According to the good folks at Life After the Oil Crash, we are at the end of the oil age and the end of suburbia. Wasn't there a bet like this in the past?

The site has some insightful graphs like this one:

Graph: The Energy Curve of History?
Source: Community Solution

What a joke.

On Saturday, April 2, India and Pakistan begin a series of 6 one-day cricket matches. One-day matches are much more lively than the notoriously slow "test" cricket matches. A one-day match takes only about 8 hours including the lunch break (one team bats before lunch, the other after); a test match typically run five days (each team bats twice through its lineup). By limiting each batting team to a fixed number of deliveries to swing at (normally 300), one-day cricket radically reduces the incentive to bat defensively. In test cricket, where deliveries are unlimited and where -- unlike baseball -- the batsman needn't run once he strikes the ball if he doesn't think it safe to do so, I once saw England's captain Nasser Hussain bat so defensively that he made only one run off his first thirty deliveries.

It is difficult for Americans to fathom how popular is India-Pakistan cricket. But Ramchandra Guha's superb book A Corner of a Foreign Field (previously mentioned here) gives a useful statistic (p. xiii):

When [Indian star Sachin] Tendulkar is batting against the Pakistani swing-bowler Wasim Akram, the television audience exceeds the entire population of Europe.

It's so popular among NRIs (non-resident Indians) that an Indian restaurant here in St. Louis (where I picked up takeout tonight) is showing all six matches live on a big-screen projection tv at $7 per head per match -- even though the matches start at 10:25pm local time!

For big ticket items, this might make sense. However, the Business Week article shares the following:

The IRS can apply a list of nine indicators that might prove whether someone's online auctions amount to a business. These indicators include evidence that the taxpayer depends on the income, acts in a businesslike manner, or puts enough time and effort into the activity to suggest a profit motive.

Who sells on e-bay without a profit motive? Good sellers on e-bay get reputational benefits and therefore are likely to act businesslike. The "depends on income" requirement might not hold even for those who sell big ticket items on e-bay.

Perhaps I've just missed it, but here's a feature of the recent bankruptcy reform legislation that seems to have passed unremarked. My bankruptcy attorney neighbor tells me that the most significant feature of the legislation is a new requirement that attorneys certify financial statements that their clients make. For example, at the risk of penalty to themselves, attorneys would have to attest that their clients have no hidden assets. My neighbor predicts this will have a chilling effect on bankruptcy attorneys' willingness to take on clients. Indeed, he plans to switch his field of practice.

Howard Dean is back in the news; here's his take on Rick Santorum:

Dean joked that Santorum should "stay in Virginia," although he added that the senator was "too much of a right-winger for Virginia. How about Venezuela?"

What a moron--Venezuela is run by the LEFTIST Hugo Chavez. From The Economist:

Mr Chávez, a former army officer, recently declared himself to be a Fidelista, a follower, that is, of Cuba's communist president, Fidel Castro, his closest ally.

Fascinating

Courtesy of WRTG Economics a rather busy graph of oil prices from 1947-2003.

Here's an open directory full of oil graphs.

Another picture from InflationData.com.

According to Reuters:

The New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority on Thursday awarded the National Football League's Jets the right to build a stadium on property the transportation agency owns on Manhattan's West Side.

The Jets' $720 million bid to build above MTA rail yards was chosen over a $760 million offer from Cablevision Systems Corp. and a $1.05 billion bid from TransGas Energy Systems, helping boost the city's chances of hosting the 2012 Olympics.

If the Jets were going to build the stadium themselves, then I wouldn't have a problem. However, that is not the case - the city of New York and the state of New York will kick in $300 million each.

Total predicted cost of the stadium? Drum roll....$1.9 billion (I almost typed million) "instead" of the paltry $1.4 billion initial estimate. I would tack on at least 15% to the $1.9 billion estimate to get the final cost.

All of this to help NYC get the 2012 Olympics. AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH

Such as scientists debating whether there is enough dandruff in the atmosphere to change weather patterns. From this story:

Could dandruff be altering the world?s climate? Along with fur, algae, pollen, fungi, bacteria, viruses and various other ?bio-aerosols? wafting around in the atmosphere, it may well be.

A global study has found that tiny fragments of biological detritus are a major component of the atmosphere, controlling the weather and forming a previously hidden microbial metropolis in the skies. Besides their climatic influence, they may even be spreading diseases across the globe.

Great.

Over at the NSF The History of the Universe in 60 Seconds.

