"Blue Devils": Ever Wondered?

You may have wondered how Duke chose the "Blue Devils" as their mascot.  (You also may not have wondered, I realize...)

If you DID wonder...wonder no more.  A five minute documentary, pretty well done.

g > m

I thought I'd get beyond the r > g mania and post about a more fundamental inequality:

g > m

to wit:




It started out close in the year of our births but then......

Weird Companies that Work

Four companies with strange but successful marketing plans.

Including "Goose Masters."  Now, Angry Alex, before you go moving here to Raleigh, you have to understand they are talking about big aquatic birds.

He's not just a RINO anymore

Bravo to the unnamed South African rhino who brutally gored a tourist last week.

A "game park owner", taking the picture of his clients, a city couple, urged them to get "within feet" of a pair of rhinos in order to get a better shot. What the wife got was a collapsed lung and broken ribs.

With apologies to Chris Rock, that rhino didn't go crazy, that rhino went RHINO, and now he's not a RINO anymore.

Phosphorescent!

The brilliant Matthew Houck (aka Phosphorescent) has a new album coming out in March called "Muchacho". Here's the first single:



If you don't know know Matthew, I just haven't been doing my job very well and I apologize.

Here's my favorite Phosphorescent song:




and my second favorite:


 

Logorrhea

Many words being spilt in UC's logo-gate. Here's an example:

The newly designed monogram of the University of California, while attempting to be modern, loses the prestige and elegance of the current seal.

Have a gander;

Let's give this kerfuffle the KPC breakdown:

(1)  there is nothing elegant about the original seal. A star, a book, and a plagiarized quote that makes no sense in this context.

(2) The second seal (sounds like we're discussing a Bergman movie) isn't "attempting" to be modern. It is modern and pretty cool at that.

(3) Most importantly, the seal doesn't give prestige to the institution, the quality of the institution gives prestige (or recognition) to the seal! Harvard isn't Harvard because of the prestige of their seal. It's the other way around.

It's not Tina's glorious comeback

This morning, I read Mark Thoma's column about Tyler's column before I read Tyler's column and thought to myself, "an anti-government screed? Kill Government? Tyler? Did Tyler outsource his column to me and Mungowitz? Or has visiting North Korea allowed Tyrone to just take over?"

Then I read Tyler's actual column and it was vintage Tyler. We are both makers AND takers. Restrictive zoning favors the rich. There are things we could do over time to improve education but those things are difficult. The mortgage interest deduction is both popular and distortionary.The founding fathers worried about this problem.

But here's Thoma's reaction:

I just don't believe that no government at all will result in a better outcome for the vast majority of Americans. (A good analogy is monopoly power. I think the government should do more to reduce monopoly power, but it doesn't due to the influence of the wealthy and powerful who own these companies. But getting rid of anti-trust law altogether, i.e. getting government out of the way completely, won't improve the outcome -- monopoly problems would simply get worse). I want to improve government, not kill it.

Maybe Romney's glorious comeback has everyone on edge, but Mark is just way way way off base here. There is not a single phrase in Tyler's piece to suggest that Tyler favors "killing" government.

In fact, Tyler's libertarian bona fides are actually quite suspect to many because of his acceptance of relatively big government.

Liberalizing zoning laws is not killing government. Repealing the mortgage interest deduction is not killing government. Reforming teachers' unions is not killing government. Centralizing school spending decisions is not killing government. More school choice is not killing government.

I'd suggest that Mark consider responding to what people actually write, than to the boogieman that appears before his eyes when he sees the byline of someone he suspects might be a libertarian.

I'd also suggest that phrases like this, "the answer is a government that represents all of our interests," suggest that Mark's comparative advantage in blogging may lie outside the field of political economy.

Markets in everything: Gourmet edition

Today I was taken to a store called "Russian Gourmet" in Fairfax. I found this:

On Yelp, the main complaint about the store is that it sells goods past their expiration date. I wouldn't see that as a problem in this case.


PS: There is a store in Arlington called "British Goodies". It does not appear to be empty.

