Kids Prefer Cheese

Duke Faculty Prom Tonight!

Mungowitz@gmail.com (Mungowitz) — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 20:56:00 +0000

No, I'm not kidding. The faculty "dinner dance" (clearly a prom, with a band, and hot women like the LMM) goes down this evening.

Me? I'll be wearing the black tux.....

Clean shirt, new shoes
And I don't know where I am goin' to.
black tux, black tie,
I don't need a reason why.
They come runnin' just as fast as they can
Coz every girl crazy 'bout a sharp dressed man.

Gold watch, diamond ring,
I ain't missin' not a single thing.
And cufflinks, stick pin,
When I step out I'm gonna do you in.
They come runnin' just as fast as they can
Coz every girl crazy 'bout a sharp dressed man.

Top coat, top hat,
I don't worry coz my wallet's fat.
Black shades, white gloves,
Lookin' sharp and lookin' for love.
They come runnin' just as fast as they can
Coz every girl grazy 'bout a sharp dressed man.

Raleigh Charter Rulz!

Mungowitz@gmail.com (Mungowitz) — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 14:38:00 +0000

Both my sons went/are going to RCHS. (School site)

US News just came out with high school rankings. RCHS is 24th nationally. And it is a charter school, like many of the schools in the ranking.

AND....admission is by lottery. AND the school is in downtown Raleigh.

Why is the minority enrollment so low? (It's not THAT low, it's 10%)
Remember, admission is by lottery, the school is in an urban area where the minority population is 25% or more, and the school has enormous value-added (class size 12, teachers with PhDs, etc).

Overall, NC does reasonably well.

Some people have called RCHS a "segregation academy." That doesn't make sense to me. Why don't more minorities apply? The lottery, after all, ensures that the proportion that apply will be the proportion accepted.

And your final score is Angels 55 - AGW 36

noreply@blogger.com (Angus) — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 13:40:00 +0000

Here is the full scoreboard from Foreign Policy:

Percentage of Americans who believe in angels: 55

Percentage of Americans who believe in evolution: 39

Percentage of Americans who believe in anthropogenic global warming: 36

Percentage of Americans who believe in ghosts: 34

Percentage of Americans who believe in UFOs: 34

Go to the link for sources. We are a wild and wacky bunch, aren't we?

Hat tip to Gabriel M.

Feeling Good

Mungowitz@gmail.com (Mungowitz) — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 02:25:00 +0000

The Tetris God: Job

Mungowitz@gmail.com (Mungowitz) — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 22:46:00 +0000

The Bishop sends this link.... the God of Tetris. He is a vengeful and an arbitrary God. THIS is the real book of Job.

Mungowitz Joins the Angus Party; STILL Not a Republican

Mungowitz@gmail.com (Mungowitz) — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 22:22:00 +0000

Full disclosure: Angus has never, ever been a Republican. Not even close, really.

Me? I was.

People ask me why I am not a Republican, and I stumble for an answer. To paraphrase Jimmy Buffet, the answer is so simple it's like the Charleston, it plumb evaded me.

I do have a pretty good answer, now. It was sent to me by Anonyman. But it was written by Andrew Sullivan, who has always been one of my favorite conservatives.

For these reasons, I found it intolerable after 2003 to support the movement that goes by the name "conservative" in America. I still do, even though I am much more of a limited government type than almost any Democrat and cannot bring myself to call myself a liberal (because I'm not). My reasons were not dissimilar to Charles Johnson, who, like me, was horrified by 9/11, loathes Jihadism, and wants to defeat it as effectively as possible. And his little manifesto prompts me to write my own (the full version is in "The Conservative Soul"). Here goes:

I cannot support a movement that claims to believe in limited government but backed an unlimited domestic and foreign policy presidency that assumed illegal, extra-constitutional dictatorial powers until forced by the system to return to the rule of law.

I cannot support a movement that exploded spending and borrowing and blames its successor for the debt....

I cannot support a movement that refuses ever to raise taxes, while proposing no meaningful reductions in government spending.

There's more. It's good. And he's right.

Shine on you crazy diamond

noreply@blogger.com (Angus) — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 16:44:00 +0000

Did you guys catch Jared Diamond in Sunday's NY Times? Ouch.

