the fort, Saxy. First order of business: this gun. It's called the DREAD and it appears to represent one of the more significant advances in small arms technology in the last 100 years. We're talking 120,000 (thousand!) rounds per minute! My calculator tells me that's 2000 rounds per second. On top of that, there is no recoil, muzzle flash or other side effects found in conventional small weapons. I'm not big on guns, but this thing is a pretty incredible piece of science.

Here's a little YouTube-ige. This short is great because it plays out like one of those film strips you used to watch back in elementary school. Remember film strips?

The gift for the continent who has nothing

2006-12-23T09:03:00.000-05:00

I gather it's rather fashionable (and, not a bad idea to boot) to give the gift of vicarious charity (you know, where money goes to the needy on the gift receipient's behalf) to friends whom you are not particularly close to. My friend points me to this website with gifts of this kind, but with a development aid and novelty flavor. My favorite, which sounds like a gag gift at Spencer's in the mall:

Prize bull semen, single delivery - £10
In Africa, areas devastated by conflict find cattle breeds weakened. The prime requirement in the development of stronger and more productive milkers is a prize bull. £1,200 buys a hunk of beefcake with the ability to service thousands of cows (often personally). Maintain his peak performance with feed for six months. At £10 a shot, his semen, delivered to the farmer, is a gift loaded with potential.

Well, it turns out to be a rather reasonable need that's being filled there. This approach to charity, methinks, is a good one. One bypasses the mundane obligatory nature of charitable giving and augments it with originality, which ultimately is kinda the point behind giving a gift.

The kicker is, this company is endorsed by Twiggy. Yes, that Twiggy.

This also reminds me of the fundamental problem in development aid: the top-down approach. William Easterly (channeling Peter Bauer) understands that the problems of a developing country will only be properly understood by those on the ground. Thus, these kinds of gifts probably aren't found in a government manual or a UN development report, but instead mostly come from the NGOs that fulfill the orders.

Justin Timberlake's latest relationship

2006-12-22T03:35:00.000-05:00

Inspired by Saturday Night Live's latest "digital short" phenom (is this a once a year thing?), I've put together some of multi-host and multi-musical guest Justin Timberlake's greatest hits from the show. He has, I think it is not controversial to say, been the most consistently funny host in several seasons.

Dick in a Box

The Barry Gibb Talk Show, with guests:
1. Thomas Friedman, Sandra Day O'Connor, Jimmy Carter
2. Nancy Pelosi, Bill Richardson, Ann Coulter
3. Arianna Huffington, Cruz Bustamante, Al Franken

Punk'd

Homelessville

Omeletteville

A Message from Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson

The Leprechaun Sketch

(By the way, NBC has decided to go the other way on online content and instead make it very difficult to find their content. After all, they wouldn't want the unwashed masses to actually keep their shows on the air by getting people to watch them)

The $1,050 steak

2006-12-18T02:33:00.000-05:00

"It didn't even taste like steak." -- Mickey Rourke. One restaurant offers a 5 oz. burger version for $62.

What will NYC's trans fat ban mean for this kind of indulgence? Will the price go to infinity?

The price, per pound, is not unrivaled. Saffron can go for as much as $2,700/pound, and Beluga caviar for $2,400. Joe Pytka, owner of Bastide in Los Angeles, once paid $35,000 for a one kilogram white truffle.

UPDATE: A man in Hong King earlier this year paid £85,000 for a 1.51kg truffle. Is this conspicuous consumption? The article indicates not as he was not trying to signal his wealth to anyone, but is genuinely obsessed with truffles. [HT: Marginal Revolution]

We've got rankings (magazine edition)

2006-12-17T23:58:00.000-05:00

Top 15 Magazines (by revenue)

1. People
2. Better Homes and Gardens
3. Time
4. Sports Illustrated
5. TV Guide
6. Parade
7. Newsweek
8. Reader's Digest
9. Good Housekeeping
10. Woman's Day
11. Cosmopolitan
12. InStyle
13. Family Circle
14. USA Weekend
15. Us Weekly

BH&G? Really? Vogue is still Conde Nast's flagship (#18). Some other surprises are AARP The Magazine (#42), Architectural Digest (#51) just edging out Playboy (#52), and overall the number of exclusively golf-focused magazines (six in the top 300).

Dawn of the Grups?

2006-12-14T09:45:00.000-05:00

Has anyone else heard this term "grup"? From New York Magazine:

He owns eleven pairs of sneakers, hasn’t worn anything but jeans in a year, and won’t shut up about the latest Death Cab for Cutie CD. But he is no kid. He is among the ascendant breed of grown-up who has redefined adulthood as we once knew it and killed off the generation gap.

This is an obituary for the generation gap. It is a story about 40-year-old men and women who look, talk, act, and dress like people who are 22 years old. It’s not about a fad but about a phenomenon that looks to be permanent. It’s about the hedge-fund guy in Park Slope with the chunky square glasses, brown rock T-shirt, slight paunch, expensive jeans, Puma sneakers, and shoulder-slung messenger bag, with two kids squirming over his lap like itchy chimps at the Tea Lounge on Sunday morning. It’s about the mom in the low-slung Sevens and ankle boots and vaguely Berlin-art-scene blouse with the $800 stroller and the TV-screen-size Olsen-twins sunglasses perched on her head walking through Bryant Park listening to Death Cab for Cutie on her Nano.

Neko Case references also make a number of appearances.

The expanding middle class

2006-12-13T18:06:00.000-05:00

Reynolds continues by telling of a 2004 story in the Washington Post titled, "The Vanishing Middle-Class Job." The Post article pointed out that in 1967, nearly a quarter (22.3 percent) of households made between $35,000 and $49,999 in inflation-adjusted terms, but that that share was down to 15 percent by 2003. Reynolds notes that the same article showed that the percentage of U.S. households with a real income higher than $50,000 rose from 24.9 percent in 1967 to 44.1 percent in 2003. Moreover, the percentage with income lower than $35,000 fell from 52.8 percent to 40.9 percent. In other words, the "middle class" was shrinking because people were moving out of the Post's statically defined middle class into a higher income class.

That's from David Henderson's review of Alan Reynolds' new book, Income and Wealth, in TCSDaily.

We've got rankings

2006-12-11T13:37:00.000-05:00

Top Fifteen Media Markets

1. NY
2. LA
3. Chicago
4. Philadelphia
5. Boston
6. San Francisco
7. Dallas
8. DC
9. Atlanta
10. Houston
11. Detroit
12. Tampa
13. Seattle
14. Phoenix
15. Minneapolis

Cities such as Phoenix, Atlanta and Houston will continue to move up, while Cleveland (#16) and Detroit will be goners in another ten years. I'm shocked that Philly is still hanging strong.

