Wow, Stan Musial was a REALLY GOOD baseball player

He made more all star appearances than years played! At least according to Yahoo Sports' Tim Brown:

"Pujols, 29, and Musial, 88, are close. They were seen laughing and chatting at Busch Stadium in the days leading to the MLB All-Star Game this summer in St. Louis. They’ve talked strike zones, bat weights, salaries and golf. They’ve talked ball.

Pujols’ friends say he admires Musial’s skill, of course, and is amazed by Musial’s longevity. In 22 seasons, Musial played in 24 All-Star Games. He took his first big-league at-bat as a 20-year-old in 1941, and hit until he was 42 in 1963."

Yes friends, you read that right. 24 All Star Games in 22 seasons. Wow! He was GOOD!!

Now, I have to ask, did they used to play more than one all star game per season? Or is this just another example of the MSM getting it wrong?

Lula-palooza

Oh what a tangled web we weave.......

Check out this awesome excerpt from this Newsweek interview with Lula da Silva:

NW: You often criticize the privatization process. But thanks to the sale of state companies even the poorest Brazilians have cell phones, and former public companies like Vale have become world-beaters under private ownership.

Lula: But the state could have done the same things.

NW: Except that it didn't.

Lula: It didn't because the Brazilian elite used public companies for their own ends. When you do that , any company will go broke, anywhere in the world. I think the privatizations were a mistake.

And then it gets even better:

NW: The Mercosul trading bloc, which Brazil leads, only allows full democracies that respect human rights as members. Does Venezuela qualify?

Lula: Give me one example of how Venezuela is undemocratic.

NW: Thirty-four radio stations closed by the government in one weekend. Repression of independent trade unions and government persecution of political rivals. Gangs linked to the government of Hugo Chávez vandalizing the only independent television broadcaster.

Lula: That's not the government's version.

NW: Is there any doubt?

Lula: Let's be frank on one thing. First, each country establishes the democratic regime that suits its people. It's a sovereign decision of every nation.

32 seconds of Heaven

Inquiring minds

Hey Dr. Mungo: WHO WON?????????

signed,  The Universe

Sadly for Paul Kedrosky, newspapers are not dead

Because if they were, no one would be mocking him on the interwebs for his extremely weak and bogus op ed on tennis challenges.

First, PK doesn't seem to know much about tennis:

The rules allow three incorrect challenges per player per set. In a best-of-five-sets match (which is normal for men), that means at least 18 available challenges per match, none of which carry over from set to set.In other words, use ’em or lose ’em. A player can get an additional challenge if the match goes into a tiebreaker, or if a fifth set goes overtime.

Best of 5 matches are played at the 4 major championships and in Davis Cup ties, meaning that they are an aberration, not the norm.

Second, he does not seem to know what the word substantial means:

And the rewards for challengers can be substantial. For example, the No. 10 seed at the Open, Fernando Verdasco of Spain, averaged 0.4 challenges per set and had a sparkling 43 percent success rate. If he challenged once per set, like Federer, and his challenge success rate fell to a similar 30 percent, it could mean one more point to him in a three-set match. If his success rate didn’t fall as much, however, and he challenged twice per set it might mean as many as three more points in a five-set match. Either way, it could be the difference between winning and losing.

Third, he seems to think that winning a challenge gives you the point (see the above quote). It does sometimes, but often winning a challenge just causes the point to be replayed.

Fourth and most importantly, he seems to forget that the status quo is neither player challenging much. If they both increased their challenges and were equally good at it, then there would be exactly zero net advantage to either player. In other words, in *equilibrium* challenging more cannot be a competitive advantage (not even a tiny one like what he cites in the quote above).

Aside from that, the piece was terrific!

By the time we got to Woodstock....

...we were half a million strong, and everywhere was a song and a celebration.

If the interwebs don't crash, KPC will spin the little red dial to 500,000 today and someone will win fabulous Mungo swag.

I'd like to thank Mungo for inviting me to tag team with him lo those many years ago, Tyler for encouraging me to blog, and y'all for getting involved as well. 

We are stardust, we are golden, we are caught in the devil's bargain, and we've got to get ourselves back to the garden.

Yikes!

American Efforts at Weisse Bier

On this trip to the beach, I tried three varieties of American weissbier.

The tale o' the tape:

Surprisingly good, in fact excellent: Sierra Nevada "Kellerweis" Hefeweizen. Much, much better than I expected. Looks and tastes just like wiessbier, in fact. Well done. My new favorite, #1 American beer.

Surprisingly good, because it is not horrible: Michelob Dunkel Weiss. Again, much, much better than I expected. Not actually great, just better than I expected. If you are stuck, this beer will in some ways remind you of a real dunkel. For an An-Busch product, outstanding, though.

Surprisingly bad, bordering on terrible: Sam Adams Weiss. Awful. Appalling. Why did they even try? Tastes like a generic beer, no head, clear amber appearance. Supposedly "retired" (i.e., discontinued to end the sucking), but still available.

Video of Dawn at Wilmington

Paul Strikes Gold

Paul comes up big, showing that "The Internet has many corners." I read more than 40 of those ads, and found every one to be enjoyable.

I especially liked the one that listed the location as "OK OK OK OK OK." Perhaps Ms. Angus is trying to sell Angus, and we found out about it?

Prize!

A fantastic KPC contest, with a FAAAAAAABulous prize!

The 500,000th hit on this site will receive a free, collectible "Munger for Governor!" t-shirt from the 2008 campaign.

So go out there and click like crazy! The current count is in the red box, on the right side, about two screens down.

(Winner has to REALIZE s/he has won, and send me an email with her/his snail mail address, to qualify)

UPDATE: A commenter points to this. Nice.

Also, another commenter notes that the "counter" does not update. Yes, there is a pretty long lag. But all hits are recorded at the Sitemeter website, and so I will have the IP address of the BIG WINNER. All we need is for the winner to send me the physical address, and I'll check to see that the IPs match.

Plus, let's open this up. ANYONE who comes in between 499,997 and 500,003 is a winner. Just check sitemeter to see if you are in the lucky interval, and then claim your FAAABULOUS prize! As the xkcd folks note, the 500,000th person, or any specific number, will likely be some schlep looking for a graphic on "Google Images," and will never even know that s/he qualified!

UPDATE 2: Only about 500 hits away from that FAAABULOUS PRIZE! Just check at Sitemeter

I Hate It When I Don't Know What to Think....

Okay, now what is the deal here? I mean, what is REALLY the deal?

University of North Carolina, with a long history of defending free speech the administration happens to agree with, has axed a student club, Youth for Western Civilization. (What did they axe them? No, I mean "got rid of."). The reason is that the faculty adviser made a joke about defending himself. Here is the News and Observer story, from Saturday morning's paper.

Another story, about the events of last spring. The N&O story about local grumpiness, back in April. Also, an Inside Higher Ed story on l'affaire Tancredo. So, in no particular order, some things that confuse me.

1. Tancredo, and all the other "we hate brown immigrants, but blue-eyed immigrants are good" people, are wrong. I personally think the way to discredit Tancredo is to let him speak, and then quote him verbatim and in context. He is a ham-handed goofball, but the protests at UNC made him look like a martyr.

2. Using violence and intimidation to shut down an invited speaker is bad. It doesn't matter if it is 1964, and the speaker is a civil rights leader, or if it is 2009 and the speaker is Tom Tancredo. (UNC has a sad history of administrative thuggishness on free speech, I should note.) You can't take over a room, pushing and shoving, go up on stage, and break a window, and then say you favor free speech. The kids who shut down Tancredo's speech are thugs and bullies, and the system exonerated them. That's wrong.

3. But....but. What obligations do we have to ensure that a group gets to be a group on campus? Chancellor Holden Thorpe fired the adviser of the UNC group for making a joke about a gun. The "joke" was simply that the guy was good at target practice: "I have a Colt .45, and I know how to use it. I used to be able to hit a quarter at 50 feet seven times out of ten." Wow. I have posted videos of my son and me using guns to shoot targets. Would I lose my job if I worked at UNC?

