From the Sept. 30, 1906 NYT:

The flatterer is never a bore.

Only the rich can afford to be stingy.

Good resolutions too often die of malnutrition.

At any rate, the loser is never accused of cheating.

Only a fool will rock the boat on the sea of matrimony.

Faith may move mountains, but it won't remove freckles.

Most troubles are not worth the time it takes to tell them.

Success is often the result of a one-card draw in the game of life.

When a man takes whisky for a cold he doesn't care whether he gets over it or not.

The man who makes his money in trade is sneered at by the man who makes his by marrying it.

The fellow who is imbued with the idea that the world owes him a living can get it in the penitentiary.

If you get the AZN channel on cable, set your Tivo to record "Ab Tak Chhappan" tomorrow morning at 9am Eastern, 8 am Central. It's a ruthlessly unsentimental cop/mafia drama, the best Indian movie of 2005. (I'd call it Bollywood, but there are no songs. There will be subtitles.) Nana Patekar plays an "encounter specialist" whose assignment is to shoot gangsters and then make up a story about how he did it in self-defense. I thought the premise was a bit over the top until I read Maximum City, which has a chapter about a real-life Bombay cop whose job is exactly the one depicted in the movie.

Voice of America has reported:

The Banking and Payments Authority of Kosovo (BPK) was transformed Friday into a central bank for the region. The move provides more independence and regulatory authority to Kosovo's new banking system.

As far as I can tell, it’s only a nominal change. Fortunately for Kosovans, the BPK won’t be issuing its own currency. Like Montenegro, Kosovo uses the euro (except for Serbian-dominated areas where the Serbian dinar circulates), though it is not a voting member of the ECB.

Daniel Davies in The Guardian:

The phrase "The status quo is no longer an option" is reliably the leper's bell of the modern managerial idiot. It is almost always wrong. Like Status Quo, the status quo is often vastly underrated simply because it is unfashionable. The great thing about the status quo is that it is not any worse than the status quo. Surprisingly few proposals for "radical and far reaching reform" can actually beat this standard.

In reference to private organizations, I agree. In reference to the government, the bar is lower. (Excercise for the reader: imagine why would that be.) Universities are somewhere in the middle.

1. In Atlanta tonight, Roger Clemens starts what might be his last major league game. I was hoping to make it, but just couldn't pull it off.

2. The WaPo has an article on wildlife's contribution to water pollution.

3. I had a bit of deja vu reading that there may be another scandal about Congressmen soliciting pages for inappropriate activities. I was a House page when there was a similar scandal back in 1982. I had no part in nor saw any signs of bad behavior while I was there, but I did get interviewed by a couple of newspapers snooping around for dirt.

4. From the AJC:

As the senior official overseeing federal farm programs in Georgia, Duke Lane Jr. helps distribute billions in subsidies while serving farmers and safeguarding taxpayers.

In 2004, Lane's public actions benefited his private interests, and taxpayers picked up the tab.

Don't read the whole thing--it'll make you want to throw something at your computer.

5. (Via Drudge) Al Gore claims smoking significantly contributes to global warming.

6. The prisoners of Fidel's paradise now have reverted back to horse-drawn transportation. (HT: LR)

The Sept. 29, 1906 NYT reports on an unnamed hurricane that struck Mobile and Pensacola on Sept. 28, 1906. Let's see if there is anything in the article that sounds familiar:

Three lives at least have been lost and damage estimated from $8,000,000 to $5,000,000 has resulted from the hurricane that struck Mobile Wednesday night and continued with unabated fury until yesterday morning at 10 o'clock...all telegraphic communication with the outside world is cut off, the river boats are sunk at their wharves, and hundreds of launches and small boats are at the bottom of the river...

The business section, four blocks wide and running the entire length of the city, is inundated to a depth of from six inches to seven feet...

a large number of houses, mostly of the poorer class, have been razed and the contents destroyed....

Several persons, one a woman 94 years old, were injured when some buildings fell, and one [African-American] child was killed. The streets are littered with signs, roofs, and other debris. All electric light wires are down, and last night the city was in utter darkness...

The city hospital was badly damaged by the storm, the roof of the [African-American] ward hospital was blown off, and the rooms flooded...

The town of Frederick, three miles away, has been wiped off the map...

Robertsdale, thirty-four miles away was practically destroyed. Of the ninety-five houses only three stand, and three are tottering. The schoolhouses are destroyed, as is the village store. The total loss, $35,000...

Summerdale, thirty miles from Bay-Minette, is wholly destroyed...

Granted the destruction of 1906 Mobile was likely not as "big" of a deal, at least from the pure value of property and magnitude of the destruction, as Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Yet, perhaps because the storm wasn't of the magnitude of Galveston and/or because the storm didn't have name, how many people are aware of a "great storm of 1906?" Likely those in Mobile have heard stories, but the rest of us?

I wonder how Katrina will be viewed in 100 years viz-a-viz Galveston and (now) Mobile/Pensacola.

From the Sept. 29, 1906 NYT:

"Wealth has its disadvantages," said the philosopher.

"Yes," answered the man with sporting inclinations, "it must be very monotonous for a man to be able to bet $5,000 or $10,000 on a horse race without caring whether he loses or not."

Yet, if you don't care if you win or lose, why place the bet in the first place?

The Wall Street Journal has a free service in which weekly recaps of interesting stories are emailed on Friday [You can sign up here - look for the Weekly Review]. This week there are three topics in the microeconomics blast:

1) The lack of stop signs in Belgium and game theoretical implications
2) The supply and demand of/for flat-screen televisions
3) Forced enrollment in 401(k) plans.

I posted the first two (as I regularly do) over at Heavy Lifting although I do not post "my answers" to the questions. I will post the 401(k) summary below the fold.

However, the third recap did have an excellent question, one that might make for some interesting lunch/class conversations:

One example of irrational behavior is insuring against small risks and ignoring big ones. Why is it irrational to purchase extended warranties for appliances while not purchasing life insurance?

Read More »

William McChesney Martin famously said that the Fed's job is to take the punch away when the party starts getting good. My view is that economists have a similar role: To ask how much the punch costs and who's paying for it. It won't get us invited back to some of the best parties.

Russell Roberts relates interesting observations by John Baden on the economist's role. I disagree with Baden's statement that economists "are trained to measure the efficiency of alternative choices." We're trained to point them out, but not very good at measuring them. This is a quibble.

Arnold Kling on the making of a Libertarian:

I travelled the route from Far Left to libertarian. I think that quite a few libertarians have travelled that route, and yet I cannot think of anyone who has gone the other direction. This leads me to suspect that:

1. Far Leftists and libertarianism have much in common.
2. Libertarians know something that Far Leftists do not.

What I believe that Far Leftists and libertarians have in common includes:

1. A passion for social and political issues. ...
2. Frustration with political incumbents. ...
3. Anti-elitism. ...

Libertarians have learned is what social psychologists call the Fundamental Attribution Error. The error is to attribute behavior to a person's character when this behavior is in fact based on context. ...

The Far Left believes that bad policies come from evil motives. In this view, villains ... oppose good policies, and political incumbents lack the strength and courage to overcome the villains.

Libertarians ... believe that government power is inherently corrupting, regardless of who holds leadership positions or how they are influenced. We believe that the market does a relatively good job of channelling self-interest toward socially desirable ends.

