G-Bike Found?

You may recall the G-Bike.  It was a German girl's bike (actually, a German bike that happened to be set up for a girl.  I did NOT take a bike from a German girl).  Story and pictures here.  Last I knew of the G-Bike, it was stolen, in Erlangen. Stolen by the police.  Because I left it in a "no bikes" zone where there dozens of other bikes.  Okay, maybe not stolen, exactly.


Anyway, Tommy the Tenured Brit wonders if perhaps it has been found.  With John Kerry riding it.  And TtTB may be right.  But they took off the pirate flag, in that case.

9 ball, corner pocket!

Let us now praise famous men

My main man, co-blogger, and friend of over 30 years, Mungowitz really outdid himself by sending me this *awesome*, nearly life-sized, David Freese world series bobblehead. 

Feast your eyes, people. Feast your eyes.

(clic the pic for an even more glorious image)

There is no Great Stagnation!

Phone call for Tyler Cowen!

Uganda trip report #1: Non-primate wildlife

The main focus of our trip was seeing primates (mountain gorillas, chimps, & monkeys), for which Uganda is unparalleled. But you can see a lot of other classic African wildlife too. We saw 11 lionesses, scores of elephants, hosts of hippos and buffalo (and, thankfully, zero snakes).

Perhaps the most unusual non-primate encounter we experienced was seeing a lion climb up into a fig tree, relax, hang out, jump down, and then climb back up again. This was in the southwestern corner of Queen Elizabeth Park, in a place called Ishasha (clic the pics for a more glorious image):

Ishasha is a very beautiful place.

I climbed up onto the roof of our Land Cruiser and was almost eye to eye with her!

Vile McBride of the abused Ukulele

Six new inches of snow and I am not yet in the mood to finish my paper with Aaron (sorry dude!), so here you go.

1. I love Kurt Vile's music. Here is a video:

2. I discovered Kurt by watching Eastbound & Down, so here's a Danny McBride video (in two parts)

3. This guy is obviously talented but this is exactly how NOT to play the ukulele

A novel idea

Wow! The NY Times had an epiphany and announced that economic growth might actually serve some useful purpose; it could reduce the deficit!

Very open-minded of them. I can just picture the editorial meeting where the writer fought for his story: "See, growth isn't all bad, it can at least raise government revenues."

Sadly, their ideas for "cultivating growth" all involve the government doing more things like "reforming" the tax code and "investing" our money.

One of the problems with this approach is that our government insists on investing money in things that don't have a positive economic return like "green jobs", "alternative fuels", high speed trains, and bribing Brazilian cotton farmers so they can keep paying off US cotton farmers.

The article does argue that the government should "prioritize" education and science, and I am in favor of subsidizing the production of public goods. But what has increased government spending in education actually accomplished so far? Has more money brought better performance, or a stronger, more politically active bunch of public sector union members?

Still and all, the Times saying something good about growth has to be counted as progress of a sort.

Outsourcing

I feel weird when I link to blogs far more popular than KPC. Most of our readers probably already follow Tyler and Interfluidity. But they both have excellent posts up about our current economic situation and the policy options we face. You people should read these posts so I am linking to them here.

Here's Tyler's post and a teaser:

Still, QEII may do some good. Money matters, even if we don't always understand how or why, and excessively tight money has never done market-oriented economics any favors. Think of QEII as a make-up for some earlier monetary policy mistakes. Some of the relevant alternatives include a trade war with China or direct government employment of the unemployed and with what endgame? QEII is not some terrifying burst of potential hyperinflation.

Here's Interfluidity's and a teaser:

But the thing is, human affairs are a morality play, and economics, if it is to be useful at all, must be an account of human affairs. I have my share of disagreements with both Krugman and DeLong, but on balance I view them as smart, well-meaning people who would do more good than harm if they had greater influence over policy. But they won’t, and they can’t, and they shouldn’t, if they exempt themselves from the moral fray. One of the stereotyped insults economists throw at one another is that a piece of analysis is “partial equilibrium”. The phrase is shorthand for coming to a conclusion based on assumptions that could not survive the circumstances under which the conclusion would obtain. I don’t want to single out Krugman and DeLong, but technocratic economists in general engage in partial equilibrium social science when they ignore moral concerns and the constraints “legitimacy” places on feasible policy.

I would add to the last sentence above that it's also problematic to ignore political constraints as well.

He came, he saw, he conquered!

Mungo ruled the Sooner nation last night. Thanks to SIAS for sponsoring this event and to everyone who came out. It was informative, provocative and entertaining.

Breaking down the Econ Nobel

Overall, I like the choices. Search theory and unemployment. My personal choice was Paul Romer and will be until he gets it, but this is a deserving group.