Better than some other expenditures.

I imagine there will be light blogging from the DoL crew this weekend and early next week as several of us will be attending the Association of Private Enterprise Education meeting in Orlando from Sunday-Tuesday. This includes myself (I'm the APEE President this year), Frank, Josh and Larry. The hotel does have wi-fi so I may get out a post or two.

This begs the question: What the heck are Mike, Ralph and Craig doing not going to the APEE meeting? I say next year we ALL go. Mark your calendars: April 2-4, 2006 in Las Vegas.

Everybody will have heard by now that Terri Schiavo has died. I sure hope her husband was right and she didn't feel a thing, because dying of dehydration/starvation can not be the best way to go.

I haven't blogged on this because this is a very hard case. My knee doesn't jerk one way or the other on this one, and frankly I'm suspect of anyone who thinks this is an easy call. (Initially I leaned toward the husband's side of the argument but have been swayed by the family's side in the end. Still I don't know how I would decide if I were in charge.)

One thing really has bugged me though about the debate. I've heard many people who are statists (leftists, modern liberals or whatever you want to call them) criticize Congressional efforts to save her from this fate. On what basis can modern statists possibly say that Congress should not be involved in deciding whether this woman lives or dies? This is the same Congress that they applaud when it regulates every aspect of our freakin' lives. If they don't mind Congress deciding how much water we can use in our toilets, then jeez do they really have anything to complain about here?

that academe is predominantly left of center if not downright statist. However, being in the business school and in a department with only one person who might even try to argue non-libertarian positions, my department evidently flies in the face of the norm.

A study by Stanley Rothman, S. Robert Lichter, and Neil Nevitte, in the BEPress suggests that the academy is predominantly Democrat/Liberal [I like the term statist] and that ideological discrimination might result. I wonder what the hallway discussions are like in the other buildings on campus. I know on our floor, we love talking economics but we definitely do not default to claims like "the government ought to."

I haven't had a chance to read the paper, but here is the abstract:

This article first examines the ideological composition of American university faculty and then tests whether ideological homogeneity has become self-reinforcing. A randomly based national survey of 1643 faculty members from 183 four-year colleges and universities finds that liberals and Democrats outnumber conservatives and Republicans by large margins, and the differences are not limited to elite universities or to the social sciences and humanities. A multivariate analysis finds that, even after taking into account the effects of professional accomplishment, along with many other individual characteristics, conservatives and Republicans teach at lower quality schools than do liberals and Democrats. This suggests that complaints of ideologically-based discrimination in academic advancement deserve serious consideration and further study. The analysis finds similar effects based on gender and religiosity, i.e., women and practicing Christians teach at lower quality schools than their professional accomplishments would predict.

Are college coaches paid so much because college athletes are paid so little? I don’t believe in the wages fund, but I do think even a neoclassical model can hypothesize a link.

When the NCAA attempted to restrict assistant coach’s salaries, the courts determined that this violated the Sherman Act. (I don’t think the NCAA ever attempted to restrict the salaries of head coaches.) However, the same court finds no problem with restricting college athletes to a hot meal and a room. Nevertheless, colleges compete for exceptional athletes with offers of hidden perks and a discounted product, a college education that many players don’t want. A true amateur sport would have amateur coaches instead of million dollar managers who profit from players who are paid less than their marginal worth to the university. Underpaid athletes support a hierarchy of wealthy beneficiaries that shamelessly espouse the benefits of amateur sports. This hypocrisy promotes fraud and cheating in the college recruitment of athletes and detracts from the university’s educational mission.

Why doesn't the NCAA restrict coaches to room, board and tuition?

Lou Dobbs hosts Moneyline each night on CNN. He may be the most dangerous man on TV. Single handedly he is trying to undo the work of all mainstream economists since Adam Smith. He is a mercantilist who launches a nightly tirade against free trade, multinational firms and outsourcing.

His biography at CNN lists numerous awards and prominent positions in financial news operations. It also indicates he has an economics degree from Harvard. Something just don’t seem right here. Is it possible that this protectionist Neanderthal is really a product of Harvard? If so, Larry Summers is doing God’s work.

An interesting article examining Lou Dobbs can be found at the Columbia Journalism Review.