One man's No Good, Rotten, Really Bad Day

2006-12-10T23:47:00.000-05:00

Back in May, The New Yorker ran a story of a Massachusetts psychotherapist who got taken in by a Nigerian advance-fee e-mail fraud, also known as a 419. You know the one. It starts out:

"Dear Sir/Madam, I have a fortune and I need your help to move it offshore in exchange for a substantial cut. I believe you are trustworthy"

The kicker is, after losing some $80,000 to the scam, this sucker was convicted in federal court of wire fraud (among other charges) for doing so.

Girls don't like you

2006-12-10T23:43:00.000-05:00

That's the subject line of the latest spam to get through my SpamGuard filter.

They were apparently trying to sell prescription meds.

The beat goes on...

2006-12-05T23:37:00.000-05:00

The Board of Health voted Tuesday to make New York the nation's first city first city to ban artery-clogging artificial trans fat at restaurants.

Whereas Chicago has bounced around the idea of doing this only for high revenue kitchens (read: fast-food chains), New York decided to throw out the baby with the frying oil. While I'm opposed to any kind of regulation of food, this clearly goes too far.

One question: will New York continue to be the culinary center of the country? Already standbys like Chicago, San Francisco and unlikely contenders such as Las Vegas and Atlanta are making credible bids as new centers of varied local and haute cuisine. Will this mark the death knell for the Big Apple's hegemony?

Side issue: it's worth noting that national chains like KFC, Wendy's, McD's and so on have already moved to or are experimenting with lower (trans) fat alternatives. This may be for three reasons:

1. Preempt such bans such as New York's which they see as inevitable. This will give them a leg up on any competition (fast food or otherwise) where these bans get put in place

2. Because of the the good PR that goes along with it.

3. Changing consumer demand patterns. People really are becoming more health conscious. You'll notice that McDonald's started offering nutritional information even before they were required to. Of course Subway has really leveraged the health-wary fast food diner.

Robot Chicken - "Wishes" Sketch with Weird Al

2006-12-04T18:51:00.000-05:00

The F**kin' short version -- Pulp Fiction edition

2006-12-04T17:07:00.000-05:00

A three minute condensed version of the, ahem, "crucial" parts of Pulp Fiction.

(Also, see The Big Lebowski version here).

[HT: Glumbert.com]

100 Greatest Living Songwriters

2006-12-04T03:09:00.000-05:00

As determined by Paste Magazine, here's the list.

Overall, the inclusions don't bother me much, but naturally the top spots are imminently debatable. Note: I am happy to see Outkast and T Bone Burnett make the cut, if only barely, at 99 and 100, respectively.

Here's them talking about the list on NPR.

One question: does anybody find any rhyme or reason to how they (dis)aggregate writers from their band and/or their regular collaborators?

Babe of the Week

2006-12-02T15:17:00.000-05:00

Zooey Deschanel

It really depends on who I've been hanging out with

2006-12-01T05:43:00.000-05:00

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The West Your accent is the lowest common denominator of American speech. Unless you're a SoCal surfer, no one thinks you have an accent. And really, you may not even be from the West at all, you could easily be from Florida or one of those big Southern cities like Dallas or Atlanta.
The Midland
Boston
North Central
The Inland North
Philadelphia
The South
The Northeast
What American accent do you have? Take More Quizzes

[HT: Daniel Drezner]

Hey Pitchfork, you know what?

2006-11-30T02:13:00.000-05:00

Time to do some housecleaning. Ryan Schreiber's wunderkind Marc Hogan in particular.

Hey, guys, you know what?
------ ---- is pretty much the vanguard of the avant-garde: a Bladerunner-snazzy digital billboard beckoning toward a brave, new, post-emotional future. Sure, the canny Irish artiste may have fooled a lot of people into thinking his ostensible watered-down coffeehouse troubadour shtick was boring enough to win a Shortlist Prize, but a few of us know better. Maybe you're saying I'm full of shit: maybe you can't actually hear the new sound of the 21st century because you're still so busy half-listening to the first 30 seconds of the latest "leaked" indie album, breathlessly registering your online approval in comment boxes between ritual visits to goatse.cx.

He goes on to explicate non-denial denials and non-apology apologies.

By the way, he's talking about Damien Rice.

[Update: Apparently I'm not the only one who thinks so]

One Giant Hat Tip to Greg Mankiw

2006-11-29T14:35:00.000-05:00

1. Why I ended up (temporarily) in Chicago in the first place.

2. Why I am in a doctoral program .

3. Why the minimum wage is more symbolic than substantive.

4. Why I (marginally) liked the Bush tax cuts (or, why in the long run, deficits will owe more to increased spending than lower taxes).

5. Why I like rich people.

[Of course, all links owed to this guy]

Scalia: still "a favorite face on liberal dart boards?"

2006-11-28T02:52:00.000-05:00

From this week's New York Times Magazine, Scott Turow exposes the oft-overlooked liberal face of Justice Antonin Scalia:

Justice Scalia’s flamethrowing rhetoric and his hostility to whole chapters of 20th-century jurisprudence have made him a conservative icon and a favorite face on liberal dart boards. The justice has declared that the Constitution not only creates no right to abortion but does not even protect private adult sexual conduct....and made it clear that he would like to do away with Miranda warnings.

Less noted, however, is the fact that Justice Scalia, especially in the last decade, has frequently taken an expansive view of the Bill of Rights....Despite his fevered support for capital punishment, Scalia also joined a court majority in holding that the Constitution requires a death sentence to be decided by a jury, rather than by a judge, effectively setting aside every capital sentence still on direct appeal in five states.

In college, Scalia always struck me as the most consistent jurist on the court; apparently I'm not the only one. More recently, Justice Thomas' dissent in Gonzalez v. Raich has made him look pretty dreamy, if inconsistent (see section A, para. 4, last two sentences for instance and tell me it doesn't make you swoon).

[HT: Volokh Conspiracy]

Also from VC: On the heels of Arthur Brooks' Who Really Cares, Jim Lindgren asks: are those who favor income redistribution more likely to be racist?

Who has the right of way at an intersection with no stop signs?

2006-11-21T01:40:00.000-05:00

In many of my debates with sympathetic, right-leaning friends, they often like to reduce my position to something along the lines of: "if it were up to you, we wouldn't even have stop signs."

