Monday, February 26, 2018

Monday's Child is Full of Links!




1.  If Germany had Floridians....A knight's costume? Still, "more than rude" gets that Florida element in pretty well...

2.  Pro-tip: if you have skunks in your basement, a smoke bomb should NOT be on your list of solutions. It's not a solution at all, in fact.

3. IVF: Capitalism's final frontier?

4. Streetlights? We don't need no stinkin' streetlights. 'Cause the trees glow.

5.  If you want to debate whether the "get your flu shot!" argument doesn't really serve public health, that's fair enough. But random fabricated stories are subversive not only to public health but to public trust in institutions. Our institutions do quite a bit to destroy our trust on their own, without help from trolls and link-whoring.

6.  A year ago, my friend John Hasnas wrote this. He has gotten righter and righter over time.  Trump is NOT antidemocratic, but is rather the apotheosis of the democratic, populist ideal. No elites, no experts, no truth, except what the majority decides.

7.  This would be ridiculous if it weren't really, really bad. Turkey needs to be a stabilizing force, not a bunch of nut-jobs with a huge, modern army.  And this is even worse. Golly.

8. Figure 4 is amazing. Not sure it's replicable. But....gosh.

9. Our Favorite Headlines:  Former Freemason, 51, found drunk and naked inside a huge pipe organ with a toy gun and remote-controlled police car says he got lost while trying to hand out cheeseburgers to the homeless (or, another reason to love Australia).

10. Drink beer, throw axes.

11. Kevin Williamson is not always right. But when he's right, he's right.

12. Did you know this? Twitter ditched the egg.  Dang. One of the things I loved about Twitter was watching Matt Iglesias mansplain something to an egg with three followers.

13. Wow. The New Yorker made a mistake and published an actual piece of objective journalism. I assume heads will roll....Still, well done.

14.  The town tweeter?

15.  Tribes.

16.  Banks and credit cards have to be neutral, at least on legal products. Ending a "branded" card, which is an endorsement, makes sense. But barring transactions on legal products is just a way of encouraging discrimination on other margins.

17.  It's against the law for guns to go to jihadists. And yet they go. A lot of them. We should be optimistic, though, about our ability to keep guns from going to depressed and angry young men. Because....wait, why?

18. Social media and democracy

19. There are certain facts everyone should know. One is that there has been a DRAMATIC decline in poverty, almost everywhere. Further, it actually IS TRUE EVERYWHERE in countries that use market systems. All remaining poverty is in places where markets are suppressed.

20.  Doomed to repeat it....

21. Florida or Ohio? "Man injured in chainsaw fight..." Nope, you're wrong. Ohio.

Grand Lagniappe! A cultural map of individualism, with considerations of innovation.  From this paper. (Click for an even more selfish view)


Monday, February 19, 2018

Monday's Child is Full of Links!



1.  P.F. Chang, Pyeongchang, all those Asian words look alike, right?  I had thought it was a spell-check error, but it was actually a spoof, and they didn't notice when it was time to do a serious story.  Could totally have happened to me, so I'll just shut up and laugh.

2.  There are probably no security cameras in the security area, right? Plus, the dude is a lawyer. He can steal tens of thousands of $ with his pen. Why go for cash?

3. NOT the "Onion." Passenger who passed gas continuously on flight forces emergency landing. Others on same row also forced to deplane.  And there's a thing called "Transavia Airlines."  They probably have a direct slingshot flight to Elbonia.

4.  We're not very good at handling problems of waste generated by electronics.

5.  It costs nothing to tweet, and someone might believe you. So you don't even need to send spam, you can get others to do it for you.

