Annals of strange co-authorships

Did you know Maya Angelou wrote a kids book with J. M. Basquiat? Me neither.

Panda-mania!

        


Vote your preference in the comments.

All Hail R. K. Gaddie

There's a protest in his kitchen and he's telling the world:

Take the skinheads bowling

One of my alltime favorite bands is Camper Van Beethoven. Turns out their front-man, David Lowery also has a head for business, as he was involved in the founding of Groupon which just sold itself to Google.

Here is Lowery on the subject:

"In 2008 I was appointed to the board of advisors of a small web startup called www.the point.com. The site the brainchild of Andrew Mason was a " tipping point" mechanism, a social networking site that allowed people "commit" to take group action. In particular the hope was they would take group action for social change. The investors quietly noted there was not a clear way to monetize Andrew’s experiment. However they hoped that by watching the way users used the tipping point mechanism, a viable way to monetize this website would present itself.

I was asked to start a campaign on www.thepoint.com."To get a feel for it". Not being very socially conscious I decided that I wanted to use The Point for my own narrow self interests.

Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven have a festival, The Campout. It’s rather remote and since we produce the small festival ourselves we take considerable financial risk. While the previous years had been marginally successful we were worried about the rapidly deteriorating economy (I believe Bear Stearns had just gone bankrupt). So I started a campaign to get a "break even" amount of CVB and Cracker fans to commit to attend the festival. In this way our fan’s promises to attend would become a sort of promissory note. no pun intended. While you couldn’t exactly peg it’s value, these collective promises to attend at some point seemed to be worth enough to go ahead and book the flights, PA, lights, and port-o-potties.

Other successful "campaigns" on The Point also involved similar commitments for group purchasing. It wasn’t long before The Point became Groupon."

Wow, Elvis Presley died and David Lowery got paid?

Hat tip to DG!

Big ups to Mungo

Over at MR, Tyler has a lengthy homage to Timur Kuran.

Timur is joint in polisci and econ at Duke.

You know who was instrumental in getting him there?

Mungowitz!

Well done, lad.

practice makes perfect

In an interesting new NBER working paper (here, but gated, I can't find an ungated version), Victor Lavy present evidence that increased instructional time raises standardized test scores, especially in developed countries, and "countries that implemented school accountability measures, and in countries that give schools autonomy in hiring and firing teachers."

As Lavy points out, more hours in the classroom is a goal of our current administrattion's educational policy.

G-bike gets pwnd!

I long for the days of Mungowitz in Germany, riding his inimitable, self decorated Gbike.

However, I think I've found a bike that tops it:


(click the pic for a larger and more glorious image)

Phosphorescent incandescent

People, do you know Phosphorescent (aka Matthew Houck)?

Amazing. Reminds me a bit of vintage Will Oldham, but not really.

Gorgeous, involving, and highly highly recommended.

Here are three videos. The first is the studio version of perhaps my favorite song of theirs, "Mermaid Parade". The second in a live solo version of the same song. The third is another great song "A Picture of our Torn up Praise".

Laguna San Ignacio

This video was taken and edited by Mrs. Angus during our trip to Baja to see the gray whales last March. I had to lobby her heavily to agree to let me post it, because the footage is often shaky, due to (a) the movement of the boat and (b) the excitement level of the videographer. It is almost 4 minutes long and the most spectacular footage is at the end.

Enjoy!

C'mon Jackie Chan

Only one more week!

Copa Mundial

In honor of the looming World Cup, KPC is proud to present the greatest soccer kick of all time:

Catch me at the border, I got visas in my name

Extensive profile of M.I.A. in the NY Times Sunday Magazine. This one is a bit better than the ridiculous puff piece on the National a couple weeks ago. Word is that Maya A. didn't like this piece one little bit.

She doesn't come across as an overall genius, but she certainly is a pop genius. "Galang" and "Paper Planes" are two of the best songs of this century.

Adjective-free

Big ups to Mrs. Angus, whose promotion to full professor was finalized yesterday and commemorated today with a new sign on the old office door!

Way to go, sweetheart!

I now believe in re-incarnation....

Because James Brown has come back to earth in the body of a young woman:

What's in a name?

The social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services.

--wikipedia

The dismal science

--Thomas Carlyle

The mechanics of utility and self interest.

--W.S. Jevons

A study of mankind in the ordinary business of life

--Alfred Marshall

Economics is a science which studies human behavior as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses.

--Lionel Robbins


The study of how the forces of supply and demand allocate scarce resources

--investorwords.com


The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.

--F.A. Hayek

Pickin' & Grinnin'

Long strange trip

I've been an NBA fan since the late 1960s. I've seen games in Detroit (Cobo Hall), Milwaukee (when they played at the Mecca), Dallas, San Antonio, New York (the Gah-den), New Orleans, Los Angeles (Sports Arena, Fabulous Forum, and Staples).

Tyler and I for years were season ticket holders for the Washington Bullets in the Cap Center (people, we saw Muggsy Bogues and Manute Bol standing side by side).

All of this is preface for saying that last night's Thunder - Lakers game was the loudest crowd and probably most exciting game I've ever seen in person.

As in the previous two games, the Thunder came out extremely sloppy and fell far behind early. They somehow convince themselves that the Lakers are just another team and seem shocked by the intensity of the start of the game.

Kobe had a pretty good first 3 quarters and KD had a pretty poor first three quarters.

But, oh, that 4th quarter was fun. Kobe was 2-10 (10 - 29 total with no free throws) and Durant, who ended up guarding Kobe down the stretch, was huge. The key sequence was KD blocking Kobe's jumper, the Thunder recovering the ball and then Durant hitting a baseline floater on the other end.

Plus I guess Scotty Brooks must follow me on Twitter, because Jeff Green only got 27 minutes of PT to stink it up, rather than the 41 he's been averaging in this series.

because it wasn't available on on Edison cylinder

Got the new Mountain Goats! On a double album of purple vinyl. I am an old school, "I LIKE the tape hiss" fan of the Mountain Goats back catalog, but this record is good and sounds great.

redefining excellence

The Cards have clinched and A-poo has locked up the MVP. Life is good for me and Mungowitz.  We went to a lot of Cardinal games during our grad school summers, sitting in the uber-cheap left field bleachers, smoking cigars and chanting bad things about the people in the right field bleachers, all the while wondering if we would pass our exams, finish our theses, and obtain gainful employment (depending on the year).

This NY Times article proposes changing the definition of what it means to win the triple crown and talks about what a great year Prince Albert is having:

"If the Triple Crown tips a cap to the singular season, then attention must be paid to Pujols, who entered Saturday leading the National League home run race (with 47); third in R.B.I. (129); and first in OBP (.447). His .331 batting average was second to Hanley Ramirez’s .351."

32 seconds of Heaven