For those ... still on the Far Left, my advice is to study the consequences of policy, not simply the motives and intentions of those who advocate the policy. Once one understands and corrects for the Fundamental Attribution Error, the passion for better public policy translates into a support for libertarian principles.

Paul McCartney’s daughter Stella, until now a fashion designer, has designed a new account card for the private bank Coutts. Curiously, none of the news accounts includes a picture of the card, but you can see it here.

According to the Moscow Times, Russia’s central bank is now in limbo for lack of a quorum:

The board of the Central Bank on Thursday lost the quorum it needed for policy decisions after the mandates of half its members expired, while the seat of murdered banking supervisor Andrei Kozlov remained empty.

The Duma is expected to consider replacements next week.

1. I like the Weather Channel because it combines maps and weather, two things that have interested me since childhood. Alas, TWC is introducing a global warming show and the show will take the position that global warming is definitely happening. The show's host Heidi Cullen claims, "Scientists are very much in consensus about the fact that it's real." My reading, admittedly based on quite superficial research, is that scientists are not certain global warming is taking place and that they are much less certain about whether human activity has contributed global warming or whether policy changes could mitigate it.

2. I was glad to see 7-Eleven dropping Citgo. Although I have no pretense that my choice will have any effect whatsoever on Citgo or Chavez, for the last year or so (i.e., well before the Chavez's rant at the UN) I've been choosing not to patronize Citgo stations. I'm probably guilty of the "better to feel good than to do good" criticism, but I don't want to support a dictator.

3. Dave Berri posts on Freakonomics vs. Moneyball or, if you prefer, Steve Levitt vs. Skip Sauer.

I reach out to the DoL community with the following question. The following is an abstract of a working paper which is having a hard time getting past the editors at the journals to which we have submitted. We are not being rejected for being "wrong" but for being "different." This is not an unheard of experience, but one that is frustrating.

My question is what, if any, journal in which you might imagine such an abstract appearing. Hopefully not the Journal of Failed Research!! Any suggestions can be sent to depken-at-uta-dot-edu.

Multiproduct Pricing in Major League Baseball: An Empirical Analysis Using Principal Components

The empirical analysis of multiproduct pricing suffers from a lack of clear theoretical guidance and appropriate data. These limitations often render traditional regression-based analyses impractical. This paper analyzes ticket, parking, and concession pricing in Major League Baseball for the period 1991-2003 using a principal components methodology. This approach allows inferences to be formed about the factors underlying price variation without strong theoretical guidance or abundant information about costs and demand. The most important factor is general demand shifts, which explain about half of overall price variation. Also important are price interactions that derive from demand interrelationships between goods or the desire to maximize the capture of consumer surplus in the presence of heterogeneous demand. The principal components methodology can effectively reveal the economic forces underpinning pricing in a multiproduct context using data on prices alone.

JEL Classifications: D40, L11, L13

Keywords: multiproduct pricing, sports, structural model, complements, substitutes, principal components.

Yahoo! News has a story concerning trash and debris building up behind the Three Gorges Dam in China:

The amount of floating garbage in the reservoir is expected to surpass 200,000 cubic meters (seven million cubic feet), Cao said.

To make matters worse, a specialized boat to clean up floating debris is inoperable due to a lack of spare parts, he added.

Oops.

In addition to my job at Berry, I do some forensic economics consulting. Mostly I estimate lost earnings in personal injury or wrongful death cases. (To those who think the legal system has some abuses, I agree. However, I think abuses are mostly in class action cases. I also think people have a right to seek damages for injuries they suffer, and I mostly agree with Alex of MR about the incentives facing contingent fee lawyers.)

To the point, I had a deposition earlier this afternoon. I entered the lawyer's office at the same time as one of the defense attorneys who was deposing me. We both told the receptionist that we were there for the deposition, we gave her our names, and we sat down. The lawyer then introduced himself to me and I introduced myself to him. He had now heard my name twice, and one would have thought that he would have recognized my name from the damage report I prepared. But no.

Presumably thinking that I was the other defense attorney coming for the deposition, he proceeded to tell me that he had an economist look over my report and that I had gotten the numbers about right (though in the other economist's opinion, my estimates in one part of the report were too high and my estimates in another part of the report were too low). I was inclined to reintroduce myself, but he blurted out his comments too quickly. About that time, though, the other attorney arrived. He recognized my name as we introduced ourselves and said something like "you're the one we're deposing right?" The look on the first attorney's face was priceless.

We have our merry band of bloggers here at DOL. I would guess that most readers are familiar with The Institute for Justice, which has their merry band of litigators defending individual rights and the rule of law. IJ has always done important work, but recently they've landed an impressive string of blows in the proverbial good fight.

You know about the Kelo case, which was a nominal defeat but fueled a backlash that, by the time it runs its course, may end up strengtheninig property rights. More detail on this below the fold.

Since Kelo, IJ has won a development takings case before Ohio's Supreme Court, Norwood v. Horney, the first of its kind to reach a state supreme court after Kelo. If you're into the whole Stackelberg leader idea, this is an important signal to courts in other states.

IJ has also meticulously documented the extent of eminent domain "abuses" (roughly, takings for economic development purposes). Two reports by IJ senior attorney Dana Berliner, one pre-Kelo and one post-Kelo, count the state-by-state filings of eminent domain for economic development, from 1998 through middle of 2006. Good stuff.

IJ's current splash is their new lawsuit against the city of Riviera Beach, Florida. The scenario is familiar. The mayor and city council expanded the city's redevelopment area, hired a big developer to put in a new fashionable multi-use complex, and threatened eminent domain on lont-time property owners to pave the way. IJ filed suit on behalf of four property owners yesterday.

Last week, IJ Senior Attorney Scott Bullock was out at San Jose State to give a Kelo lecture. He did a great job fielding questions, everything from Austrian-subjectivist critiques of "just compensation", to 14th Amendment selective incorporation stuff, to how the Roberts Court might have decided Kelo.

Like Richard Posner, IJ seems to be okay with eminent domain for "traditional public uses" under holdout problems. Others are more hawkish, such as Bruce Benson's article in The Independent Review undermining the holdout justification. Even for right-of-way, holdout-likely, traditional public uses, eminent domain poses serious problems for efficiency and for giving property owners the right incentives. Yesterday in Tehachapi, California, a homeowner had this to say about his struggle with the city over a proposed road (article).

“We’ve been notified that the road [Pinon Street] goes through our garage and the city has told me there’s nothing I can do about it,” Timothy Dunn said to the council...."If you take my garage, you take my whole property. Someone’s going to pay for the stress,”...

IJ has a knack for choosing sets of facts that will lead to larger ramifications when brought to court. In general, I think IJ deserves a fresh round of props for doing good work on many fronts, including and especially to stem the tide of development takings.

Read More »

SWIFT, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, is a private institution (an industry-owned co-operative) based in Belgium that provides “secure, standardised messaging services” to thousands of banks and other financial institutions worldwide. Secure, that is, except from snooping by the US government. Payment messages sent via SWIFT include “customer names, account numbers and other identifying information”. After 9/11/2001 the US Treasury went on a fishing expedition, sifting through “millions of confidential financial transactions handled by SWIFT.” The New York Times revealed ("leaked") the secret program’s existence in June.