Notwithstanding that my position is a bit more nuanced than that (I am, after all, no anarchist), several cities in Europe are doing away with all traffic signs. How do we suppose this will work? To the typical American vistor it appears European drivers already essentialy operate without regard to existing signs (red lights, stop signs, and especially lane dividers).

According to the article, it seems there is some preliminary evidence that it has reduced accidents. It's strange the article makes no reference to two important concepts in economics that would lend creedence to this experiment.

1. While many important rules are codified explicitly in law and communicated through things like traffic signs, the vast majority of the "laws" we live by are norms and customs that develop over time through an unconscious social process. Friedrich Hayek called it "spontaneous order." In a given system, whether it is traffic, stock traders at the NYSE, or your workplace, rules may be set up by some governing institution, but ultimately these rules can never address the vast permutations of interactions and circumstances. Depending on the nature of the interactions, ths will lead to two general outcomes (that are not mutually exclusive):

a.) People will operate within the rules insofar as they exist, and develop a system that addresses the remainder.

b.) If the cost of doing so is sufficiently low, or is outweighed by the benefit, people will disregard the rules and develop their own substitutes.

Both of these outcomes are propogated by an ongoing transmission among participants, resulting in an equilibrium that is neither intended or designed by any one of them. The degree to which each exists depends on how the system is set up. Most of us can relate to a system of semi-legal driving conventions understood by locals in your area. For instance in Atlanta, it is common knowledge that two cars will turn left after the light has turned red. Among other things, this is probably a function of how well enforced the formal rules are.

This is true too in something like sports. Where every action of participants is carefully and consistently scrutinized, the rules are fairly strictly adhered to. But even here, players develop their own efficient knowledge of rules to follow and which ones to break (the rare enforcement of the 3-second rule in basketball for example). For a stark counterfactual, imagine the last pickup game of basketball you've seen or played, where a general understanding of the rules is implicit without them ever being itemized.

2. The Tullock effect -- this is actually implied in the article but never articulated as such. This effect says that people have a given risk preference and that no one can ever fully reduce someone's risk without that person making some compensating behavioral changes. For instance, there is evidence that people who drive safer cars tend to drive faster. Or that seatbelt laws have increased average speeds. Without stop and yield signs, people will not have an implied safety rule in place to protect them so instead they will compensate by being safer drivers.

Emory University's Meal Plan

2006-11-17T02:22:00.000-05:00

Concerts my school has been kind enough to host for free since I've been here:

--John Legend (Fall 05)
--Guster* (Spring 06)
--Common* (Spring 06)
--Reel Big Fish (Fall 06)
--Jurassic 5* (Fall 06)

*concerts I've attended

Number of performers who made reference to Adult Swim: 2

Slide 1: Get rid of the PowerPoint presentation

2006-11-15T20:45:00.000-05:00

Tuesday's Wall Street Journal has a piece about the scourge of PowerPoint in corporate culture (subscription req'd). Everything therein, of course, could apply just as easily to academia.

PowerPoint presentations are like corporate karaoke. "For the most part, it's tough to listen to," he says. "We all applaud each other even though we know how bad it stinks."

And then there were none

2006-11-15T18:07:00.000-05:00

"Belmont to be first U.S. city to ban all smoking."

Reductio creep at its finest. I'm speechless. I need a cigarette...but first I will need to draw the shades, turn out the lights, and hide under my bed.

[HT: Drudge Report]

What's an organ donation worth?

2006-11-14T03:55:00.000-05:00

Well, we'll never really know unless we allow for legal compensation for donors. Alex Tabarrok here provides a good overview of the current organ shortage and a sensible case for using incentives to mitigate the problem.

Eugene Volokh has a forthcoming paper in the Harvard Law Review on the topic here. In it, he uses hypothetical analogous cases of women in different circumstances:

1. Alice is seven months pregnant, and the pregnancy threatens her life.

2. Katherine's house is broken into and she needs to defend herself through force.

3. Ellen is terminally ill and wants to try experimental drugs that are approved for use.

4. Olivia is dying of kidney failure and wants to pay someone to donate a kidney.

Direct from the paper:

My claim is that all four cases involve the exercise of a person's presumptive right to self-defense - lethal self-defense in Katherine's case, and what I call medical self-defense in the others.

This is a constitutional right: Roe and Casey secure not just a pre-viability right to abortion as reproductive choice, but also a separate post-viability right to abortion as medical self-defense when pregnancy threatens a woman's life. And given that Alice has such a right to defend herself by getting an abortion, Ellen and Olivia should have the same right to defend themselves through other medical procedures. It can't be that a woman has a constitutional right to protect her life using medical procedures, but only when doing so kills a viable fetus.

In other words, all four should be constitutionally protected but only two of them are.

Eugene has also posted a string of less formal descriptions of the problems of "medical self-defense" and organ payments which have prompted some spirited commenting (see here).

Is Lil Wayne the best rapper alive?

2006-11-13T04:06:00.000-05:00

Exhibit A.

"AZ murders Jay over this beat. The Game murders Jay over this beat. Wayne does not murder Jay over this beat. Without one nasty word, Wayne slices Jay's head clean off over this beat. Then he grinds him through a wood chipper. Then he collects the chunks and smashes them with a two ton Acme anvil. Then he pours lava over what's left...."

You get the idea.

A Stern Talking To

2006-11-06T17:34:00.000-05:00

Bjorn Lomborg takes apart the 700-page climate change report, commissioned by the U.K. government, also known as the Stern Report.

2006-11-05T23:23:00.000-05:00

Frank Zappa on Crossfire

"I love when you spank me." --Frank Zappa

Great Success!

2006-11-04T15:43:00.000-05:00

It's true, Borat is a viable candidate for funniest movie ever. Nary do I remember laughing so consistently for so long.

From the Economist's Desk

2006-11-02T03:30:00.000-05:00

[From the The NBER Digest October 2006]

--"The Fox News Effect: Media Bias and Voting"

"The introduction of Fox News had a small but statistically significant effect on the vote share in Presidential elections between 1996 and 2000...Our estimates imply that Fox News convinced 3 to 8 percent of its viewers to vote Republican. "

--"Partisan Impacts on the Economy: Evidence from Prediction Markets and Close Elections"

"In 2000, 2004, and over the entire 1880-2004 period, a Republican victory raised equity values by about 2 percent. On the other hand, since the Reagan Administration, Republican victories also have raised interest rates on government bonds by about 0.12 percent."