Also from today's Chronicle, more commencement speakers:

Case Western Reserve University: Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC's Hardball With Chris Matthews

Ferrum College: U.S. Sen. John W. Warner, a Republican, of Virginia

Gannon University: The Rev. Edward A. Malloy, president of the University of Notre Dame

Hampden-Sydney College: U.S. Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican, of West Virginia

Nichols College: Arun Gandhi, a grandson of Mohandas K. Gandhi and a co-founder of the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence

Portland State University: Neal Keny-Guyer, chief executive officer of Mercy Corps

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute: U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, a Democrat, of New York

Rust College: The Rev. Gregory V. Palmer, bishop of the Iowa Episcopal Area of the United Methodist Church

Stanford University: Steve Jobs, chief executive officer of Apple Computer Inc. and of Pixar Animation Studios

University of Notre Dame: Vartan Gregorian, president of the Carnegie Corporation and a former president of Brown University and the New York Public Library

University of Redlands: James R. Appleton, president of the university

University of Rio Grande and Rio Grande Community College: U.S. Rep. Robert W. Ney, a Republican, of Ohio

University of Texas at Austin: Sara Martinez Tucker, president and chief executive officer of the Hispanic Scholarship Fund

University of Texas at Dallas: Russell A. Hulse, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and visiting professor at the university

Winston-Salem State University: Janet Reno, former U.S. attorney general

I wonder what Chris Mathews will have to say - he lost me years ago. Janet Reno can discuss when court orders should be obeyed (Teri Schiavo) and when court orders should not be obeyed (Elian Gonzales) by the executive branch. Hillary can try to explain how the left is grounded in an actual philsophy that is not zero-sum in nature.

It might be interesting to hear the grandson of Gandhi, but I wonder if we are getting too far removed from the original fountainhead. So far, the most interesting speaker might be Steve Jobs, but I wonder how many Stanford kids will be wearing I-Pods during his speach.

From today's Chronicle of Higher Education (reg req'd) comes a story that the professors at Si Tanka University in South Dakota are threatening to walk off the job because they haven't been paid since February. The school failed to qualify for federal funds and evidently faces severe fiscal constraints.

However, the interesting tidbit was at the very end of the story:

Mr. Fryberger said faculty members had agreed to issue grades for the semester by the end of this week, so that students could have complete transcripts if they chose to move on.

Wait a second. Students will have "complete transcripts" for classes they did not complete? Would that we could all do this. Are the students buying into this? Probably, if they are myopic. However, the administration/professors at Si Tanka are doing their students a disservice.

Cochran's famous phrase as OJ Simpson's attorney was, of course, his comment on the bloody glove: "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit.'' Regarding the phrase, he later commented, "I'd like to have an epitaph other than that." To help Cochran out, here's my suggestion for an alternative epitaph:

He spoke in rhyme; Juice did no time.

Have a better one? I've enabled comments.

Addendum: My previous suggestion was "If the body's calm, you must embalm," but that doesn't really speak to the man's accomplishments the way an epitaph should.

This article describes how firms should price their product. In the introduction is this gem:

How much should you charge customers for your product or service? This, of course, depends on the nature of your business. There are no specific formulas. You must do some research to find an appropriate price for your specific product.

Yet, we teach price theory assuming that there are specific formulas, specifically Marginal Revenue should equal Marginal Cost. Always. The trick is accurately measuring marginal revenue and marginal cost.

The article goes on to offer a few other ideas:

"Make a list of similar products or services and how much other companies charge for them."

This sounds like "know your demand," which is one component of determining profit maximizing price and quantity. However, simply knowing what other firms are charging, i.e., market price, does not necessarily tell the firm owner what marginal revenue will be, unless the firm's demand is perfectly elastic.

The next step in determining price:

"Review Your Costs...the cost of goods or raw materials, the amount of staff time (including your time) it will take to produce the product, as well as the amount of administrative time to invoice your customers and collect payments. You also need to include general operating expenses and administrative costs (or G&A) -- when calculating the cost of your product or service."

Hmmm...the first set of costs are part of marginal cost, which we teach should be considered in profit maximizing output and pricing decisions. However, general operating expenses and administrative costs sound like fixed cost. Economists claim that fixed cost have no impact on the profit maximizing quantity-price decisions, and to consider fixed costs will guarantee that the firm owner will not maximize profit.

Finally, the article suggests a rather ad hoc markup over cost:

"Mark up for Profit...The amount of the markup varies by industry, service, potential liability and general overhead. Generally, you should at least double your fixed costs to get a selling price. In retail, this is known as "keystone" pricing. When retailers apply a discount of 10-40 percent for a sale on their products, they still make a profit because they used keystone pricing."