Now the European Central Bank and national central banks in Europe may be in trouble for violating data protection laws by looking the other way while the US authorities went through SWIFT’s records. The International Herald Tribune reports:

The Treasury Department has used broad administrative subpoenas to get access to large volumes of transactions from Swift, often millions at a time. The operation, while highly unusual, appears to fall into a gray area in American law protecting the banking privacy of customers. But legal experts said the program appears to conflict more directly in Europe with banking privacy restrictions, issued by the European Union and others, that impose tighter restrictions on how private banking data can be shared.

We in the US don't need to wait for the terrorists to restrict our liberty; our own government is doing a pretty good job of that.

The 2006 Ig Nobel prizes will be awarded next Thursday, October 5.

Live webcast is promised starting at 7:20pm Eastern.

Finally, someone has captured the essence of the American economy - or at least the essence of the economic thinking of far too many Americans:

"[T]he Bush/Halliburton team [is] pulling out the stops to get the Republithugs back in office. Once the dirty deed is done we can expect heating oil prices to climb just when we need it the most. This will be followed in the spring by another “market driven” increase in the price of gas just as the summer driving season begins. It is an old game, drive prices higher just at the time when we need it the most and let them decline just when we don’t use it as much. These gyrations are just a way to tamp down our outrage enough to let them get away with it again next time and conveniently keep their profits down when elections are about to occur and our outrage might lead to change.

"Think I am wrong? When did we invade Iraq to seize their oil? March, just before driving season. Easy cover for jacking up oil prices wasn’t it? When will we invade Iran? Before May, I promise.

"It is no accident that elections are held in the fall. Long ago the oil companies figured out that the fall was not an especially profitable time for them due to low gasoline usage and relatively tame energy usage for heating and cooling. What better time to manipulate the market for lower energy costs?"

This is great satire precisely because it rings true - you can read rants that aren't all that different on left wing blog sites every day. Worth reading the whole thing.

1905 and 1906 was a period of reform in collegiate football. New rules were instituted, most notably the forward pass. As the first games were played with the new rules, there were interesting contrasts in how the new rules are received.

From the Sept. 27, 1906 NYT:

The first real game of football under the new rules was played here [Carlisle, Pa] between the teams of Carlisle Indians and Villa Nova College. The Indians won by a score of 6 to 0, scoring a touchdown and a goal in the first half and failing to score in the second.*

The game was variously criticised by the largest crowd that ever witnessed a contest here. The side lines were filled with football experts, who received the game rather unfavorably. The spectators, however, appeared to enjoy it more than the old sport and regarded the rules as distinctly desirable.

As a matter of fact the play was very open and interrupted by almost constant fumbling...Villa Nova tried a forward pass on the first play...and it succeeded in gaining ten yards. After short gains, however, it lost the ball through the ball touching the ground without touching a player on an attempted forward pass.

The passing was more of the character of that familiar in basket ball than that which has hitherto characterized football. Apparently it is th intention of football coaches to try repeatedly these frequent long and risky passes. Well executed they are undoubtedly highly spectacular, but the risk of dropping the ball is so great as to make the practice extremely hazardous and its desirability doubtful.

On the other hand, it seemed impossible for either team to gain ten yards consistently without such plays.

So, the "professionals" didn't like the new rules at first but the fans dialed in immediately? Why is that not surprising?

* In 1906, a touchdown was worth five points and a point-after-attempt was worth one point.

From the Sept. 26, 1906 NYT:

Yale University is free of floating debt, according to an annual report made public to-day...the university has a credit balance of $62,000 as against an adverse balance existing for several years.

The gifts for the year approximate $2,000,000. They have already been announced. The total income to the university has increased from $902,000 to $980,000 while the expensese of $918,000 are $1,000 less than the previous year.

The Treasurer says that the financial situation of the university is better than for several years; and yet, in spite of the credit balance and increased economies, the university is still hampered for the lack of funds.

In 1906, $980,000 was approximately $19,639,703 in 2005 CPI adjusted dollars.

The University's operating revenue totaled $1.68 billion in 2003-2004.

[Update: The Chronicle of Higher Education reports: "Yale’s $18-billion endowment, the second largest of any private university in the nation, rose 22.9 percent" for a $2.8 billion dollar gain. UT Arlington's operating budget is in the area of $300 million.]

The local fishwrapper finally noticed that my university is suing its former VP for Resource Management and Director of Facilities as well as a local construction firm.

Specifically, the suit says Aungst handled Capital's purchase of two rental properties at 701 and 707 Sheridan Ave. in February, and paid the owners more than $350,000 over the fair market value of the buildings, plus an illegal broker fee of $50,000....Capital's lawsuit also says Aungst and Fares arranged for Gutknecht Construction to remodel a house owned by Capital for Fares to live in rent free. In [a] letter, Gutknecht vice president Jeff Feinman stated that the company would renovate the house, at 2361 E. Mound St., for $105,000. The lawsuit contends that Fares promised Fredrickson he would pay any cost above $80,000. The lawsuit says Gutknecht charged Capital $306,134 for the work, which Gutknecht never completed. The company also attached a $251,841 lien on the property. Fares and Aungst hid the cost of the renovation by charging some costs to Capital accounts for rental property maintenance and for the construction of a new residence hall, the lawsuit says.

Meanwhile, the former Director of Public Safety is suing us for $4.6 million.

I should've gone to law school...

… fighting efforts to lower your state’s taxes and spending. The PBS show “NOW” on Friday did a hatchet job on donor Howie Rich and the efforts to limit state government spending in Montana and elsewhere through ballot initiatives. Though the show acknowledges that it’s perfectly legal for out-of-staters to donate funds to support initiative campaigns, and that Rich’s donations have been fully disclosed in states that require disclosure, “NOW” gave many minutes to opponents of those initiatives (they also interviewed one pro-initiative Montanan organizer, whom they put on the spot). The opponents – and the “NOW” reporter herself – insinuated that there’s something improper about non-disclosure in states that don’t require disclosure, and more generally something nefarious about a "wealthy New Yorker" funding such initiatives in pursuit of his “extreme” agenda. (The show also reports that some hired gatherers apparently faked a fair number of petition signatures in some states, which is bad, but that’s a guilt-by-association diversion from the funding issue.)

But don’t take my word for it that “NOW” has an anti-spending-limit slant. View the video (takes about 20 minutes), or read this copy from the PBS website, and judge for yourself:

The aim is to slash state spending, with the potential for deep cuts in health care, education, and other social services. But are these local initiatives really "home" grown? This week, NOW investigates how organizations associated with one wealthy New Yorker, Howard Rich, are secretly providing major funding for ballot measures. In some states, those contributions have been matched by ones from Americans for Tax Reform, an anti-tax group headed by the politically well-connected Grover Norquist. Since 2001, Norquist visited the White House nearly 100 times, including six meetings with President Bush.

NOW also takes a look at the questionable tactics used to put these issues on your ballot. Is someone manipulating your state's laws, your vote, and you?

The recent edition of the ever-interesting Econ Journal Watch includes my comment on a recent paper [abstract] by Jakob de Haan et al. that surveyed the literature linking economic freedom and economic growth.

Abstract: Jakob De Haan, Susanna Lundström, and Jan-Egbert Sturm have written a valuable survey of the literature that uses the Gwartney and Lawson economic freedom (EFW) index. Their discussion of the index’s theoretical underpinnings and methodological ins and outs itself should be useful to scholars interested in the field. While DLS accurately describe the mechanics of the construction of the EFW index and the econometric literature that has found a link between economic freedom and economic growth, I find myself in disagreement with some of their commentary. This reply in part will address these issues.

They replied in turn.