4. The so-called "joke" was in the context of anonymous flyers posted around campus where the leftist thugs were again threatening violence. (You may say that no violence was threatened. But if the UNC lefties can say that "Western Civilization" is code for "White Supremacist," then I can say, "Go to this prof's house, and here is his address" is code for "physical threat." That's the problem with claiming that there are codes: you can make up stuff you think they meant, instead of what you know they said). And the flyers clearly included the adviser's name, photograph, home address and telephone number with the caption, "Why is your professor supporting white supremacy?" That is an exhortation to go confront the guy. AND THE FLYERS ARE ANONYMOUS.

5. On the other hand...Youth for Western Civilization openly calls itself "right wing." They are completely, totally wrong on immigration, and most other things. They call Obama's speech in Cairo "An Inspiration to Islamic Terrorism." * So, now suppose that they can't find a faculty adviser, and that means that they can't exist as a student group. Is that right? Should the faculty have an implicit veto on which groups students can form, based on ideology? I assume that the left-o storm trooper kids have an easy time finding a faculty adviser for their window-breaking and thuggish censorship of invited speakers. Should we censor student groups based on whether faculty endorse the ideological content of the group's mission?

*I do have to point out one passage in this article. Remember, this was actually published on the YfWC website!

In his speech, Obama goes on: “It was Islam — at places like Al-Azhar — that carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe’s Renaissance and Enlightenment.” Really? Have the monasteries of Europe, the libraries and universities of Byzantium been suddenly replaced by an Islamic madrassa in Egypt?

Um...wow. I would hope that the folks in favor of Western Civilization had a little more concept of the history of Western Civilization. Yes, it actually is true that the libraries of Islamic scholars really, really were the sources for much of what we now know of Greek and Roman history, literature, and poetry. Perhaps the author should take a class in Western Civilization?

"Are we crazy"?? "Maybe!!

Bulls Win! Bulls Win!

Durham Bulls win 3rd Gov's Cup (IL AAA World Series) this decade. Yippee!

Glen Beck: Libertarian?

"Beck is 45, tireless, funny, self-deprecating, a recovering alcoholic, a convert to Mormonism, a libertarian and living with ADHD. He is a gifted storyteller with a knack for stitching seemingly unrelated data points into
possible conspiracies - IF he believed in conspiracies, which he doesn't,
necessarily; he's just asking questions. He's just sayin'." [TIME]

I assume that Mr. Beck is not really a Mormon, either. Both Libertarians and Mormons expect people to have a consistent set of beliefs.

(Nod to Kevin L)

Harry Shearer dishes on polysci

DIA: You were a politics major at UCLA, but I've also read that you did some graduate work at Harvard. What was that all about?

Mr Shearer: Firstly, it was about staying out of the draft. Secondly, it was about urban government. And thirdly, it was about discovering that I really had had enough of academe, most particularly since my writing style—given my proclivity for mimicry—had grown as tediously unreadable as that of any other "political science" practitioner.

Gee, he says it like it's a BAD thing!

Whole article here.

Money, Sex, and Love

Fatal (Fiscal) Attraction: Spendthrifts and Tightwads in Marriage

Scott Rick, Deborah Small & Eli Finkel
University of Pennsylvania Working Paper, February 2009

Abstract:
Although much research finds that "birds of a feather flock together," surveys of married adults suggest that opposites attract when it comes to emotional reactions toward spending. That is, "tightwads," who generally spend less than they would ideally like to spend, and "spendthrifts," who generally spend more than they would ideally like to spend, tend to marry each other, consistent with the notion that people are attracted to mates who possess characteristics dissimilar to those they deplore in themselves (Klohnen and Mendelsohn 1998). In spite of this complementary attraction, spendthrift/ tightwad differences within a marriage predict conflict over
finances, which in turn predict diminished marital well-being. These findings underscore the importance of studying the relationships between money, consumption, and happiness at an interpersonal level.

----------------------

Why Love Has Wings and Sex Has Not: How Reminders of Love and Sex Influence
Creative and Analytic Thinking

Jens Förster, Kai Epstude & Amina Özelsel Personality and Social Psychology
Bulletin, forthcoming

Abstract:
This article examines cognitive links between romantic love and creativity and between sexual desire and analytic thought based on construal level theory. It suggests that when in love, people typically focus on a long-term perspective, which should enhance holistic thinking and thereby creative thought, whereas when experiencing sexual encounters, they focus on the present and on concrete details enhancing analytic thinking. Because people automatically activate these processing styles when in love or when they experience sex, subtle or even unconscious reminders of love versus sex should suffice to change processing modes. Two studies explicitly or subtly reminded participants of situations of love or sex and found support for
this hypothesis.

(Nod to Kevin L.)

Lifted from the comments

KPC mainstay Kunal weighs in with the pithy essence of the difference between China and India:

"Sadly, China, with its oppresive one-party state, can only censor with a broad-brush - they've banned all of Blogger. By contrast, in India, with our superior multi-party censorship apparatus, more targeted displays of intolerance are possible."

Yes, people, it's sad but true: no KPC for the Chinese. They do get KFC, but it's a poor substitute at best.

She Crossed Her Arms, She Must Like Me!

Mimicry and seduction: An evaluation in a courtship context

Nicolas Gueacuteguen
Social Influence, October 2009, Pages 249-255

Abstract:
Recent studies have found that mimicking the verbal and nonverbal behavior of strangers enhances their liking of the individual who mimicked them. An experiment was carried out in two bars during six sessions of speed dating for which young women confederates volunteered to mimic or not some verbal expressions and nonverbal behaviors of a man for 5 minutes. Data revealed that the men evaluated the dating interaction more positively when the woman mimicked them, and that mimicry was associated with a higher evaluation score of the relation and the sexual attractiveness of the woman. Mimicry appears to influence perceptions of physical attributes in addition to personal and social attributes.

(Nod to Kevin L. Women always mimic him, for some reason)

AK v. Cans

AK wins. (My annual fall post to remind you all that we ain't right, here in NC)

Mrs. Wilson: Pretty Darned Sensible, Everything Considered

T. Friedman: Tired of Democracy, Need Dictatorship

wow, amazing article.

since the American people don't agree with Friedman's little schemes, we need a dictatorship. And for some reason he assumes that the dictator will agree with him.

Enforcing government defined happiness

It can be a tricky business. Consider the current news from Gross National Happiness pioneer, Bhutan:

Bhutan has warned its citizens over cutting down thousands of young trees every year to make prayer flags, a threat to the tiny kingdom's lush scenery and the government's duty to bring "Gross National Happiness."

Himalayan Buddhists put up prayer flags for good luck or to help the dead find the right path to their next life. The more flag poles put up for the departed the better, and Buddhist monks say fresh poles must be used each time.

Having failed to convince its citizens to switch from wood to steel for prayer flags, the government of the Himalayas' last Buddhist kingdom is growing bamboo, which it hopes will be an attractive alternative.

"The pressure on forest is from all sides -- from flagposts to hydropower. We are discussing this every day," Agriculture Secretary Sherub Gyaltshen, said.

Bhutan's constitution, which emphasises the importance of Gross National Happiness over Gross Domestic Product, stipulates the country must have at least 60 percent forest cover.

Himalayan Buddhists believe winds will carry positive vibrations of tantric symbols written on the prayer flags in yellow, green, red, white and blue to represent the five elements, and 108 prayer flags are put up when someone dies.

So I guess my question is, what actions produce national happiness? What the people obviously want to do, or what the government wants them to do? Why wouldn't a program to plant renewable prayer flag seedlings be the way to address this issue?