The optimal markup does vary by industry, according to the Lerner condition, but the "doubling of fixed costs" doesn't sound like what we teach in firm theory. Once again, the general overhead (fixed cost) is being used to determine price, which is incorrect. The so-called "keystone" pricing may yield positive profit, but would not pass muster in my price theory course.

I wonder who is "more right" and who is "less wrong" - the article's author or us economists? I will, of course, go with the economic theory, but perhaps the difficulties in accurately measuring demand (and hence marginal revenue) and cost (and hence marginal cost) are so insurmountable that firm owners resort to rules-of-thumb. I fight my brother (who is a small business owner) in this area all the time.

I wonder if the article provides a net positive or not.

Orin Kerr at The Volokh Conspiracy encourages readers to become organ donors. While I am an organ donor and would like to encourage you to become one as well, the economist in me knows altruism is not going to solve the organ shortage problem - financial incentives will.

Woman Sells Her Name on EBay for $15K

A mother of five put her name up for bid on eBay and got an offer. Terri Iligan, 33, sold her name to Internet site Golden Palace Casino, and she will officially be named goldenpalace.com once the legal work is complete.

The casino paid $15,199 for the name.

[Nod to Marginal Revolution for the post title.]

brings us a Space Mountain car from Disneyland.

Hurry!! Time left: 1 day 16 hours, 7-day listing, Ends Mar-31-05 11:02:43 PST

---

Also a 727 Limo for US $300,600.00?

pictures from the movie Taxi Driver are available here.

Somewhat interesting.

And the 100 hoaxes of all time...some I actually remember!!

In London, UK, McDonald's restaurants are now offering a "curry chicken sandwich". Only 99p! I didn't try it.

But I did go to hear the Indian percussionist Trilok Gurtu at the Royal Albert Hall on Saturday night. The program was called Gujarat -- A Celebration. (Gujarat is a western Indian state; the most common surname among Gujarati-Americans is Patel. So many motels in America are owned by Gujaratis that people speak jokingly about the "Patel motel cartel".) Disappointingly, Gurtu's band played only two songs! But the rest of the program, folk songs and dancing, was entertaining enough. And to see the interior of the Albert Hall was alone worth the price of admission.

A new NBER working paper finds:

"Segregation in schools might have declined had it not been for the actions of federal courts."

This is the first post on this blog concerning the Schiavo story. The reason may be that we have conflicting feelings on how this should be managed or that we see very little in the current situation that has to do with economics. Steven Landsburg, however, can find economic principles everywhere. Read his take on the Schiavo story in Imagine Terri Were a Toaster … and Tyler Cowen’s response at Marginal Revolution

Hat tip to Trent McBride at Catallarchy

60 Mintutes ran a story about Dean Karnazes and Pam Reed on Sunday. They are among the leading "ultra marathoners" in the world. 60 Minutes made a big deal of the fact that women are competitive with men at the elite level in this sport--a point I made some time ago in this post.

Dean Karnazes won last year's Badlands Ultramarathon (135 miles) and Pam has won it twice before. Dean had been known for having run longer than anyone else ever--262 miles. But it just broke today that Pam Reed ran 300 miles !

[Update: It took her about 80 hours.]

We may have a frontrunner for the next Economic Idiot Award (it's depressing to think there's at least one deserving recipient daily). Daniel Sneider of the San Jose Mercury News writes (registration required):

"This is unprecedented territory, C. Fred Bergsten, the director of the Institute for International Economics, told the Council on Foreign Relations. He takes a decidely darker view of the future.

The U.S. external deficit is ``a reflection of the fact that we save virtually nothing in this economy,'' Bergsten argued. Household savings are literally at zero. The federal government is borrowing heavily, and the proposed Social Security privatization will pile up even more debt, he said.

To keep going, the United States borrows about $5 billion every working day from the rest of the world. ``If we didn't get it, we'd have no investment, we'd have no growth, we'd have no productivity, we'd have no nothing,'' Bergsten said."

Assuming Bergsten is quoted correctly, he should head an Institute for Flat Earth Economics. It's just silly to think that if we didn't have the $5B inflow from the rest of the world that we'd have no investment, growth, or productivity. Static-thinking Bergsten apparently cannot fathom the possibility that, absent access to cheap foreign capital, Americans just might save more on their own.

NOTE: It isn't even clear that the premise of Bergsten's statement--that Americans "save virtually nothing"--is correct. For example, David Malpass argues otherwise in yesterday's WSJ (subscription required). A longer discussion will have to wait for a future post ...