--"A Healthy Economy Can Break Your Heart"

"A single percentage point reduction in unemployment increases predicted deaths from heart attack by about 1.3 percent."

--"The Long-Term Effects of a Generous Income Support Program: Unemployment Insurance in New Brunswick and Maine"

"A 10 percent UI-induced increase in the income associated with working for less than half a year raises the number of persons working less than a half year by about 10 percent."

A Budget At War

2006-10-26T01:23:00.000-04:00

I've long maintained that one of the few (if the only) truly public good is national defense. As such, it is the only manner of spending which can be justified on its own terms from first principles of government authority, without the need for empirical backing. In fact, national defense has no plausible (or even outlandish) alternative.

So what to make of this graphic (from this Wall Street Journal editorial)? How can defense spending under Bush, a "war president", possibly be this historically low? Are the escalating war costs we hear on the news more sizzle than steak?

There are a couple possible reasons why a massive buildup in defense spending could be more of a ripple than a splash.

1. Military spending is more efficient. Even given the legendary Pentagon office supply costs, it's possible technology has made spending (on capital, not labor mind you) more effective. So even a larger increase in military capacity could cost less.

2. Bush's budgets, along with the economy, have grown. Especially during the 90s but also so far this decade, the country has experienced significant growth in output (GDP). Of course, we know how federal spending has reacted to this growth. Thus, as a share of these things, military spending will look smaller in the past, even with the same or higher outlays for defense.

3. Future commitments are not reflected. Much of the federal budget, the part we should be worried about bankrupting us, is not reflected in current year outlays. For instance, social security and medicare's biggest liabilities are several years from now. So even spending that is committed in one year may not actual show up on the bill much later. I don't know how military spending works, but I suppose it's possible that the administration has managed to commit funds to the War on Terror without actually paying out yet. Maybe, and this is admittedly conspiratorial, the president wants a massive spending increase to hit once he'e out of office, or perhaps he knows of a future crisis that will need large military mobilization that isn't pressing this year.

[HT: Greg Mankiw's Blog: Defense Spending]

Birthday Fries for the FDA

2006-10-25T20:26:00.000-04:00

Because I have nothing to post right now, I've decided to link to an op-ed I wrote this Summer to "commemorate" the 100th anniversary of the FDA, which ran in the Orange County Register. It was titled by the editor, somewhat unpolitically "FDA: 100 years of misguided missions."

Excerpt:

In 1904, the journal Appeal to Reason commissioned Upton Sinclair to write a fictional tract on socialism. Published in 1906, "The Jungle" became a worldwide best-seller. Perhaps the book's most famous passage employs graphic detail to describe the supposedly unsavory meatpacking practices of the time.
...
"On June 30, 1906, a broiling day in Washington," according to historian James Harvey Young, President Roosevelt signed into law the Pure Food and Drugs Act. Thus the chrysalis of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was born.

What's Old is New, Part II

2006-10-19T18:10:00.000-04:00

or "the eternal return of the same."

Francis Fukuyama, while not always agreeable, is probably one of maybe 3-4 consistently level-headed, thoughtful observers of international relations and big picture politics (Thomas Mann is another). His latest New York Times column is no exception. He argues that the accepted tradeoff between security and liberty is a false bargain, one that we unwittingly made during the Cold War.

It has become a cliché to say that “everything changed” after 9/11, but for two great American intellectuals — the sociologist Edward Shils and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the former New York senator — recent events would have represented the eternal return of the same. Both argued that in the past, the United States has taken real foreign threats and vastly exaggerated the menace they represented, spinning out conspiracy theories. These justified the creation of a state based on secrecy that undermined American liberties and the free exchange of information, the fundamental sources of success for the United States as a society.
...
[Shils] also argued that American democracy, in contrast to the historically aristocratic orders in Europe, was based on a principle of publicity in public affairs — indeed, it “luxuriated” in its wide-open culture. That openness made the idea of external threat and internal subversion especially shocking: “In America, more excitable temperaments and a tradition of violence in expression and energy in action have prompted a passionate response to the threat of secret machinations. A weaker sense of privacy than that of the Europeans, as well as a “flimsier attachment to corporate bodies,” made Americans seek their identity in great national symbols, leading to a hyperpatriotism and a tendency to see things in black and white.

We're too young to perhaps understand what a real threat Communism was, but this may be less so the case if the US goverment had engaged in a more "sunshine-friendly" intelligence policy.

The Venona intercepts of decrypted Soviet communications from the late 1940’s, declassified only after the cold war ended, showed without a doubt that there had been a major Soviet spy network in the United States. The intercepts proved that Julius Rosenberg was guilty of atomic espionage, and that Whittaker Chambers’s charges that Alger Hiss was a Soviet agent were correct. Defense of Hiss had of course become a cause célèbre among the liberal intelligentsia of the 1950’s. And yet security officials within the government all along had conclusive evidence of his spying, and of the true scope of the Soviet conspiracy. But they failed to reveal what they knew, even to President Truman. This failure, Moynihan said, allowed the public imagination to supplement real knowledge with destructive fantasies, which in turn called into being a generation of anti-anti-Communists. This is a polarization with which we are still living today.

[HT: The Agitator]

Red and Blue Makes Purple or What's Old is New

2006-10-17T11:56:00.001-04:00

While no reasonable person thinks that states are absolutely politically red or blue, we may be overstating the case of a polzarized America. In a new working paper, Ed Glaeser and Bryce Ward (both Harvard) argue that we are historically no more divided than int he past.

In particular, they take on what they say are five commonly perceived myths about American political geography:

1.) America is divided into two politically homogenous regions
2.) The two parties are more spatially segregated than in the past
3.) America's political geography is more stable than in the past
4.) America's cultural divisions are increasing
5.) America is becoming more politically polzarized

The abstract:

The division of America into red states and blue states misleadingly suggests that states are split into two camps, but along most dimensions, like political orientation, states are on a continuum. By historical standards, the number of swing states is not particularly low, and America’s cultural divisions are not increasing. But despite the flaws of the red state/blue state framework, it does contain two profound truths. First, the heterogeneity of beliefs and attitudes across the United States is enormous and has always been so. Second, political divisions are becoming increasingly religious and cultural. The rise of religious politics is not without precedent, but rather returns us to the pre-New Deal norm. Religious political divisions are so common because religious groups provide politicians the opportunity to send targeted messages that excite their base.