Until now, the only self-identified libertarian among fictional TV characters has been “Penn Jillette” on the Showtime series “Bull$#@!”. But on Sunday’s season opener of Desperate Housewives on ABC, we got this exchange during a bedroom scene between Bree and her new boyfriend Orson:

"I don't do that," she says. "I'm a Republican."

“I'm a Libertarian," Orson replies. "I believe in minimizing the role of the state and maximizing individual rights. Trust me, I know what I'm doing."

Hah! Too bad they made the libertarian character not only a creepy control freak who murdered his wife and put Mike into a coma, but a dentist.

Front page of today's Fort Worth Star-Telegram has the following headline:

Stadium to look 'like a spaceship'

Uggh. I'm not sure that's what we wanted to hear.

More at Heavy Lifting

For at least 25 years, market critics have decried the Missing Middle--the alleged bedrock of our society. As Bruce Bartlett points out, they've been right. Families with household income between $25,000 and $75,000 per year are going missing. The fraction of households falling into this category has been falling, from 52.9% in 1975, to 49.3% in 1985, to 46.7% in 1995, and to 44.6% in 2005.

Turns out, we also have a Missing Lower as well as a Missing Middle. The fraction of households with income below $25,000 has been in decline: 33.1% in 1975, 30.5% in 1985, 28.9% in 1995, and 27.1% in 2005.

Of course, arithmetic reveals the whereabouts of these Missing Households. The fraction of households with income above $75,000 has changed as follows: 14% in 1975, 20.2% in 1985, 24.4% in 1995, and 28.3% in 2005.

From the Sept. 26, 1906 NYT:

Marines have been deserting the barracks on Mare Island, Cal., at a rate which has made it necessary for Brig. Gen. G. F. Elliott, commanding the Marine Corps, to detail a strong squad to search San Francisco for deserters.

So great has been the demand for laborers there that representatives of labor agencies have been urging the marines to desert and go to San Francisco, where $5 a day is paid to able-bodied men to help clear the city of debris. The police when called upon refused to arrest the deserting marines.

The NBER estimates hourly wages in the building industry in 1906 as $0.48 or $3.84 for an eight hour day. I haven't been able to locate the daily wage for a Marine in 1906. Evidently it was considerably less than $5 per day.

From an editorial in the Sept. 26, 1906 NYT:

Many and violent are the vicissitudes of baseball. Necessarily so, with the prevailing practice of strengthening the local teams by importing mercenaries without any regard for the real residence of the mercenaries, so that the strongest team indicates not at all the superior culture of its putative habitat in baseball. It denotes only the superior judgement or length of purse, or both, of the local management which has secured the services of the team. It is hard to see any rational basis for the local patriotism which can nourish itself on the achievements of "hired men" from anywhere, even though we have proof that local patriotism is roused by the contest to seething enthusiasm.

In other words, the New York team should be populated by New Yorkers, and the Atlanta team should be populated by Atlantans. This is an interesting perspective on the potential labor market for baseball players. Assuming the distribution of baseball talent was similar across cities, smaller cities would have a hard time fielding a competitive team if they were unable to import "mercenaries" from other locales.

When baseball (and other sports) players lived in the local area during the off-season, interacted more with the local fans, often through off-season jobs, there might have been a stronger tie with the team. Indeed Psychologist Robert Passikov suggests that one component of fan loyalty is "bonding with players and other fans."

However, civic pride is only valuable to team owners in as much as it translates into revenues, i.e., people in the stands. To this end, if winning is more important than nativism, the decried "mercenaries" are potentially welfare improving - players are worth more and are paid more, team owners earn more revenue (and potentially profit), if the team wins more fans enjoy an increase in surplus. Evidently the editors of the NYT suffer a decrease in surplus, but I'm willing to bet that the net is positive.

For an example of local-only talent-based sports, look at high-school sports. Granted the competition is a little lower as the talent has not been completely developed, but in general people are not willing to pay as much nor willing to attend as much as at the "mercenary" based teams - even at the minor league professional levels. Although, I must admit to exceptions, such as certain Texas high school football games which attract more people than some college games.

From the AJC:

A woman prosecutors called a serial yarn thief will spend a year in jail after pleading guilty to shoplifting Monday in DeKalb County.

Audrey Yandel, a 70-year-old Atlanta grandmother and a retired nurse, has been convicted 12 times in the past two decades, mostly for stealing yarn, according to DeKalb Deputy Chief Assistant District Attorney John Melvin.

In the DeKalb cases, Yandel was caught stealing yarn at a Decatur shop in January 2005 and knitting needles at a Dunwoody business in May 2006.

Kidding aside, I doubt spending perhaps $25k to lock up a serial yarn thief is good use of taxpayer funds. This is a crime that seems more appropriate to punish via a stiff fine.

Harvard has more concentrators in economics than in any other discipline.

Source here; HT Mankiw.

Harvey Mansfield's swipe at economists leads to a discussion on the tragedy of the commons on Volokh. Most comments are not kind to folks in my profession; lawyers get a few smacks.

My thoughts:
1. When teaching property rights and the tragedy of the commons to my principles students, public and dormitory restrooms are my ace in the hole. Even skeptical students get that example.

2. Some of the Volokh commenters seem to have spent way too much time on their hands--the bathroom isn't high on my list of places to linger and people watch.

HT: MR

From the Sept. 25, 1906 NYT:

Mobile, Ala -- A 500-pound octopus was caught yesterday by a fishing party in Mississippi Sound, and killed after a struggle that lasted for eight hours....The octopus towed the boat of the party stern first for a distance of ten miles. It was finally killed with rifles.

Greenleaf, Idaho -- All Americans have the right to bear arms. Some towns have even gone as far as to require each household to have a gun. Now a small Idaho town is contemplating a similar idea-- it's called the Civil Emergencies Ordinance. And although gun ownership is just one piece of this ordinance, it's the part that's getting the most attention.

"We've blessed to be a fairly rural area of the state, so we don't have a lot of crime and I think we'd like to keep it that way," said Lee Belt, Greenleaf city clerk.

Drive about 10 minutes west of Caldwell and you'll run into Greenleaf, Idaho, population 860. If city council member Steve Jett has his way, each head of household that can legally own a gun, will. Along with that they're encouraged to have ammunition and appropriate training.

Story here. Chuckles aside, the right to own a gun is a good thing but folks should not be required by law to do so.

Judge Robert G. James of the United States District Court, Western Division of Louisiana, has said that it is criminal trespass for the American boating public to boat, fish, or hunt on the Mississippi River and other navigable waters in the US.

Judge James ruled that federal law grants exclusive and private control over the waters of the river, outside the main shipping channel, to riparian landowners. The shallows of the navigable waters are no longer open to the public. That, in effect, makes boating illegal across most of the country.

"Even though this action seems like a horrible pre-April fools joke, it is very serious," said Phil Keeter, MRAA president, in a statement. "Because essentially all the waters and waterways of our country are considered navigable in the US law, this ruling declares recreational boating, water skiing, fishing, waterfowl hunting, and fishing tournaments to be illegal and the public subject to jail sentences for recreating with their families."

Found here.

more here

Repeat after me, class: price control causes a shortage. A government that tries to help consumers get bread by forcing its price down in fact makes it harder for consumers to get bread. In Zimbabwe this week, Voice of America reports:

Bread has become hard to find since the government ordered bakers last week to roll back prices and sell loaves at the official price of Z$200 dollars. Bakers have had to import their own flour and say the official price doesn’t let them recover costs.