Or maybe is this actually a weird reverse prisoner's dilemma problem, where everyone individually would like to stop with the prayer flags already but can't risk the stigma from being the only one who quits? And the government really is doing their people a favor?

the "it" man of Norman

Mrs. Angus and I practice yoga at a space called Pilates Plus in Norman. It houses a variety of entrepeneurs with business ranging from yoga to accupuncture to reflexology to........... intuitive touch?

Here is a photo of the sign on the side of the car of one of the business people housed there:



I especially like how Mr. it has carefully matched his headband to his pocket square!!!

Lula Strikes Again!

Last spring, Brazilian President Luis Ignatio Lula de Silva kicked up a ruckus when he pinned the blame for the financial crisis on "white, blue-eyed bankers".

Now he has decided to clear the air and dispel any possible misunderstandings:

"What I wanted to say is more noteworthy today than it was then. What I wanted to say was that it wasn't the indigenous or the black population who should pay the bill [for the crisis] but those really responsible, the blue-eyed bankers.

"It was the rich who were responsible for the crisis. And we weren't going to allow them to put the blame on the poor people of the world, as always happens when there is an economic crisis", President Lula said.

Yikes! Does Lula really think that Geithner and Bernanke were going to pin the US financial meltdown on poor people in South America? And only his courageous rhetoric stopped them?

Get a grip sir!

Hat tip to Boz

The best sentences I've read this month

are written by John Cochrane and Luigi Zingales:

"The big banks know the government will bail them out, and they are already bigger, more global, more integrated and "systemic" than ever. They are making huge trading profits—profits that must someday turn to losses. If brokerage and banking are "systemically important," they cannot be married to proprietary trading. Yet the financial-reform plans do not even talk about breaking up this marriage—they hope simply to regulate the behemoths instead."

The whole article is well worth reading for its take on the "blame it on Lehman" meme.

France joins Bhutan

In the quest to measure "gross national happiness". In this case though, President Nic has commissioned a couple of heavy hitters to create an alternative index to GDP. Here is an article on what they've come up with:

"Sarkozy asked U.S. economist Joseph Stiglitz, winner of the 2001 Nobel economics prize and a critic of free-market economists, and Armatya Sen of India, who won the 1998 Nobel prize for work on developing countries, to lead the analysis of growth tracking.

Sen helped create the U.N. Human Development Index, a yearly welfare indicator designed to gear international policy decisions to take account of health and living standards.

Their report, delivered to Sarkozy on Monday, recommends shifting the emphasis from gross domestic product, which measures economic production, to well-being and sustainability.

The report recommends looking at household income, consumption and wealth rather than production in the economy as a whole for a better reflection of material living standards. Non-market activities such as house cleaning should also be tracked, it says.

More prominence should be given to the distribution of income and wealth, as well as to access to education and health.

Attention should also be given to whether countries are over-consuming their economic wealth and damaging the environment, the report says."

OK, got all that? Our index measures house cleaning, income distribution, access to particular goods and services, plus measures of over-consumption and environmental damage.

I will have to see if I can find the actual report and see if Stiglitz and Sen were so foolhardy as to list a concrete quantitive formula containing all this that could be computed.

Let me conclude by saying that on a 0 - 100 scale, my happiness today is around 97.34!

A Tale of Two Rookies

Matthew Stafford the overall #1 pick making his pro debut for the Lions:

16-37 for 205 yards, 0 TDs, 3 INTs and a QB rating of 27.4

Mark Sanchez the overall #5 pick making his pro debut for the J-E-T-S Jets:

18-31 for 272 yards, 1 TD, 1 INTs and a QB rating of 84.3

Need I even say that the Lions lost (for 18th straight time) and the Jets won?

The good people of Michigan shouldn't despair (about football at least) as another rookie quarterback, Tate Forcier (I am not making that up) led the Wolverines past Notre Dame yesterday in a thrilling game.

They got the dial-up blues

Remember the old joke, "it'd be faster to send it by carrier pigeon?". In South Africa it appears to be actually true:

"A South African information technology company on Wednesday proved it was faster for them to transmit data with a carrier pigeon than to send it using Telkom , the country's leading internet service provider.

Internet speed and connectivity in Africa's largest economy are poor because of a bandwidth shortage. It is also expensive.

Local news agency SAPA reported the 11-month-old pigeon, Winston, took one hour and eight minutes to fly the 80 km (50 miles) from Unlimited IT's offices near Pietermaritzburg to the coastal city of Durban with a data card was strapped to his leg.

Including downloading, the transfer took two hours, six minutes and 57 seconds -- the time it took for only four percent of the data to be transferred using a Telkom line.

SAPA said Unlimited IT performed the stunt after becoming frustrated with slow internet transmission times.

The company has 11 call-centers around the country and regularly sends data to its other branches.

Telkom could not immediately be reached for comment."

The best parts of this story are (1) the pigeon's name, and (2) the last sentence!

Hat tip to Mrs. Angus

Statistical Analysis: Yer doin' it Wrong!

The study on the determinants of college graduation rates is making a big splash. However, its analysis is, with all due respect, crap. Correlation is not causation, there are generally multiple explanations for a correlation and it is not correct to simply pick one and assert its truthfulness.

Consider this part of the story:

Students shouldn't settle for less in a college: Thousands of bright, qualified students apply only to lower-ranked schools where their grades and tests scores are above those of the average student. But the new study finds that those who attend such "safety" schools are far more likely to drop out than those who get into "reach" schools. "It is counterintuitive," Bowen says. "You might think that if Sally goes to a school where she is top dog, she will have a much easier time graduating. But that's not true. She has a better chance of graduating if she goes to school with other people as talented she is."


Well, his (Bowen is one of the authors of the study) interpretation of the correlation certainly is counter-intuitive. It is also almost certainly incorrect! How about this instead: Students who pick an easy school when higher quality options are available to them are not very interested in higher education and are signaling by their very choice that they are unlikely to complete a degree. The last sentence in the quote above should read: "She has a much better chance of graduating if she WANTS to go to a school with other people as talented as she is".

In other words, a lack of desire to get a college degree is driving both the choice of an easy school and the failure to graduate.

I am not saying that my interpretation is 100% correct, but it least it posits a causal mechanism that makes the correlation un-puzzling. The authors, to me are being almost willfully dense. They admit their view is "counter-intuitive" but can't bring themselves to think about anything else.

The next paragraph in the story makes the same mistake again:

Admissions tests don't predict graduation: SAT and ACT test scores are no help in predicting who will graduate from many, if not most, colleges. The widely used tests do help identify those likely to succeed at elite schools, the study found. But for many less selective colleges, students with higher scores were actually more likely to drop out.

Again, it's counter-intuitive unless you consider that highly qualified people picking an easy alternative are showing their actual lack of interest in the endeavor and thus are intrinsically less likely to complete said endeavor.

Putting students who don't want to go to a competitive college into a competitive college is NOT going to raise graduation rates in any significant way. Putting them into one or two year (instead of 4 year) certificate/professional training / apprenticeship programs or just getting off their backs and letting them go to work is a better way to make them happy and improve the economic health of the polity.

Lumaye News Quiz

Here is the weekly news quiz I do on the Bill Lumaye show, every Thursday. What do you think?

Which of the following international news stories is UNTRUE? One of these stories is ridiculous, and made up. The other three are equally ridiculous, but entirely true and real. Which one is false?

A. (Where’s Waldo?) Boaters and fisherman in Florida are urged to look out for a missing robot submarine, nicknamed “Waldo.” Waldo the robot cost about $100,000. It also was equipped with a detector to find red tide, a toxic algae bloom. That was valued at another $30,000. Scientists aren't sure if Waldo sank, or is just floating around somewhere.