That the current number of swing states is not uncommon is an easily confirmable point. That America has in the past had large, powerful religious constituencies is both no big surprise and yet easily overlooked.

Nat'l Boss Day

2006-10-16T17:36:00.000-04:00

Since today is National Boss Day (someone want to explain to me exactly what the f*ck kinda of "Holiday" that's supposed to be?), I thought you guys might enjoy this:
Need to impress someone quickly?

1	2	3
integrated	management	options
heuristic	organisational	flexibility
systematized	monitored	capability
parallel	reciprocal	mobility
functional	digital	programming
responsive	incremental	projection
optional	transitional	time-phase
synchronized	logistical	scenarios
compatible	third-generation	hardware
futuristic	policy	contingency

The procedure is simple. Think of any three-digit number; then select the corresponding buzzword from each column. For instance, number 257 produces "systematized logistical projection", a phrase that can be dropped into virtually any report with that ring of decisive knowledgeable authority. No-one will have the remotest idea of what you're talking about, but the important thing is that they are not about to admit it!

You, Me, and the Rest Like Us

2006-10-11T21:48:00.000-04:00

From today's Financial Times:

A bleak picture of the corrosive effects of ethnic diversity has been revealed in research by Harvard University’s Robert Putnam, one of the world’s most influential political scientists. His research shows that the more diverse a community is, the less likely its inhabitants are to trust anyone – from their next-door neighbour to the mayor.
...
The core message of the research was that, “in the presence of diversity, we hunker down”, he said. “We act like turtles. The effect of diversity is worse than had been imagined. And it’s not just that we don’t trust people who are not like us. In diverse communities, we don’t trust people who do look like us.”

Prof Putnam found trust was lowest in Los Angeles, “the most diverse human habitation in human history”, but his findings also held for rural South Dakota, where “diversity means inviting Swedes to a Norwegians’ picnic”. [Emphasis added]

[HT: Greg Mankiw]

Your Services Will No Longer Be Needed

2006-10-11T00:21:00.000-04:00

Reason Online has a short piece by John Stossel (adapted from his most recent book) on what it takes to fire a public school teacher in New York City.

Once, [chancellor of New York City schools Joel] Klein reports, the school system discovered that a teacher was sending sexual e-mails to a 16-year-old student. "This was the most unbelievable case to me," he says, "because the e-mail was there, he admitted to it. It was so thoroughly offensive." Even with the teacher's confession, it took six years of expensive litigation before the school could fire him. He didn't teach during those six years, but he still got paid—more than $350,000 total.

The full illustrated schematic of firing procedures is just breathtaking.

The Elephant in the Room

2006-10-10T23:45:00.000-04:00

Rob asks: "What are the netroots supposed to do when Lieberman wins in Connecticut? Will it be considered a failure of will or a political miscalculation or what? Or will it just get papered over..."

I don't have a savvy answer to the question, but my cynical knee-jerk is that focal point events (especially races) always seem seminal until their outcome goes the other way. If Lamont wins, of course, it will mark "an important change" that everyone knew was coming. Just look at all the Yankees armchair quarterbacking for pete's sake.

But Rob's question, motivated as it was by DailyKos, reminds me of Cato Unbound, a monthly roundtable kind of online publication put out by the Cato Institute, and populated by intelligent observers of "big-picture topic[s]." This month, they ask the question above.

The contributors are worth hearing out, even if they become somewhat myopic at points. The lead essay is by DailyKos proprietor Markos Moulitsas, with responses by former Clinton advisor and author Bruce Reed, The American Propsect editor Harold Meyerson, and eventually Reason editor Nick Gillespie.

Bruce Reed, as I think I've mentioned before, is a fantastic writer who uses wit and panache to construct thoughtful commentary. In his contribution, he comes bearing three gifts that Democrats can deliver libertarian-minded folk:

1. Small Government: through earmark reform and spending caps. Also, he profers Republicans' past failures to curb spending as indication that Dems will do it better.
2. Limited Government: one word, accountability.
3. Ending Corporate Welfare: it was a Democrat afterall who signed welfare reform, why wouldn't they pass corporate welfare reform?

That the three gifts are principally the same thing wouldn't pass the smell test. Reed admits as much in the beginning when he leaves the hard sell to Kos and makes a realistic bargain.

So...should libertarians go blue?

2006-10-05T03:23:00.000-04:00

More (YouTube) Back to the Future stuff: The Family Guy Edition

Peter tests his Delorean here, and Rufus Griffin in "Black to the Future" here: "We're talkin' Marty McSuperFly!"

Best line I read today

2006-10-03T02:22:00.000-04:00

A do-nothing Congress will seem like the good old days once voters hear that "get a ruler and measure it for me" was Foley's idea of oversight.

[From Bruce Reed's latest "Has Been" column: "Page Turner"].

The Lesser of Two What-Have-You's

2006-10-02T22:51:00.000-04:00

Two columns in the Washington Post this week collectively paint the upcoming midterm elections in perhaps the starkest and most gaudy colors to date.

E.J. Dionne delineates how state and local politicians can maintain popularity in the face of abysmal national party polling. In particular, as it should be clear to anyone by now, Bush is no kindling for local Republican fire.

Asked the classic question about whether "things in New Hampshire" were going in "the right direction" or were "seriously off on the wrong track," an astonishing 79 percent saw their state moving the right way; only 14 percent saw it on the wrong track.

But when asked exactly the same question about how their country was doing, according to findings released yesterday, only 34 percent of New Hampshire residents said "the right direction."

In other words, national party R's are screwed as their local political fortunes don't trickle up.

Yesterday, Sebastian Malaby (who is quickly becoming my favotie liberal commentator) asks: Does it matter if the Dems win?

Most Democrats in Congress seem bereft of ideas or the courage to stand up for them. They clearly want power, but they have no principles to guide their use of it.
...
There's a long tradition of demagoguery on entitlement reform, but refusing even to discuss the challenge plumbs new depths of cynicism. A decade ago, Democratic centrists such as Sen. Bob Kerrey of Nebraska argued that runaway entitlement spending would rob the rest of the budget, draining money from social programs that liberals are supposed to care about. Today, a pragmatic Republican such as Sen. Bob Bennett of Utah can propose a progressive fix to Social Security that does not involve personal accounts. But Democrats won't come forward to support him.

Back to the YouTube

2006-10-02T22:23:00.000-04:00

This may be no surprise to some, but I had no idea what a glut of Back to the Future related videos are on YouTube. My favorite so far is Tom Wilson (who played Biff) playing the "Question Song" as part of his stand-up routine.