As usual, LeBron is all over this story and has done it better than I ever could.

Here are his post on Mortensen, on Pissarides, on Diamond, and his personal take on the relevance and meaning of this year's prize.

Kudos to Tyler for excellent and incredibly rapid coverage of this year's economics Nobel. Given that these guys were far from the front-runners, he must have produced all of this on the run this morning.

USA Bas-ket-ball: 2010 FIBA World Champs

USA beat Turkey 81-64 behind 28 points by KD along with 15 points and 11 boards for Lamar Odom!

Man I can't wait for the NBA season to start.

Robots need love too

I posted about being impressed with Dan Mangan at a recent live show. Here's the video for the song they closed their set with:

(Dan is the leader of the yellow gang)

Here's another DM video for a song I like:

old school is the best school

Thanks to Noel Campbell for reminding me of this!

tres coronas!

No one in the National League has won the triple crown since Ducky Medwick in 1937. This year two players have a legitimate shot. One is the incomparable 3 time MVP Albert Pujols, the other is some punk named Votto!

A-Poo is 1st in homers with 33 and 1st in RBI with 92. He's 3rd in batting average at .319.

Votto is 3rd in homers with 29 and 2nd in RBI with 86. He's 1st in batting average at .323.

I'm pulling for Albert, but it could go either way.

Wow, how cool would it be to have a triple crown winner in the NL?

It's Win-Win-Win at Chez Angus

Our "putting the cd collection onto a hard drive while retaining great sound" project is going better than I expected. The MacBook - Iomega external drive combo is super quiet. It and our refurbished Wavelength Audio Brick USB dac actually sound notably better than my stand alone CD player ever did, so there's a Win for sound quality.

(Note to the haters out there, I am ripping my cds into AIFF, no compression of any kind. You can clearly hear the difference between Apple Lossless and AIFF on my stereo.)

Plus there is this fantastic iPhone ap called "rowmote" that lets you control iTunes from the phone. The only time I ever have to get up is to adjust the volume on my preamp (I turn all the iPhone and iTunes volume controls to their max and adjust the sound level with the much higher quality attenuators in my preamp). That's a huge win for convenience.

Finally, the ladder-style cd racks in our living room and den are thinning out and even disappearing as we rip the cds to the hard drive. Thats a win for de-cluttering.

I'd like to thank Gordon Rankin of Wavelength for his help and for making such a great product, and also the developer of the rowmote ap.

Now if I could only get Mr. 2T to learn how to rip our cds to the hard drive......

Vegas is fun but I wish I was here last weekend

People! LeBron may have exited the playoffs early, but he pwnd champion Lamar Odom in a dance off at the Palazzo (right across the street from us) last weekend:

Soon after arriving at Lavo, a restaurant and nightclub at the Palazzo, a scene straight out of "West Side Story" breaks out when James and Lamar Odom, seated at a nearby table, engage in an impromptu dance-off to California Swag District's "Teach Me How To Dougie."

Odom, smoking a cigar, can't quite keep up. James celebrates by crossing himself and taking a shot of Patron.

C'mon Lamar, a stogie during a dance off is a rookie mistake. A Kardashian man should know better than that. Bruce Jenner: step up and mentor Lamar why dontcha!

All Hail Robert Gober!

Went to the Whitney Sunday afternoon to see the Gober curated Charles Burchfield exhibit. Fantastic! Highly recommended.

Burchfield hit the ground galloping as a 20 year old kid with a style that combines early Mondrian and Van Gogh. He lost his touch in mid life, and then impressively pulled it together to make great pictures again in his 50s and 60s.

The first and last rooms of the exhibit are total stunners with one knockout piece after another.

Plus the notes on the pieces are extremely well done.

If I hadn't seen "curated by Robert Gober" I never would have went and Mrs. A and I loved it.

In fact, for the first time ever, she took longer viewing the exhibit than I did!

James Booker, Henry Byrd, Mac Rebennack

Who ya got, people??

Henry Byrd was better known as Professor Longhair and Mac is Dr. John. I love the Doctor for introducing me to New Orleans piano, and Fess for pioneering it, but James Booker is my favorite.

This post is dedicated to Mark Perry!

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".

viva la reconquista!

From USA Today:

A new kind of Mexican immigrant is making it big in the USA: huge Mexican corporations that are snapping up U.S. brand names, opening U.S. factories and investing millions of pesos north of the border.

From Thomas' English Muffins to Borden milk, Saks Fifth Avenue department stores to The New York Times newspaper, Mexican investors have taken advantage of low interest rates and depressed prices during the economic downturn to expand their holdings in el norte.

People, Grupo Bimbo (aqui hay Bimbo) owns Entenmann's!

How are those Spanish lessons coming?