B. (Origin of “Hot Dogs”) On a cold April day in 1901, at New York’s “Polo Grounds,” the concession guys weren’t cold stuff. They got the idea of putting long “dachshund sausages” in warm rolls, and selling them. “Get yer hot dachshund rolls! Get yer red hots!” They sold like crazy. Sports cartoonist Ted Dorgan was up against his deadline, and needed an idea. He was interested in the way the new “hot dachshund rolls” were selling. But he didn’t know how to spell “dachshund,” so he depicted concession sellers hawking “hot dogs! Get yer hot dogs!” The cartoon was so captivating that it was reprinted. And the hot dog name stuck.

C. (Japanese First Lady Rides UFO) Forget Nancy Reagan and her astrologer. Japan's about to get a first lady who claims her soul rode a UFO to Venus. In her book "Very Strange Things I've Encountered," Miyuki Hatoyama says she traveled to Venus in a triangular UFO while her body slept. "It was a very beautiful place and it was really green," she wrote. Because of his large eyes and prominent forehead, her husband, new PM Yukio Hatoyama has been called "the alien" himself. Maybe the election in Japan is a sign of a new era in intergalactic relations.
D. (Pepsi Can Surprise) Fred DeNegri was grilling in his backyard tiki bar in Ormond Beach, Florida, when he popped open a can of Diet Pepsi, took a big gulp and started gagging. He emptied out the can down a sink but something heavy remained inside. He shook the can until something resembling "pink linguini" slid out, followed by "dark stuff," wife Amy DeNegri said. But the heavy object inside the can never came out, she said. The DeNegris took pictures before calling poison control and the FDA, which showed up the next day to examine the can in question and collect it for lab testing. The couple received a copy of the completed report last week from the Food and Drug Administration Office of Regulatory Affairs, which had good news: It was NOT a mouse. It was, however, almost certainly the remains of a frog or a toad.

RTL-Day Plus 3: Main Problem is Buses

It appears that the main problem in Samoa has been the bus system. MANY people depend on buses, and there are fewer than 20 legal, converted buses in the entire island nation. The BEEB tells us about it.

Excerpt: "A few of the bus owners did not believe that we would proceed [with the change]," Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi said after meeting a group of them on Wednesday.

Actually, I think they were just waiting for sure that a whack job like you was actually going to go through with this plan, Mr. PM, before they took a blow torch to their buses and cut a new door on the other side.

Radio NZ Int'l has some more on the bus dust-up....

Nonetheless, and contrary to some overheated predictions made on this VERY blog, the switchover seems to have gone pretty well. The economic expense will still be quite large, in the short run, but all transitions have short run costs.

We Get Letters--Doping and Science

From RL, in CA:

This piece- on whether Lance's blood levels show possible indications that he doped during Le Tour de France is interesting, but the science is either not well explained or unclear or both.

The main accusations seems to be based on a study of seven riders in 2007. All seven saw their hemoglobin and hematocrit levels decrease by just over 10%. Thats a small sample for the Tour, and I think its debatable whether the riders represent a homogenous group from which one can draw a random sample from, or whether the different types of riders - "General Classification (GC)" competitors who are in peak condition and trying to win the whole thing, sprinters who maximize their speed only at the end of flat stages, climbers who only maximize effort on mountain stages, domestiques who are the unheralded pack horses, and the others who try to get lucky one day here or there and conserve their energy the rest of the time (since they cannot beat the GCs, the climbers, or the sprinters unless they get really, really lucky and find themselves on one day with more energy and the right set of circumstances).

I think it is possible that the GC's train in such a way (or are special to begin with) that their blood levels do not decrease during a three-week grand tour without a study of the GCs. Or they are cheats. Armstrong was not peaking during Italy- in fact, he struggled- so comparing his blood levels from Italy vs two months later in France may not be fair - a better comparison would be to a previous TdF he rode.

From our perspective, the best part of the article is that the proposed solution: have a group of "experts" deliberate... And we all know how effective and unbiased a group of SCIENTISTS can be... Especially if, say, a political scientist or a lawyer, gets to enjoy agenda setting powers.

Teleprompter Failure: Valley Forge

What if BHO's teleprompter failed, at Valley Forge?

Here's one view of one possibility....

Carriage is a pumpkin, glass slipper doesn't fit

Melanie Oudin lost to Caroline Wozniaki 6-2, 6-2 last night and that will probably be the last we hear from her in big time tennis. At least allow me to hope so, because the era when human backboards reigned in women's tennis (Chrissy Evert, Tracy Austin, Arantxa!!) was a brutally boring time.

The media coverage of this "phenom" was ridiculously over the top. People, she is 5 foot 6 inches tall and has no weapons to speak of. Her run at the Open was one of those pseudo "hot hand" episodes that seem so amazing for the person doing it, but given all the matches and all the players will definitely happen from time to time.

She seems like a sweet kid (although there was a lot of Monfils type yelling out there on the court) and I wish her well. My number one piece of advice to her would be to get a new coach, preferably one that wasn't a scumbag.



ps. the ever entertaining Wikipedia informs us that Arantxa's nickname is/was "The Barcelona Bumblebee". How sweet is that?

The Culture that is Thailand

A Thai man is keeping more than 4,600 scorpions as pets to atone for the years he spent cooking the arachnids to sell as snacks.

Scorpions, insects and worms are commonly eaten in Thailand, especially in the northern regions.
But after years of serving up scorpions, Suang Puangsri, a practicing Buddhist, felt it was time to befriend them instead.

"Although I was happy to have money, I felt suffering deep inside as they were being harmed by me," he told Reuters. "I felt scared that I was committing a sin."

The 38-year-old has given up the bottom floor of his two-storey home to the scorpions, who scuttle about a 6 meter by 5 meter (19 ft by 16 ft) enclosure decorated with branches and stone so that very little light and heat come in.

Suang buys up to one kg of live cicadas and other inspects daily to feed his pets, who have stung him so many times that he says he is immune to their venom.

He also spends at least an hour every day meditating inside the enclosure, often placing scorpions in his mouth.

So clearly, another title for this post could have been: Karma reparations: yer doin' them wrong.

He has stopped torturing scorpions (at least partly stopped, I doubt the scorpion enjoys being inside his mouth), only to start torturing and killing cicadas instead.

Turns out that this guy is not alone:

Suang's fixation with scorpions is unusual, but not totally unheard of in Thailand.
Earlier this year a Thai woman went into the record books for spending 33 days and nights with 5,000 live scorpions. She also held a 7-inch live scorpion in her mouth for 2 minutes and 3 seconds.

The full story is here.

Big Doings

In October, Built to Spill is releasing a new record called "There is no Enemy". The Mountain Goats are releasing a new record called "The Life of the World to Come". Jonathan Lethem has a new novel, "Chronic City", coming out and Orhan Pamuk has a new novel coming out in English called "The Museum of Innocence.

Plus, just to get things started, Richard Powers' new novel, "Generosity: An Enhancement" will be coming out on September 29th.

Our modern world is truly a bounteous and wonderful place.

Dilbert goes to Mumbai

What happens when you apply professional US-style management to Indian textile factories you ask?

A hint of the answer can be found here, along with lots of amazing photos of what Indian textile factories look like before the pointy haired ones come in and start managing.

I worked in a factory in rural Ohio in the 1970s that I thought was a dump, but it looked like the JPL compared to these contemporary photos.

Hat tip to Gabriel M.

Riddle me this!

Why is the USA virtually mum on the electoral fraud and now harsh repression of the opposition in Iran, but seemingly blind to any nuances and insistent on the return of Zelaya in Honduras?

The Monroe doctrine? The fact that Honduras is a friendly country to us compared to Iran and you should always treat your friends more harshly? Are we just trying to get on Chavez's good side? Is the Honduran case somehow more egregiously bad?

Or are we just hypocrites?

We Get Letters--Faculty Governance

As part of our occasional "We Get Letters" series, here is one from a friend who let guilt rule her/him, and now is learning more than s/he wanted to know about faculty governance.