Here he is doing (essentially) the same song, but in a post-modern twist, he grabs the camera from an audience member and dares him to put it on YouTube after, well, giving the camera a private show.

They go "whoooop!"

2006-10-02T22:21:00.000-04:00

Bubb Rubb and Lil Sis -- coming soon to a muffler shop near you.

Tidy Up

2006-10-02T22:16:00.000-04:00

Ikea's "neat" new ad campaign. Number one (funniest), number two (most clever), and number three (most macabre).

What does the Street have to say about midterm elections?

2006-09-28T12:44:00.000-04:00

i.e., should Republicans be worried?

In the House, maybe. I'd say right now the R's have about 56% chance of holding.

In the Senate, I'd say the same event is about 80% likely.

See the source of my predictions here. The price under "Last" represents the percentage likelihood that the market thinks the event will happen.

And here's a summary of why these kinda of markets are better predictors than opinion polls.

UPDATE: HOUSE.GOP.2006 is trading at 47.5. The Rep. Foley business must be having an effect.

Reductio creep

2006-09-26T23:46:00.000-04:00

Fellow traveller Julian Sanchez at Notes from the Lounge a few years ago coined the term reductio creep. In his own words:

Reductio creep is the process by which an insane extension of some principle, offered a reductio ad absurdum of that principle, is soon afterwards realized.

Well, thanks to New York City's health department, we may have the country's first ban on fat (take that Chicago's ban on foie gras!). The original motivation for Julian's coinage was how during the initial tobacco lawsuit brouhaha, we could stand around and joke "what's next? Some lardo suing McDonald's? Ha ha!" We know how that turned out.

Of course my roommate still denies the public health establishment is all that draconian.

Computers taught to sort opinion from fact

2006-09-25T21:00:00.000-04:00

"Scientists will use machine-learning algorithms to give computers examples of text expressing both fact and opinion and then teach them to tell the difference."

My Name is Mr. Nice

2006-09-25T20:54:00.000-04:00

Would you like to see me dance?

Also: Would you like to see Mr. Nice Hands?

One 'Giant Steps' For Mankind

2006-09-25T01:33:00.000-04:00

Over on the recently inaugurated Distributed Intelligence, Shruti has a thoughtful and sincere reflection on John Coltrane, the occasion of the equinox, and of course his seminal Giant Steps. While I would dispute some of the claims in the post, it is well worth the (brief) read.

While the equinox is about equilibrium, Coltrane's life often bordered on tumultuous with his musical journeys, spiritual epiphanies and addictions.
...
Coltrane's big break came through his friend and contemporary Sonny Rollins. Coltrane and Rollins would call each other at night, play over the phone and hang up waiting for the other to return with an appropriate musical answer.

Related: I posted this a while back, but it is a two-minute animated film which constructs and then deconstucts the chorus and part of the Coltrane's solo on "Giant Steps."

God's Morality Play

2006-09-20T15:30:00.000-04:00

For a few weeks I've been trying to keep up on Slate's Blogging the Bible, written by deputy editor David Plotz. From his introduction to the series (also hear him talking about the project here):

I have always been a proud Jew, but never a terribly observant one. Several weeks ago, I made a rare visit to synagogue for a cousin's bat mitzvah and, as usual, found myself confused (and bored) by a Hebrew service I couldn't understand. During the second hour of what would be a ceremony of NFL-game-plus-overtime-length, I picked up the Torah in the pew-back, opened it at random, and started reading (the English translation, that is)
....
So, what will happen if I approach my Bible empty, unmediated by teachers or rabbis or parents? What will delight and horrify me? How will the Bible relate to the religion I practice, and the lessons I thought I learned in synagogue and Hebrew School?
....
I'll spend the next few weeks (or months) finding out. I'll begin with "in the beginning" and see how far I get.

So far he's gotten up through Deuteronomy. The best part is how conversational and literal the descriptions are. We find out how impetuous and insecure God is, and how sensible and stereotypical Moses is ("Oy vey! Again with the tribes and the non-stop kvetching!"). It's a very entertaining read, and lends itself well to intermittent or selective browsing -- create your own Now! That's What I Call Pentateuch!

I had for several semesters tried unsuccessfully tried to get into the "Bible As Literature" course at ASU. It always seemed like an interesting story, and as the instructor points out on the first day, the tools of literary analysis which we are familiar with using on any other story, also apply to the Holy Word.

If you're looking for a place to start, you may jump into my favorite, Numbers:

Another Monty Python-style episode: If a husband suspects his wife of adultery, he takes her to the Tabernacle. A priest casts a magic spell upon holy water, then makes her drink it. If nothing happens to her when she drinks, she's innocent. But if her belly "distend[s] and her thigh shall sag," she's an adulteress.
...
The Lord's abhorrence of body hair continues. In Leviticus he praised bald men and ordered healed lepers to depilate. Now he mandates that Levites purify themselves by shaving off all their body hair. (And on the eighth day, the Lord created the Abercrombie & Fitch catalog.)
...
the Israelites set off toward the promised land. Which means, of course, that they immediately start to gripe. They've only been marching three days and they're already "complaining bitterly."
...
like a very mean babysitter, God does the old, "You want chocolate, I'll give you so much chocolate you'll puke" trick. "The Lord will give you meat and you shall eat. You shall eat not one day, not two, not even five days or ten or twenty, but a whole month, until it comes out of your nostrils and becomes loathsome for you."

Talkin' Bout My Institution

2006-09-19T14:06:00.000-04:00

Bobby Jones (the golfer, not the former Denver Nugget) it turns out is an Emory University alum. I knew that he was a lawyer, but not that his law degree was from Emory Law (1929). Technically speaking, though, he entered practice after only one year, having already passed the bar. This was of course after he studied engineering at Georgia Tech and got a masters in English Lit. from Harvard.

Now there's a scholarship named in his honor which exchanges students between Emory and the University of St. Andrews. It's much like any other fellowship except that it has the very cool feature of giving the student access to a car which they are expected to use to travel around the country. How cool is that?

This makes me wonder, do we know of any other both intellectually and athletically prodigious people?

Re-Wired

2006-09-14T14:48:00.001-04:00

Just when I thought HBO was starting down the slippery slope in to the realm of "normal" television, the critics come around and start calling this new season of The Wire, "The greatest TV show ever." (read) As much as I lack patience for TV dramas, maybe I'll have to tune in this time out.