He starts out with an ode to corporate environmental responsibility:

The embrace of environmental concerns by chief executives has accelerated recently for several reasons. Lower consumption of environmental resources saves money in the short run. Maintaining sustainable resource levels and not polluting saves money in the long run. And a clean image — one attained by, say, avoiding oil spills and other environmental disasters — reduces criticism from employees, consumers and government.

But somehow ends up in Thomas Friedman crazyland:

While the United States is dithering about long-distance energy transmission from our rural areas with the highest potential for wind energy generation to our urban areas with the highest need for energy, China is far ahead of us. It is developing ultra-high-voltage transmission lines from wind and solar generation sites in rural western China to cities in eastern China. If America doesn’t act to develop innovative energy technology, we will lose the green jobs competition not only to Finland and Germany (as we are now) but also to China.

Class, repeat after me:

(1). Green jobs are NOT a zero sum game where nations are competing for a fixed number of them.

(2). If China or Germany or anyone develops "innovative energy technology", that is NOT bad for us. It is in fact *awesome* for us, as we can then adopt it and use it.

People, ideas are public goods. That is the whole basis of new growth theory. If China is now doing cutting edge R&D, that is an unmitigated blessing for everyone on the planet.

WE WANT OUR CHANGE BACK!

Mungowitz@gmail.com (Mungowitz) — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 13:18:00 +0000

Suppose I go to a baseball game, with my teen-age son. I've just been to the bank, and the smallest bill I have is a $100.

I send my son up to get two hot dogs, some peanuts, and two diet sodas. I know that costs maybe $18.

He comes back with the stuff and sits down. I ask him for the change. He looks at me like I'm crazy. "That money is going to be spent on other things! That's leftover money!"

What would I do? I'd grab him by the belt, and shake the money out of his pockets! That's my money! I want my change back. I WANT MY CHANGE BACK!

That's what we should be telling President Obama about the TARP money. I WANT MY CHANGE BACK! Obama and his bunch of geniuses in Congress said they needed our money, that there would be a DISASTER unless we gave them a $1 Trillion bill. Maybe that was true, maybe it wasn't.

But we gave them the trillion dollar bill. AND THEY DIDN'T NEED IT ALL.

WE WANT OUR CHANGE BACK! It is outrageous that they are keeping the change, just so they can spend it on something else.

Tell the President: WE....WANT....OUR.....CHANGE...BACK! Apply the money back toward the deficit, don't treat it like a high school kid at a baseball game, on the equivalent of cotton candy and corn dogs.

The Culture that is Germany VII

noreply@blogger.com (Angus) — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 21:28:00 +0000

Or Saw -1?

Here it is, direct from der Spiegel:

Was it mass cannibalism, ritual slaughter or both? Archaeologists who unearthed the remains of 500 Stone Age corpses in the German town of Herxheim say the meat was cut off their bones as if they were livestock. One conclusion is that the people were eaten -- after volunteering to be sacrificed.

YIKES!!

Drug war over: We win!!

noreply@blogger.com (Angus) — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 19:30:00 +0000

hat tip to Art Carden!

Part of the VANGuard

Mungowitz@gmail.com (Mungowitz) — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 13:37:00 +0000

This guy lived in a van, on the Duke campus.

Or so he says.

(Nod to Chelsea)

An Email Exchange

Mungowitz@gmail.com (Mungowitz) — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 13:22:00 +0000

A delightful email exchange.

Excerpt:

From: Simon Edhouse
Date: Tuesday 17 November 2009 11.07am
To: David Thorne
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Logo Design

You just crossed the line. You have no idea about the potential this project has. The technology allows users to network peer to peer, add contacts, share information and is potentially worth many millions of dollars and your short sightedness just cost you any chance of being involved.

From: David Thorne
Date: Tuesday 17 November 2009 1.36pm
To: Simon Edhouse
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Logo Design

Dear Simon,

So you have invented Twitter. Congratulations. This is where that time machine would definitely have come in quite handy.