There were 4 candidates for the position of [representative] to something called
the [many headed governance monster]. Against my better judgment I did not withdraw my name from consideration after being nominated, and to my shock I won by a plurality, which has been the customary way college-wide elections to committees have been decided.

This time the second-place finisher complained that the college's bylaws (in discussing the conduct of meetings) stipulate a majority decision, so s/he demanded a runoff. The head of our college's [assembly] (whose email I am forwarding) consulted the President of the [assembly] and the [guy who wrote down the rule manual]. Below s/he reports their Solomonic ruling--we are to keep voting until someone gets a majority of the votes.

This may make for a fascinating experiment if all four original candidates
agree to stand in the subsequent rounds.

Emailed response:

Dear [people] -
I have heard back from [guy] and want to let you know that based on his assessment and that of [another guy], we will need to hold a runoff election for the [assembly] seat. Because of the way our bylaws are currently written, we also cannot limit the election to the top two vote getters. Rather, all of the original candidates have the right to stand for election if they wish. I will be getting in touch with [other candidates] to see whether they want to run again. I also need each of you to tell me whether you are willing to stand for the runoff.

If you have questions or want more details as to why the runoff needs to happen in this way, please don't hesitate to get in touch. My plan is to start the runoff voting by noon on [day] and close it at the end of business on [next day].

Thanks, [Person]

So....the decision is that the runoff will continue until someone gets a majority. And ALL FOUR candidates will continue to be on the ballot. An excellent natural experiment. At the Libertarian Convention this year, this kind of thing brought us...BOB BARR! After six ballots, I should note....

RTL Samoa: Video

From the BEEB

"Stop," from the SF Chron

UPDATE:
The UK Guardian calls the switch "smooth."

TVNZ is less optimistic.

People Figure Stuff Out

I had no idea about this, but an interesting article about the Dutch village that eliminated traffic signals.

Can you imagine having no traffic lights or signs or any other way of keeping cars and people apart? The results would be dangerous chaos, right?

Well, they have a lot a faith in human nature in the small Dutch town of Drachten. Its main intersection is a busy place, where cars and trucks compete with people on bicycles, and others on foot.

The normal civic response - here and elsewhere - has been to put in more traffic lights, divide the roadway into lanes - control things. But the response in Drachten has been the opposite - they took the controls away.

A funny thing happened. The accident rate around the intersection went down - way down, from more than eight a year to fewer than two.

Another article. Brilliant. Excerpt:

The project is the brainchild of Mr Monderman, and the town has seen some remarkable results. There used to be a road death every three years but there have been none since the traffic light removal started seven years ago.

There have been a few small collisions, but these are almost to be encouraged, Mr Monderman explained. "We want small accidents, in order to prevent serious ones in which people get hurt," he said yesterday.

"It works well because it is dangerous, which is exactly what we want. But it shifts the emphasis away from the Government taking the risk, to the driver being responsible for his or her own risk.

"We only want traffic lights where they are useful and I haven't found anywhere where they are useful yet."

Mr Monderman, 61, compared his philosophy of motoring to an ice rink. "Skaters work out things for themselves and it works wonderfully well. I am not an anarchist, but I don't like rules which are ineffective and street furniture tells people how to behave."

Of course, John Stossel and John Staddon have made this argument in the U.S.

RTL Day: Updates....

5:30 am Apia time: It's quiet. Almost time for the church bells and police / fire sirens the announce the switch. Nice last minute video from NZ TV3 here....

UPDATE 1: I had not heard this before, but it makes some sense. The government has banned ALL alcohol sales, starting today (Sept 7), and extending throught the 2-day "holiday." Not that banning alcohol sales will keep people from drinking. But there is a special population whose attention might be gotten through a ban on alcohol sales. When they ask why, they will be told about the lane switch. And, of course, there will be a mandatory blessing. All the nightclubs and bars have to close by 10 pm, through Sept. 12.

UPDATE 2: Almost 9 a.m. now in Apia. This story, just posted, has very little content. I searched and searched for a webcam, set up somewhere in Apia or one of the other cities. Disappointing. CNN had nothing, at least not yet.

UPDATE 3: A BBC Story....Could the UK switch? UPDATE 4: This from the Samoa Observer.... (published 9:30 am Apia time)
The road switch happened at 6am today. So remember to keep left.
Chief Executive Officer of Land Transport Authority, Leasi Galuvao, urges that as most important. “And drive carefully,” said Leasi. “Stick to the speed limit.”
Leasi thinks drivers will be cautious the first few days of the switch.

The time of most concern is when motorists believe themselves adjusted to the new conditions and press the accelerator a little harder. That’s why the safety messages will persist up to three months from now, Leasi said. LTA’s technical unit was yesterday afternoon praying the rain would stop so that they could complete the remaining directional arrows at intersections in town before 6am today.

Road signs on poles are still being vandalised, with some pushed down with their coverings still on, Leasi said.

RTL DAY

Right to Left Day. TODAY.

The always reliable BEEB is on the story.

Buses threaten strike. Although it is not really a strike, since the law says the buses are not ALLOWED to run if they don't have a door cut in the left hand side. Useful video from NZ TV3.

Excerpt:
Bus owners want compensation from Government to change the side of the door of their buses to make it safer for passengers to embark and disembark. They put the price at $50,000 – which includes the cost of transferring the location of the steering wheel from the left to the right.

Government, through Land Transport Authority (LTA), wants only the location of the doors changed. But bus owners say the steering wheel needs also to be relocated for the sake of safety when vehicles are required to change to travelling to the left side of the road from tomorrow.

LTA offered free licensing for a year. That amounts to a total $2,360 – which bus owners say is nowhere near enough as compensation. Nor is the time given them to make the conversion anywhere near enough, they say. LTA believes otherwise.

The comments here in the Samoan Observer (Apia/Savalalo) are interesting....

RTL-Day Minus 1: TOMORROW is Driverdämmerung

Tomorrow in Samoa: Twilight of the Driver--Driverdämmerung!:

(götterdämmerung -- Dictionary: göt·ter·däm·mer·ung or Göt·ter·däm·mer·ung (gŏt'ər-dăm'ə-rŭng', gœt'ər-dĕm'ə-rʊng')

A turbulent ending of a regime or an institution. [Comes from "Götterdämmerung," an opera by Richard Wagner, from German, twilight of the gods : Götter, genitive pl. of Gott, god (from Middle High German got, from Old High German) + Dämmerung, twilight (from Middle High German demerunge, from Old High German demerunga, from demar, twilight).])

A turbulent ending of a regime or an institution, indeed. Turnabouts will be difficult. (Götterdämmerung was the fourth in Wagner's "Ring" Cycle, so I guess the Ring Roads should be okay). Although I keep hearing that one way streets will be a "special problem." Why? No one said to change directions. Just change lanes. I can see why turning OUT of a one-way street onto a two way street will be tricky. I expect that the morning will look and sound something like this, at about the 4 mins 30 second mark in the video...

Also, remember, Samoa is the latest place in the world. Tomorrow almost never comes, in other words, because Samoa is barely east of the International Dateline. The switchover starts (as I noted yesterday) with some radio reminders and police roadblocks. By 6:00 am local (in other words, 1 pm Eastern Daylight Time in the U.S., a seven hour time difference between Raleigh and Apia), the switch will be in full Götterdämmerung.

If it matters, the weather forecast for tomorrow is cool and wet, a high of 81 deg F and morning rain.

Regulate this!

Alan Blinder in today's NY Times points out that the financial regulation we are likely to get is not the financial regulation that we might actually need. That is to say he expects that there will be additional consumer protection and pay limitations forthcoming (which he deems to be of second order importance), while things of first order importance like making derivative markets more transparent or creating new rules to deal with the potential failure of large financial firms may go unaddressed.

Well worth reading.

I am going to lose some of Mungo's libertarian street cred here, but I think that increasing the transparency of, and collateral behind, derivatives is a very good idea. I am not a fan of legislating pay limits or having a government panel set them.

