by David Sides. Very exciting piano music. I hope I can find something of his that I can download/purchase. Update: Found it. Free downloads of 5-6 different of his medleys. Amazing stuff. All of them are adaptations of popular hiphop and pop music.
Friday, November 30, 2007
Ratatouille Post
Yes Virginia, Ratatouille should be nominated for Best Picture with Brad Bird for Best Director as well. But of course it will not be, for the very simple reason that the existence of the Best Animated Film guarantees an animated movie will never win the Best Picture prize, which makes it virtually impossible to win anything other than that niche category. The only animated film, to my knowledge, that has ever come close to winning is Snow White, which won Walt Disney an honorary Oscar. There's a bias against truly great animated films for that category, which is probably due to the fact that the Academy consists mainly of people involved in moving picture films, of which animators are a minority. So, seeing so many animated films get very little accolade year after year at the Academy Awards, the niche category was probably the best way to honor those films, even if it does regulate them to something "less than" true art.
Ron Paul, Ron Paul, Ron Paul, Snore
Man, everyday I am hearing about the damn Ron Paul revolution. This guy is making money hand over fist, but it's not making a dent in his chances. In fact, his money-making and his probability of winning are negatively correlated according to this chart. It's been falling as he keeps raking it in.
Violence in the Media
Saw this on Digg - new article coming out in the Journal of Adolescent Health summarizes 50 years of research and shows that violence in the media increases violence in children. Can't wait to read it. The manner in which these kinds of out comes are tested leave much to be desired, but I'll try to have an open mind (despite the fact that I basically have a prior that rejects these findings with about 99% certainty. Fifty years of flawed studies aren't impressive to me).
Sayings in Economics
Or really in probably any field. But I've said so many of these sayings, that I'll just claim they are unique to economics (though the entry says they are readily available to anyone working on a dissertation in anything.
“It has long been known” = I didn’t look up the original reference.
“A definite trend is evident” = These data are practically meaningless.
“While it has not been possible to provide definite answers to the questions” = An unsuccessful experiment, but I still hope to get it published.
“Three of the samples were chosen for detailed study” = The other results didn’t make any sense.
“Typical results are shown” = This is the prettiest graph.
“These results will be in a subsequent report” = I might get around to this sometime, if pushed/funded.
“In my experience” = once.
“In case after case” = twice.
“In a series of cases” = thrice.
“Correct within an order of magnitude” = Wrong.
“According to statistical analysis” = Rumor has it.
“A statistically oriented projection of the significance of these findings” = A wild guess.
“A careful analysis of obtainable data” = Three pages of notes were obliterated when I knocked over a glass of pop.
“It is clear that much additional work will be required before a complete understanding of this phenomenon occurs”= I don’t understand it.
“After additional study by my colleagues”= They don’t understand it either.
“A highly significant area for exploratory study” = A totally useless topic selected by my committee.
“It is hoped that this study will stimulate further investigation in this field” = I quit.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Papers on Black Males
Harry Holzer has an interesting new working paper that revisits the old mid-1960s Daniel Moynihan report. It's only 20-something pages long, and is a good summary/overview of the literature on Black outcomes (particularly Black males) falling with respect to other racial groups.
Another worthwhile, but long, paper is this one by Stephen Raphael and Michael Stoll entitled "Why are so many Americans in prison?" It documents the tremendous boom in the construction of prisons and the expansion of prison populations, as well as law enforcement changes such as sentencing laws and stricter laws on drug possession and drug trafficking.
Another worthwhile, but long, paper is this one by Stephen Raphael and Michael Stoll entitled "Why are so many Americans in prison?" It documents the tremendous boom in the construction of prisons and the expansion of prison populations, as well as law enforcement changes such as sentencing laws and stricter laws on drug possession and drug trafficking.
Monty Hall Problem
Wow. I teach Bayes' Rule today in class, and specifically use the example of Monty Hall gameshow, and what shows up on Digg.com but a 5-minute video explaining it.
You can formally show this using Bayes' Rule, which is somewhat more satisfying to me personally than the above video. There are three doors: Door 1 (D1), Door 2 (D2) and Door 3 (D3). The probability that a car is behind one of those doors is Pr(D1)=Pr(D2)=Pr(D3)=1/3. Monty Hall, the gameshow host, asks you to pick a door and you pick D1. Monty Hall knows which door has the car and which does not, and he then immediately opens D3, which does not have a car. He has to open the door without a car, by the way. Had a car been behind D3, he would've opened D2. If neither door has a car, then he can open either one. He has then eliminated D3, and now it's just down to D1 and D2. He says to you that he is willing to let you switch doors, if you so desire. But should you? Intuitively, at first glance, it seems like you shouldn't. After all, 2 doors, 1 prize, aren't my chances 50/50 either way? So I can switch if I want, but I have no compelling reason to, right?
Wrong. You should switch doors. Always. Bayes' Rule shows you this formally. The probability that D1 (the door you picked) is the correct door in light of B (ie, Monty opening the door) is based on the definition of conditional probabilities and independent events. It is written as:
It's not obvious to most people, not even to most statisticians, when they first hear this problem explained. But it's true. And you can see it if you run Monte Carlo simulations, too. 2/3 of the time, the other door is the right door.
You can formally show this using Bayes' Rule, which is somewhat more satisfying to me personally than the above video. There are three doors: Door 1 (D1), Door 2 (D2) and Door 3 (D3). The probability that a car is behind one of those doors is Pr(D1)=Pr(D2)=Pr(D3)=1/3. Monty Hall, the gameshow host, asks you to pick a door and you pick D1. Monty Hall knows which door has the car and which does not, and he then immediately opens D3, which does not have a car. He has to open the door without a car, by the way. Had a car been behind D3, he would've opened D2. If neither door has a car, then he can open either one. He has then eliminated D3, and now it's just down to D1 and D2. He says to you that he is willing to let you switch doors, if you so desire. But should you? Intuitively, at first glance, it seems like you shouldn't. After all, 2 doors, 1 prize, aren't my chances 50/50 either way? So I can switch if I want, but I have no compelling reason to, right?
Wrong. You should switch doors. Always. Bayes' Rule shows you this formally. The probability that D1 (the door you picked) is the correct door in light of B (ie, Monty opening the door) is based on the definition of conditional probabilities and independent events. It is written as:
Pr(D1|B)=Pr(B|D1)Pr(D1)/Pr(B)We can fill in all the values and find the answer. Pr(B)=.5, because he either had to open Door 2 or Door 3. Pr(B|D1) needs a little unpacking. What is the chances that he would open door 3 if my door, door 1, held the car? Well, that also is 1/2, because if I'm holding the right door, then he's got two empty doors, and can choose either one. So Pr(B|D1)=.5 as well. That leaves just Pr(D1), and we said earlier that Pr(D1)=Pr(D2)=Pr(D3)=1/3. So inserting those values, you get:
Pr(D1|B)=(.5x.33)/.5=.33Or 33%. There's a 33% chance, after seeing door 3 open and finding nothing, that you're holding the right door. But there's only one door left, because we now know with certainty that the car was not behind door 3. Therefore you might already see that door 2 is going to have to take up the slack in the sum of the probabilities by taking on a value of 2/3. But let's see it using Bayes' Rule.
Pr(D2|B)=Pr(B|D2)Pr(D2)/Pr(B). Again, we know that Pr(D2)=1/3 and Pr(B)=1/2 for the same reasons as before. What about that strange conditional probability, though, Pr(B|D2)? To put that into words, what's the likelihood that he opened door 3 if door 2 had the car? Think about it. He opens door 3 because he cannot open the door with the car, and he had to choose between door 2 and door 3 because you had already taken door 1. The answer is 1 - he had to choose door 3, if the second door has the car. He had no choice. Therefore the Pr(B|D2) conditional probability is equal to 1. Substituting that into Bayes' theorem and you get
Pr(D2|B)=(1x1/3)/.5=2/3So should you or should you not switch doors? The answer, as the video showed, is that you should always, always, always switch. The chances are much better for you to be picking the right door if you switch.
It's not obvious to most people, not even to most statisticians, when they first hear this problem explained. But it's true. And you can see it if you run Monte Carlo simulations, too. 2/3 of the time, the other door is the right door.
Rising Obesity
Very cool graphic based on the CDC's Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, a telephone survey that tracks health conditions. Amazingly quick growth in obesity (which I think is BMI>30 but I could be wrong - it's either 30 or 25) since 1985. What's causing this? Is it a cohort effect? The unconditional changes don't control for anything except state and year, so you can't see whether these are growths in BMI within a given cohort, or if it's an increase in BMI among the younger cohort who are gradually replacing the older cohort over time. A well known paper by Glaeser, Shapiro and Cutler posits that the growth in obesity is being driven by falling food prices and food preparation prices.
Heroes Poll
I commented the other day (no. 3) that I thought Maya and Nicky would be the ones who died. According to this informal survey of self-selected responders, that is what most people out of 350 who responded said as well. I'd already heard through the grapevine that Nicky dies, but I thought it was at the end of the season 2, so I wasn't sure. But, I'm hearing that everyone is so disappointed in the creative execution of season 2, that they're truncating the season completely, so it's a good bet that she'll be the one who goes next week. She'll sacrifice herself before Suresh can get to her with the cure, in other words. Maya will die, but hopefully not at Sylar's hands, otherwise Sylar will own a pretty bad ass power in which he kill everyone around him. So I predict she dies in some other fashion. Maybe a suicide like that girl from season 1 who could make people do whatever she wanted just by suggesting it to them? She killed herself so that Sylar wouldn't get her awesome power, just as he was about kill her, so maybe Maya will do something like that as well.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
African-American Women and Relationships
For this week, NBC is airing a five-part miniseries on African-American women and their modern situation - their health disparities, their relationships, their education, etc. It should be fascinating, and if you miss it, you can always watch it here via webstream. Andrea Wiley, the filmmaker of Soulmate, a Christian documentary about African-American women, is featured in the NBC series, as is several clips of her documentary. I own the documentary and highly recommend, regardless of your religious background. Here is a trailer.
Suicide Barriers' Effectiveness
This paper looks interesting:
With support from mental health workers, elected officials, the California HighwayHat tip to Andrew Gelman's site. These seem like a monumental waste of money, even a priori without seeing this paper. Why? Because at best you would expect the potential suicider to substitute towards the cheaper location, not stop altogether. Since suicide locations are probably supplied in huge quantities to every market, you've really not imposed any meaningful deterrence. As Gelman points out on his blog, a reduction in suicides at a certain location is not the same thing as a reduction in suicides in aggregate.
Patrol, and the local community, Caltrans has announced their intention to install a
suicide prevention barrier on the Cold Spring Bridge by 2010 at a cost of $605,000.
During the course of the debate a number of people have claimed that such a barrier
would not only deter suicides at the Cold Spring Bridge, but actually prevent suicides and
thus save lives. This claim is unfounded. A review of the evidence presented in favor of
building the barrier and my own research reveals that there is no evidence that installing a
suicide prevention barrier on the Cold Spring Bridge would save lives.
Top Ten Video Games
I love the "top ten lists" that show up everyday (several times a day actually) on Digg, because it really reveals who uses Digg. Nine times out of ten, the list has something to do with video games, and is always insightful. At least, I think it's insightful. I have such an arm's length love for video games that it's hard for me to say. On the one hand, I grew up playing video games, but only on the family computer, which limited my gaming to Sierra titles like King's Quest, Police Quest, Thexder, and Leisure Suit Larry [question: my parents let an 11-year-old play this adults only game, why?]. I never owned a game console past the basic Atari 2600, and thus missed out on a lot. But, all my friends had one, so I got to play and beat some of them. So, that means that when I read a top ten list like this one, entitled "The 10 Most Important Games Ever", I both geek out and am disappointed simultaneously. I geek out because when I recognize an obviously important game like this one, I feel like I'm in the loop. But then I come across one like this, and am left scratching my head going, "I think I remember this one. Wait. No, I have no idea what this important game is. Sniff." And walk away utterly demoralized. (Not really).