Voters in Switzerland today rejected a ballot initiative that would have directed the Swiss National Bank’s annual profits (last year US$1.2 billion, basically from seigniorage on Swiss francs, gold sales, and foreign exchange gains) specifically to the national pension scheme (AHV, the country’s Social Security system). Currently about 55% of the SNB’s profits go to the federal government, and the other 45% to the various cantonal governments. These governments in turn, of course, subsidize the pension scheme. The Swiss National Bank opposed the initiative as infringing its independence. The Swiss Bankers’ Association likewise rejected treating the SNB as a cash cow, reports the International Herald Tribune:

"If the SNB could contribute 1 billion francs to the AHV, why not 2 billion or 3 billion given that the AHV will need the money?" the Swiss Bankers Association, an influential association of the country's commercial banks, said in the run-up to the vote.

File this in the "things never change" drawer. From a letter to the editor in the Sept. 23, 1906 NYT:

How does the [Republican Dingley] tariff raise the price of building material. By taxing it - some 40, some 60, some 100. Why should there be any duty on lumber? Did man create the great forests, whose owners are Republicans, and demand a tax on Canadian lumber, so as to increase their profits? Why should not the tax on every article in the metal schedule be reduced to 25 per cent.?...Competition with foreign countries, now prohibited by the Dingley bill, would put the managers on alert to improve the quality of their product and would compel a reduction in its [steel's] price. The structural steel, the hardware, the tin roofs of buildings, would all cost less. So would the mason's dinner pail and the tin pans used in his kitchen. And the capitalists would still get a fair return for their investment. In the name of justice, then, in the name of the tenant who has to count every dollar he pays in rent, of the man who has saved a little money and wants to build a small house for his family, and of the farmer who needs a new barn, let us stop paying the bonuses to the great manufacturers and owners of mines and forests that the present tariff compels.

Wait a second. We have had tariffs on Canadian lumber for over 100 years and we still can't "compete" with the Canadians in lumber!?! Oh, right, that whole comparative advantage thing.

From the Sept. 23, 1906 NYT:

"I do not believe the present experiment in American college football can survive. In my opinion, the whole country will within five years be playing the Rugby game."

Who dared such a prognostication? None other than Benjamin Ide Wheeler, President of the University of California, who was previously football coach (and professor) at Cornell.

Oops.

From the Sept. 23, 1906 NYT:

From the Louisville Courier-Journal - A health crank who has never smoked, chewed, nor used intoxicants, and who lives upon 10 cents a day, rode 11,761 miles on a bicycle when he was 50 years old. The lesson we learn from this is that strenuous economy does not always result in the ownership of motor cars.

From the Sept. 23, 1906 NYT:

The youngest collegian in this section of the country, if not in the United States, is eleven-year-old Norbert Weiner, who has entered the freshman class at Tuft's College. He is the son of Leo Weiner, Assistant Professor of Slavonic Languages at Harvard, and resides with his parents at 11 Bellevue Street, Medford Hillside....He is to make the study of philosophy his specialty.

He changed his major, as his Wikipedia entry claims he went to study mathematics (although at that time philosophy and other subjects were sometimes rolled together).

Furthermore, a crater on the dark side of the moon carries his name.

Back in March Poland’s parliament, where a nationalist-populist coalition prevails, was upset over a merger between two foreign-owned Polish banks. Leszek Balcerowicz, architect of Poland’s “shock therapy” free-market reforms in the 1990s and today ironically head of the central bank and of the Banking Supervisory Committee (KNB), refused calls to block the merger. So Parliament moved banking and financial regulatory authority out of the KNB and other agencies to a new agency (which began operation on Tuesday). Free-marketers in Poland have been skeptical about the new agency: "‘It's all about giving their friends a job,’ MP Zbigniew Chlebowski of the opposition [market-]liberal Civic Platform told Poland's Dziennik daily.”

Parliament also set out to embarass Balcerowicz by establishing a commission to investigate the deregulation and privatization of banking since 1989. Balcerowicz refused to appear before the commission, on the grounds that it would compromise the central bank’s independence. The battle ended up in court. The court has now ruled in favor of the central bank, Forbes reports:

Poland's constitutional court ruled Friday that a parliamentary commission set up to probe the activities of the country's central bank and its governor Leszek Balcerowicz was unconstitutional.

Balcerowicz’s term ends in January. I’m guessing that the next central bank head that Poland's ruling politicians appoint won’t be quite so independence-minded.

Steven Malloy offers an insightful history of DDT policy. Among the villains: the Audubon Society, EDF, the Sierra Club, William Ruckelshaus, and (of course) Rachel Carson.

On the activist groups: "Business are often held liable and forced to pay monetary damages for defective products and false statements. Why shouldn't the National Audubon Society, Environmental Defense, Sierra Club and other anti-DDT activist groups be held liable for the harm caused by their recklessly defective activism?"

On Ruckelshaus: "The DDT ban solidified Ruckelshaus’ environmental credentials, which he has surfed to great success in business, including stints as CEO of Browning Ferris Industries and as a director of a number of other companies .... Corporate wrongdoers ... were sentenced to prison for crimes against mere property. But what should the punishment be for government wrongdoers like Ruckleshaus who ... abused his power and affirmatively deprived billions of poor, helpless people of the only practical weapon against malaria?"

On Carson: "She was even honored with a 1981 U.S. postage stamp. Next year will be the 100th anniversary of her birth. Many celebrations are being planned. It’s quite a tribute for someone who was so dead wrong."

Malloy might be a little hard on Carson, but he's spot-on with the rest. A charitable reading of Carson would include this sentence (Wikipedia entry for DDT): "Practical advice should be 'Spray as little as you possibly can' rather than 'Spray to the limit of your capacity.'" I did say, "A charitable reading."

On Sept. 21, 1906, the six ton cornerstone of the lesser known Roosevelt Dam was laid in Roosevelt, Arizona.

As reported in the September 22, 1906 NYT:

At 5:15 P.M. yesterday Supervising Architect Hill laid the cornerstone of the Roosevelt storage dam, an immense rock weighing six tons.

This is the real beginning of construction of the big Government enterprise, all previous work being preliminary. The cornerstone is 32 feet below the normal river bed.

That's the entire article. Perhaps what was happening in what, at the time, was a U.S. territory didn't warrant a big response in New York? Maybe the general mood was more favorable towards building dams? Perhaps the project was "big" but not "that big"? Note, the paper didn't say it was a "Big Government" enterprise.

I remember when I first stood at the bottom of Hoover Dam and wondered if it would even be possible to contemplate such a project today. My almost immediate conclusion was 'NO.'

A Google Maps search reveals the dam still stands (as those in Phoenix likely already know). Official web page at the Bureau of Reclamation.

This is why I love reading the paper from 100 years ago - you learn something new every day.

ABC news ran two global-warming stories today. The first was Branson’s giveaway; the second was not news, but a revisit of the dying polar bears story. These are excerpts from an article cited by cei.org that calls this report into question.

One polar bear population (western Hudson Bay) has declined since the 1980s and the reproductive success of females in that area seems to have decreased. We are not certain why, but it appears that ecological conditions in the mid-1980s were exceptionally good.

Climate change is having an effect on the west Hudson population of polar bears, but really, there is no need to panic. Of the 13 populations of polar bears in Canada, 11 are stable or increasing in number. They are not going extinct, or even appear to be affected at present.