One thing's for sure, HBO is slipping. Dane Cook's series was a train wreck from the beginning, Entourage never really went anywhere (nor did Sopranos) and Lucky Louie, while it did have a lot of cocks both on-screen and spoken, didn't really feel like HBO's kind of show. It remains to be seen whether Curb can keep it up.

Re-Wired

2006-09-14T14:48:00.000-04:00

Mr. Anti-Establishment

2006-09-13T20:15:00.000-04:00

A new documentary, Mr. Conservative: Goldwater on Goldwater, is set to premiere September 18, 9pm on HBO. It's made by CC Goldwater, Barry Goldwater's granddaughter and if past performance is any indication, the HBO imprint indicates it'll be great. A typical combination of interviews with major political figures and archival footage create the picture of a man, who in his time was the scourge of liberals, and is now their reluctant anti-hero: a principled conservative all the way.

Also if I recall correctly, my former boss was interviewed for the film but I'm not sure that it made the final cut. Here are a couple lines from the movie:

"He looked like a guy that came out of central casting."
--James Carville

"People say Goldwater lost in 1964. I often say he won, it just took 16 years to count the votes."
--George Will

Imagining the Universe

2006-09-13T19:46:00.000-04:00

(The first 10 dimensions of it anyway).

Here is a nifty flash animation describing a ten-dimensional world (click on "Imagining the Ten Dimensions"). String theory tells us, all the properties of the four dimensions we interact with owe to the vibration of sub-atomic string-like particles in the 10th dimension. Okay, simple enough. Except...what the hell is a 10th dimension (and six through nine for that matter)! In the manner of A Brief History of Time, The Elegant Universe, "What the Bleep Do We Know!?," and of course the greatest movie of all time, this little ditty puts it into an intuitive sketch.

Living on a Prayer (if not a wage)

2006-09-13T19:37:00.000-04:00

Rob over at AMillionMonkeys has taken particular interest in the living wage ordinance (aimed at Wal-Mart) recently vetoed by a politically brave, if insular, Mayor Daley.

No one needs to actually read my thoughts on the subject to know where I fall on the whole thing. But here is Harvard Professor Gregory Mankiw (and former President's Council of Economic Advisors Chairman) on the subject. In the post, he references an op-ed he wrote four years ago on the general living wage issue. An excerpt:

How often does [Harvard's] janitorial staff have to vacuum the classrooms and wash the blackboards? It's a judgment call. An increase in the wage from $8 to $10 a hour raises the cost of labor by 25 percent. It is wishful thinking to suggest that this won't affect the number of workers hired.

...the adverse effects of a high minimum wage go beyond its impact on total employment. In addition to reducing the amount of labor demanded, a high minimum wage compounds the problem by increasing the amount of labor supplied. In other words, not only are there fewer jobs available for unskilled workers, but more people apply for those jobs. (emphasis added)

UPDATE: Read Thomas Sowell here (from November 2005) on the effects of a minimum wage, with particular emphasis on the racial dynamic.
The first federal minimum wage law, the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931, was passed in part explicitly to prevent black construction workers from "taking jobs" from white construction workers by working for lower wages. It was not meant to protect black workers from "exploitation" but to protect white workers from competition.

Episode Four: In which Satya returns home to find his house empty, but for the smell of smoked ribs.

2006-09-09T02:33:00.000-04:00

or

Will Rocky and Bullwinkle ever cease vagabonding?

Never did I think, in all my God-angering induction, what with all the non-believing, that I would weather two biblical storms – in one Summer. The first was, by my own admission, scary as hell. While I was in DC for the last few months, I only assumed the cleansing waters of the rapture was a quadrennial event meant to purge the gluttonous behavior of the Capitol Tribe, the government-ites. Penance in liquid form.

As an aside, I never got over what an obvious metaphor DC being built on a swamp was. And nowhere was the smell as pungent as in the hallowed halls of the Longworth congressional building. Capitol Hill is an area with no less than eight different responsible policing agencies, but where older tourists still get mugged under midday sunlight, under the ever growing shadow of the famous capitol dome.

It was a Sunday (of course it was) when the streets of downtown DC ran brown with the blood of the skies. One of my roommates, who, after returning to his car parked on Constitution Ave--which was now on top of the curb thanks to the rising water level and also having been obviously T-boned by a passing car – was forced to sit for several hours waiting for a tow truck, told me he eventually laid on his back and floated down the street. He ended up four blocks downstream.

The second flood was on my drive back to Atlanta . I couldn’t stop yakking about Atlanta all Summer. So somewhere around Charleston , a giant “SHUT UP” in the form of torrential downpour came my way. All at once, in a spontaneous dance of awakwardness, everyone on I-85 went from 80 mph to zero. I’ve never seen such a thing.

My roommate and I, fresh off a stop at the University of Virginia , came home to a house we had never stepped foot in. It was dank, musty, dusty, and overcome by moths. Naturally we invited everyone over for a Labor Day BBQ. We re-christened the smoker, fresh out of storage. Those insect suckers didn't know what hit 'em.

Up next this semester: a Tom Petty concert, an experiment on some undergrads in Virginia , a trip to Six Flags, a wedding, followed by a trip to somewhere West of the Mississippi .

As always, anyone is welcome to stay at my house if they should pass through the Dirty, Dirty South. (In contrast, my house is now cleaned, fully furnished, and well-appointed with food).

Conan the Emmy-slayer

2006-08-29T00:49:00.000-04:00

Emmys 2006 - Opening Number (Part 1)

For those of you not sufficiently engrossed in celebrity self-congratulation you may not have heard about the bang up job Mr. O'Brien did hosting the 58th Annual Emmy Awards. Check it out (second part here) what I thought the best award show opening I can remember.

UPDATE: The links have been fixed.

To get a date with Serena Williams

2006-08-28T15:39:00.000-04:00

A friend of mine, and co-Bonnaroo-er who works at CBS News in New York, just had an "investigative" video he put together placed on the CBS News website.

In it, he tries to find out what it takes to become a U.S. Open Ballperson. Does he make the cut? Find out.

Camping Labor Day Weekend?

2006-08-24T20:42:00.000-04:00

This one is worthy of a duel post. Who's down for a potential car camping trip o'er labor day weekend? If you read this blog on a regular basis consider yourself invited. If the Indy crew shows interest we could arrange a southern/mid-illinois spot. Otherwise Wisconsin should not be ruled out. No major backpacking type shit, just the basic car camping.

Who's down?