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
End of Day Post
Whew. The day is almost over. These days are the longest since I teach two classes. The day was productive on several fronts, as I may finally be at a place where I can write down a formal model of something I've ruminated on for years. I'll know more by the end of the week as to whether that is the case. Here's some of what I was just reading.
1. Robert Schiller, author of Irrational Exhuberance has an updated edition coming out with chapters on the housing bubble. Quite timely, I'm sure he'll do very well with it given the popularity of the first edition and the current sub-prime mortgage problems. One graph from the book shows a history of home values. The current rapid increase in housing prices, starting in the mid-1990s, is the largest percentage increase on his index of any period of booming real estate in the US history, or at least since 1890. By a large margin. With each month's foreclosures exceeding the one before, no one knows where this is going to end, but a recession is nowhere near out of the realm of possibility. As the graph from InTrade Prediction Markets shows, the probability of a 2008 recession is nearing, again, a coin-flip.
2. An interesting article using competitive market theory to explain why supply-sider interdictions can inadvertently increase drug-crimes. If demand is inelastic, then a 10% increase in the price of drugs will lead to less than a 10% decrease in consumption, and an increase in total expenditure on drugs. If these are addicts, then likely it will mean income-generating crimes, such as prostitution hours extended and/or robberies of various sorts. But, if it is a competitive market, then the profits generated by eliminating a "firm" will in the longrun be replaced. The profits are competed away in the longrun by new entrants. And the way new entrants compete in illicit economies is, as the theory goes, via violence to extend market share and enforce informal contracts. Hence, drug enforcement can inadvertantly increase violence.
3. Heroes: Truth and Consequences is kicking it. The last scene gave me goosebumps. I hear they are going to kill off 2 heroes next week. On the one hand, I can see why. The narrative is difficult to tell as the ensemble grows, and we've got a lot of people to handle. My prediction is: Maya and Niki. Mark it in your books. I really like the pacing of the story, personally, and I'm going to be sad to lose the heroes. Given the decline in ratings, though, I understand they're going to try to take the stories in a slightly more adrenalin-oriented direction. Which is fine with me. I hope they don't kill off the new villains though. Sylar and Adam are excellent, and in comic books, villains remain and return regularly - which has been historically missing, for some reason, from almost every major comic book adaptation to television and movie that I can think of. It did not happen that Lex Luther was killed, but in all the Spidermans and in all the Burton-era Batmans, the major villain died. In Batman Begins, thankfully, Scarecrow did not die. And I hope that Joker does not die in the sequel. But, more to the point, I hope Sylar and Adam do not die next week on Heroes.
4. The top one percent is a revolving door according to Thomas Sowell.
5. S&P Housing Index shows a 4.5% decline in housing prices. This is a decline in consumer wealth, and therefore would predict a decline in autonomous consumer spending, which in turn would cause a leftward shift in aggregate demand, leading to a drop in output, and increase in unemployment if it takes us off the longrun equilibrium output amount. If that were to happen, then we'd ultimately have the problem of inflation dealt with, as in time as prices fell, inflation would settle a lower rate. Lots of comfort that gives to those of us with a house they can't sell, I guess.
1. Robert Schiller, author of Irrational Exhuberance has an updated edition coming out with chapters on the housing bubble. Quite timely, I'm sure he'll do very well with it given the popularity of the first edition and the current sub-prime mortgage problems. One graph from the book shows a history of home values. The current rapid increase in housing prices, starting in the mid-1990s, is the largest percentage increase on his index of any period of booming real estate in the US history, or at least since 1890. By a large margin. With each month's foreclosures exceeding the one before, no one knows where this is going to end, but a recession is nowhere near out of the realm of possibility. As the graph from InTrade Prediction Markets shows, the probability of a 2008 recession is nearing, again, a coin-flip.
2. An interesting article using competitive market theory to explain why supply-sider interdictions can inadvertently increase drug-crimes. If demand is inelastic, then a 10% increase in the price of drugs will lead to less than a 10% decrease in consumption, and an increase in total expenditure on drugs. If these are addicts, then likely it will mean income-generating crimes, such as prostitution hours extended and/or robberies of various sorts. But, if it is a competitive market, then the profits generated by eliminating a "firm" will in the longrun be replaced. The profits are competed away in the longrun by new entrants. And the way new entrants compete in illicit economies is, as the theory goes, via violence to extend market share and enforce informal contracts. Hence, drug enforcement can inadvertantly increase violence.
3. Heroes: Truth and Consequences is kicking it. The last scene gave me goosebumps. I hear they are going to kill off 2 heroes next week. On the one hand, I can see why. The narrative is difficult to tell as the ensemble grows, and we've got a lot of people to handle. My prediction is: Maya and Niki. Mark it in your books. I really like the pacing of the story, personally, and I'm going to be sad to lose the heroes. Given the decline in ratings, though, I understand they're going to try to take the stories in a slightly more adrenalin-oriented direction. Which is fine with me. I hope they don't kill off the new villains though. Sylar and Adam are excellent, and in comic books, villains remain and return regularly - which has been historically missing, for some reason, from almost every major comic book adaptation to television and movie that I can think of. It did not happen that Lex Luther was killed, but in all the Spidermans and in all the Burton-era Batmans, the major villain died. In Batman Begins, thankfully, Scarecrow did not die. And I hope that Joker does not die in the sequel. But, more to the point, I hope Sylar and Adam do not die next week on Heroes.
4. The top one percent is a revolving door according to Thomas Sowell.
5. S&P Housing Index shows a 4.5% decline in housing prices. This is a decline in consumer wealth, and therefore would predict a decline in autonomous consumer spending, which in turn would cause a leftward shift in aggregate demand, leading to a drop in output, and increase in unemployment if it takes us off the longrun equilibrium output amount. If that were to happen, then we'd ultimately have the problem of inflation dealt with, as in time as prices fell, inflation would settle a lower rate. Lots of comfort that gives to those of us with a house they can't sell, I guess.
Lists to Help Creativity
Top 20 necessary, though not sufficient, conditions for coming up with amazing ideas. #1 - Carry a notebook. I do most of these already, and I think they are, for me, necessary, particularly #5 ("Read a lot").
Monday, November 26, 2007
Simo Hayha
Digg.com is so great, and brings some very fascinating things to the surface. Just now, a link to the wikipedia entry on Simo Hayha caught my eye. Hayha was a Finnish sniper during the Winter War, and had 505 confirmed Russian kills over a 100 day period. That's 5 kills per day, averaging basically 1 kill per daylight hour of each day. The article is short, but full of fascinating details about his preferences for guns and scopes, and about his close calls.
Median Joker?
Screw the median voter, I want to know who the median joker on the SCOTUS bench is. It is apparently Souter who moved from a score of zero to one with this zinger:
"Following an extended question from Souter, the arguing attorney responded, “No Justice Ginsburg, there has been no waiver,” to which Souter astutely replied, “I’m Justice Souter . . . You’re very flattering.”"
Post-Saddam Iraq
There are problems with focusing just on violence statistics when studying progress/problems in Iraq. This article discusses some of the gains and problems that still exist in Iraq. It concludes with,
"IRAQ today is a hundred times better than what it would have been under Saddam in any imaginable circumstances. Statistics of violence don't begin to measure the efforts of a whole nation to re-emerge from the darkest night in its history. And in that sense, the news from Iraq since April 2003 has always been more good than bad.
What is new is that now more Americans appear willing to acknowledge this - good news in itself. As long as the United States remains resolute in its support for the new Iraq, there will be more good news than bad from what is at present the main battlefield in the War on Terror."
In Defense of the Power Nap
Nine to ten justifications for the power nap (I lost count because the article inspired me to take a power nap).
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Should cyber-bullies get the death penalty?
That is not a silly question. The damages caused by cyber-bullying may be very large - much larger, even, than the damages caused by traditional "brick and mortar bullying." The most recent cyber-bullying case involves the suicide of Megan Meier. Megan committed suicide a month ago, mid-October, after receiving a crushing email from her on-screen Myspace boyfriend, Josh Evans, that read, among other things, that he no longer wanted to be her friend because he had heard she was mean to her friends and "the world would be a better place without you." Megan went upstairs and hung herself not a half hour after receiving this email. She had been diagnosed previously with both Attention Deficit Disorder and clinical depression. What makes this really bad, though, is not merely that she was dumped by her boyfriend, which happens everyday to thousands of teenage girls in America, but that "Josh Evans" was actually the mother of one of Megan's former friends with whom she had had a falling out. This neighbor, Lori Drew, had concocted the entire affair with the help of her daughter, they claim, in order to learn whether people at school were gossiping about the daughter. But in the end, they used it to psychologically bully Megan.
With the ubiquity of the Internet and the increased popularity of Internet communication and social networking sites, one hears about cyber-bullying more and more. One of the first cyber-bullying cases, and not coincidentally one of the most famous viral videos of all-time, was the Star Wars Kid in which a boy had secretly taped himself imitating fighting scenes from Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, only to have his alleged friends take the tape and upload it to a peer-to-peer file-sharing site, where it quickly became hugely popular and an Internet phenomenon within days. Now much older, the boy has since filed a lawsuite against his former classmates because of "[what he] had to endure, and still endures today, harassment and derision from his high-school mates and the public at large, [and for which he] will be under psychiatric care for an indefinite amount of time." According to Cyberbullying.org, it is currently a federal crime to "annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass any person" via the Internet or any other telecommunications medium, and is punishable by a fine and/or up to two years of imprisonment.
The question I am now asking myself is what is the optimal punishment for cyber-bullying? No doubt, we could ask Larry Lessig and he would know. It seems that the reason the death penalty might approach the efficient punishment is because of the potentially very large external costs created by cyber-bullying if the bullying ends up becoming viral, in the way that it did for the Star Wars Kid. Each act of bullying can potentially grow exponentially if the bullying is publicly replicated through something like Myspace, Youtube, or other forms of social networking. In such a case, the appropriate penalty would be to match the bullying with some monetary value equal to the value of the damages done, assuming the probability of catching said-bullies was equal to 1.0. But as Becker showed, the more difficult it is to catch people for their crimes (i.e., the lower the probability of arrest), the larger the penalty must be set to to achieve efficient punishment. His classic, footnoted example was Vietnamese authorities chopping off the arms of individuals caught stealing rice - a small crime indeed, but so difficult to catch that it was necessary (allegedly) to make the punishment sufficiently draconian.
Well, here we have one of each. On the one hand, the externalities from cyber-bullying make the damages a function of the size of the network itself. What did the damage to the Star Wars Kid? If it was the number of times his video was viewed, then it's already almost at 4 million views on Youtube. That's not counting the hundreds of parodies that have been created, both online and on the small screen (I saw an episode of Arrested Development recently that was effectively a parody of the Star Wars Kid video). Over 4 million separate events of one and a half minutes of laughter and derision add up, and they add up quickly since viral videos escalate rapidly. Even if the damage is simply linear in the number of times the video is watched, the damage grows quite large, but if it is nonlinear (which is plausible), then it's even moreso. But, given the anonymity of the Internet, it's possibly quite easy to get away with this kind of bullying, if one is savvy enough.