I've been an admirer of (and small donor to) FIRE; I think it does good work combatting silliness such as campus speech codes. Thus, I was quite surprised to find that the current issue of FIRE Quarterly contains an article advocating external pressure by the NYCLU on Hamilton College for disinviting Ward "Little Eichmanns" Churchill to its campus. (Link here; scroll down to page 9.) The article is by FIRE board member Michael Myers; here's the salient part:

Initially, Hamilton College officials stood
by the invitation for Churchill to speak on
campus, although they had also insisted
on “balance” through a panel. But as censorial
pressures mounted from politicians,
media demagogues, and angry donors,
college officials folded and canceled the
event altogether, citing death threats that
had been called in. The NYCLU fell silent,
but even the New York Post, which had
itself been railing against Professor
Churchill and his scheduled talk, faulted
college officials for their cowardice for
using “crank calls” as the basis for punking
out on their pretense of support for
academic freedom and free speech.
The answer I got from my own call to the
NYCLU’s legal director as to why they had
said nothing in this episode was that they
had indeed been quiet about the
Churchill controversy—but they had now
gotten “an op-ed opportunity.” A free
speech organization need not await an
“op-ed opportunity” or even a client to
speak up for free speech—especially
when the governor of New York was pressuring
Hamilton College officials about
the speaking invitation to Churchill.

Hamilton College is a private institution; it can invite and disinvite anyone it pleases to speak on its campus. Other than rebuking NY politicians for hectoring Hamilton, the NYCLU should have no say in Hamilton's affairs. There are, after all, civil liberties other than freedom of speech (which only applies to government in any case); among the others is Hamilton College's freedom to associate with whomever it chooses.

Writing the last post on John Snow reminded me of Doug Adie, one of my professors at Ohio University. His dissertation committee was comprised of three eventual winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics - Friedman, Stigler, and Mundell.

From what I understand Stigler didn't appear on many dissertation committees, so this might be extremely rare, even for Chicago graduates from this period.

Anyone know of any other economists with at least three Nobel Prize winners on their committees? Comments are open.

Like me, he was born in Toledo.

He earned his Ph.D. in economics at UVA where he "studied under two Nobel Prize Winners." Don't know if he just took classes from Buchanan and Coase or had both on his dissertation committee.

Full bio here.

Today's Chronicle of Higher Education (sorry, reg req'd) lists the first set of announced commencement speakers for this spring. I report them below, at least for the first 25 schools the Chronicle reports. Interesting enough, there doesn't seem to be anyone terribly controversial (at least from one point of view) except for Jocelyn Elders. I bet John Ashcroft will make a splash with the kids - walkouts, boos, and the such are already being planned, I'm sure. Moreover, I bet the big guys will have a few crackpots.

David S. Broder, Clark University, May 22, 2005
Major Gen. Martha T. Rainville, College of Saint Joseph, May 8, 2005
Ricardo Lagos, Duke University, May 15, 2005
Prince Hamzah bin Al-Hussein, Elon University, May 21, 2005
Mary Louise "Mel" Bringle, Guilford College, May 7, 2005
Michael G. Wilson, Harvey Mudd College, May 15, 2005
Michael O. Leavitt, Jacksonville University, April 30, 2005
The Rev. Scott J. Jones, Kansas Wesleyan University, May 14, 2005
U.S. Sen. John S. McCain, Maine Maritime Academy, April 30, 2005
Rudolph W. Giulian,i Middlebury College, May 22, 2005
John D. Ashcroft, Northwest University, May 7, 2005
Sister Joan F. Burke, Notre Dame de Namur University, May 7, 2005
Floyd Vrtiska, Peru State College, May 7, 2005
Marsha J. Evans, Pfeiffer University, May 7, 2005
M. Jocelyn Elders, Philander Smith College, May 7, 2005
Ronald H. Bayes, Saint Andrews Presbyterian College, May 13, 2005
Kenneth J. Zahorski, Saint Norbert College, May 15, 2005
Dick Thornburgh, Saint Vincent College, May 7, 2005
Rochelle (Shelly) Lazarus, Smith College, May 15, 2005
U.S. Rep. James Nussle, University of Dubuque, May 14, 2005
John Seely Brown, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, April 30, 2005
Muriel Siebert, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, May 13, 2005
Howard Baker, University of Tennessee at Knoxville, May 7, 2005
Jaroslava Moserova, Warren Wilson College, May 14, 2005
Richard A. Gephardt, Washington University in St. Louis, May 20, 2005

From Buzzwhack :

SEP: Someone Else's Problem. "Let's outsource production and make it SEP."