RTL-Day Minus 2: Nuts and Bolts of the Change

Our Samoan friends are dealing, as best they can, with the prospect of the road change. Here are some nuts and bolts discussions of the costs of the switch, and the exact sequence of events. Excerpt:

Police checks of vehicles and driver’s licences;
Drink driving enforcement campaign.
Encouragement: Police reminding all road users of the switch.
The following activities have been scheduled for the switch day:
Engineering--Between 0600hrs and 0610hrs remove tape from line markings and covers from signage.
Education--Radio and television reminders of switch, including associated speed limit changes between 0000hrs and 0400hrs;
Radio broadcasts begin again at 0500hrs ahead of switch and reminders continue until midnight.
Between 0600hrs and 0610hrs remove tape from line markings and covers from signage.
Education
Radio and television reminders of switch, including associated speed limit changes between 0000hrs and 0400hrs;
Radio broadcasts begin again at 0500hrs ahead of switch and reminders continue until midnight.

Oh, and they are going to ring the church bells. I think I would just go to church and STAY for two or three days.

48 hours left. We'll see.

The match of the week (so far)

Taylor Dent beat Ivan Navarro last night, winning the 5th set tiebreaker 11-9. Both guys played serve and volley (Dent went to net 109 times, Navarro 146) with accurate and huge serves (Dent made 70% of his first serves with a top speed of 147 mph, Navarro 81% with a top speed of 130).

The full match stats are here.

After the match, Dent commandeered the umpire's microphone to thank the crowd and took a victory lap around the Grandstand, slapping hands with the crowd. He is coming back from two spinal fusion surgeries and has a great attitude about the sport as revealed in his post match interview.

Next up for Taylor is the most handsome Scottish person in all of history, Andy Murray.

The Jobless Recovery

from the WSJ:

"The economy is experiencing another huge increase in productivity in the third quarter. Nonfarm labor productivity grew at an annual rate of 6.6% in the second quarter. Look for something in that eye-popping range for the current quarter. Here’s a rough sketch of the numbers: Today’s jobs numbers showed that the Labor Department’s index of aggregate hours worked by Americans was at 98.9 in August, down steeply from a second quarter average of 99.7. That’s from a combination of job cuts, reductions in overtime and other cuts to work shifts. Let’s assume there’s no change in hours worked in September. That would mean the total amount of hours that Americans worked in the third quarter would be down at about a 2.8% annual rate. The economy seems to be on track to grow at an annual rate of 3% or more. More output and fewer hours worked means more productivity in the neighborhood of 6%. You’ll be hearing a lot of talk about a jobless recovery in the months ahead. The upside is that this is good for corporate profits. The downside is that workers will suffer even after the economy comes back."

YIKES!

Mothers in Law, Part Deaux

I endeared myself to my then future MiL the first time I entered her house. In the kitchen, on the wall, she had framed and mounted a picture of Bill Clinton and John Paul II. I couldn't help myself, I blurted out "Cool picture! It's the pope and the dope!"

I was reminded of my heinous verbal indiscretion by this picture, on the front page of the WSJ today:

It's just too easy, but just too fun: Dumbbell, meet Dumbbell

Change you can believe in, and drink

Blue Matter compares Pepsi and Coke logos over the years.

I had not realized this difference. Interesting.

RTL-Day Minus 3: Why Can't We All Just Get a Lane?

Several MSM sources have now weighed in, including Gwynne Dyer (published many places, but locally in the Pacific here...)

And the Canadians noticed...

Randy James, for TIME, asks, why is it different?

The BEEB solicits comments, though no one has yet commented, as of this writing.

And the Daily Mail, that paragon of Brit journalism, has this. An interesting article, with some history. I'm not sure it is all true, but it is interesting. (And that pretty much describes MOST of British journalism, doesn't it?)

UPDATE: A Brit posts on the change. But she gets the date wrong, and expresses the hope that...well, read for yourself. Why move from right side to left side?
The answer is money. The Government wants to slash the number of big, expensive, fuel-hungry American cars being imported into the country. Instead, it’s hoping that ex-pat Samoans living in Australia and New Zealand will send cheaper-to-run right-hand-drive models to the folks back home.

No. NO, NO, NO. The concern is not for the fuel costs, but for the cost of smoking, pollution-emitting junkers. The PM wants MORE of these old junkers, and it is easier to get them from the Commonwealth island nations. Also, as I have noted repeatedly, the Samoan PM worries that American cars cannot escape tsunamis, because....well, I have no idea why he thinks that. But he does.

Radio Quiz

Every week, on the Bill Lumaye show, I do a call-in quiz. This week's was, I thought, better than average.

Which of the following international news stories is UNTRUE? One of these stories is ridiculous, and made up. The other three are equally ridiculous, but entirely true and real. Which one is false?
A. (Sick Terrorist Released) One of our closest allies released a convicted terrorist, a man convicted in an open, honest trial, of killing hundreds of people. This terrorist, on returning home, was greeted as a hero, and paraded around the streets with the leader of the country. The reason for the release was that the terrorist was not feeling well, though he did perk up quite a bit when he got home to such a boisterous celebration.
B. (Airbus Subsidy Suit at WTO) The U.S. is demanding that the European Union stop subsidizing the airplane manufacturer, Airbus. But this suit was brought before the U.S. took over, and offered much larger (three times larger) subsidies to its own auto companies General Motors and Chrysler. If the U.S. wins the Airbus suit, they will have to pay much larger fines if the EU sues about our automobile subsidies.
C. (Fly to Havana) President Barack Obama this week announced that he is lifting all travel restrictions for Cuba. Travel to Cuba has been restricted since 1974, and has been nearly impossible since 2003. Two U.S. air carriers, American and Air Tran, announced that they would begin regular service from Miami’s airport to Jose Marti International in Havana, in time for the (I’m quoting now) “2010 winter snowbird season.” I think, I’m not sure, but I think that 10,000 Canadians have already bought tickets for January.
D. (Island Lane Switch) A small island nation in the Pacific has decided to switch from driving on the right to driving on the left. This is in spite of the fact that ALL the 20,000 cars in the country are Left Hand Steering, and all the buses and trolleys have doors that open on the right hand side. The Prime Minister who made the decision to force the switch thinks that older, cheaper cars from NZ and OZ will now flood into his country, making it easier (quoting now) “for citizens to increase our mobility, and to escape tsunamis.” (Quick, kids, get in the car, a tsunami is coming!)

Preach, Bishop! Won't YOU Take the Pledge?

Someone has gone and made the Bishop angry. You won't LIKE the Bishop when he's angry. Here is his email:

After watching the really well done and moving "I Pledge" paean to President Obama and feel-good liberalism, I took the challenge and wrote my own pledge: I pledge to not buy a hybrid since its life cycle costs exceed those of my Tahoe. I pledge to increase my carbon footprint in order to encourage more plant growth. I pledge to not purchase any electricity from wind farms because they greatly increase costs without any measurable environmental benefit and they are UGLY. I pledge to overthrow the Endangered Species Act because it makes endangered species worse off. I pledge to educate my grandchildren about the evils of government. I pledge to promote free market environmentalism. I pledge to respect my neighbor's property rights by fighting restrictive zoning. I pledge to spend more time growing tomatoes. I pledge to introduce even more students to the great works of Western Civilization. I pledge to re-read Milton Friedman. Friedrich Hayek, Ronald Coase and the other great University of Chicago economists. I pledge to not be a servant to any government official but to serve my neighbors.

I'll take that pledge myself.

Mother in Law jokes: NOT Funny to Mother in Law

Sunda Croonquist is being sued by her Mother in Law, for making fun of the MiL in the stand-up comedy show that Sunda does.