When I was about twelve, I read that time slows down when approaching the speed of light so I constructed a time machine by securing my father's portable generator to the back of my mini-bike with rope and attaching the drive belt to the back wheel. Unfortunately, instead of traveling through time and finding myself in the future, I traveled about fifty metres along the footpath at 200mph before finding myself in a bush. When asked by the nurse filling out the hospital accident report "Cause of accident?" I stated 'time travel attempt' but she wrote down 'stupidity'.

If I did have a working time machine, the first thing I would do is go back four days and tell myself to read the warning on the hair removal cream packaging where it recommends not using on sensitive areas. I would then travel several months back to warn myself against agreeing to do copious amounts of design work for an old man wielding the business plan equivalent of a retarded child poking itself in the eye with a spoon, before finally traveling back to 1982 and explaining to myself the long term photographic repercussions of going to the hairdresser and asking for a haircut exactly like Simon LeBon's the day before a large family gathering.

Regards, David.

(Nod to Prabhu)

The never ending temporary tax?

noreply@blogger.com (Angus) — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 19:24:00 +0000

In 1993, my northern neighbors in OKC voted to add one cent to their sales tax to fund something called MAPS. This tax was sold as temporary and the revenues were used to (among other things) help get the Ford Center (where my beloved Thunder play) built. The tax expired in 2001, but was replaced by an equivalent tax to fund "MAPS for kids" which spent money on school renovations or new school construction. When that tax expired, an extension was sold the the OKC-ites to help get the Seattle Supersonics to come to OKC by funding renovations of the Ford Center.

Now THAT tax is set to expire and sure enough, voters are being asked tomorrow to approve yet another extension for "MAPS 3", which is supposed to last for 9 years, and to fund a laundry list of projects such as:

A new, approximately 70-acre central park linking the core of downtown with the Oklahoma River. The park would include a restaurant, lake, amphitheater, dog park, skating rink and other amenities. ($130 million)
A new rail-based streetcar system of 5 to 6 miles downtown, a downtown transit hub to link streetcar, commuter rail and bus systems, and possibly increased funding for the building of commuter rail lines. ($130 million)
A new downtown convention center on the south edge of downtown near the proposed park. ($280 million)
Sidewalks to be placed on major streets and near facilities used by the public throughout the city. ($10 million)
57 miles of new public bicycling and walking trails throughout the City. ($40 million)
Improvements to the Oklahoma River, including a public whitewater kayaking facility and upgrades intended to achieve the finest rowing racecourse in the world. ($60 million)
State-of-the-art health and wellness aquatic centers throughout the city designed for senior citizens. ($50 million)
Improvements to the State Fair Park public buildings, meeting halls and exhibit spaces. ($60 million)
Contingency funds to cover unforeseen costs ($17 million)

While all of this stuff surely is awesome, (can you imagine how nice of trails those would be at a price tag of $701,754.39 per mile?) I wonder if my northern neighbors are getting tired of this 17 year long temporary tax? At least some folks are against it and they have put their case up on the interwebs here.

So maybe in a few years I can take a streetcar to the senior aquatic center and then walk a luxury trail down to the Oklahoma "river" to see some white water kayaking! And after that, who knows? Maybe MAPS 4 could build a ski resort in south OKC!

More reasons to not worry about the demise of newspapers

noreply@blogger.com (Angus) — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 14:44:00 +0000

People, you don't need newspapers, you got KPC for FREE! But (as our beloved president loves to say) some would argue that newspapers serve an essential role in a democracy by influencing the electoral process.

Well, not so much, according to a new NBER working paper by Gentzkow, Shapiro, and Sinkinson (ungated version here):

We use new data on entries and exits of US daily newspapers from 1869 to 2004 to estimate effects on political participation, party vote shares, and electoral competitiveness. Our identification strategy exploits the precise timing of these events and allows for the possibility of confounding trends. We find that newspapers have a robust positive effect on political participation, with one additional newspaper increasing both presidential and congressional turnout by approximately 0.3 percentage points. Newspaper competition is not a key driver of turnout: our effect is driven mainly by the first newspaper in a market, and the effect of a second or third paper is significantly smaller. The effect on presidential turnout diminishes after the introduction of radio and television, while the estimated effect on congressional turnout remains similar up to recent years. We find no evidence that partisan newspapers affect party vote shares, with confidence intervals that rule out even moderate-sized effects. We find no clear evidence that newspapers systematically help or hurt incumbents.