Sounds like Congress's answer to social security reform and everything else that requires a backbone.

A pro-union Cleveland pol (is there any other kind in Cleveland?) is in hot water for building her house with non-union labor. Worse yet, the workers are apparently Amish--those notorious individualists renown for violating the labor standards near and dear to the hearts of unions everywhere.

The husband justifies the use of non-union labor by claiming the builder is black. Now I've heard of Black Irish, but Black Amish?

[Btw, the second picture in the article is of Scott Maag--the son of Capital University's Librarian, Al. Scott has become a regular freelancer for TIME.]

Clocky is a clock for people who have trouble getting out of bed.

I think this says something about preferences, but I am not exactly sure what.

"In the foggy logic of our drowsiness, we disable the very device that is meant to wake us up"

Tim Worstall has announced the Economic Idiot Award. It sounds like a lot of fun. His first award goes to a reporter who has committed an obvious post hoc fallacy in his report on the oil industry.

Following up on Michael's post on gas prices, I have been arguing that the price of gasoline could increase in real terms and we would still have relatively little grounds for complaining. The utlity gained from driving today's cars is arguably greater than that obtained thirty years ago - what with greater safety, DVD players, GPS and MP3 players. Most of us get better mileage that thirty years ago, and therefore we are paying less per mile driven while obtaining higher utility per mile driven.

Michael brings up a good point about the media carping about the "highest prices ever." In the same vein, the other day, the NYT ran a headline to the effect of "Trade defiict reaches all time high" or some such nonsense. The upshot was that the trade deficit was the largest dollar amount of all time. Because the trade deficit as a percentage of GDP is relatively stable, every quarter GDP increases, the NYT and others have a ready-made story.

I have just about given up on trying to correct this. All of my letters to the editor of our local fishwrap have gone unprinted. I suppose it doesn't sell papers to claim that in real terms things are better than they have ever been - period, end of paragraph.

After all, I am typing this blog on my Fujitsu Lifebook S6000 on a wireless home network while I watch the Kentucky - Michigan State game on digital cable in a 2300 square foot home I paid $130k for, with two (paid for) german automobiles in the garage. Yeah, I think I can handle $2.25 a gallon for fuel.

Here is a great picture from today's Wall Street Journal Sunday:

The MSM repeatedly explains the support for President Bush in terms of his standing with the Christian Right. I don’t know exactly who this group is supposed to include. I know a lot of people that support George Bush, but only about one or two to whom I would apply that label. I suspect that this term is meant to include groups that support a conservative political agenda because of their faith and not because of any rational or logical examination of the facts. The MSM and their fellow travelers in the academic community consider themselves the arbiters of intellectual thought. Therefore, anyone who does not agree with them must base their position on faith and not rational reasoning.

Consequently, I see the Left’s continual blathering about the Christian Right not so much as an attack on religion but rather as a defensive mechanism. There is no longer any cohesive philosophy holding the left together. Marxism is dead and no one seems to recognize what socialism is. Many others have come to the conclusion that the left is simply a grab bag of special interests groups that want to further their accumulations through takings from others. The Left depends on an illogical and irrational faith in big government. There is no Hayek on the left who can build a supporting logical lattice. The attack on the Christian Right becomes a diverting strategy that turns the public's attention away from the non-existing philosophy of the Left. It creates a fog that prevents a logical attack on the issues of the Left.

The underlying message of the MSM is, “Look at these silly people. They really don’t know what they're doing. They're doing what they're doing because the Good Book told them so. If you don’t want to be a hayseed or holy roller, or if you are a person of the mind, then you better distinguish yourself from this group.”

By labeling conservatives the Christian Right, the MSM is also able to avoid analyzing their arguments. If conservatives are against Roe v. Wade because of religious reasons rather than because of a federal encroachment on state’s rights, then there are no logical issues to be examined. This and other issues, like the ban on stem cell research, can be similarly explained and summarily dismissed as backward faith based beliefs that will eventually give way to an age of enlightenment.

Okay, so now I sound like Andy Rooney.

But, YA KNOW WHAT REALLY MAKES ME MAD ABOUT DISCUSSIONS OF GAS PRICES?

It's when "records" in nominal prices are discussed without reference to purchasing power. Why not talk about record high wages, or record high social security benefits? Those are the same kinds of records.