So how do we adequately "price" this kind of crime? Two years, honestly, seems like on the low side to me. It seems like if we take Becker's theory to heart, we should pursue monetary fine equal to some estimation of the damages done, which are a function of the size of the network itself, using the available evidence that indicates how many viewings occurred. But this takes me back to the death penalty question. In light of the size of the damages, and the difficulty of capturing assailants, it's not at all the case to me why it shouldn't be a capital crime. That so many have now begun retaliating against the Drew Family, with threats, vandalism, prank calls, and published information about them online, in my minds speaks to how we may intuitively appreciate that this kind of viral bullying is really bad. Serious reflection, legislation and enforcement is necessary if we are to deal with this peculiar new crime.
With the ubiquity of the Internet and the increased popularity of Internet communication and social networking sites, one hears about cyber-bullying more and more. One of the first cyber-bullying cases, and not coincidentally one of the most famous viral videos of all-time, was the Star Wars Kid in which a boy had secretly taped himself imitating fighting scenes from Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, only to have his alleged friends take the tape and upload it to a peer-to-peer file-sharing site, where it quickly became hugely popular and an Internet phenomenon within days. Now much older, the boy has since filed a lawsuite against his former classmates because of "[what he] had to endure, and still endures today, harassment and derision from his high-school mates and the public at large, [and for which he] will be under psychiatric care for an indefinite amount of time." According to Cyberbullying.org, it is currently a federal crime to "annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass any person" via the Internet or any other telecommunications medium, and is punishable by a fine and/or up to two years of imprisonment.
The question I am now asking myself is what is the optimal punishment for cyber-bullying? No doubt, we could ask Larry Lessig and he would know. It seems that the reason the death penalty might approach the efficient punishment is because of the potentially very large external costs created by cyber-bullying if the bullying ends up becoming viral, in the way that it did for the Star Wars Kid. Each act of bullying can potentially grow exponentially if the bullying is publicly replicated through something like Myspace, Youtube, or other forms of social networking. In such a case, the appropriate penalty would be to match the bullying with some monetary value equal to the value of the damages done, assuming the probability of catching said-bullies was equal to 1.0. But as Becker showed, the more difficult it is to catch people for their crimes (i.e., the lower the probability of arrest), the larger the penalty must be set to to achieve efficient punishment. His classic, footnoted example was Vietnamese authorities chopping off the arms of individuals caught stealing rice - a small crime indeed, but so difficult to catch that it was necessary (allegedly) to make the punishment sufficiently draconian.
Well, here we have one of each. On the one hand, the externalities from cyber-bullying make the damages a function of the size of the network itself. What did the damage to the Star Wars Kid? If it was the number of times his video was viewed, then it's already almost at 4 million views on Youtube. That's not counting the hundreds of parodies that have been created, both online and on the small screen (I saw an episode of Arrested Development recently that was effectively a parody of the Star Wars Kid video). Over 4 million separate events of one and a half minutes of laughter and derision add up, and they add up quickly since viral videos escalate rapidly. Even if the damage is simply linear in the number of times the video is watched, the damage grows quite large, but if it is nonlinear (which is plausible), then it's even moreso. But, given the anonymity of the Internet, it's possibly quite easy to get away with this kind of bullying, if one is savvy enough.
So how do we adequately "price" this kind of crime? Two years, honestly, seems like on the low side to me. It seems like if we take Becker's theory to heart, we should pursue monetary fine equal to some estimation of the damages done, which are a function of the size of the network itself, using the available evidence that indicates how many viewings occurred. But this takes me back to the death penalty question. In light of the size of the damages, and the difficulty of capturing assailants, it's not at all the case to me why it shouldn't be a capital crime. That so many have now begun retaliating against the Drew Family, with threats, vandalism, prank calls, and published information about them online, in my minds speaks to how we may intuitively appreciate that this kind of viral bullying is really bad. Serious reflection, legislation and enforcement is necessary if we are to deal with this peculiar new crime.
David vs. Starbucks
A small town coffeeshop has taken out a large billboard ad reading, "We May Not Be Big... But We're Not Bitter, which is a shot at the new Starbucks in town. The article notes that the owners recognize the important role Starbucks has had in creating a market for retail coffeeshops and coffee-to-go. Without their influence, there would probably not be a market for smaller, locally-owned coffeeshops.
Starbucks itself saw its stock price fall recently due to falling sales caused, apparently it is believed, by an increase in prices. Higher dairy costs, in particular, have caused Starbucks coffee to rise. This decline was the first decline they have had ever, I think. Part of this is also just more general - as the American economy struggles, so goes Starbucks. If the housing troubles spill over into decreased consumer expenditure - which it may very well be doing, given the substantial fall in the value of American homes in some parts of the country - many consumer products like coffee and clothing will take a hit.
I'm currently reading the classic investment book, A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Princeton economist Burton Malkiel. Reading it, and then reading about the decline in Starbucks stock plus the big swings in Google stock over the last month, I'm more and more certain I don't ever want to try to chase individual stocks.
Starbucks itself saw its stock price fall recently due to falling sales caused, apparently it is believed, by an increase in prices. Higher dairy costs, in particular, have caused Starbucks coffee to rise. This decline was the first decline they have had ever, I think. Part of this is also just more general - as the American economy struggles, so goes Starbucks. If the housing troubles spill over into decreased consumer expenditure - which it may very well be doing, given the substantial fall in the value of American homes in some parts of the country - many consumer products like coffee and clothing will take a hit.
I'm currently reading the classic investment book, A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Princeton economist Burton Malkiel. Reading it, and then reading about the decline in Starbucks stock plus the big swings in Google stock over the last month, I'm more and more certain I don't ever want to try to chase individual stocks.
Birth Control Prices Rise on Campus
I saw an article about this a year ago, and was wondering what had gone on. Changes in federal law has caused the price of birth control to rise at college campuses. Previously, the federal government had subsidized these products and therefore lowered the price students faced. Since these new changes, the article reports that certain contraceptives have seen significant declines in sales, which is support that demand for birth control is rational and responsive to price increases.
But, to say that women use less birth control in response to a rising price is not the same as saying that pregnancy or STD risk has increased. In Levine and Staiger's 2002 NBER Working Paper, "Abortion as Insurance", the authors model pregnancy risk as a function of abortion availability. The title references the moral hazard implications that abortion availability has on that risk - the cheaper the ex post protection against an unwanted pregnancy, the less the female precaution the female needs to invest in ex ante. That is, if you make bad outcomes less expensive, you are inadvertently reducing the price of the behavior that leads to the bad outcome. So, if we raise the price of birth control, there is some margin of female who will reduce her pregnancy risk in response by substituting to other birth controls (e.g., condoms), or decrease her pregnancy risk some other way (e.g., less intercourse per period). The impact of changing prices of birth control on pregnancy and STD outcomes are theoretically ambiguous, in other words.
But, to say that women use less birth control in response to a rising price is not the same as saying that pregnancy or STD risk has increased. In Levine and Staiger's 2002 NBER Working Paper, "Abortion as Insurance", the authors model pregnancy risk as a function of abortion availability. The title references the moral hazard implications that abortion availability has on that risk - the cheaper the ex post protection against an unwanted pregnancy, the less the female precaution the female needs to invest in ex ante. That is, if you make bad outcomes less expensive, you are inadvertently reducing the price of the behavior that leads to the bad outcome. So, if we raise the price of birth control, there is some margin of female who will reduce her pregnancy risk in response by substituting to other birth controls (e.g., condoms), or decrease her pregnancy risk some other way (e.g., less intercourse per period). The impact of changing prices of birth control on pregnancy and STD outcomes are theoretically ambiguous, in other words.
Freud Lives (Outside Psychology Departments)!
A lack of empirical rigor, testable hypotheses, insurance companies refusal to fund psychotherapy, and the advances in neuroscience have really harmed psychoanalysis as a scientific field. While still taught at universities, it is not taught usually in psychology departments, but rather in the humanities.
I took two courses on psychoanalysis as an undergraduate english major. In one of the courses, we read his Interpretation of Dreams which I loved. Through recording my dreams on a tape recorder (recommended by the professor to be done in a stream of consciousness manner so as to not impose an ex post narrative structure on the dreams fleeing from my memory), my professor showed me that I was not merely friends with my now-wife, but in fact loved my now-wife! Ever since, I've been fascinated by Freud's theory of dreams. I would need to re-read the book to figure out just what the predictions of the theory were, though. I mainly remember it as relating to the id/ego/superego structure, and dreams being, like Freudian slips and neuroticisms, ways that the id attempted to communicate with or influence the conscious mind those things which were suppressed by the ethical mind. You could model this using game theory, since the three players are all strategically involved with one another, but I'm not sure if it'd be all that useful.
I took two courses on psychoanalysis as an undergraduate english major. In one of the courses, we read his Interpretation of Dreams which I loved. Through recording my dreams on a tape recorder (recommended by the professor to be done in a stream of consciousness manner so as to not impose an ex post narrative structure on the dreams fleeing from my memory), my professor showed me that I was not merely friends with my now-wife, but in fact loved my now-wife! Ever since, I've been fascinated by Freud's theory of dreams. I would need to re-read the book to figure out just what the predictions of the theory were, though. I mainly remember it as relating to the id/ego/superego structure, and dreams being, like Freudian slips and neuroticisms, ways that the id attempted to communicate with or influence the conscious mind those things which were suppressed by the ethical mind. You could model this using game theory, since the three players are all strategically involved with one another, but I'm not sure if it'd be all that useful.
DNA Evidence Freed Man from Prison
Or did it? Jeffrey Mark Deskovic served 16 years in prison for rape and murder, only to have it recently overturned on new DNA evidence which led to the conviction of another man. The article details the difficulties that Deskovic had has re-acclimating into society, which he has not participated in since he was a 17-year-old high school student. His story is unfortunately not unique. Another NYT article writes that "more than 200 prisoners exonerated since 1989 by DNA evidence — almost all of whom had been incarcerated for murder or rape.
Saturday, November 24, 2007
Religious Groups Line Up to Protest
You can always count on Christian organizations to protest a movie, even though it probably always raised the revenues for that film. There's no such thing as bad press as they say.
Nuclear Energy
This takes NIMBY ("Not in my backyard") to another level. This sucker, you encase in concrete, bury in your backyard literally, and it'll power a 25,000 home community for five years.
Factoid 1: George Foreman's Money Making Grill
I love wikipedia. I started off reading something on Hulk Hogan, then read tons of professional wrestling entries (learning a lot about the simulated sport in the process), including a touching entry about Andre the Giant), and then ended up at the George Foreman Grill entry. Fact: Hulk Hogan turned down this endorsement deal, which then went to George Foreman. Fact: George Foreman has made $150 million in revenue from this endorsement, which is vastly more than he ever made from boxing. Here's George talking about his entrepreneurial success.
Personality Test Results!
I am addicted to personality profile examinations, okay, so sue me. They are my version of an astrology zodiac sign. I have a tendency to introduce myself as "Hi, I'm an INFP and you are?" This is a new test I found called "the Big Five." My score is linked below. I'm a O80-C2-E37-A87-N43 Big Five!!. If you click through, you can see what that means. But yes, I am a "C2" which means in terms of conscientiousness, I scored in the 2 percentile. And that means that 98% of all people in the population (I assume this is representative scoring) are more conscientiousness than me. Or to put it differently, out of 100 people, only 2 of them would be more disorganized than me. Yes, that sounds about right.
Friday, November 23, 2007
Thanksgiving Rap
Actually, no rap. That was a bait-and-switch just to get you to keep reading. But what a glorious thanksgiving thus far. Exhibit A: The 11 lb. turkey a faery left in my fridge for my birthday. That was divine, and we still have 7 lb. of it in the freezer now! Exhibit B: It is only Friday, and yet it feels like Saturday! So that means I still have a Saturday to go. Sweet. There are more exhibits which would absolutely punish the opposing anti-Thanksgiving team, but why bother. They know they lost. Thanksgiving is splenderiffic and they know it.