It is noteworthy that the neighbouring population of southern Hudson Bay does not appear to have declined, and another southern population (Davis Strait) may actually be over-abundant.

I understand that people who do not live in the north generally have difficulty grasping the concept of too many polar bears in an area. People who live here have a pretty good grasp of what that is like to have too many polar bears around.

By the way, Charlie Gibson closes the report by saying that scientists have documented a 20% population decline in Western Canada since the 1980s. Good work: Select your subset of the poplulation, select your endpoints, and fit your trend line. I never knew model estimation was so easy.

The abstract of a new NBER Working Paper:

We report results from economic experiments that provide a direct test of the hypothesis that criminal behavior responds rationally to changes in the possible rewards and in the probability and severity of punishment. The experiments involve decisions that are best described as petty larceny, and are done using high school and college students who can anonymously take real money from each other. We find that decisions about whether and how much to steal are, in general, rational and responsive to the variations in tradeoffs, and sometimes, though not always, to the overall availability of criminal opportunities.

From today's Fort Worth Star Telegram:

That's one of the reasons teachers at Bellaire overwhelmingly rejected a state grant for $90,000 in salary bonuses linked to student achievement. The recent secret ballot vote was 44-2.

Bellaire's decision was rare. Of the 1,161 schools across Texas that qualified for the grants, only 57 did not accept.

Prediction: Bellaire will be looking to replace two teachers rather soon.

HT: Colleague Mike Ward.

Another editorial from the September 21, 1906 NYT:

We have been invited to send a dollar contribution to the Republican campaign fund that is being raised by popular subscription and to which President Roosevelt recently subscribed. We would like to have our dollar in such select company all right, but we've done all the contributing we intend to this year.

We recently have completed building a house at a cost of something over $4,000, and for every foot of lumber, every pane of glass, every sack of cement, every pound of nails, and, in fact, for nearly every bit of material that went into it we made a good, liberal contribution through the trusts that control them, and we guess we have done our share. [emphasis added]

We'll just let the several trusts to which we have had to pay unwilling tribute in the past year pay our dollar for us. We need it and they don't.

From the September 21, 1906 NYT:

Recent events point to the belief that the Democratic nominee for 1908 must come from that section of the country wherein lies the voting strength of the party...it is well to cast about for an available standard bearer. Alabama has many favorite sons; so, too, have Mississippi, Tennessee, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Louisiana, and even Florida. Virginia has a score or more of very able men...

So far, so good. Pull a candidate from, at the time, the heavily Democrat south. Yet the editorial closes with advice that is as sound today, suggesting that the South, and therefore the Democrat party,

...must now assert its independence, cast out demagogues, blatherskites, wild-eyed visionaries, who would use the organization to advance selfish interests...

I like the word blatherskites ("A babbling, foolish person"). Clearly, neither of the major parties has fully asserted its independence from such folks.

Does this mean that parties are, by definition, comprised of blatherskites and demagogues, and there is no reason for parties to change in nature? Or is it that successful parties are those populated with demagogues, and blatherskites (see, I love that word), that serve to lure the median voter? Many insist they want a third party, but of what kind? More of the same, yet different?

The local fishwrapper reports

Ohio motorists can keep buying "Choose Life" license plates now that abortion-rights advocates have dropped their lawsuit to block sales of the plates. The move came because the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal of a decision upholding a similar program in Tennessee.

Given that the state has authorized dozens of other license plates expressing clear viewpoints (Breast Cancer Awareness, Celebrate Kids, Cleveland Browns (ugh!), National Rifle Association...), this seems to make sense to me. Of course, a Choose Death Pro-Choice license plate would also have to be allowable. We'll probably have to wait for a Democratic majority in the legislature for that to happen though.

What does Ohio need to get its economy moving again?

Tax cuts? Nah.

Medicaid Reform? Nah.

Real School Reform? Nah.

A new tag line? Yeah, that's it!!!

Come to Ohio: Build Your Business. Love Your Life. The price tag for coming up with this winner? $400,000.

Slate's mathematician, Jordan Ellenberg, says the odds of a Democratic victory depend on the degree of correlation among races, but, "it's fair to say that the Democrats' chances of flipping the House are somewhere between 15 percent (the scenario in which the races are independent) and 50 percent (where the races are as correlated as possible)."

Intrade quotes 56.5 as the price of "Republican Party to retain control," suggesting a probability around 43.5%. The Washington Stock Exchange places the probability that Republicans retain control at 69.0%.

NORFED, the issuer of the Liberty Dollar, officially reponds here to the US Mint's allegation that its silver pieces are illegal. The kernel of the reply:

In the sense that money may be used to refer to the coinage of a government the Liberty Dollar never has claimed to be, does not claim to be, is not, and does not purport to be, money. ... the Liberty Dollar, ... in addition to its being a numismatic item, is a means of voluntary barter.

In July 1996, a search and rescue (SAR) operation had begun for missing National Park Ranger Randy Morgenson in the Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park area.

Backpacker magazine (June 2006, sorry--no story link) has and article about the SAR. Where do you look for a missing park ranger in such a vast area?

One of the organizers:

"inked up" a topographic map on the picnic table dividing it into 16 segments labeled A through P. Each segment was deliniated by obvious geographic features--rivers, ridgelines, trails, meadows, passes or mountains. Together they formed a zone that was roughly 80 square miles, the area that the rangers agreed represented the outer limits of where Randy might have traveled on a 4-day patrol. The sheer size of the operation sank in.

They decided to organize the search using the Mattson Consensus.

Each ranger was asked to assign each segment with a number value--high for areas where Randy most probably was, low for least-probable locales. According to Mattson, it was "best to do this privately because it will ensure that even meeker individuals will be able to express their opinion without being intimidated by the more vocal members of the group."

The percentage points assigned by each ranger for 16 segments plus the ROW [RL: rest of the world] segment had to add up to 100 points. Nobody could assign a zero for any area. That would mean that he or she knew with certainty that Randy was not in a particular zone, which was impossible.

The information gathering process had consumed hours, but the voting process took only 20 minutes. Not surprisingly, the Lake Basin area (segment F) was the highest-percentage POA [RL: probability of area] at 26.2 percent, while Marion Lake and its surrounding cirque (segment G) was the second-leading selection at 19.2 percent. The ROW option was voted as the lowest POA...

In the end, despite the "wisdom of crowds" approach, the SAR failed to find Randy Morgenson and gave up after two weeks of searching. Some five years later, his remains were found apparently drowned after a fall while crossing a creek "within an area of high probability of discovery in the original search." A book has been written about Morgenson's life and disappearance.

Thomas Bray's comments on implications of DDT policy:

Researchers haven't even been able to show conclusively that DDT is the cause of widely-cited declines in populations of eagles and other animals. There appeared to be a strong correlation, but the type of DDT use being recommended by WHO - indoor spraying to reduce the risk of mosquito bites to sleeping humans - is no threat to nature. All this was known more than three decades ago, but so powerful had the environmental lobby become that rational decision-making was all but impossible.

There is an important lesson here. Policy decisions that aren't based on a cold, hard appreciation of costs and benefits, as well as solid science, cost lives.

Citing the so-called "precautionary principle," advocates of such controls [to reduce greenhouse emissions] argue that we must act even before all the facts are in. To delay is to risk catastrophe down the road, they assert. But insofar as the precautionary principle is valid, it might offer a strong reason not to act too quickly. The one thing we know about government, after all, is that it often gets things wrong - as it did with DDT.