The good Easterbrook, one of the more sensible people at TNewRep, puts it this way:

Financial numbers of all kinds annually reach "record" levels until inflation and buying power are taken into account. At the end of Bill Clinton's second term, the defense budget was at a "record" level, but adjusted for inflation was nearly 50 percent lower than the peak Ronald Reagan budget. If Social Security payments were not indexed for inflation, they would still set a "record" every year while annually declining in real value. Etc. It's an embarrassment to journalism when big news organizations act as if they don't know about real-dollar valuation. ATSRTWT (Note that this was a year ago; as my dad used to say: palooka change)

Easterbrook does make one mistake, however: If these people were capable of embarrassment, they wouldn't be journalists.

Check this graph (which does leave out the recent price spike, but...)

UPDATE: Some props to my colleague here at the Div of Lab, reflecting our credo of "division of labour": he whines that prices are higher (which they are), and I whine the media shouldn't talk about records in nominal terms (which they shouldn't). But here is his post.

And, let's not forget my guy Ralph Frasca, doing the Lord's work. Gas prices are high in part because of high taxes and foolish regulations.

My old UCLA classmate Tom Hazlett has an interesting column in the Financial Times about the competition that Microsoft faces on various fronts. The lesson I draw: consumers only need free entry; antitrust is a sideshow that has done them no real good.

If you're looking for an example to illustrate the idea that political parties gravitate toward the center to capture the median voter, look no further than the current UK election contest. Tony Blair's Labour party is projecting 3% real growth in government over the next six years; Michael Howard's Conservatives are (gasp) promising only 2% real growth. The difference, for 2011, amounts to £35 billion. Labour accuses the Conservatives of planning a £35b "cut" in vital social services. The Conservatives promise that they won't cut a thing, only eliminate "waste, fraud, and abuse". Yawn.

Anyway, the big news here (I'm blogging from London this morning) this weekend was that a Conservative MP, Howard Flight, has been booted out of the Party by Michael Howard. Flight's crime: he hinted in a speech that further savings in public expenditure might be found once the Tories are in office, contradicting Howard's centrist line that the Tories have no secret agenda for cutting back on the growth of government. If Margaret Thatcher weren't still alive, she'd be spinning in her grave.

News story here.

The term "good" in conjunction with light beers is admittedly a stretch. I too homebrew - red ales, wheat beers, a kicker porter and a hell of a stout. Here was last year's brew, of which there are still a few bottles left for special occasions. Then we had a kid and that put the kibosh on brewing.

I started brewing in graduate school for three reasons. First, I didn't have a lot of money and my neighbors pitched in. Second, homebrew is good. Third, I gathered up some five gallon coca-cola kegs, found a good CO2 bottle with dual regulators, and hosted three keg (fifteen gallon) parties. We used forced carbination, which reduces the true flavor of a good beer, but the scale economies were worth the tradeoff. It was interesting/fun to see which kegs were emptied first - porters, pale ales, and stouts - and my buddy's pumpkin and onion beers taking a back seat.

During the microbrew heyday of the early to mid 1990s I even entertained the idea of a microbrewery, for about 5 minutes. The fixed cost of approximately $1 million was enough to disuade me.

As for light beers, $0.50 per beer for a daily drinker is a sufficient lowering of transactions costs for me. Are light beers good? I'm with Frank, not really.

Robert J. Gordon has some great photos here. Like Kevin Brancato, I especially like the ones from the early 1970s, including the one of a young D. McCloskey.

My co-bloggers' posts on light beer are particularly timely--I've just bottled my first batch of homebrew in 16 months. It's a batch of California lager--a la Anchor Steam. Their posts are also cringe-inducing--I find most light beers (especially the swill sold by Miller) to be awful. Who knows--if this turns out to be a good batch of house-brau maybe I'll rescue them from their drinking misery.

By viruses, or hackers?

Nope, but what about by martians? or by nukes? The perspective makes DOL seem massive.

The daily drinker in casa Depken is Milwaukee's Best Light. The Beast Light is cheap, if the can gets warm you don't wince pouring it out, and it is less than 100 calories. But the best, cheap, light beer around here is Pearl Light, which rolls in at 68 calories. It doesn't taste too bad, and I would make it a daily drinker but I have to go out of my way to the liquor store to purchase it ($5.00 a twelve pack), the grocery and convenience stores won't/don't carry it.

Lone Star Light is also pretty good.

The new Beck's Premier Light weighs in at just 64 calories!

Ok, it may taste like crap but as my granddaddy used to say, "no one likes a fat drunk."