My conference was a good time and worth the investment my department made in me going (I hope they too see it that way). I made some new contacts, met some new co-authors, and more or less got to complete a draft of a paper I needed to complete. I also learned some new techniques that are going into one of my papers as soon as I make sure I know what it is they were doing. All in all, I came away from the trip with some sage advice from someone I met, that makes me think my career is best served by continuing in the vein I've been working on the last 3 years.
That's a wrap. I hear the tink-tink of glassware that alerts me to a dinner being made. Til then, here's a list of the seven least faithful comic book adaptations ever. Note that "least faithful" does not mean "badly executed," but in most of these, it did mean just that. Ultimately a creative team should take the source material and tell an interesting story with it, whatever it is. And for that, I actually thought Ang Lee's Hulk was a pretty ambitious, gutsy story in every way. The psychological metaphor was always what Hulk/Banner was about. If you go back and read interviews with Stan Lee or Jack Kirby, they're fairly explicit that Hulk was a metaphor for psychological disfunction and anger ("I get mad and become a MONSTER!"), just like the Spiderman was for puberty and X-men were for 1960s era civil rights and racism. So Ang Lee told that story, and not a simplistic HULK-SMASH story. And besides, I liked it. But the others on the list were just plain bad. Another list of "just plain bad comic book movies" would have to include Spiderman 3 and X-men 3 though. Even though they were "faithful" in some technical sense (X-men 3 especially since so much of it was ripped off verbatim from a Josh Whedon series written for X-men), it was just a butchering of the previous two movies' seriousness and genuine drama. OH well. Like I said, evidence of the "shitty third movie in the trilogy" Hypothesis, so win-win for me.
My conference was a good time and worth the investment my department made in me going (I hope they too see it that way). I made some new contacts, met some new co-authors, and more or less got to complete a draft of a paper I needed to complete. I also learned some new techniques that are going into one of my papers as soon as I make sure I know what it is they were doing. All in all, I came away from the trip with some sage advice from someone I met, that makes me think my career is best served by continuing in the vein I've been working on the last 3 years.
That's a wrap. I hear the tink-tink of glassware that alerts me to a dinner being made. Til then, here's a list of the seven least faithful comic book adaptations ever. Note that "least faithful" does not mean "badly executed," but in most of these, it did mean just that. Ultimately a creative team should take the source material and tell an interesting story with it, whatever it is. And for that, I actually thought Ang Lee's Hulk was a pretty ambitious, gutsy story in every way. The psychological metaphor was always what Hulk/Banner was about. If you go back and read interviews with Stan Lee or Jack Kirby, they're fairly explicit that Hulk was a metaphor for psychological disfunction and anger ("I get mad and become a MONSTER!"), just like the Spiderman was for puberty and X-men were for 1960s era civil rights and racism. So Ang Lee told that story, and not a simplistic HULK-SMASH story. And besides, I liked it. But the others on the list were just plain bad. Another list of "just plain bad comic book movies" would have to include Spiderman 3 and X-men 3 though. Even though they were "faithful" in some technical sense (X-men 3 especially since so much of it was ripped off verbatim from a Josh Whedon series written for X-men), it was just a butchering of the previous two movies' seriousness and genuine drama. OH well. Like I said, evidence of the "shitty third movie in the trilogy" Hypothesis, so win-win for me.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Waking up and Leaving Las Vegas
Nice. The cat woke me up at 5am instead of 5:45am, which was when the alarm was set to go off. So I decided to knock off an hour and watch last night's Heroes episode, Cautionary Tales on NBC's website. Having NBC stream their shows is very nice for the one who does not have cable or basic channels. I thought the episode was so-so. In an interview, the guy who plays the horned rimmed glasses guy, Noah Bennett, said it was one of the best episodes they've ever done - which is a bit of an overstatement if you ask me. I suppose he said that because he felt like the episode had some real punch - we learn who killed Hiro's father (gasp! Adam Monroe? Who didn't know this by now?), that Adam was basically immortal (duh), that Matt Parkman can manipulate minds as well as read and communicate with them (Wow. A telepath can do that?! No way ), and how Isaac's paintings would come true. The one question I had was how the paintings would both come true and Noah would stay on the show, but I figured that out once Suresh shot Noah in the eye. After learning in the last episode that Adam's blood can be used via transfusion to heal other people, I figured the blood Bob had drawn fifteen minutes earlier from Claire would probably be used that way. How? Elementary my dear Watson! The Horned Rimmed Glasses Man is super-sweet and popular. Ergo, comic book death only for him.
I tell you the one thing that really worries me about Season two are: (a) Tim Kring's public lamentation over how sorry he is that the first third of the season was "so slow," and (b) the writer's strike. Together, I figure the show's on the verge of being cancelled, despite being the #1 hit of the previous year. Apparently, for all the sophistication of the modern television viewer, the pacing of this season has been too complicated. I have not myself minded at all, but I've long since realized I'm a horrible gauge of the typical American viewer. Kring basically tore his shirt and rubbed ash on his face when a few weeks ago he apologized profusely for this season. That makes me worry that the rest of this season is going to be a deviation from his original story, which hopefully won't backfire and end up being an "overshooting" sort of thing as he tries to readjust. If you had a narrative arc mapped out, then how does this season's struggling ratings combined with the writer's strike change that? Lost has 6 episodes in the can plus 2 scripts written, meaning they'll own the spring of the strike doesn't end soon. I worry that that means Heroes will be returning to the small screen after having lost the chance to recover from its bumpy beginnings this season, which may be the one thing that even Claire Bennett cannot heal.
Did you see that? I totally rocked the metaphor just then. I just used a character's healing abilities to discuss the potential doom of the show if the writer's strike doesn't end! I am so awesome.
I tell you the one thing that really worries me about Season two are: (a) Tim Kring's public lamentation over how sorry he is that the first third of the season was "so slow," and (b) the writer's strike. Together, I figure the show's on the verge of being cancelled, despite being the #1 hit of the previous year. Apparently, for all the sophistication of the modern television viewer, the pacing of this season has been too complicated. I have not myself minded at all, but I've long since realized I'm a horrible gauge of the typical American viewer. Kring basically tore his shirt and rubbed ash on his face when a few weeks ago he apologized profusely for this season. That makes me worry that the rest of this season is going to be a deviation from his original story, which hopefully won't backfire and end up being an "overshooting" sort of thing as he tries to readjust. If you had a narrative arc mapped out, then how does this season's struggling ratings combined with the writer's strike change that? Lost has 6 episodes in the can plus 2 scripts written, meaning they'll own the spring of the strike doesn't end soon. I worry that that means Heroes will be returning to the small screen after having lost the chance to recover from its bumpy beginnings this season, which may be the one thing that even Claire Bennett cannot heal.
Did you see that? I totally rocked the metaphor just then. I just used a character's healing abilities to discuss the potential doom of the show if the writer's strike doesn't end! I am so awesome.
Monday, November 19, 2007
Leaving Las Vegas
Not actually Las Vegas. Just my secret lair. Got the computer (check), the clothing (check), the directions to the airport (check), the rental car car keys (check), the projector (check), the bag of stuff (check), and the dozen or so articles I feel obliged to read before writing my critique of the paper I'm discussing (check). I think I've got it mostly together this time. Of course, I am forgetting something - I'm just not sure what. I leave for the conference tomorrow morning, and will return Wednesday night, late evening. Because I'm only going for one day, the number of people I'm going to see is few and far between. But I'm not too interested in socializing this time. Because I organized this session, I feel obligated to make sure I am on top of the paper I am discussing, so I'm probably just going to spend all my time tomorrow working on that paper. Since it is so similar to papers I have written, it's an interesting assignment. In fact, I think my session will prove to be very rewarding for those in attendance, since I handpicked all the participants and discussants. But it is late in the conference, on the week of Thanksgiving, so I suspect the interest of the topic notwithstanding, I won't get many in attendance. Blogging will be sparse until I return.
Spiderman 2 and Why I Love It
Well, I'm pretty sure that "Getting Things Done" says you should not keep writing blog entries all morning long. Last. Blog. Post.
The real story of Spiderman is one of sacrifice and guilt, and that's why Chabon's script worked so well. Chabon understood that Peter Parker is a lonely hero who, though wanting a normal life, cannot because the random accident that gave him his powers also gave him responsibilities to use those powers. There is no such thing as a free lunch you might say. Peter Parker is responsible for his uncle Ben's death. He knows it. He therefore cannot stop being heroic. It's an impulse he has motivated by his own felt-guilt. In this way, Spiderman is a quite different character than Batman, despite a similar origin. Bruce Wayne also witnessed a parent's death by a common crook, and the experience cast a shadow over his entire life making him a vigilante. But Bruce was not the perpetrator; Peter Parker was. Bruce Wayne was a little boy who couldn't stop the man who killed his mother and father, thus orphaning him at a very early age, whereas Peter Parker was a man with powers who could have stopped the crook, but chose not to out of selfishness, and his own desire for revenge on a crooked employer that wouldn't pay him his paycheck. Whereas Peter Parker is motivated by guilt, Bruce Wayne is motivated by obsession, revenge and hate. Even though both heroes are lonely as a result of their callings, Bruce is the lonelier one because his obsession has made him lonely in a different way. Spiderman is Peter Parker wearing the mask, whereas Bruce Wayne is the mask. They are very similar, and very different, portrayals of psychologically disturbed heroes haunted by their pasts.
This is why it is such a redemptive point in the film when the crowd of people on the subway car in Spiderman 2 lift Peter (sans facemask) over their heads in the iconic Christ pose, lay him down and stare at him. For a few minutes, the people Peter has committed to saving know him. They see that he is a boy, and that he is willing to give his life for them, even though they are strangers. It was a small, but important, gift given by Chabon and Raimi to give Peter, and us by proxy, that scene. We all want to be known; deep down, we want people to understand that there is a reason for why we act the way we act. It's not so much that we want to be heroes or are motivated by heroism, though we are that too. It's that we want to be touched by people - for them to give us compassionate understanding. That's one of things that made that movie so great - that one scene in the subway car. Spiderman 3 had nothing that even came close to that level of seriousness. It was just a stupid superhero movie, which is about the worst thing you can say about a story if you ask me.
The real story of Spiderman is one of sacrifice and guilt, and that's why Chabon's script worked so well. Chabon understood that Peter Parker is a lonely hero who, though wanting a normal life, cannot because the random accident that gave him his powers also gave him responsibilities to use those powers. There is no such thing as a free lunch you might say. Peter Parker is responsible for his uncle Ben's death. He knows it. He therefore cannot stop being heroic. It's an impulse he has motivated by his own felt-guilt. In this way, Spiderman is a quite different character than Batman, despite a similar origin. Bruce Wayne also witnessed a parent's death by a common crook, and the experience cast a shadow over his entire life making him a vigilante. But Bruce was not the perpetrator; Peter Parker was. Bruce Wayne was a little boy who couldn't stop the man who killed his mother and father, thus orphaning him at a very early age, whereas Peter Parker was a man with powers who could have stopped the crook, but chose not to out of selfishness, and his own desire for revenge on a crooked employer that wouldn't pay him his paycheck. Whereas Peter Parker is motivated by guilt, Bruce Wayne is motivated by obsession, revenge and hate. Even though both heroes are lonely as a result of their callings, Bruce is the lonelier one because his obsession has made him lonely in a different way. Spiderman is Peter Parker wearing the mask, whereas Bruce Wayne is the mask. They are very similar, and very different, portrayals of psychologically disturbed heroes haunted by their pasts.