6. As tempting as a "Scooby Doo" ending would be....
It's unlikely.  But wouldn't it be great if, as Trump
 is being led away, the police pull off the mask. It's
 Bill Clinton! He had thought Hillary would still win,
 and he could date porn stars in the meantime.  After
 he won, he cooked up the Russia collusion thing as
 a distraction, so he could date MORE porn stars,
and serve again as President.  He shouts back, "And
 I'd have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for
 those meddling kids and their FBI!"
(WIth thanks to Brendan Nyhan)

7.  Facebookenstein.

8.  Top5-itis.

9.  Bowling for Fascism.

10.  The wrestler, in real life.

11. Brewing Up Entrepreneurship.

12.  Prison just makes bad people worse, and it's expensive.  We can make bad people worse just by letting them use Twitter, and Twitter is free!

13. Basic Income Guarantee and bad behavior....maybe not so bad?

Grand Lagniappe! Murphy sound asleep, curled in a ball, with his little tongue sticking out. Because....Monday.

Monday, February 12, 2018

Monday's Child is Full of Links



1.  In which "Doritos But For Women" is introduced.

2.  Making the world safe for moonshots.

3.  Jonathan Chait is an idiot. Yes, my friend Will Wilkinson can be hard to figure out. But mostly, Jonathan Chait is an idiot.

4.  I do love a smart young entrepreneur.

5. Canadians are so bored they are starting a trade war. With Canada.

6. On "regulation." I wrote.

7. Can you date a co-worker? Facebook status: "It's complicated."

8. Losing interest....

9. Regulation has become a silly concept, as if just "more" or "less" is the goal. As Jimmy Carter and Jerry Brown knew, the real goal is better.

10. California judge does sensible thing.

11. We all live on campus now...

12.  Wow. The fact is that "reduce the deficit" is ONLY a "Republican goal" when they are out of power. When Republicans are IN power, their primary goal seems to be "spend money as if you won the lottery." This is a remarkably empirically out-of-touch argument, here


The Grand Lagniappe:  Even Politico says, "HRC Needs to Move On..."  If Hillary Clinton were reincarnated as a dog....


Monday, February 05, 2018

Monday's Child is Full of Links!

(Sorry to miss last week.... I was hanging out with Marie Newhouse at Surrey U

1.  Can competition stem corruption?  Seems a little simplistic. In some ways corruption is a way of reducing competition, by buying favors.  I have argued that corruption can make the system more efficient....Tullock was first to argue that from an economic perspective.

2.  Self-check out is not in equilibrium. Something is going to change. Perhaps like this.

3.  This was a great EconTalk, I thought. As was this, though for different reasons.

4.  Check Figure 4 on p 32. Seriously: Check Figure 4 on p. 32.

5.  All the agricultural land in the world.

6.  Two things can both be true: (1) some students manipulate "accommodations" and (2) there are real problems some students face that can be debilitating and can be accommodated pretty easily. We haven't figured out the answer yet.

7.  Carter Page is a bona fide idiot. Remarkable.

8.  4 ways to communicate in an on-line course. I wonder if students WANT to be in direct contact. Of course, some do. Do these work well enough?

9.  I don't usually credit the "what if this were used for affordable housing instead?" kind of counterfactual. And this is largely devoid of any real economic understanding. Still: why are public funds being spent on such a ridiculous endeavor?

10.  So...this.  And then this.  And, then, THIS.  I frankly found the similarities between the second and third things a bit disturbing.

11.  A not very informative but still interesting piece about my friend (and Duke parent) William Kristol.

12.  And while we're reading the NYer, a very informative and even more interesting piece on what it means to die....or live.

13.  Will Wilkinson on taxes, and colors on maps.

14.  Armenian Rhapsody....

15.  I have long worried about the tendency of libertarians to blame enforcement agencies, rather than policy-makers, for dumb laws.  If you approve of what is being done to the FBI, then...well, you and I disagree.

16. Well, so THAT's good! No, it's bad.

17. More power is not always better....

18. Free markets fail the poor, as shown by that famously unregulated "market," public housing.

19. Did they really think that this would be a successful, admired commercial?

20.  On the other hand, well done, Very well done,

Grand Lagniappe:  Wedu Nagivafaka. From Hawaii. Enjoy!