Seinfeld Episodes....

Had some very nice dinner, and then a brief (by  London standards; it was three hours, which was enough for jet-lagged MM) pub crawl with the Skarbeki and two lads from ASI. 

And played "Seinfeld episode," because the two ASI-ers reminded me so much of George and Kramer.  Let's  call them "Sam" (the George K clone) and "Ben" (the Kramer clone).   Because those are their names.  They were kind enough to act out parts of the dialogue.  I wish we had had a camera.  Natural vaudevillians, Sam and Ben.

Here are the proposed Seinfeld episodes that I remember (and, yes, several of these apparently actually happened to Sam and Ben, in different ways):

1.  George has a date with an Asian woman he doesn't really want to go out with.  To get rid of her, he takes her to a very Americanized "Chinese" restaurant and then orders sweet and sour pork.  She says things in Chinese that are impolite, but the waiter agrees with her and kicks George out.

2.  Kramer decides that he is going to estimate a DSGE model for policy simulations for the New York area.  The gang is skeptical, with George whining about the Lucas critique.  But Kramer is insistent:  "Jerry...it's DYNAMIC! And NONLINEAR!"

3.  George decides to buy a new cell phone, but drives everyone crazy by dithering over the decision.  Eventually he decides to test five of them at the same time.  But he keeps running out of battery, and has to plug them in everywhere he goes.  Eventually, he wears a utility belt with five large back-up chargers strapped to it, and then tries to go through airport security....

4.  Jerry becomes obsessed with the Elgin Marbles, claiming they should be returned to Greece.  George and Elaine are scornful, saying that England should keep them, because otherwise they would have been lost or destroyed, and it's "only right." Everybody is doing research on the internet, and then saying "Did you know...?" about some obscure fact. Kramer goes around driving everyone crazy, peeking in doorways and shouting, "Greece has lost its marbles!" and then closing the door again.

5.  Jerry works on a routine that is based on telling jokes.  But Kramer has heard them all, and he can't help but shout out the punchline.  Jerry tries to hide, but Kramer can't help himself and keeps finding him.  Worst of all, Kramer always follows up the punchline shouting by guffawing, "HA!  Premature e-joke-ulation!"  Kramer never tires of this joke, but everyone else does.

Pirates! Or is it just a matter of moral intuition?

The short- and long-term effectiveness of anti-piracy laws and enforcement actions 

 Tylor Orme 
Journal of Cultural Economics, November 2014, Pages 351-368 

Abstract: Film studios have spent the past two decades lobbying extensively to establish new legislation restricting access to copyrighted materials online. While there is growing evidence of the effect film piracy has on studio profits, the evidence on the impact of anti-piracy legislation is limited. If anti-piracy legislation is having the film industry’s desired impact, we would expect film revenues to be consistently higher following the passage of major laws that restrict access to pirated content, or major enforcement actions, such as the shutdown of Web sites that provide illegal content for download. This paper applies an intervention analysis approach to weekly data on movie box-office revenues in the USA to determine whether the passage of new anti-piracy policy has generated significant changes in box-office revenues during the period from 1997 to the present. These effects are evaluated in both the short and long term, which allows an assessment of the duration of effectiveness of government actions. The results show that four of the six included policies are ineffective in the long term and those policies that do impact revenues in the short term often harm film studios, rather than help them. 



“Piracy is not theft!” Is it just students who think so? 

Michał Krawczyk et al.
 Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, February 2015, Pages 32–39 

Abstract: A fair share of studies analyzing “online piracy” are based on easily accessible student samples. However, it has been argued that the youth tend to have more lax social and ethical norms concerning both property rights and online behavior. In this study we present the results of a vignette experiment, i.e. a scenario survey where responders are asked to provide an ethical judgment on different forms of unauthorized acquisition of a full season of a popular TV series described in a number of hypothetical stories. The survey is conducted both on a student sample and on a sample of individuals who openly endorse protection of intellectual property rights for cultural goods. In this way we can investigate the possibly limited external validity of studies relying solely on the student samples. The vignette experiment concerned ethical evaluation of unauthorized acquisition of cultural content in both virtual and real context and was focused on six dimensions previously identified as relevant to the ethical judgment. Surprisingly, we found that the rules for the ethical judgment do not differ between our samples, suggesting that the social norms on “online piracy” follow similar patterns in student and in other populations. Findings from studies relying on ethical or moral judgments of students may thus be valid in a much broader population. 

With a nod to Kevin Lewis for finding these...

NASCAR Post-Race Interview

I think more baseball players should do post-game interviews in the persona of other sports stars.  But clearly NASCAR is the best choice...