A news report via Drudge:

NEW YORK (AP) -- Poor New Yorkers who make healthy choices - such as staying in school and regularly seeing the doctor - should be rewarded with cash to help break the cycle of poverty, Mayor Michael Bloomberg suggested Monday.

The idea, which has seen success in countries including Brazil and Mexico, developed out of an anti-poverty commission's report released Monday.

Along the same lines, here's a post from MR about economist Roland Fryer's paying students for academic improvement.

In 1906, there is an undercurrent or "movement" concerning municipal/government ownership of the means of production in several industries, most notably the railroads but also utilities, food preparation, and others. Perhaps it was a natural outcome of the political discussions of the times, but that doesn't mean there wasn't opposition to the idea.

Case in point is an editorial in the Sept. 19, 1906 NYT:

That [private ownership] might be what the people want, but it is not what the politicians want. The politicians hunger and thirst for the control of the payrolls which would accompany the adoption of municipal ownership. We have just had the report of the Haag commission informing us that in this city there are 60,948 persons on New York's payroll at present, to the tune of $57,068,253. How many times would this be multiplied if the municipal ownership theorist got their way? And what would be the chance of defeating them if ever they got control of perhaps several times 60,000 offices and the expenditure of hundreds of millions of dollars?

Good question. Let's look at NYC today. The editorial goes on:

There is a yarn to the effect that in Chicago they mow the parks by man power, because horse mowers don't vote. We cannot vouch for the story, but it illustrates an idea in connection with municipal ownership.

[Update 2:14PM CDT: Came across this article concerning New Jersey considering taking over operations of Amtrak in the state (State considers Amtrak takeover). Says Gov. Corzine: "Amtrak can never do enough when they want to because of a lack of resources. Not enough money is put into Amtrak."]

Think Progress reports on a speech by Al Gore at NYU Law School which included the following quotes:

Well, first of all, we should start by immediately freezing CO2 emissions and then beginning sharp reductions.

and

For the last fourteen years, I have advocated the elimination of all payroll taxes — including those for social security and unemployment compensation — and the replacement of that revenue in the form of pollution taxes — principally on CO2. The overall level of taxation would remain exactly the same. It would be, in other words, a revenue neutral tax swap. But, instead of discouraging businesses from hiring more employees, it would discourage business from producing more pollution.

I have never (to my recollection) heard Al Gore advocate the elimination of payroll taxes. Replacing most of the personal income tax system with a tax system dependent upon CO2 production is a new one to me as well.

[Re-entered]: It seems that a) the payroll taxes would never be "done away with" but would only be shifted, perhaps to non-monetary taxes, b) a CO2 tax would not tax based on value added, upon which our current system is somewhat loosely based, c) it presumes that the government can and will choose the optimal CO2 tax, which is unlikely.

Would professors and politicians be taxed for their CO2 production. What about therapists or preachers?

The Fraser Institute has produced a seriously cool color 24x36 map using the Economic Freedom of the World index. For information about ordering the map, send an e-mail to sales@fraserinstitute.ca, or call (604) 688-0221 ext. 580.

Oh -- I would so love to do this when someone's cell phone goes off in my class.

[HT: Alex Padilla]

This article at the Chronicle of Higher Education describes a proposal in the Senate to provide funds that "would help states collect data on individual students from pre-kindergarten through the baccalaureate level. Officials and researchers could use the information to examine retention and graduation rates of college students..."

How this will not lead to a single nation-wide database of students, as students and their families move from one state to another, is not discussed. There is substantial opposition to the proposal, but not necessarily from the folks you would expect.

However, consider the following phrase from the article:

Meanwhile, momentum has been building in the Senate this year for a bill to help improve the country's global economic competitiveness...

What "bill" (that has a chance in Hades of passing) will improve our global economic competitiveness?

Given recent events, this story from the September 18, 1906 NYT was of interest:

"The Food and Drugs act," he [Dr. H. W. Wiley of the Department of Agriculture] continued, "has two great purposes in view, which stand out clearly throughout all its sections, namely, first, to prevent the introduction of any injurious substances to food and drug products, or the abstraction of any valuable properties therefrom; second, to prevent the misbranding of any package of food or drug products, either as to the nature of the contents of the package or their properties, or as to the place, country, State or Territory where made or produced.

Later in the article, it is described how hearings in Chicago turned to the topic of coloring of foods:

D.W. Hutchinson, Vice President of W. H. Hutchinson & Son, soda water makers, of Chicago, Ill., spoke for coal tar coloring. One ounce of coal tar red will color over 2,000 gallons of soda water, he said, while an ounce of coal tar yellow or orange will color over 4,000 gallons.

"It can be readily seen," he went on, "in what small quantities it is used for - "

"Is it harmless?" Dr. Wiley interrupted.

"Quite so."

"Well, why talk about small quantities at all, then?" Dr. Wiley asked. "What difference do quantities make when the material under consideration is harmless? Does it add anything to the quality of the soda water?"

"Nothing. It simply appeals to the eye. You couldn't sell strawberry soda water by using the natural colored flavors as they are extracted."

I've been quiet because I've been traveling. Just got back from the Economic Freedom Network Asia in Malaysia.

More later...

How environmental activists are "Dooming Woods and Wildlife":

Unfortunately, legal action has blocked common-sense thinning to restore forests to their natural diversity and resistance to catastrophic wildfire. Already, many California public forests have grown dangerously overcrowded with 10 to 20 times more trees than is natural. The Giant Sequoia National Monument is near the top of the crowded forest list. It already burned once, and it is certain to burn again. ... Rather than protecting forests and wildlife with lawsuits, activists condemn them to destruction. Massive wildfires move so fast that flames can overtake animals like deer, bears and fishers before they escape. Streams boil and fish die. Ash fills burrows and suffocates ground dwellers. Smoke inhalation kills most animals before the flames reach them.

From the September 16, 1906 NYT:

As a result of an investigation by the School Board of Hellertown [Penn.], a village near here, concerning the robbing of school houses, it has been discovered that Hellertown is the home of half a dozen boys, each about 16 years old, who have organized the "Jesse James boys" and who planned to commit various crimes.

[T]he boys had planned to burn the hosiery mill at Hellertown, to wreck the "Scranton Flyer" on the Jersey Central Railroad, and blow up Odd Fellows' Hall.

From the September 16, 1906 NYT:

Many a girl has lost a good friend by marrying him.

Liquor improves with age. The longer you keep it the better it is for you. Figure it out.

The minute a man accomplishes anything he is called a crank by those who have failed.

If you go about it right, a quarter will make as much noise dropping into the collection plate as a five-dollar gold piece.

The Royal Society announces their archive of 350 years of articles is freely available through the end of the calendar year. From the front page:

For the first time the Archive provides online access to all journal content, from Volume One, Issue One in March 1665 until the latest modern research published today ahead of print. And until December the archive is freely available to anyone on the Internet to explore.

