Only in Academia

An MA student at UCSB, Christopher Todd Brown, wrote his thesis and got it approved. After the committee approved it, he added a "Dis-acknowledgements" section which started like this:

"I would like to offer special F**k You's to the following degenerates for of being an ever-present hindrance during my graduate career...."

Only there weren't any ** in there and it continued to rail at some length against various bureaucrats, politicians and institutions with which Chris had beef.

Unsurprisingly, the university refused to accept the thesis in that form, requiring him to drop the ex post additions he'd made.

Somewhat surprisingly, Chris chose to sue instead. And then to appeal when he lost.

And thanks to the internet and Paul Gowder, we get to read about it!

I actually think the student is right. They shouldn't stop you from getting your degree because you let off a little steam in the acknowledgements. My only issue with Chris T. Brown is that he didn't have the onions to let his committee see his handiwork ex-ante, and just tried to weasel it in ex-post.

More on the NBA lockout

After Tyler linked to our inaugural Grantland piece, many of the commenters at Tyler's site were complaining that the situation regarding losses is symmetric for each side, and thus the owners have just as much to lose as the players.

But people, it is NOT symmetric.

First, the owners are losing net revenues, the players their gross revenues. Do we really think operating profits are >= labor costs?

Second and more important, owners are sacrificing short run net revenues for long run benefits. If they can shift the cost curve, then the present value of the long run savings should get capitalized into their franchise values. The current owners can capture the long run benefits from "winning".

By contrast, the current players have no capture-able long run economic gains to motivate short run pain. They only gain what ever revenue increases they get over their playing days. They don't have a long run claim on the revenue stream they are sacrificing to try and protect.

It doesn't get much more asymmetric than that.