This is why it is such a redemptive point in the film when the crowd of people on the subway car in Spiderman 2 lift Peter (sans facemask) over their heads in the iconic Christ pose, lay him down and stare at him. For a few minutes, the people Peter has committed to saving know him. They see that he is a boy, and that he is willing to give his life for them, even though they are strangers. It was a small, but important, gift given by Chabon and Raimi to give Peter, and us by proxy, that scene. We all want to be known; deep down, we want people to understand that there is a reason for why we act the way we act. It's not so much that we want to be heroes or are motivated by heroism, though we are that too. It's that we want to be touched by people - for them to give us compassionate understanding. That's one of things that made that movie so great - that one scene in the subway car. Spiderman 3 had nothing that even came close to that level of seriousness. It was just a stupid superhero movie, which is about the worst thing you can say about a story if you ask me.
Ebert (finally) Reviews Spiderman 3
Our self-appointed father figure and patron saint, Roger Ebert, has been sick for most of 2007, and so he has been backtracking during his recovery to review old movies. This week he reviews Spiderman 3, the latest from the blockbuster franchise. So you know where I'm coming from, I gave the first Spiderman movie 3 stars, and the second one, Spiderman 2, 4 stars. If you asked me to make the "best of..." comic book movie, it'd go like this: Batman Begins, Spiderman 2, and X-men 2 get 4 stars. I'll also put Hellboy in there,The Incredibles and of course Ghost World, but the latter doesn't really fit unless we're expanding our definition of a comic book movie to, well, comic books. So of course I should just say "superhero movie." There are no doubt more, but I have the memory capacity of a blind, deaf and dumb gnat, so I can't think of anything else right now.
Spiderman 3, though? Well of course it's going to suck. How did I know? Elementary dear Watson. I'd like to submit Exhibit A, which is "no Michael Chabon." Exhibit B? It's the last one of three, which means the odds are it's going to be putrid up there with Return of the Jedi [would you believe me if I told you I couldn't remember that movie's title?! I had to google it! I'm getting unbelievably old or something], Godfather 3, Austin Powers: Goldmember, the old Batman fourth and fifth movies and who knows however many other ones I just flat out hated. Exhibit C? Venom, Black Suit, Sandman, the New Green Goblin AND Gwen Stacey? Come on! I was disillusioned the second I heard it was this crowded. He's going to tell a story with all these people in 2-2.5 hours? Like hell he was. And he didn't.
Of course, the economist in me says the third movie is optimally bad, so why am I complaining? Why is it optimally bad? Because if the first two are good, then the third should be bad since you have a guaranteed audience coming in, so you should minimize cost by employing mediocre scripts. Good scripts, good acting, good directing are things a studio employs to address the uncertainty of profits. But if revenue is guaranteed thanks to the captured audience from previous incarnations, then there's some point over which subsequent incarnations should be falling in quality. You might say movies are convex in quality, in other words. The last movie in the trilogy should suck, if I have any confidence in the rationality of the studio executives. And thankfully, I am both encouraged to see trilogies usually suck it up on movie three, and disgusted to see how bad Spiderman 3 actually was. [Apparently, the new Bourne entry is the exception to my theory, though, also thankfully. See how I did that? I made a theory that makes me happy whether I falsify it or not. Win-win!].
It is nonetheless good to see Ebert finally getting around to seeing this movie and sharing his insights about it. I liked this barrage of rhetorical questions, not all of which are good (I know the answers to some of them, even if Ebert doesn't, but only because I have the vast reservoir of Venom's Todd McFarlane in my memory banks. Why I can remember this, but few other things, is something I do not understand.], but some of which are.
Spiderman 3, though? Well of course it's going to suck. How did I know? Elementary dear Watson. I'd like to submit Exhibit A, which is "no Michael Chabon." Exhibit B? It's the last one of three, which means the odds are it's going to be putrid up there with Return of the Jedi [would you believe me if I told you I couldn't remember that movie's title?! I had to google it! I'm getting unbelievably old or something], Godfather 3, Austin Powers: Goldmember, the old Batman fourth and fifth movies and who knows however many other ones I just flat out hated. Exhibit C? Venom, Black Suit, Sandman, the New Green Goblin AND Gwen Stacey? Come on! I was disillusioned the second I heard it was this crowded. He's going to tell a story with all these people in 2-2.5 hours? Like hell he was. And he didn't.
Of course, the economist in me says the third movie is optimally bad, so why am I complaining? Why is it optimally bad? Because if the first two are good, then the third should be bad since you have a guaranteed audience coming in, so you should minimize cost by employing mediocre scripts. Good scripts, good acting, good directing are things a studio employs to address the uncertainty of profits. But if revenue is guaranteed thanks to the captured audience from previous incarnations, then there's some point over which subsequent incarnations should be falling in quality. You might say movies are convex in quality, in other words. The last movie in the trilogy should suck, if I have any confidence in the rationality of the studio executives. And thankfully, I am both encouraged to see trilogies usually suck it up on movie three, and disgusted to see how bad Spiderman 3 actually was. [Apparently, the new Bourne entry is the exception to my theory, though, also thankfully. See how I did that? I made a theory that makes me happy whether I falsify it or not. Win-win!].
It is nonetheless good to see Ebert finally getting around to seeing this movie and sharing his insights about it. I liked this barrage of rhetorical questions, not all of which are good (I know the answers to some of them, even if Ebert doesn't, but only because I have the vast reservoir of Venom's Todd McFarlane in my memory banks. Why I can remember this, but few other things, is something I do not understand.], but some of which are.
"We know that Spider-Man's powers do not reside in his red suit, which lies in a suitcase under his bed. So how do fake Spideys like Venom gain their powers when they are covered with the black substance? And how does a microorganism from outer space know how to replicate the intricate patternwork of the Spidey costume, right down to the chest decoration? And to what purpose from an evolutionary point of view? And what good luck that the microorganism gets Peter's rival photographer, Eddie Grace, to infect, so that he becomes Venom! And how does Eddie know who he has become?"Not to geek out here, but if you're going to geek out, where else than on your geeky blog? But the alien costume doesn't set off Peter's spidey sense, first of all, which is why Peter doesn't notice it when the meteor lands. Secondly, everyone post-Peter gets Peter powers because the alien costume bonded to Peter, and there's some psychic transmission that took place from that experience. They don't get the Spiderman powers, per se. They just get the strength, webbing and clinging powers, which are native to the alien himself/herself, expressed physically as Spiderman powers (with some nice differences). And, the alien costume apparently fell in love with Peter, which is why he now behaves like a jolted lover and why the coincidental attachment to Eddy Brock (not Grace - Eddy is played by Topher Grace) works so nice, since Spiderman got Brock fired. And the suit can basically do anything, so making a Spiderman pattern isn't too bad. In McFarlane's original story, the suit was effectively a psychic camouflage. After Secret Wars, where Peter picked it up in the first place, Peter would just think of an outfit he wanted to wear, and the suit would "transmogrify" (to use a favorite Calvin and Hobbes term) into that outfit. I think in reality, Peter was actually just walking around in his underwear. Anyhow, that's why the suit does what it does.
Internet Gossip Meme
Nice detective work. Here's the story. Several news outlets state that Nissan is working on color-changing technology for their automobiles. Someone calls Nissan, who says they have no idea where people are getting this. Blogger tracks down the original stories, and recovers how asides in early articles were picked up later, like tumbling dominos, into misunderstandings about Nissan and this technology. I bet it only helped Nissan, though.
Victor Shklovsky
For whatever it is worth, Victor Schklovksy's aesthetic philosophy left a deep impression on me many years ago when I read him for my literary theory colloquium class in college. Here's a quote similar to the one that I remember vividly from college:
"The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known. The technique of art is to make objects ‘unfamiliar’, to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged. Art is a way of experiencing the artfulness of an object; the object is not important." (Shklovsky, "Art as Technique", 12.)What I remember is Shklovsky giving an analogy involving a man walking on a rocky path. When one walks barefoot on the rocky path, initially one feels the rocks beneath one's feet. But the longer one walks, the more insensitive one becomes to the rocks. Art exists to make "the rock rocky again," or more technically, to defamiliarize the familiar. I believe in this, personally. It's one of the few times from college where I actually agreed with the theorist, actually.
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Evening Post
I started this last night, but didn't finish...
1. We watched Beautiful Girls, and we both liked it a lot. There's a part in the movie where Timothy Hutton says that his current girlfriend, Tracey, is a solid 7.5 in the body, face and personality department. And I think that that is a good description of the movie - it's a solid 7.5 in terms of heart, emotional escape, interesting characters and overall story. I found it very interesting in many ways - the men were in love with ideals, but they paid prices for those idealized loves. Some were physically hurt, some lost the real-life women who loved them, and some almost lost themselves. It was a great story.
2. I read two comic books today. One was a Geoff Johns Justice Society of America, which basically served to introduce the new generation of JSA. Post-Crisis, DC is revamping several titles, which is apparently more common in the DC Universe than in the Marvel Universe due to the latent difficulty of continuity problems in the DC Universe. I don't mind. I think sometimes the stories need the old CTRL-ALT-DEL. I enjoyed this collection. I think Johns is a terrific writer, although it took a lot out of me to keep up with 52, especially since I never quite understood what he was trying to accomplish. As best as I could tell, many marginal characters were fleshed out weekly over 52 weeks, but the problem was that I only gave a crap about the new lesbian Batwoman, the Question, and Renee Montoya, who is now the new Question. The big story is that the multiverse exists in DC, but try as I may, I don't care much about the multiverse anyhow. I will admit, I did like the new Black Adam stories, though. I like this tragic man in his gold and black colors.
3. The other book I read was Brian Michael Bendis' fantastic series, Powers. Barnes and Noble has both volume one ("Who Killed Retro Girl?") and volume 7 ("Anarchy"), which of course sucks since apparently a lot of crap happened between volumes 1 and 7. But oh well. As I said in a previous post, I am actually not turned off by spoilers or reading out of order, so whatever. It just makes me want to go back and read more. "Anarchy" was a good story; not as fantastic as "Who Killed Retro Girl?" but awesome nonetheless. Powers, as a concept, is the story of a metropolitan special unit within the police department whose purpose is to investigate super-hero related crimes, primarily hero homicides. So, it's actually not a superhero story, at least not in the traditional sense. The genre feels more rooted in the police procedural genre. The main character, Christian Walker is a police detective, and his partner, Deena Pilgrim. The only volume that I read, before yesterday, was Who Killed Retro Girl?, which is available online here. I encourage all interested to read it, as it's some of the best, original, superhero comics I've read in a long time. Unfortunately, I only read comics if they are free, and the local Barnes and Noble is lagging. But, they've got "Retro Girl" on display, which hopefully bodes well for me if it means they'll fill out the rest. The idea of a normal police form in the midst of a city populated by super heroes (i.e., vigilantes) and super villains, as well as the social tension that creates with civilians (several of the storylines involve superhero deaths at the hands of a group of civilians who are opposed to superheros, for instance) is a good way to defamiliarize the superheroes themselves. We end up seeing them fresh from the eyes of cops working on the mundane details of a case, the frustrations of evidence and the legal system, and the relationships between the cops themselves.
1. We watched Beautiful Girls, and we both liked it a lot. There's a part in the movie where Timothy Hutton says that his current girlfriend, Tracey, is a solid 7.5 in the body, face and personality department. And I think that that is a good description of the movie - it's a solid 7.5 in terms of heart, emotional escape, interesting characters and overall story. I found it very interesting in many ways - the men were in love with ideals, but they paid prices for those idealized loves. Some were physically hurt, some lost the real-life women who loved them, and some almost lost themselves. It was a great story.