Duct and Cover

2006-08-22T13:58:00.000-04:00

My friend Ross reminded me off this absolutely hilarious send up of Ready.gov, the government's brilliant homeland security outreach website. In the tradition of colorful pictures paired with authoritative instructions, this little ditty comes up with hilarious captions for the actual pictures used to help instruct you what to do in case of terrorist attack.

The first two:

If you have set yourself on fire, do not run.

If you spot terrorism, blow your anti-terrorism whitsle. If you are Vin Diesel, yell really loudly.

Nozick's "Lucid Dream"

2006-08-02T14:19:00.000-04:00

I remember briefly discussing with Nowak, why he (and eventually myself when I got around to seeing it), actually liked Cameron Crowe's borrowed film Vanilla Sky. Speaking for myself, I think it was superbly executed, even if largely plagiarized. But for Steve, it asked a question with no objective answer -- one that sublimely pits human cognition against human experience.

David Friedman reminds me of a thought experiment posed by Robert Nozick in his seminal Anarchy, State and Utopia. Quoting:

Someone invents an experience machine; get into it and you will have a fully convincing illusion of experience. Somehow, the inventor figures out about what your life is going to be like and makes you the following offer:

Get into my experience machine, spend the rest of your life there, and I will give you the illusion of a life slightly better than the one you would otherwise live. Your average income in the illusion will be a few thousand dollars higher than it would have been in reality, your wife a little prettier, your children slightly better behaved, your promotions just a little prompter. Your illusory summers won't be quite as hot, or winters quite as cold.

Assume you believe his offer. Do you accept it? If not, why not?

Tyler Cowen takes issue with his formulation: the machine provides a much better life. Say the improvements run a continuum. At what point do you say yes? Suppose, like in the movie, you can pay more to have a better experience (again, along a whole spectrum). How much would you be willing to pay? How much should you be willing to pay?

A message from Ronen, the Chinaman in the black pajamas

2006-07-19T22:07:00.000-04:00

A message from the Ro-dill-bean/beater, a.k.a. Frank TJ Mackey

Just got back homie. I added a little comment to your more recent DeepFat blog. I haven't had blog access for quite some time and am happy to be back to censor free internet. Here are a couple pics i'd like to share with the blog mates, but I don't remember how to post. If you see fit, please add to one of your blog sites. You're my man and I hope to see your ass soon. I'm moving out to Tucson, AZ on Sunday and will be there for 5 years so if you happen to be in the area, I hope you'll stop by. No digits yet, but i'll hook you up when i get a new phone. Take sleazy my brother.

Beater

These shots are f*cking histerical. Enjoy. Oh how we missed your sweet, taught Jewish manbreasts.

I am getting to old for this...Nevermind!

2006-07-08T07:28:00.000-04:00

Gentlemen, this is sad! We have not had a post in over 2 weeks. I can not bitch b/c I have not posted shit since March when I was shreddin' gnar gnar with the powder hound (Cypress Hill himself - Tedro). I apologize for not keeping in touch and fillin' you in on Washington State and the whole other world I live in...literally...
This holiday weekend, Geoff (a Purdude buddy I met out here) and I took a roadtrip to Portland to taste some good and healthy NW beers, visit the Blues Fest (craziness 25,000+ hippies), and see all the titties we could handle. Usually I am a man of "no stip clubs these days." However, Portland is known for their cheap full nudity and drinks...so of course I went over my budget. Spent too much money and almost got booted b/c of misconduct. I could live in Portland....hmmmm..become a "pow hound" in the winter, cheap cover to nonstop fun-bag access, good beers, free boobies...ehhhhh the life. Seriously speaking, Portland is a great town! It is half the size of Seattle but could be the shizz if played right. However, watch out for mad hippies, attractive women, lots of pubs, Teddy's mom, and Mt. St. Helens (and Mt. Hood). I would recommend this city to all! Later biootches.......It is 5:45am Pacific Time and I am off to the greens. Hit em' straight!
Yeti

Athletes in Action

2006-07-07T13:55:00.000-04:00

Here's a site to keep your eye on: Drunk Athletes. Among the many candid images, this one of Dirk Nowitski probably tops them all.

Confessions of a Trivial Mind

2006-06-29T12:10:00.000-04:00

It's taken the blogosphere by storm, but if you haven't seen it, Ken Jennings (yah, the Jeopardy! player extraordinaire) has started a blog. I guess it's no big surprise, but he's incredibly clever and self-aware. As much as I love Jeopardy!, I never joined the cult of Ken because, you see, on the Left Coast the show plays at the wholly inappropriate time of 4:00pm -- don't people have jobs (Parker-Renga's excluded, of course)? So I never really got the chance to know Ken the way others did, to become familiar with his only slightly awkward but totally peculiar, understated humor.

As an entree to the Jennings feast, there's this post and picture.

Unrelated: I feel like the possible killing off of Harry Potter is primed to be some landmark cultural event (where were you when charming British wizard died in questionable magic wand accident?). So, I almost feel compelled to read one of the books (or atleast see the third movie, where that chick starts to become hot) lest I be relegated to pop culture non-entity status.

"Radiohead has much in common with the Grateful Dead"

2006-06-23T23:39:00.000-04:00

The great expositer of hip-hop, and all that is otherwise hip in music, Sasha Frere-Jones of The New Yorker makes an unlikely but apt connection between two seemingly polar points in the music continuum.

Frere-Jones' latest column is on how he was slowly (or is slowly) converted on the whole temple of Radiohead.

I thought his line, which is the title of this post, was particularly uncanny as I saw both Radiohead (Saturday) and Greatful Dead offspring Phil Lesh and Friends (Sunday) as headliners at this year's Bonnaroo.
Yorke, as his early sponsor Michael Stipe once did, plays his voice the way his bandmates play their instruments, and he has impressively consistent pitch. Radiohead sounds like an instrumental band that happens to have a singer.

I think that's about right. Radiohead is sans record deal and already road-testing new songs for the album in progress. I'm glad to have seen them on one of their limited American engagements.

Aside: I'm jealous of those with access to this year's Lollapalooza lineup, but the following are bands/artists I was able to check out at the 'Roo this year in order:

--Nickel Creek
--Oysterhead
--Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
--Lyrics Born
--Common
--My Morning Jacket
--Umphrey's McGee
--Steel Train
--Gomez
--Beck
--Radiohead
--Mike Doughty's Band
--Upright Citizen's Brigade/Aziz Ansari
--Bela Fleck & The Flecktones
--Matisyahu
--moe.
--Bonnie Raitt
--Phil Lesh & Friends