The MiL is suing for actual damages, it appears. But the MiL should remember that truth is a defense in libel cases. As in, the daughter comic is "libel" to win. An example of the kind of jokes in question: Sunda's first visit (Sunda is black, btw) to her mother-in-law's (very white, very Jewish) house: "I walk in, I say, 'Thank you so much for having me here, Ruthie.' She says, 'The pleasure's all mine, have a seat."' Then, in a loud aside, 'Harriet, put my pocketbook away.'"

Here's the best part: Sunda's husband Mark is a lawyer. He is personally represnting Sunda, in court, against his own mother. What could POSSIBLY go wrong with that plan!? I guess grandma is not going to get to see much of the grand daughter. Sad, really.

The video....see for yourself if Sunda goes over the line.

Fortunately, I have a WONDERFUL mother in law, one who never does anything nuts or bizarre. So, I'm never tempted to blog about her, and get sued like this.

Nod to RL, who has an even BETTER MiL than I have. (Yes, he made me say that...)

Papers on Housing and Financial Regulation

Yet Another View on Why a Home Is One's Castle

Fuad Hasanov & Douglas Dacy, Real Estate Economics, Spring 2009, Pages 23-41

Abstract: We compute equity-based real after-tax rates of return for homeowners and landlords in the United States for 1952-2005. The study confirms that a combined aggregate for residential housing provides a high average net return and low volatility, has low correlation with financial assets and can provide a hedge against inflation. The efficient frontier analysis shows that the optimal portfolio for a household with a coefficient of relative risk aversion of four to five is one which contains a bit larger amount of housing than stocks, close to what one observes in the real world.

-----------------------

The Impact Of Deregulation And Financial Innovation On Consumers: The Case Of The Mortgage Market

Kristopher Gerardi, Harvey Rosen & Paul Willen Journal of Finance, forthcoming

Abstract: We develop a technique for assessing the impact of changes in the mortgage market on households. We start with an implication of the permanent income hypothesis: that the higher a household's expected future income, the more it desires to consume, ceteris paribus. If perfect credit markets exist, desired consumption matches actual consumption and current spending forecasts future income. Since credit market imperfections mute this effect, the strength of the relationship between house spending and future income measures the "imperfectness" of mortgage markets. Using micro-data, we find that over the past several decades, housing markets have become less imperfect in this sense. Mortgage securitization has played an important role in explaining this phenomenon.
-----------------------

The Housing Crisis and Bankruptcy Reform: The Prepackaged Chapter 13 Approach

Eric Posner & Luigi Zingales, University of Chicago Working Paper, March 2009

Abstract: The housing crisis threatens to destroy hundreds of billions of dollars of value by causing homeowners with negative equity to walk away from their houses. A house in foreclosure is worth 30 to 50 percent less than a house that a homeowner either retains or sells on the market, and a foreclosed house damages neighboring property values as well. We advocate a reform of Chapter 13 that would allow homeowners to strip down the value of their mortgages in a prepackaged bankruptcy. Such a plan would give homeowners an incentive to keep or resell their homes, thus reducing the market value loss of homes while protecting the effective value of creditors' interests. Two further key elements of the plan are that it uses prices based on the average house price in a particular ZIP code, which reduces moral hazard; and it is automated, requiring only a rubber stamp by a bankruptcy judge or other official, thus preserving judicial resources. Other plans, including that of the Obama administration, are compared.

(Nod to Kevin L, who phones home)

RTL-Day Minus 4: Coordination Games and Bastiat

From 3-news, Kiwi-land, regarding the decision of the fake "Cabinet Meeting" on Tuesday....

Roina Vavatau, an opponent to the change, says there should be a delay in implementing the rules.

“We wanted to have a delay since we were not successful with the court case,” he says. We had anticipated that the best that we want to request from the government is to delay it further.”

Mr Vavatau’s request was ignored and on Monday the rules will change, but some villages near the main port of Sa'vaii are vowing to continue to enforce driving on the right hand side - even if only on the one kilometre stretch of road in their village. Protest organisers say the change is being implemented in an undemocratic way, and some village chiefs or matai's will ignore the rules.

Samoan Community Leader Litea Ah Hoi says the village chiefs want to maintain there local authority. “They are very proud to retain their position of authority even to the extent of defying central government,” she says.

Samoan leader Fa'amatuainu Tino Pereia says the change is positive for Samoa. “I think for Samoa it will harmonise Samoa’s driving patterns with the rest of the region,” he says.

“Not only that but also with the two significant countries of the region, Australia, and New Zealand which will then allow Samoa to have some sort of mobility within its own country.”

Mr Tino Pereira says September 7 will get off to a bumpy start but the majority off the 160,000 will eventually see sense in the change.

Many amazing claims in these quotes. First, the idea of a "region" for an island is a bit odd. You cannot drive from NZ or OZ, or Hawaii, to Samoa (and it's the same distance, approximately, with OZ being the furthest away.) Thus, by far the cheapest cars are the CARS YOU ALREDY HAVE. All of these are Left Hand Drive cars.

There are NO car-carrying ferries from OZ, NZ,or HI. Not one. And shipping cars 4000 miles is about 10% more expensive than shipping them 1000, on a bulk carrier. Just not a consideration. The expensive part is loading and unloading.

So, "mobility within its own country" suggests staying with the existing system.

As for "maintaining there local authority" (that is THEIR typo, not mine), this is coordination game, AND a power struggle. But if everyone else switches, the threat to stay on the right side of the road is not credible.

Finally, I am reminded of Bastiat's famous observations on the broken window, chapter 1 in "That Which is Seen and Not Seen." Bastiat addresses the argument that a broken window is a good thing, because it creates new business for the glazier. Bastiat goes on to say, "what will you say, disciples of good M. F. Chamans, who has calculated with so much precision how much trade would gain by the burning of Paris, from the number of houses it would be necessary to rebuild?"

It is true enough that forcing people to buy new cars, and new buses, and make other changes, will create the appearance of economic activity. What we won't see is the business, and work, and activity, that WOULD have taken place without this ridiculous in-kind tax.

It's the Amazing...TURTLE PUPPY!

Once the turtle puppy gets on his back, he can't get back up!

RTL-Day Minus 5: Continued

So, who is bigger tool, the PM of Samoa or those two wacky French mayors?

Listen, and decide for yourself....

On the Pacific island of Samoa, traffic will switch next week from the right side of the road to the left. Protesters took to the streets. Bus companies are stuck with passenger doors on the wrong side. In France, two feuding mayors have declared a busy street one way — in both directions. Now no one can take the road that used to carry thousands of commuters into Paris each day.

Interview, on Radio Australia, with the attorney for PASS...

RTL-Day Minus 5: Dagen H

Håll dig till höger, Svensson An astute reader (yes, all KPC readers are astute, but this person is astute even by those elevated standards) notes that one should compare the impending Samoan disaster to the analogous disaster in Sweden.

Well, at KPC we live to serve. Well, and to complain. To serve and to complain, that's what we live for. Anyway, some background on Dagen H. Start with the WikiP entry, which is quite good. Excerpt:

Dagen H (H day), today mostly referred to as Högertrafikomläggningen ("The right-hand traffic diversion"), was the day, 3 September 1967, on which traffic in Sweden switched from driving on the left-hand side of the road to the right. The H stands for Högertrafik, the Swedish word for "right-hand traffic".

There were two major arguments for the change: (1) All Sweden's immediate neighbours drove on the right (including Norway, with which Sweden has a long land border). (2)
Most Swedes drove left-hand drive (LHD) vehicles. This led to many head-on collisions when passing on two-lane highways, which are common in Sweden because of its low population density and traffic levels.
Nonetheless, the change was widely unpopular, and had repeatedly been voted down over the previous forty years. In a 1955 referendum, 83 percent voted to keep driving on the left. In 1963, the Riksdag (the Swedish parliament) approved the change and established the Statens Högertrafikkommission (HTK) ("state right-hand traffic commission") to oversee it. It also began implementing a four-year education program, with the advice of psychologists.[1]

The campaign included displaying the Dagen H logo on various commemorative items, including milk cartons, men's shorts and women's underwear. Swedish television held a contest for songs about the change; the winning entry was Håll dig till höger, Svensson ('Keep to the right, Svensson') by the Telstars. As Dagen H neared, every intersection was equipped with an extra set of poles and traffic signals wrapped in black plastic. Workers roamed the streets early in the morning on Dagen H to remove the plastic. Similarly, a parallel set of lines were painted onto the roads with white paint, then covered with black tape. Before Dagen H, Swedish roads had used yellow lines.