2. I read two comic books today. One was a Geoff Johns Justice Society of America, which basically served to introduce the new generation of JSA. Post-Crisis, DC is revamping several titles, which is apparently more common in the DC Universe than in the Marvel Universe due to the latent difficulty of continuity problems in the DC Universe. I don't mind. I think sometimes the stories need the old CTRL-ALT-DEL. I enjoyed this collection. I think Johns is a terrific writer, although it took a lot out of me to keep up with 52, especially since I never quite understood what he was trying to accomplish. As best as I could tell, many marginal characters were fleshed out weekly over 52 weeks, but the problem was that I only gave a crap about the new lesbian Batwoman, the Question, and Renee Montoya, who is now the new Question. The big story is that the multiverse exists in DC, but try as I may, I don't care much about the multiverse anyhow. I will admit, I did like the new Black Adam stories, though. I like this tragic man in his gold and black colors.
3. The other book I read was Brian Michael Bendis' fantastic series, Powers. Barnes and Noble has both volume one ("Who Killed Retro Girl?") and volume 7 ("Anarchy"), which of course sucks since apparently a lot of crap happened between volumes 1 and 7. But oh well. As I said in a previous post, I am actually not turned off by spoilers or reading out of order, so whatever. It just makes me want to go back and read more. "Anarchy" was a good story; not as fantastic as "Who Killed Retro Girl?" but awesome nonetheless. Powers, as a concept, is the story of a metropolitan special unit within the police department whose purpose is to investigate super-hero related crimes, primarily hero homicides. So, it's actually not a superhero story, at least not in the traditional sense. The genre feels more rooted in the police procedural genre. The main character, Christian Walker is a police detective, and his partner, Deena Pilgrim. The only volume that I read, before yesterday, was Who Killed Retro Girl?, which is available online here. I encourage all interested to read it, as it's some of the best, original, superhero comics I've read in a long time. Unfortunately, I only read comics if they are free, and the local Barnes and Noble is lagging. But, they've got "Retro Girl" on display, which hopefully bodes well for me if it means they'll fill out the rest. The idea of a normal police form in the midst of a city populated by super heroes (i.e., vigilantes) and super villains, as well as the social tension that creates with civilians (several of the storylines involve superhero deaths at the hands of a group of civilians who are opposed to superheros, for instance) is a good way to defamiliarize the superheroes themselves. We end up seeing them fresh from the eyes of cops working on the mundane details of a case, the frustrations of evidence and the legal system, and the relationships between the cops themselves.
Time Management
Time management is a problem for me. As in, I don't manage the details of my life very well, and with the new job, the sheer volume of details has risen four or five-fold if I had to guess. I'm going to be spending the next week or so going over various time management philosophies. Now I am reading about Getting Things Done.
Hipster PDA
Money's tight around this household, thanks to Christmas looming, our house sitting unsold, and the recent purchase of a super sweet furnace for said unsold house (SWEET!). The much coveted iPhone is therefore on indefinite hold. But, this much is clear, I need something to help me organize or I will quickly get fired. This week I had several appointments on the same time which I had forgotten, and it was not pretty let me tell you. I am trying to suppress the memories of people's looks of disappointment even now as we speak. In the meantime, I'm printing out my brand new hipster PDA, PocketMod. I found some Mac hacks that I'll probably use more of the time. My goal will be to print out a new pocketmod each Monday that will cover the week at hand. Each pocketmod will have: week at a glance, month at a glance, and Monday-Saturday daily calendars.
A Game A Month
Since posting about Crayon Physics the other day, I found out that the game is available in prototype, and is currently being expanded to a suped up version called Crayon Physics Deluxe. An hour ago, my son and I downloaded it and went nuts on it. Now, as always, I've got 15 tabs open with information about either the game or the developer. One thing I found that was interesting to me was an interview with the developer, Petri Purho, in which he explains a year-long experiment of his to "create a new game every month." Crayon Physics came out of the project, and the immense popularity of the game led him to expand the prototype (what he now calls the original) into Crayon Physics Deluxe, which has many more levels and better physics. Reading the interview, I was reminded of my days as a poet in which I also set out experiments like these. For one summer, I wrote a new poem every day, for instance, largely inspired by William Stafford who basically wrote a new poem every day of his life. The idea is that inspiration is really not a sufficient support for the life of a poet. It requires commitment, devotion, routine, practice and mainly just brute force. You've got to squeeze those poems out of you. I think the same should apply to my scientific work, though I've been disappointed this new semester with my inability to balance family life, teaching and the existing research projects. But I am going to make such a goal for 2008. My goal is to have 6 working drafts of papers by December 31, 2008. That's one new paper every two months. We will see if that is indeed attainable. The ones I have right now will not count (the three chapters from teh dissertation), but I will count the paper I have on methamphetamine since it's not currently in written form. But all the others will need to go from idea to implementation to results to writeup in 12 months time.
Interactive Poverty Map
A very interesting map of the US with various poverty and population statistics overlaid. Mississippi, my old stomping grounds, is number one in terms of poverty -- 21.3% of the population lives at or below the federal poverty line (I think that's what the statistic is, anyway), and 30.9% of all children live in poverty (ranking it second in the country). It also has a large senior citizen poverty rate. It'd be interesting to see this statistic over time so we could see the trends.
What I'm Reading
We subscribe to the NYT for the weekends only, so you can imagine my frustration when it not only did not come yesterday, but it did not come today. Not having Saturday's paper, I can do. Not having Sunday's paper, and I'm giving some NYT person at the help desk a piece of my mind. Not really. I'm sure it has something to do with the fact that I overlooked the bill in the stack of bills and didn't realize I hadn't mailed it until after I got an bill saying I was late. Nevertheless, here's some of the articles I'm reading from today's paper.
1. Renters feel the effects of the mortgage problems. One in eight foreclosures are "non-owner occupied." So many renters are losing their homes, despite the fact they are dutifully paying their rent, because the owner is unable to pay the mortgage. I suppose this means the owner has a contract with his tenants that locks in the price, making it impossible to raise the price to cover his mortgage payments.
2. The guy driving the government's case against Barry Bonds is a special agent for the IRS with an interesting story, and apparently with significant ability to get steroid users to confess.
3. A good summary of the recent generation of capital punishment studies by economists and law professors. The article does a good job of showing to the reader that many, recent, sophisticated econometric studies show a deterrence effect. Joanna Shepherd and Paul Rubin of Emory are the two whose works I am most familiar with, and they have done several clever papers using natural experiments in the implementation of capital punishment (I'm mainly thinking of the moratorium on capital punishment during the mid-1970s), and they consistently have found a deterrence effect. And of course, in theory, there should be an effect. As the article notes, the more expensive an action becomes, the lower the demand for it there is. To quote Wolfers in the article, to say anything else is to be labeled an imbecile. So no one on the dissenting side rejects the theoretical idea of the law of demand. Rather, they argue that because there are so few executions in the first place, it is difficult empirically to get enough variation in executions over time and across the country to estimate the empirical model reliably. In other words, the difficulty is not that theoretical, but empirical. It is difficult to estimate the equations because the number of executions are so small, and Wolfers and Donohue in particular believe the estimates that are picked up are just too large as to be implausible. I have not followed this debate super, super closely so I don't have an opinion about the studies.
4. Most dangerous cities in America vs. the fattest.
5. Slashfilm reports their predictions of who will play the parts of Superman, Flash, Green Lantern, and Talia Ghul in the upcoming Justice League movie. No mention of Batman.
1. Renters feel the effects of the mortgage problems. One in eight foreclosures are "non-owner occupied." So many renters are losing their homes, despite the fact they are dutifully paying their rent, because the owner is unable to pay the mortgage. I suppose this means the owner has a contract with his tenants that locks in the price, making it impossible to raise the price to cover his mortgage payments.
2. The guy driving the government's case against Barry Bonds is a special agent for the IRS with an interesting story, and apparently with significant ability to get steroid users to confess.
3. A good summary of the recent generation of capital punishment studies by economists and law professors. The article does a good job of showing to the reader that many, recent, sophisticated econometric studies show a deterrence effect. Joanna Shepherd and Paul Rubin of Emory are the two whose works I am most familiar with, and they have done several clever papers using natural experiments in the implementation of capital punishment (I'm mainly thinking of the moratorium on capital punishment during the mid-1970s), and they consistently have found a deterrence effect. And of course, in theory, there should be an effect. As the article notes, the more expensive an action becomes, the lower the demand for it there is. To quote Wolfers in the article, to say anything else is to be labeled an imbecile. So no one on the dissenting side rejects the theoretical idea of the law of demand. Rather, they argue that because there are so few executions in the first place, it is difficult empirically to get enough variation in executions over time and across the country to estimate the empirical model reliably. In other words, the difficulty is not that theoretical, but empirical. It is difficult to estimate the equations because the number of executions are so small, and Wolfers and Donohue in particular believe the estimates that are picked up are just too large as to be implausible. I have not followed this debate super, super closely so I don't have an opinion about the studies.
4. Most dangerous cities in America vs. the fattest.
5. Slashfilm reports their predictions of who will play the parts of Superman, Flash, Green Lantern, and Talia Ghul in the upcoming Justice League movie. No mention of Batman.
Saturday, November 17, 2007
The Female Condom
The female condom has not caught on, despite the public health importance of such a device. The need for a female condom is important because of the different transmission rates for sexually transmitted diseases. The male-to-female transmission rate is higher than the female-to-male transmission rate because vaginal receptive intercourse is riskier than vaginal insertive intercourse. To complicate matters even more, the sensual costs vary. For men, wearing a condom lowers the sensual pleasure of vaginal insertive intercourse, whereas a male condom has virtually no effect on the sensual pleasure of a woman. That said, the "benefits" of safesex skew towards females, but the "costs" of safesex skew towards males. If men aren't all that concerned about the safety of their partners, that will suggest that in the population, men will wear condoms less often, thus putting women at risk.
And you can imagine that this problem intensifies in areas where female civil rights are not protected. I'm thinking mainly of married women in developing countries. If a woman suspects her husband is unfaithful, she is unable to negotiate a condom to be worn during either her sex with him, or when he is having sex with his mistress(es). On the latter, she has no way to monitor his activities, and in fact even bringing up the matter of him having safesex with his mistress is probably an impossible conversation to have, even though she would prefer him to wear a condom with every sexual encounter he has with other women in extramarital sexual relationships. Condom use falls dramatically for married people, but if a wife suspects her husband is unfaithful, requesting a condom be worn during marital intercourse is basically a not-so-subtle way of accusing the husband of having extra-marital sex. In some parts of the world, such accusations could result in significant domestic violent retaliation, and if female rights are not protected whereby a wife could file for divorce or the husband be held criminally liable for domestic violence, her threat position is weakened to such a point wherein it is optimal for her to roll the dice and have risky, unprotected sex with the husband she suspects of having an extramarital affair.
The female condom would help deal with this problem. It would put the decision squarely on the female, who is really the person paying the price for unsafe sex. A female condom removes the problem of achieving cooperation with the husband - and you can imagine that cooperation is going to break down more often with the least altruistic husbands, who are probably by definition the men having extra-marital affairs. But a female condom would not address the signalling problem mentioned earlier. A female condom, if discovered by the husband, would indicate the woman believes her husband is unfaithful, and then would trigger the violent response. Apparently, the failure of the female condom to catch on in the world is due mainly to this design flaw - female condoms are not secretive. That is, when a woman is wearing one, her partners knows. It has apparently only caught on among prostitutes.
Therefore it is encouraging to see scientists working on a second generation female condom that solves this problem. The new one will hopefully be secretive, thus enabling married and cohabiting women to protect themselves both from STD risk and the violent repercussions of their husbands. In fact, they have one such prototype, but it is currently held up at the FDA. You can read about it here.