I've been drinking Rolling Rock's 83 calorie Rock Green Light beer and find it pretty good for a light beer. I'll have to try this new Beck's beer.

We went with little bit to see Robots this afternoon. If you haven't seen it and were thinking about it, then don't bother. We hardly laughed at all, and the all-too-typical anti-greedy businessman theme was -- well you can imagine what I thought about that.

What the $%^& were the critics who liked this crappy movie thinking?

Who owns it? Nissan or Audi? Neither?

Evidently some judge will determine the answer.

I wonder why Nissan didn't sue the folks who wrote Star Trek: Voyager?

From Amusement Business comes this headline:

Red Sox remain committed to Fenway Park

Okay, so now we know that the Red Sox are not committed to Fenway Park.

In other sports news, New York City unions evidently made history by pledging not to strike during the 2012 Olympics, if the Olympics are held in New York City - gee, don't do us any favors. There was no indication whether the unions might go on strike during the Olympics if they are not held in New York City:

President of New York's Building and Construction Trades Council Ed Malloy said: "This no-strike pledge is probably the biggest commitment we have given in the history of organized union labor.

"The Olympics is the greatest event in the world and I believe we are the greatest city in the world with the greatest labor force."

The biggest committment by organized labor was to promise to do their friggin' job? The IOC should deny NYC's bid for the Olympics on the grounds that it cow-tows to unions.

The Jets have been promised the 2010 Super Bowl if they build a new stadium on Manhattan Island? Arlington has been promised the 2011 Super Bowl. So, when does Houston get back into the mix? Jacksonville? The Super Bowl has become the one-and-done promise of the NFL. Next year the SB is in Detroit!? Even people who live in Detroit don't want to be in Detroit in February. My prediction, however, is that the Detroit SuperBowl will have the largest economic impact of any SuperBowl in the past thirty years - almost all of the tourist money will be new spending and not substitute spending.

Here in Arlington, today's gas prices at the QuikTrip are $0.05 higher than yesterday for all grades. This morning, the BoB (Bucket of Bolts) gathered 16.2 gallons of high test for $1.24 per gallon. The BoB, which is a 1988 MB 560SL roadster - lots of fun, completely impractical - gets a reasonable 20 miles per gallon or so around town (thankfully Arlington is flat).

I fill up my tank about once a month, which is one of the benefits of the five mile commute to school. The long time between fillups gives price a lot of time to fluctuate. My records indicate that on Feb. 22, the last time I filled the BoB, premium was running $1.94 per gallon here in Arlington.

Ouch. Thirty cents in a month? Yesterday's spike (added to others in the recent weeks) is ostensibly because of the non-terrorist related BP-Amoco refinery that suddenly went missing the other day in Texas City. I wonder if the rest of the country has felt the same spike. I know we can look at formal data, but why not do our own gas-price survey - especially through the summer months.

I volunteer to receive gas-price updates from around the country from DOL contributors and regular readers, collate them and keep them in a handy spreadsheet. Each week, I will post a time-series graph of the major cities - or of all the series if I can. I figure the regular contributors range from St. Louis, to Dallas, to the Atlanta "area" - okay, Rome, GA is not really Atlanta - North Carolina, and up to Ohio. That's a pretty good swath, although we need some help from the West.

To make the information somewhat more useful, send e-mails to depken at gmail.com every Thursday and Friday with the following information: City, State, Gas Price, Gas Grade (Regular, Premium, etc), Brand (Exxon, QuikTrip, etc).

Economist Forfeits Mirror for Skirt Peeking

A Japanese economist found guilty of peeking up a schoolgirl's skirt with a mirror was ordered to forfeit it and pay a fine of 500,000 yen ($4,740). Kazuhide Uekusa, a former professor at Tokyo's Waseda University, was arrested in April 2004 for using the mirror to look up the skirt of the high school girl as they went up an escalator at a train station.

John Lott links to a story about farmers using federally provided gun locks to fasten their gates. Another great nanny state scheme for taxpayer dollars ...

After a few hours of family time and a few highballs on Easter Sunday, I always look forward to the traditional family Peep jousting tournament.

I love smell of burning sugar in the morning.

A Columbus-area high school principal has banned students from wearing t-shirts in support of gay marriage. [Story.]

[Principal] Best told the supporters of same-sex marriage that he was concerned that other students might respond with shirts of their own and the debate would escalate.

Oooooooooh, we wouldn't want the debate to escalate w