On Dagen H, Sunday, 3 September, all non-essential traffic was banned from the roads from 01:00 to 06:00. Any vehicles on the roads during that time had to follow special rules. All vehicles had to come to a complete stop at 04:50, then carefully change to the right-hand side of the road and stop again before being allowed to proceed at 05:00. In Stockholm and Malmö, however, the ban was longer—from 10:00 on Saturday until 15:00 on Sunday—to allow work crews to reconfigure intersections. Certain other towns also saw an extended ban, from 15:00 on Saturday until 15:00 on Sunday.

One-way streets presented unique problems. Bus stops had to be constructed on the other side of the street. Intersections had to be reshaped to allow traffic to merge.

Why put a reminder to "switch sides" on women's underwear? Why did one-way streets present unique problems? Why does Samoa want traffic to look like this? UPDATE: This Salon piece makes the comparison with Sweden quite nicely, and (importantly) mentions the timeless musical classic "Keep to the Right, Svensson." Ya gotta recognize....

What makes Roger go?

Insightful multimedia commentary here and a look at what it's like to play him for the first time here.

The men's  side of the Open is amazing this year with Federer, Roddick, and Murray all playing well, the uberpunk Djokovic seemingly regaining form, and the chance that Nadal might come back to life.

The women's side is basically Serena and a bunch of Russian players with serious serve issues (there are 40 players in the women's draw whose last name ends in "a").

Running out of land....NOT

Unlearned Lessons from the Housing Bubble

Robert Shiller, The Economists' Voice, July 2009

"Many people all over the world seem to have thought that since we are running out of land in a rapidly growing world economy, the prices of houses and apartments should increase at huge rates. That misunderstanding encouraged people to buy homes for their investment value - and thus was a major cause of the real estate bubbles around the world whose collapse fueled the current economic crisis. This misunderstanding may also contribute to an increase in home prices again, after the crisis ends. Indeed, some people are already starting to salivate at the speculative possibilities of buying homes in currently depressed markets. But we do not really have a land shortage. Every major country of the world has abundant land in the form of farms and forests, much of which can be converted someday into urban land. Less than 1% of the earth's land area is densely urbanized, and even in the most populated major countries, the share is less than 10%. There are often regulatory barriers to converting farmland into urban land, but these barriers tend to be thwarted in the long run if economic incentives to work around them become sufficiently powerful... Despite a huge twenty-first century boom in cropland prices in the U.S. that parallels the housing boom of the 2000s, the average price of a hectare of cropland was still only $6,800 in 2008, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and one could build 10-20 single-family houses surrounded by comfortable-sized lots on this land, or one could build an apartment building housing 300 people. Land costs could easily be as low as $20 per person, or less than $0.50 per year over a lifetime. Of course, such land may not be in desirable locations today, but desirable locations can be created by urban planning. Many people seem to think that the U.S. experience is not generalizable, because the U.S. has so much land relative to its population...But, to the extent that the products of land (food, timber, ethanol) are traded on world markets, the price of any particular kind of land should be roughly the same everywhere...Shortages of construction materials do not seem to be a reason to expect high home prices, either. For example, in the U.S., the Engineering News Record Building Cost Index (which is based on prices of labor, concrete, steel, and lumber) has actually fallen relative to consumer prices over the past 30 years. To the extent that there is a world market for these factors of production, the situation should not be entirely different in other countries."

(Nod to Kevin L, who doesn't need land. He has evolved into pure energy, and exists in the atmosphere)

RTL-Day Minus 6 (continued)--Datelines and Separated at Birth

One of the cool things about Samoa is the fact that you can travel to yesterday just by going a few hundred miles. Consider the map: Notice that if you fly (or swim, if you swim fast) from Tonga to Samoa, you go from today back to yesterday.

Samoa: The last place on earth where it is today.

The reason that this is important is that the Prime Minister announced today that the protesters' last appeal is rejected.

Which reminds me: Consider this "separated at birth" sequence. Is it just me, or are these guys related?

Gmail...IS DOWN!

Holy Snappin' Turtles! Gmail is down. Google Apps Status September 1, 2009 12:53:00 PM PDT We're aware of a problem with Google Mail affecting a majority of users. The affected users are unable to access Google Mail. We will provide an update by September 1, 2009 1:53:00 PM PDT detailing when we expect to resolve the problem. Please note that this resolution time is an estimate and may change. (from the source....)

Ick. A big hassle for me. Can't really complain, since I don't pay anything. But...what a cluster firetruck.

UPDATE: Now Google says: Google Apps Status
September 1, 2009 1:02:00 PM PDT
We are continuing to investigate this issue. We will provide an update by September 1, 2009 2:16:00 PM PDT detailing when we expect to resolve the problem.

Four minutes from now, an update? We'll see....

UPDATE II: LIAR! LIAR! DUDE LOOKS LIKE A LADY! Instead of an update, now Google says.... September 1, 2009 2:13:00 PM PDT
We are continuing to investigate this issue. We will provide an update by September 1, 2009 3:13:00 PM PDT detailing when we expect to resolve the problem.

In other words, no freakin' clue do they have.

UPDATE III: Still no explanation. Here is the NYTimes Blog, on the outage. Here's the timeline, oldest messages at bottom, read up:


5:37 PM
The problem with Google Mail should be resolved. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and continued support.

5:13 PM
We are continuing to investigate this issue. We will provide an update by September 1, 2009 6:13:00 PM UTC-4 detailing when we expect to resolve the problem.
Users can access their email via IMAP or POP. You can find instructions for how to do this here. Also, at this time, Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook (applies only to Google Apps Premier and Edu customers) is not available.

4:02 PM
We are continuing to investigate this issue. We will provide an update by September 1, 2009 5:16:00 PM UTC-4 detailing when we expect to resolve the problem.
Users can access their email via IMAP or POP. You can find instructions for how to do this here.

3:53 PM
We're aware of a problem with Google Mail affecting a majority of users. The affected users are unable to access Google Mail. We will provide an update by September 1, 2009 4:53:00 PM UTC-4 detailing when we expect to resolve the problem. Please note that this resolution time is an estimate and may change.

11:18 AM
Google Mail service has already been restored for some users, and we expect a resolution for all users in the near future. Please note this time frame is an estimate and may change.

Go South Old Man!

From the every informative USA Today

"It sounds almost too good to be true: a health care plan with no limits, no deductibles, free medicines, tests, X-rays, eyeglasses, even dental work — all for a flat fee of $250 or less a year.

To get it, you just have to move to Mexico.

As the United States debates an overhaul of its health care system, thousands of American retirees in Mexico have quietly found a solution of their own, signing up for the health care plan run by the Mexican Social Security Institute."

There's gotta be a catch, right? Right!

The system has flaws, the facilities aren't cutting-edge, and the deal may not last long because the Mexican government said in a recent report that it is "notorious" for losing money. But for now, retirees say they're getting a bargain.

and

The IMSS plan is primarily designed to support Mexican taxpayers who have been paying into the system for decades, and officials say they don't want to be overrun by bargain-hunting foreigners.

Oh.

Well, for the time being at least, I think our most cost effective form of health care reform is mandatory Spanish lessons for the elderly!!

Or, as Mrs. Angus put it, health care runs downhill. Canadians come here, we go to Mexico, Mexicans go to ..........??