And you can imagine that this problem intensifies in areas where female civil rights are not protected. I'm thinking mainly of married women in developing countries. If a woman suspects her husband is unfaithful, she is unable to negotiate a condom to be worn during either her sex with him, or when he is having sex with his mistress(es). On the latter, she has no way to monitor his activities, and in fact even bringing up the matter of him having safesex with his mistress is probably an impossible conversation to have, even though she would prefer him to wear a condom with every sexual encounter he has with other women in extramarital sexual relationships. Condom use falls dramatically for married people, but if a wife suspects her husband is unfaithful, requesting a condom be worn during marital intercourse is basically a not-so-subtle way of accusing the husband of having extra-marital sex. In some parts of the world, such accusations could result in significant domestic violent retaliation, and if female rights are not protected whereby a wife could file for divorce or the husband be held criminally liable for domestic violence, her threat position is weakened to such a point wherein it is optimal for her to roll the dice and have risky, unprotected sex with the husband she suspects of having an extramarital affair.
The female condom would help deal with this problem. It would put the decision squarely on the female, who is really the person paying the price for unsafe sex. A female condom removes the problem of achieving cooperation with the husband - and you can imagine that cooperation is going to break down more often with the least altruistic husbands, who are probably by definition the men having extra-marital affairs. But a female condom would not address the signalling problem mentioned earlier. A female condom, if discovered by the husband, would indicate the woman believes her husband is unfaithful, and then would trigger the violent response. Apparently, the failure of the female condom to catch on in the world is due mainly to this design flaw - female condoms are not secretive. That is, when a woman is wearing one, her partners knows. It has apparently only caught on among prostitutes.
Therefore it is encouraging to see scientists working on a second generation female condom that solves this problem. The new one will hopefully be secretive, thus enabling married and cohabiting women to protect themselves both from STD risk and the violent repercussions of their husbands. In fact, they have one such prototype, but it is currently held up at the FDA. You can read about it here.
Natalie Portman and Timothy Hutton scene
It's a well-known fact in my family that I love Roger Ebert's reviews. Not just merely in some kind of objective "here's-good-writing" kind of way. What I mean is, when I read his reviews, I am moved emotionally, spiritually and intellectually. He's a national treasure, or at the very least, a private treasure, and I worry about him regularly because of his poor health.
Today I came across a scene from a 1996 film entitled Beautiful Girls that got me curious. The movie stars Timothy Hutton, Matt Dillon, Mira Sorvino, Natalie Portman, Uma Thurman, Martha Plimpton, Rosie O'Donnell, and several others, and is directed by Ted Demme. I then scanned for Ebert's review, figuring that since I traditionally agree with him about 90% of the time, that he'd be a good guide to see the film. He gave it 3.5 stars, virtually guaranteeing I'd love this film. His review of it made me even more sure of that fact. Among the wonderful descriptions and observations, I found this one really great. It's classic Ebert to both notice this attribute in the movie, and to more importantly notice that that is an important attribute for a story to have.
Today I came across a scene from a 1996 film entitled Beautiful Girls that got me curious. The movie stars Timothy Hutton, Matt Dillon, Mira Sorvino, Natalie Portman, Uma Thurman, Martha Plimpton, Rosie O'Donnell, and several others, and is directed by Ted Demme. I then scanned for Ebert's review, figuring that since I traditionally agree with him about 90% of the time, that he'd be a good guide to see the film. He gave it 3.5 stars, virtually guaranteeing I'd love this film. His review of it made me even more sure of that fact. Among the wonderful descriptions and observations, I found this one really great. It's classic Ebert to both notice this attribute in the movie, and to more importantly notice that that is an important attribute for a story to have.
"What's nicest about the film is the way it treasures the good feelings people can have for one another. They emerge most tenderly in the friendship between Willie and the 13-year-old girl."Here's the scene from Beautiful Girls that piqued my curiosity. Ah, Natalie Portman. Are you really the greatest actress of my generation? Yes, I think. I think I have someone else my compete with you for that title, but I'm drawing a blank right at this moment. But she has it all. She's easy on the eyes, profoundly wonderful dramatic actress, and even comedic actress. I don't think anyone else is the full package the way she is.
Friday, November 16, 2007
The Allocation of Resources in Mixed-Race Families
Fascinating new paper by Marcos Rangel, an assistant professor at the University of Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy. From the abstract:
I'm printing it out now. This is not at all an unlikely outcome, but I need to think about it more often.
Studies have shown that differences in wage-determinant skills between blacks and whites emerge during a child’s infancy, highlighting the roles of parental characteristics and investment decisions. Exploring the genetics of skin-color and models of intrahousehold allocations, I present evidence that, controlling for observed and unobserved parental characteristics, light-skinned children are more likely to receive investments in formal education than their dark-skinned siblings. Even though not denying the importance of borrowing constraints (or other ancestry effects), this suggests that parental expectations regarding differences in the return to human capital investments may play an independent role on the persistence of earnings differentials.
I'm printing it out now. This is not at all an unlikely outcome, but I need to think about it more often.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Movies I want to see
"The Air I Breathe" looks great, Brenden Fraser's lead role notwithstanding.
And the new animated film about Iran, Persepolis.
And the new animated film about Iran, Persepolis.
American economy and Drug Smuggling
The article calls it marijuana-nomics which is now the straw that broke the camel's back. Steven Levitt, you are to blame. The article is nonetheless interesting. As the American dollar's value relative to the Canadian dollar ("Loony" apparently they call it), it's no longer profitable to take Canadian grown marijuana and smuggle it over here. The costs of production are paid in Canadian dollars, and now the profitability of moving it across the border to sell at higher relative prices in America are apparently keeping the bud there, in Canada.
With more of the Canadian-grown marijuana remaining in Canada, economists are expecting a significant increase in the domestic supply of marijuana to British Columbia's market, driving down the price of marijuana, and therefore - depending on the price elasticity of demand for marijuana - increasing consumption.
Never thought about this before. I wonder if you could use this, though, to identify the price elasticity of marijuana, since presumably this is a purely exogenous shift in the supply curve, and not demand.
Suddenly, it’s far more expensive to buy Canadian exports, legal or otherwise, and smuggling profits disappear.
“It’s very simple,” said Stephen Easton, professor of economics at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, B.C. “Canadian marijuana production costs are met in Canadian dollars, and those are worth more now.”
Previously, he said, pot growers could produce a pound of potent “B.C. bud” for about $2,000 Canadian and, with the exchange rate, smugglers buying with U.S. currency could sell it for a hefty profit south of the border. In those days, an American dollar in Canada was like a 50 percent discount card, and there’s nothing like a wholesale discount to bolster retail profits.
With more of the Canadian-grown marijuana remaining in Canada, economists are expecting a significant increase in the domestic supply of marijuana to British Columbia's market, driving down the price of marijuana, and therefore - depending on the price elasticity of demand for marijuana - increasing consumption.
Never thought about this before. I wonder if you could use this, though, to identify the price elasticity of marijuana, since presumably this is a purely exogenous shift in the supply curve, and not demand.
What I Learned Today
This post is entitled "What I Learned Today." If the teacher has had a total of 8 hours of sleep over a 2-day period, then he should not attempt to teach himself about "finite repeated games" and "infinite repeated games" with unique and multiple Nash equlibria starting at 8:30am on the morning of his 11:00am lecture. One, even if it's possible to learn the material quickly enough to teach it that day, he will be too tired to focus, even if he is working at a coffeeshop and drinking coffee by the pot. And two, even if he were well-rested, he'd probably still not be able to do it. I have no idea what I just talked to them about.
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Make Sleepy Time
Ah, evening. You have arrived. You have spread your wings over me and now I must rest. I wish. Actually, I'm finishing a paper for a conference that is next week, and since I teach all day tomorrow, there shall be little time tomorrow since tomorrow I must prepare a face to meet the faces I will meet. Sigh. In the meantime. I leave you with these tidbits.
1. Do coffeeshops discriminate against women? Maybe. A forthcoming Applied Economics article by Caitlin Myers of Middlebury College finds that controlling for the kind of drink women and men order (as women tend to order more complicated coffee drinks), women still have to wait about 20 seconds longer than men to get their order. What an interesting finding. This result goes away, for the most part, the greater the share of female staff working, suggesting it is rooted in the male employee side of things.
2. Two new books written, apparently, in response to the wave of anti-religion books by Dawkins and Hitchens. I won't read them, but I'll link to them. I laugh sometimes when I think about how my exposure to agnostic scientific reasoning has exploded since college. In fact, I think about evolution and evolutionary processes what feels like constantly. Being religious myself, it creates uncomfortable tensions, since for most of my Christian life, I've held to the more theologically traditional positions on things like the age of the earth, the impossibility of evolution, etc.
And that is it. Leon's eyes are getting heavier and heavier. I still have to brush my teeth! I leave you with my my favorite.
1. Do coffeeshops discriminate against women? Maybe. A forthcoming Applied Economics article by Caitlin Myers of Middlebury College finds that controlling for the kind of drink women and men order (as women tend to order more complicated coffee drinks), women still have to wait about 20 seconds longer than men to get their order. What an interesting finding. This result goes away, for the most part, the greater the share of female staff working, suggesting it is rooted in the male employee side of things.
2. Two new books written, apparently, in response to the wave of anti-religion books by Dawkins and Hitchens. I won't read them, but I'll link to them. I laugh sometimes when I think about how my exposure to agnostic scientific reasoning has exploded since college. In fact, I think about evolution and evolutionary processes what feels like constantly. Being religious myself, it creates uncomfortable tensions, since for most of my Christian life, I've held to the more theologically traditional positions on things like the age of the earth, the impossibility of evolution, etc.
And that is it. Leon's eyes are getting heavier and heavier. I still have to brush my teeth! I leave you with my my favorite.
How to Store DVDs
Saw this on digg. Guy takes you, step by step, on how to efficiently store your DVDs. It's only slightly worrisome that I can only see Disney/Pixar films, but whatever, I appreciate and applaud the obsession for efficiency.
Columbia Faculty have their feelings hurt
President Bollinger, of Columbia, is receiving a Larry Summers style wagging finger from his faculty. Why? Apparently because his comments made when introducing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad earlier this semester were too mean. Liberal faculty members are very selective in who should, ideologically, get the living crap rhetorically beaten out of them, and who should be coddled. Oddly enough, it correlates well with people who share their own ideologies, and they tend to want a beat down on the person when their views are orthogonal. Can I say again how glad I am I'm not in the humanities anymore?
More on Housing Blues
The New Yorker blames performance-pay, which makes hedge fund managers willing to take gambles that are good for them, bad for investors. The problem, the writer argues, is that they receive 20% of all gains to the fund they manage, but do not lose some proportion when the fund goes south. It's hard to imagine how you could structure the downside risk realistically into performance-pay. A hedge fund might receive an annual bonus of tens of millions of dollars if his fund does very well. But will he be expected to pay out tens of millions when the fund fails to do well? No, he won't, and thus the argument is that he does face the right prices. He only really faces the positive variance price, which means he can do really well once and be very wealthy, and never do well again and not lose any of that wealth. I suspect there is some truth to this. It sounds like some variation of a principlal-agency problem.
Mayor Bloomberg Adopts Roland Fryer's Cell Phone Incentive Program
Roland Fryer, an economist at Harvard, has studied the causes of low Black achievement in schooling, and because of that research and other research, he developed an inititative for NYC schools in which high achieving minority students would receive free cellphones, sporting event tickets, and other bonuses. Bloomberg has just approved it. I look forward to seeing Fryer's subsequent publications from this experiment.
A New Day
Well, last night was pretty horrible. I stayed up til 3am looking at videos on a video sharing site, pretty much all of which involved either buildings collapsing or people doing stupid stunts that nearly got them killed. It didn't help that I had a cup of coffee to drink at a dinner last night. I guess if I drink a cup of coffee at 7pm, I'll probably not go to sleep for another 6-7 hours. But now I'm awake and at work. Today's goal: finish revisions of paper I'm presenting next week at a conference. So this is just a post for some links
1. NYT reports on rising gonorrhea, syphilis and chlamydia. While a different article from the AP piece I linked to yesterday, it's basically the same story. One of the interesting trends is chlamydia. It'll be very hard to figure out if real chlamydia cases are rising, or if the rise is merely due to more vigilant testing by clinicians. Increased testing can increase reported STD cases without changing the underlying incidence - it just means that the mean and variance values of the measurement error on STD cases is falling.
