Shutting Down

Dear Friends and Lurkers - once again, I'm going to close down the blog. This particular site is the third incarnation of my blog and I'm extremely attached to it. I love the people who stop by on a regular basis most of all, but I also just like writing into the maw of the web. But, I also like it too much given all that's going on right now, so for now, I'll be closing it down. If the past is at all a good sign of the future, I'll turn it on again, but hopefully it won't be for a long time. I'm nearing the end of my coursework, I'm starting to hone in on research, and I'm taking on more responsibilities, generally speaking, at home and at school. That being the case, since I can't seem to harness my energy and output on here, prudence in this context means simply shutting it down. I'll leave this message up for at least a few days, but then I'll have Josiah erase this domain name, as well as the archives.

Extra Credit: Hayek

I'm debating about whether to assign an extra credit assignment to my class to aid those students who on either of the two tests we've had so far did not do as well as they had wished. I've been generous with the curves so far, but I was thinking to myself - it's so easy to get lost in the calculations and the curves for this class. They may leave here and never really understand the few basic things I want them to understand - most notably, comparative advantage and how markets work. So, I'm considering offering a simple extra credit assignment that would allow a person's lowest grade on a test to be pushed upward some amount (I'm not sure how much to make this - enough to help some desperate soul is all I know, but not sure what that should mean). And I was considering assigning F.A. Hayek's "The Use of Knowledge in Society" from the AER 1945. Probably one of the more important papers published last century, and secondly, one of the least technical. But, I still wonder if it's maybe too tough for these guys, most of whom are freshmen. But, at the same time, it's an extra credit assignment. It's not mandatory. I keep going back and forth on it.

Music

Wal-mart's recent entry into the point-to-point distribution of singles is interesting. First, iTunes was selling songs for 99 cents a song. Now Wal-mart is selling songs for 88 cents a song. I also read that roughly 50 (or was it 500???) new suits were brought against pirates trading songs illegally. And while I don't have numbers on this, from what I can gather, this point-to-point distribution of songs digitally is a healthy new market for music.

Chabon Wrote Spiderman 2

Over at Mesh's crib, I learned from Amy that Michael Chabon wrote the screenplay for this summer's sure-to-be-kick-a-awesome Spiderman 2. Let me just take this moment to say to the reading public - if ever you believed that because I'm always talking about comic books, movies and economics, that I therefore much be an authority in any of those three categories, please know that that would be false. I had no idea Michael Chabon wrote this movie, and if I wasn't so absolutely ecstatic at learning this, I would be embarassed and ashamed.

Roulette Scam

Three gamblers were arrested after having won nearly 2 million pounds betting on roulette. They won 300,000 pounds one night, came back the next night, and walked out with 1.2 million pounds. They are suspected of using a device that enabled them to calculate the speed of the ball as it traveled around the roulette wheel. A laser measure the time it takes the ball to pass through the same point twice, from which a computer calculates the "decaying orbit" of the ball. This allows the better to determine the slot - within a given range - in which the ball will land. It cannot determine the exact stopping point, it moves the probabilities closer to the better. They've been able to do this, evidentally, in laboratory settings, but this would be the first time it was done successfully in an actual casino. You can read about it here, but below, I'll post the article's simple breakdown of how the scam works.

The Lifecycle of Economists

Galenson and Weinberg do the study again, but this time studying economists - specifically Nobel Laureates. Again, the comparison is between conceptual work and the type of work where experience affects the peak ages when the best work is done. Here is the article. I'm reading it now, but I think the more conceptual work is the more theoretical work - your Paul Samuelson's who basically invent neoclassical economics with their Harvard dissertations - and the type of work that depends on experience is the applied empirical, econometrics work. For poetry, it would undoubtedly be someone like T.S. Eliot who at the age of his mid-20s, wrote the excellent "Love Song of J. Alred Prufrock." (I was wondering, too, if in theological work, you saw a similar breakdown. John Calvin wrote the first edition of Institutes of the Christian Religion when he was a wee lad).

Age and Work

Russell Roberts (scroll down to March 24, "Child Labor" (he doesn't have permalinks), mentions how the technological shifts occuring in the marketplace are affecting the age at which workers do work. The Internet, for instance, for a variety of reasons, seems to now be a classic case in point. Whereas three to four years ago, a person could make a great living designing webpages for firms, now that work is going overseas and/or to teenagers. It's not uncommon to find the excellent web designers who are 14 years old, or even younger.

Spartan tanking

Although it can't touch Gigli's dramatic fall from grace, which experienced an 82% fall in revenues in its second week, and was pulled from approximately 1700 theaters by its third week, Mamet's new film, Spartan is nonetheless itching to try. It's revenues were down 60% in its second weekend. But, it also is only in a mere 800 theaters (compared to Gigli which opened on over 2000 theaters). It takes time for a movie to finds its audience, and a big opening is one way to do that. Roger Ebert also praised the film, giving it four stars.

When David Mamet's films work, they're fantastic. And even when they don't quite work, like The Spanish Prisoner, they're still wonderful to behold. Glengary Glen Ross is fantastic, and The Heist is a great genre piece. But, his an acquired taste it seems like. Not everyone likes his storytelling, and particularly how he writes dialogue.

China's Closing Down Domestic Weblogs

Yan is the propriestor of Glutter and is a Chinese citizen (I think). He notes that the Chinese government has banned all domestically run Typepad weblogs. He writes, "China has been systematically shutting down blog servers within the country in the last weeks as a means to tighten up information. So far foreign blog servers has avoided detection. Is this the beginning of even more vigilant crackdown of information?" You can read more about what is going on here and here. Please circulate news of this. Blogging disperses information more quickly than regular news media, and in many ways, can actually drive what the regular news media covers. I've sent an email to Matt Drudge, so perhaps it'll get picked up by someone.