Supermoon

In NYC, the EYM took us to visit "Supermoon."  It's....well, it's this.

After we ordered (the pastries were, I grudgingly admit, fantastic, really something special) and while we were waiting for our order. There was a commotion.

A 40 year old woman and an extremely overdressed and overly made-up young woman (looked 15, could have been 22) came in and started demanding to speak to the manager. They wanted "...a box, for photographs. She's a blogger!" pointing to the younger woman.  I had never heard "S/he's a blogger!" used as an argument for "give me free stuff!" before, so I felt I was missing out.

They kept loudly demanding a free box of pastries and the chance to do some photos, because (and I'm totally serious) "She's a blogger!" This was said at least ten times, in an increasingly loud voice.

Eventually the manager came out, made the crazed women give back all the display items they had decided to just steal, and gave them a box with some pastries. The older woman took a bunch of photos of the young woman pretending to take bites, affecting surprise and / or delight, and so on. Then they finally left, after throwing away all the untouched pastries and the box they came in.

I got the EYM to take my picture, in front of the Supermoon boxes. And, I want the whole world to know:  "I'm a blogger! Give me free stuff!"

Economist Questions

AIER does an occasional post where they ask an economist to answer some questions.  Some of the questions are pretty serious, some more whimsical.

I gave it a shot. 

7,000 extra page views per day, 4 days?

Anybody have any idea what could have caused this?  We got 7k+ extra page views per day, for four days, and then it stopped.

Extremely lame denial of service attack?  Bots looking for emails to harvest?  Some readers with extremely short attention spans?

Angus and I have no clue.  Very odd.  Never seen anything like it.

I Should Learn...

So, maybe someday I'll learn.  Though the evidence is against that.

Mark Twain once said, "Never pick a quarrel with a man who buys ink by the barrel, and paper by the ton.) (Okay, maybe MT did not say that, but stay with me).

Years ago, I picked a quarrel with Dan Drezner.  And was emotionally (and rightly) crushed when I realized that he was so much better than I at blogging.  I mean, SO MANY more people read his blog, it was unbelievable.   (Mark Twain 2004: Never pick a quarrel with a man whose Technorati score is two orders of magnitude better than yours.)

Did I learn?  I did not.  Tried again, picking a Twiter quarrel with Dan.  And happened to check on his "followers."  MON DIEU!  He has 120 times as many followers as I do.  More than 10,000. (Mark Twain 2012:  Never pick a quarrel with a man who has a 1,000% more followers than you)

Dan, you win.  You are mighty.

BlogDolt

Got this email today:

Hello Mike,

My name is Matilda Thompson, social media manager at Blogdash.com. We’ve been following your blog at http://www.duke.edu for a while now and your writing style is pretty great! I’m willing to bet PR agencies and Brands might find it appealing as well.

So we selected your site to offer you a revenue share partnership.  Let me know if you’d be interested in this opportunity and I’ll follow-up with more details!

Best regards,

Matilda Thompson

Matilda@blogdash.com

www.blogdash.com

My response:  Gosh, Matilda, thanks for the compliment!  It would mean more if the "blog" you identify as admiring were something other than the main Duke University web site.  I'll give you credit, Duke does post often, has lots of links, and they do produce some pretty impressive content!

However, if this is the level of care you idiots at BlogDash put into your work, I'd like to try to make sure that no one falls for your spam-phish.  So I thought I'd post your email on my ACTUAL blog.

And please don't contact me again.  You can contact that "blog" at Duke directly, if you want.  Just send an email to IMAmoron@duke.edu, and I'm sure they'll get right back to you.

Come on, Vogue!

Greta Garbo, and Monroe
Deitrich and DiMaggio
Marlon Brando, Jimmy Dean
On the cover of a magazine

Grace Kelly; Harlow, Jean
Picture of a beauty queen
Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire
Ginger Rodgers, dance on air

They had style, they had grace
Rita Hayworth gave good face
Lauren, Katherine, Lana too
Tyler Cowen, we love you

Vogue

(In honor of LeBron making Italian Vogue)

Reihan Salam on Majors and Pay

Reihan Salam is one of my favorite bloggers.

He comes up big, again, discussing the correlation between majors and incomes.

To be fair, Mr. Salam makes use of KPC friend Code and Culture, which is always a good idea. Code and Culture is one of the most consistently interesting and yet serious blogs out there.

Tim Blair Rulz

You likely know this already. But Tim Blair rulz.

Props to P-Kroog

Interesting, thoughtful article.

By Paul Krugman, lest we forget that he is actually a very smart man.

Mea Culpa

FLG has a valid point here.

You can't have just any shirt-tail guy off the street thinking they can do a hit-and-run post on bizarre sex practices.

Sorry, FLG; respect should have been paid.

Monday's Child is Full of Links: What Blogs Do

A roundup of some interesting links on what blogs do, may do, and probably don't do.

From the Incidental Economist: Another set of links

TC's post on reputation

A science perspective (and credit for the poster above)

The impact of blogs on literature. (Really? A book? I had not seen this.)

The impact of blogging on the practice of law (pretty old, but thoughtful and quite interesting)

Blogging and public relations

An academic-ish article from the good people at Monkey Cage

Blogging as a way of increasing "assignment engagement" for students

Does Blogging "Help"?

LeBron takes up a question: Does blogging improve the professional rep of an economist?

And does blogging change policy?

I can answer the second question: YES. In quite a few instances, people who have read THIS blog have adopted a policy of not reading this blog. Or so I would infer from their comments.

Hurtful, MOST Hurtful.

Darn, that hurts.

I thought Paul and me was tight, ya heard?

But apparently NOT, since "ALL his favorite libertarians" write for one blog, JUST ONE BLOG.

That's aaight, Paul, I see how it is. That's cool, you go ahead on. I'll get over it. If you really think that that brazen hussy Zwolinsky is cuter than Angus and I, FINE.

Political Science Blogging

Herr Fuchs sends this link, to an article by the estimable John Sides of the also estimable Monkey Cage.

In one part of the article, John asks, "Should Junior Faculty Blog?" I think his answer is a bit too optimistic. If your blog is invisible, why waste time on it? And if it is successful, and you become known for it, you are taking a pretty big chance when it comes time for promotion. Either way, I'd say, "no," at least until your fifth year or so in a TT job.

On the plus side of blogging, I blushingly refer to this article on "Truthiness" and political blogging, in a special issue of PC edited by blogging stalwarts Drezner and Farrell.

(Yes, it's gated. Send me an email and I'll send you a PDF, if you don't have access through a library).

UPDATE: On some comments. if you played Russian Roulette and won, that doesn't mean that it is a good idea to play Russian Roulette. So the fact that some people start a blog early, and still get tenure, is not proof it is a good idea.

Good of Dan D to write a comment also. Now, I don't think that the blog was the reason Dan did NOT get tenure. But I (and Dan) will always wonder a little bit whether it had some negative effect.

Dan wrote about it here... Seems like a long time ago now. Dan is fine, still cute and perky. But we'll never know.