2. More good news on housing. Foreclosures have almost doubled from last year. As someone trying to sell my house, I follow these stories closely, although it feels more like I'm just stopping to look at the gore and debris on a highway crash than anything else. How long does it take an economy of our size to work through these credit problems?
3. Kanye West's mom, who died over the weekend, from complications during cosmetic surgery, died at the hands of a doctor with a record of malpractice lawsuits and multiple DUI charges. Whatever the causes of her death, it's tragic. I've been thinking about the lyrics to his song, Hey Mama, a lot since learning about her death. He clearly adored her.
4. Two pieces in the news yesterday reported on some new studies by Julia Isaacs of the Brookings Institute showing Black children born into the middle class in the 1960s were more likely than whites of the same income bracket to earn less than their parents. So, generally, you observe intergernational income mobility, except among Blacks, where you see a failure to move ahead. The papers apparently don't given any explanations, only note the trends. But, one thing Isaacs mentions is the fact that Black families have less wealth in the form of assets such as homes and other real assets. So if they have the same level of income, but less wealth, then they must have a higher marginal propensity to consume rate than Whites. Question, then, is why that would be the case. What prices, constraints and otherwise do Blacks face that would make it optimal for them to consume more out of income than Whites, such that they place themselves on a lower wealth trajectory, holding income the same for both groups? A similar piece was in the WSJ today, which is from a different data source (tax data analyzed by the US Treasury). Here the findings are more generally positive - income mobility for the poorest within ten years. But the article does not appear to discuss the heterogeneity by race, which presumably the authors had if they had individual-level tax data.
5. Paul Duggan, author of the 2001 Journal of Political Economy article "More Guns, More Crime", reports on DC's gun possession ban. For thirty years, DC has had a ban on gun possession, but since then, gun-related homicides have only risen. Now, far be it from me to say that the ban caused the increase just because rates were higher after the ban than before. Maybe the rates would have been even higher without the ban. Without some kind of counter-factual experiment, we can't say. But, it's interesting nonetheless that David Mustard and John Lott studied this and found laws that allowed citizens to carry handguns was followed by statistically significant and economically meaningful declines in gun-related violence. That literature has experienced a lot of study by skeptical scholars, including Duggan, and I'm not sure if you were to do some kind of selective meta-analysis of gun studies that came out after the original Lott and Mustard (1997) paper if you'd find findings that were on net positive or negative in favor of gun control laws efficacy. But, what it does appear from the DC situation, at the very least, is that whatever the efficacy of gun control, it's a fairly small solution to a major crime problem. The real underlying causes are structural. The problem is possibly mainly caused by the drug trade, in which drug traffickers use violence to enforce contracts and expand market share. The Wire had a bit on this in season 3 when the captain legalized drugs via the "Hamsterdam" neighborhood experiment. What you saw was that drug users, rather than dealing with (for instance) robberies and competition from rivals via violence, they went to police and reported the crimes. This ultimately freed up police resources, too, for instead of harrassing sellers, police could do police work (a common theme on The Wire - what is good police work during this age of America, in which the war on drugs and the politicization of arrest data creates perverse incentives to all policemen. My personal belief is that the war on drugs creates the necessity of violence since there are no legal avenues available to drug traffickers to have their informal contracts enforced. What this does is make it necessary to make credible threats via violence against buisiness partners. There's also the need to use violence to protect real estate, or in other words, to compete with rivals. It's all very screwed up.
1. NYT reports on rising gonorrhea, syphilis and chlamydia. While a different article from the AP piece I linked to yesterday, it's basically the same story. One of the interesting trends is chlamydia. It'll be very hard to figure out if real chlamydia cases are rising, or if the rise is merely due to more vigilant testing by clinicians. Increased testing can increase reported STD cases without changing the underlying incidence - it just means that the mean and variance values of the measurement error on STD cases is falling.
2. More good news on housing. Foreclosures have almost doubled from last year. As someone trying to sell my house, I follow these stories closely, although it feels more like I'm just stopping to look at the gore and debris on a highway crash than anything else. How long does it take an economy of our size to work through these credit problems?
3. Kanye West's mom, who died over the weekend, from complications during cosmetic surgery, died at the hands of a doctor with a record of malpractice lawsuits and multiple DUI charges. Whatever the causes of her death, it's tragic. I've been thinking about the lyrics to his song, Hey Mama, a lot since learning about her death. He clearly adored her.
4. Two pieces in the news yesterday reported on some new studies by Julia Isaacs of the Brookings Institute showing Black children born into the middle class in the 1960s were more likely than whites of the same income bracket to earn less than their parents. So, generally, you observe intergernational income mobility, except among Blacks, where you see a failure to move ahead. The papers apparently don't given any explanations, only note the trends. But, one thing Isaacs mentions is the fact that Black families have less wealth in the form of assets such as homes and other real assets. So if they have the same level of income, but less wealth, then they must have a higher marginal propensity to consume rate than Whites. Question, then, is why that would be the case. What prices, constraints and otherwise do Blacks face that would make it optimal for them to consume more out of income than Whites, such that they place themselves on a lower wealth trajectory, holding income the same for both groups? A similar piece was in the WSJ today, which is from a different data source (tax data analyzed by the US Treasury). Here the findings are more generally positive - income mobility for the poorest within ten years. But the article does not appear to discuss the heterogeneity by race, which presumably the authors had if they had individual-level tax data.
5. Paul Duggan, author of the 2001 Journal of Political Economy article "More Guns, More Crime", reports on DC's gun possession ban. For thirty years, DC has had a ban on gun possession, but since then, gun-related homicides have only risen. Now, far be it from me to say that the ban caused the increase just because rates were higher after the ban than before. Maybe the rates would have been even higher without the ban. Without some kind of counter-factual experiment, we can't say. But, it's interesting nonetheless that David Mustard and John Lott studied this and found laws that allowed citizens to carry handguns was followed by statistically significant and economically meaningful declines in gun-related violence. That literature has experienced a lot of study by skeptical scholars, including Duggan, and I'm not sure if you were to do some kind of selective meta-analysis of gun studies that came out after the original Lott and Mustard (1997) paper if you'd find findings that were on net positive or negative in favor of gun control laws efficacy. But, what it does appear from the DC situation, at the very least, is that whatever the efficacy of gun control, it's a fairly small solution to a major crime problem. The real underlying causes are structural. The problem is possibly mainly caused by the drug trade, in which drug traffickers use violence to enforce contracts and expand market share. The Wire had a bit on this in season 3 when the captain legalized drugs via the "Hamsterdam" neighborhood experiment. What you saw was that drug users, rather than dealing with (for instance) robberies and competition from rivals via violence, they went to police and reported the crimes. This ultimately freed up police resources, too, for instead of harrassing sellers, police could do police work (a common theme on The Wire - what is good police work during this age of America, in which the war on drugs and the politicization of arrest data creates perverse incentives to all policemen. My personal belief is that the war on drugs creates the necessity of violence since there are no legal avenues available to drug traffickers to have their informal contracts enforced. What this does is make it necessary to make credible threats via violence against buisiness partners. There's also the need to use violence to protect real estate, or in other words, to compete with rivals. It's all very screwed up.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
I Heart Heroes
Haven't yet seen last night's Heroes, but will be watching later when I go home and unwind. I peeked and went ahead and saw what it was about, though. Does that make me a bad person? I have no qualms about reading reviews of movies that even give away the ending, seeing trailers that are so detailed they effectively give away the ending, or reading about Heroes in the NBC forums and finding all the juicy plot details beforehand. My wife, on the other hand, is the very opposite. She won't even watch a trailer for a movie that she has about a 1% probability of ever seeing. She values even the option of information about marginal films. Incredible. I've tried to be more closeted like her, but I just don't care. So I know basically what happens last night, and it only makes me want to see last night's episode even more. I'm sure there's a theoretical model in there somewhere just waiting to be written down.
Update It's 1:20 in the morning and I'm still awake. What started as an innocent trip to the backdoor to let the cat out turned into a long stay at the computer looking at old UFC videos on youtube. That was an hour and a half ago. I have also watched Heroes tonight and was pleased by the experience. I decided to move this post up to the top, as and leave the rambling nonsense post alone down below. Oh Writer's Strike. How I abhor you. I am sympathetic to your cause, but your blunt instrument of a strike is threatening to destroy my precious television shows. Indeed, The Office goes on reruns after Thursday, gasp! I have to play my geek card here, though. I am looney tunes over the show Heroes. Like, write sonnets about the show crazy for it. It's like a love letter written for me. If the show is cancelled, I will go gently into that good night having tasted of the sticky opium that is that show.
Update It's 1:20 in the morning and I'm still awake. What started as an innocent trip to the backdoor to let the cat out turned into a long stay at the computer looking at old UFC videos on youtube. That was an hour and a half ago. I have also watched Heroes tonight and was pleased by the experience. I decided to move this post up to the top, as and leave the rambling nonsense post alone down below. Oh Writer's Strike. How I abhor you. I am sympathetic to your cause, but your blunt instrument of a strike is threatening to destroy my precious television shows. Indeed, The Office goes on reruns after Thursday, gasp! I have to play my geek card here, though. I am looney tunes over the show Heroes. Like, write sonnets about the show crazy for it. It's like a love letter written for me. If the show is cancelled, I will go gently into that good night having tasted of the sticky opium that is that show.
Dirt Bike 2, you bastard
Dirt Bike 2 is the most popular game on Free Online Games Dot Com. This game is addicting. Since I basically die everytime I get to level 2, and the game has no ability to save, it's a very frustrating and painful addiction. I wonder what level 3 is like? Oh yeah, I forgot I'll never know because I always die at that stupid second ramp on level 2 and then start over at level 1, driving myself nuts trying to get over the second rock which I can only do one out of every three tries. Why am I cursed with being mediocre at the things I'm obsessed about?
UFC Glory
I still remember the first time I heard about Ultimate Fighting Championship. I was in college reading Details magazine, and came across an apologetic of the new sport. The article was well-written, and explained the high drama of the Brazilian ju-jitsu fighters from the Gracie family versus every other style imaginable. (The article is not this one by David Plotz, at least I don't think, but it's also a good defense). Tonight, while taking out the cat, I waited for him to get back from doing his business and saw another article re-telling how it went from what it was in the first days to what it is now, which is now more of a pay-per-view juggernaut. I leave you, kind reader, with this most excellent fight - which after having seen it many years ago, was burned into my brain. In the end, Keith Hackney had to drop out of the tournament because the pummelling he gave Emmanuel Yarborough, the 620 pound sumo wrestler, fractured his forearm.
Update Youtube has tons of great, vintage UFC fights. This one, which I'd never seen, is between Royce Gracie and Dan Severn. Gracie is on his back most of the fight, which means very little since Gracie's moves from that position are apparently just as lethal. I think it may end at 2:52. You can see Gracie's hand on Severn's wrist, and at that point it looks like he has in him some kind of lock that results shortly thereafter in Severn tapping out.
Update Youtube has tons of great, vintage UFC fights. This one, which I'd never seen, is between Royce Gracie and Dan Severn. Gracie is on his back most of the fight, which means very little since Gracie's moves from that position are apparently just as lethal. I think it may end at 2:52. You can see Gracie's hand on Severn's wrist, and at that point it looks like he has in him some kind of lock that results shortly thereafter in Severn tapping out.
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