Strip-Search

Okay, so I'm reading about the Florence strip-search and jail case. And I'm thinking, "Please let the guy be white, so this isn't just police racism." No such luck. Mr. Florence is black. In a BMW. Has a BMW dealership, in fact. So, cops stop black people in a BMW, for "speeding." No citation given to wife, who was driving. (WHY WERE THEY STOPPED IN THE FIRST PLACE?). Cop does check on the car. Finds old unpaid ticket, after what is basically a fishing expedition.

Mr. Florence is handcuffed, strip-searched TWICE, jailed for a week with no bail (HE'S A FLIGHT RISK! NO BAIL, BECAUSE HE ALREADY SKIPPED ON A TICKET!). Finally sees judge. Is able to prove that in fact HE PAID THE TICKET! On time. Police just failed to record the payment. Whoopsie daisy, sorry, fella. Have a good day.

Exactly the same thing happened to me, Dec. 2010, except no arrest and strip search. Got notice of failure to pay ticket that had, in fact, been paid. Had to send copy of cancelled check, had to get notarized statement, all because the state is too busy to recognize when citizens do what the state forces them to do. It happens all the time. The state is remarkably incompetent, and indifferent to the consequences of that incompetence, given that if YOU make a mistake the consequences are enormous.

You'll want to watch this excerpt from one of best movies of all time, Brazil. Four mins, watch it through, please.


Now, the Supreme Court case is about the strip-searching. I'm afraid, on that narrow question, the court got it right. If (IF!) you are going to put the guy in jail, for a week, for a nonviolent traffic ticket (which he had actually already paid, but never mind for a minute, suppose he hadn't), then you HAVE to strip search him. It's the logic of domination and humiliation in the prison system. The strip search is a consequence of the dangerous security situation in the jail where the state is choosing to hold this person. In jail, you lose the presumption of innocence.

The real questions didn't come up in the court case. Why did police stop a black couple just because they had a BMW, and then searched for something, anything, to nail the guy. Then why send him to jail, with no way out, for a week. And why not keep better records, if the stakes are really this high? If failing to pay a ticket is worth a week in jail, away from work and family, what should be the punishment for failing to record a valid and timely payment for a ticket? Shouldn't it be symmetric?

The REAL question, then, is why all our sensitive leftist friends put so much faith in a state that routinely does the sorts of things described above. I bet (paraphrasing Edmund Burke) it's because you fall out only with the abuses, and think that the thing itself is good. The THING! The thing itself is the abuse!

Why do you people love the state so much? It doesn't love you.

Guilt by association

OK, so my idea of song title book reviews is gonna be slow to catch on.

Well, what about this: If NBA players were musicians?

Let's start with two of my favorite players

James Harden -- Isaac Hayes.  Always cool, never in a hurry. Hot buttered soul.

Russell Westbrook -- Lil Wayne.  Incredible highs, huge variance. always wondering what he'll do next.

Get the idea? Here's a few more:

Rajon Rondo -- Soulja Boy
Kevin Love -- Justin Timberlake
Derrick Rose -- Tupac
Kobe -- Miles Davis
Ricky Rubio -- Bieber (duh!)
Josh Smith -- Chamilionaire
Lebron, Wade & Bosh -- Wu Tang!!

and finally,

Kevin Garnett -- Kenny G.

Got any good ones?

The most dangerous name

LeBron's rumination on middle initials got me to thinking about triple named murderers. Lee Harvey Oswald, John Wilkes Booth, John Wayne Gacy, James Earl Ray....

First I wondered why people like Sirhan Sirhan and Jeffrey Dahmer got short shrift.

Maybe Sirhan Sirhan was distinctive enough that using Bishara in the middle was gilding the lily?

 But why not Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer?

Maybe it's only mellifluous if the middle name is a single syllable?

But see Lee Harvey above.

Then I wondered if there was a specific middle name particularly associated with mayhem and found this amazing article.

If your middle name is Wayne and you live in Texas, you probably are a murderer!