Spanning nearly 350 years of continuous publishing, the archive of nearly 60,000 articles includes ground-breaking research and discovery from many renowned scientists including: Bohr, Boyle, Bragg, Cajal, Cavendish, Chandrasekhar, Crick, Dalton, Darwin, Davy, Dirac, Faraday, Fermi, Fleming, Florey, Fox Talbot, Franklin (pictured), Halley, Hawking, Heisenberg, Herschel, Hodgkin, Hooke, Huxley, Joule, Kelvin, Krebs, Liebnitz, Linnaeus, Lister, Mantell, Marconi, Maxwell, Newton, Pauling, Pavlov, Pepys, Priestley, Raman, Rutherford, Schrodinger, Turing, van Leeuwenhoek, Volta, Watt, Wren, and many, many more influential science thinkers up to the present day.

Here's a link to Crick and Watson (1953) whose innocent sounding abstract is as follows:

This paper describes a possible structure for the paracrystalline form of the sodium salt of deoxyribonucleic acid. The structure consists of two DNA chains wound helically round a common axis, and held together by hydrogen bonds between specific pairs of bases. The assumptions made in deriving the structure are described, and co-ordinates are given for the principal atoms. The structure of the crystalline form is discussed briefly.

I wonder if there is an article describing the discovery of dirt. That was tongue-in-cheek, the archive is an amazing browse.

A few years ago I wrote an article for The Freeman on a private silver-based currency, the Liberty Dollar, at that time known as American Liberty Currency. The issuing organization, NORFED continues to produce both coin-like silver pieces and silver-redeemable paper certificates. I saluted it as a noble experiment, though I doubted it would catch on in any big way while fiat dollar inflation remains in single digits. I called the alternative currency “fully legal”. Now come news reports saying that the US Mint is disputing its legality. (HT: “Common Sense” at HNN.) USA Today reports:

The government Thursday warned consumers and businesses that it is illegal to use alternative money known as "Liberty Dollar" coins, which organizers promote as a competitor to the almighty dollar.

Here’s what the US Mint’s own website says:

Read More »

A recent Wall Street Journal article suggests that the WHO, unlike much of the UN, has taken temporary leave of its insanity:

The World Health Organization, in a sign that widely used methods of fighting malaria have failed to bring the catastrophic disease under control, plans to announce today that it will encourage the use of DDT, even though the pesticide is banned or tightly restricted in much of the world.

The new guidelines from the United Nations public-health agency support the spraying of small amounts of DDT, or dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane, on walls and other surfaces inside homes in areas at highest risk of malaria. The mosquito-borne disease infects as many as 500 million people a year and kills about a million. Most victims are in sub-Saharan Africa and under the age of 5.

HT to Jeff Hoffman, who expresses hope that some bureaucrats are coming to see the importance of marginal analysis. I'm less sanguine.

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports on an ongoing dispute at NC State concerning a professor selling audio versions of his lectures online. A dean at NC State and the school newspaper have objected to the idea, although for different reasons.

The upshot is that the professor has stopped selling his lectures until the whole issue is ironed out. If the professor transcribed his lectures and printed them in book form, would he be able to sell the lectures?

It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Regular readers of this blog would likely be interested in Ryan Sager's new book, The Elephant in the Room, analyzing what the future holds for the long-standing coalition of libertarians and traditionalist conservatives that have made Republicans the majority party in America. I haven't read it yet, but Ryan, a rising libertarian star, is a bright young guy and an extremely good writer, so at an absolute minimum I'd expect a pithy, fun read. Excerpts suggest to me it will deliver more than that.

Brad and I have both commented on folks who think the government was involved in destroying the WTC or had advance knowledge of the attack. Andrew Samwick has a post on conspiracy theorists and includes links to some sites debunking the bunk. He also has this excerpt from an editon of CNN's "Reliable Sources":

[Program Host] KURTZ: I want to put up some pretty eye-opening poll figures from a Scripps Howard survey about 9/11 conspiracies. Thirty-six percent of those surveyed suspect the U.S. promoted or acquiesced in the 9/11 attacks; 16 percent believe explosives, not airplanes, toppled the World Trade Center; 12 percent believe it was a cruise missile that hit the Pentagon.]

Incredible--this is probably another reason to think that too many people vote not too few.

Today's San Jose Mercury News runs a front page feature on Stanford's new football stadium, built in an astounding 43 weeks including demolition of the old 86,000 seat Stanford Stadium in an astounding 2 weeks.

Less than 10 months after bulldozers razed the old structure, Stanford's 50,000-seat, $100 million stadium will open for business Saturday when the Cardinal plays Navy.

...

The stadium project, long a goal of the athletic department, was publicly unveiled 15 months ago, and work started the moment last season ended in November. Within two weeks, the old stadium was gone, clearing the way for more than 300 workers and roughly 30 subcontractors to meet the ambitious deadline.

With noted donor and billionaire real-estate mogul John Arrillaga overseeing the daily operation, two crews worked 16 hours a day, six days a week to fulfill a mission Bowlsby called ``nothing short of a miracle.''

The speed was made possible by a hybrid fast-track and design-build construction method. Move that old PPF outward. Tickets are still available for tomorrow's opener against Navy. Good thing the Cardinal didn't open against the mighty Spartans of San Jose State, who last Saturday overcame two 20-point deficits to beat the Stanford boys from down the street, 35-34.

While I'm talking college football stadiums, by-a-mile my favorite college football stadium is is Kyle Field at Texas A&M. I've seen probably a hundred games there. Maybe more. I could write a treatise on all the intricacies that make game day at A&M unique (my fiancee says the tradition of kissing your date after A&M scores says it all). But it's all a very tacit affair. Bottom line, you just have to experience it yourself. While the team has been in decline since 2000, the 90's saw a 92.5 win percentage at Kyle, including a 31-game streak from 1990-95 and a 22-game streak from 1996-2000. Kirk Herbstreit has repeatedly called Kyle Field his favorite place to call a game. MSNBC ranks it 4th in the nation.

Some notable stadiums I've been to that fail to impress. Notre Dame, LSU Tiger Stadium, and K-State's Wagner Field (Louisville's was bad too). The best small stadium is a tie between TCU's Amon Carter and Southern Miss's "the Rock" in Hattiesburg. Man, can those people tailgate.

I have not been to West Virginia's Mountaineer Field, but that will be corrected on Oct. 14 when I attend their homecoming game against Syracuse. Oh. I'm presenting a paper there too. It's currently half time of the WVU Mountaineers hosting the UMD Terps. WVU just returned a kickoff for a TD to go up 38-10. I hope there's similar fireworks when I visit. Go Mountaineers!

Well, enough economics for now. I have some more football to watch. :-)

From the BBC:

The first deputy chairman of Russia's central bank has died in hospital after being shot by two unidentified gunmen in the capital, Moscow.

Andrei Kozlov, 41, was attacked at a city's sports ground late on Wednesday.

Prosecutors said the motive for the shooting was unclear, but suggested that it looked like a contract killing.

Kozlov reportedly had plenty of enemies among the bankers whose licenses he suspended for money laundering.

How did the markets react?

Russia's financial markets, used to unpleasant surprises, shrugged off the murder. The RTS stock index closed up 0.65 percent and the rouble strengthened slightly.

From the strenghthening of the rouble I infer that Kozlov was less hawkish on inflation than his expected replacement.

Hat tip: WEG

From TPMMuckraker:

By next year, the public should have a public, searchable website that in one place tracks the approximately $300 billion in grants that the federal government doles out to roughly 30,000 different organizations each year, in addition to the roughly one million contracts that exceed the $25,000 reporting threshold.

Making the information public sounds great, but one million contracts?! One wonders if this will prove sufficient to reduce the pork, er, earmarking. The database would be expected to yield some very interesting empirical publi