Nod to SL

NSFW: An Honest Cable Ad

Remember, NSFW.  But a pretty good description of the most likely result of trying to "regulate" monopoly.  It's....monopoly.



Nod to Angry Alex

Jersey Sure

This article is a bit funny. I have never seen the show "Jersey Shore" (or is that the "show" Jersey Shore ?), but I am assured that it is entertaining in a not-very-demanding way.

The disturbing thing is the comments. "Natale," obviously educated in the NJ public school system, thinks she has a smackdown argument.

Sorry NYMag, but this is a shitty article. The tax credit is based on only what the entire production SPENT in New Jersey.. camera rental, lodging, food, transportation.. all during filming that specific season.. the production is entitled to a 20% rebate based on locally hired crew and monies actually spent solely in NJ AND only if reviewed by a qualified CPA and then approved by the NJ Film Office.. they usually use it towards satisfying the NJ corporate business state tax. If the total refund was only $420,000, that means MTV spent $2.1 Million dollars ALONE in NJ (that counts as revenue for local businesses as well as job creation!!) .. do your homework.

So, the reason that it is okay to rebate a large chunk back to this horrible show is that it creates a lot of the tax dollars that are being rebated.

Um...Natale, how about this: lower the taxes in the first place. Then you wouldn't have to tax the companies that create jobs (and that is what ALL companies do, Natale, not just "Jersey Sore), and you would have more jobs.

(Nod to Anonyman, who has started referring to his ass as "The Distribution")

Russ and John talk about FotC Video on CSPAN

This is more than a month old, but some interesting stuff. For instance, I did not know that Eddie Murphy's brother Rich sang the refrain of the rap song. (The CSPAN show is an hour long. So it's probably only for real fans...)

Persuasion and Spatial Theory

How Large and Long-lasting Are the Persuasive Effects of Televised Campaign
Ads? Results from a Randomized Field Experiment

Alan Gerber et al.
American Political Science Review, February 2011, Pages 135-150

Abstract: We report the results of the first large-scale experiment involving paid
political advertising. During the opening months of a 2006 gubernatorial campaign, approximately $2 million of television and radio advertising on behalf of the incumbent candidate was deployed experimentally. In each experimental media market, the launch date and volume of television advertising were randomly assigned. In order to gauge movement in public opinion, a tracking poll conducted brief telephone interviews with approximately 1,000 registered voters each day and a brief follow-up one month after the conclusion of the television campaign. Results indicate that televised ads have strong but short-lived effects on voting preferences. The ephemeral nature of these effects is more consistent with psychological models of priming than with models of on-line processing.
----------------------

A Spatial Theory of Media Slant and Voter Choice

J. Duggan & C. Martinelli
Review of Economic Studies, April 2011, Pages 640-666

Abstract: We develop a theory of media slant as a systematic filtering of political
news that reduces multidimensional politics to the one-dimensional space perceived by voters. Economic and political choices are interdependent in our theory: expected electoral results influence economic choices, and economic choices in turn influence voting behaviour. In a two-candidate election, we show that media favouring the front-runner will focus on issues unlikely to deliver a surprise, while media favoring the underdog will gamble for resurrection. We characterize the socially optimal slant and show that it coincides with the one favoured by the underdog under a variety of circumstances. Balanced media, giving each issue equal coverage, may be worse for voters than partisan media.

Nod to Kevin Lewis

The Dumbest Woman on Earth

I give you... Maruja. (In Spanish. You can figure out what's going on. "Seis" means "six." You can see why that might be a problem. "No hay un seis! Maruja!"


I find it amazing that versions of the "Eurojuego" work, all over Europe. After midnight, the female "hosts" are topless, and well built, in Germany at least. They have dumb number problems (for example, 7 + 4 - 9 = ?), but charge .40 Euro or more per minute. So you hang on the line, and they choose randomly. Lotteries are illegal, but since this is a game of skill (the answer is TWO!) this is legal. Some channels, like NuenLive, show little else.

La Eurjuego appears to be an actual game of "skill," however. But Maruja has not the skill to win. Not even the skill really to play, apparently. Maruja!

Sheen-Gadhaffi Quiz

This is actually quite interesting. I got a 4 of ten, worse than random.

The quiz: who said it?

(Nod to Timmy G)

Boom! Roasted

Jerry Seinfeld batters and fries Larry King:

Stuff My Dad Says

So I follow "S*hit My Dad Says" on Twitter (along with more than a million other people who also follow).

I had heard that there would be a TV show, with William Shatner. But it's actually true...

Some background...

(Nod to Angry Alex)