So to sum up, newspapers don't affect the composition of the vote and since the introduction of radio and then television (i.e. for a long, long time) have only a very small influence on the size of the vote.

Hey, but at least they do have Dilbert!

OH VER RAY TED

Mungowitz@gmail.com (Mungowitz) — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 12:38:00 +0000

UNC's basketball team has been getting the "OH ver RAY ted" cheer from opponents pretty often this year, and has deserved it.

But...CDOs? Really? That's bad.

(Nod to Reuters)

Wow! Great Britain is Messed Up!

Mungowitz@gmail.com (Mungowitz) — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 01:47:00 +0000

two stories that caught my eye:

1. A guy found a "shorn-off" shotgun in his garden, with two live shells.
He goes to turn it over to the police. And is arrested. And was convicted. And will be sent to jail (!). For "possession of a fire arm"! The law is "strict liability." Just amazing. This man will go to jail for five years.

My gosh, even the Canadians think the Brits are a bunch of jack-booted thug boys.

Sentencing for the vicious criminal Paul Clarke will take place on December 11. And let me state some sympathy for the police, here. IT'S THE LAW that's stupid. How could you enforce a law where turning in a gun is a crime that carries a five year prison sentence?

2. A guy in Wales was cleaning up his yard. By law, the People's Democratic Republic of Wales has dictated that you MUST put yard waste in the special yard waste containers so that paid goons can suck down taxpayer money to go around and collect it for "composting."

So, our sturdy lad did as he was told. But he also raked up some sticks and apples that had fallen from his apple tree. Apple tree is in the yard, and when it drops sticks, leaves, and apples that might well seem like yard waste.

The crew of cretinous sinecurists refused in horror to collect this dangerous waste, and slapped a "CONTAMINATED!" sign on the bin.

As for me, I'd say the Brits have gone ROUND the bin. One thing occurs to me: would it okay if the first guy had put the shorn-off shotgun in his yard waste? If he had, then the cops would have been forced to arrest the collectors, right? Zero tolerance on gun possession.

Does ICE stand for "Idiots Couldn't Explain"?

Mungowitz@gmail.com (Mungowitz) — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 16:28:00 +0000

Hans Joachim Keil is a U.S. citizen. Demonstrably. He has a passport. He served in the U.S. Air Force.

But he was arrested in Branson, MO by the intrepid folks at ICE. They said he was using a false passport.

Okay, maybe. ICE was worried about human trafficking, and there was a Western Samoan dance troupe there. (Here is their web site. Some pretty studly guys. Tommy the Brit: You are welcome!) There was some kind of investigation. So it wasn't just made up.

Except....except that ICE held Keil for three months. Are our records so bad that it takes three months to check on a passport? (He wasn't in jail, but he couldn't leave Branson. Is that "trailer park arrest," like house arrest but Branson style?

Then, Kiel was released, having never been formally charged. He is now trying to sue the gubmint (here is the actual complaint, listing the facts and the allegation; good luck with that...)

He is (pauses) A. US. CITIZEN. ICE should not be able to harass him, not in any way. But they did. And they could do it to you. If you say, "But I'm a U.S. citizen!" they will simply question your passport.

Ugh. Here is a claim that there was some kind of problem with the application for the passport, in 1967. But then why release him, and say he IS a U.S. citizen? It's the 90 days thing that is strange.

In December 2008, a year ago, the US Attorney's office in Springfield, MO filed a motion essentially certifying (get this) that Kiel was and always had been a U.S. citizen! No, really.

Oh, and one more thing: Keil is the Western Samoa Ambassador to America. If he does NOT have a U.S. passport, then he has diplomatic immunity. He can be deported, but under no circumstances can he be detained.

Bottom line: there are only two possibilities...Keil has, or does not have, a valid U.S. passport. If he does, then he is a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil and ICE can't touch him. If he does NOT, then he is a duly appointed ambassador of a foreign nation, on formal diplomatic business, and the ICE CAN'T TOUCH HIM.

The only thing I can think of is that Ambassador Kiel is a big d**khead, and the ICE is just harrassing him for bureaucratic recreation. But if the ICE can use "is a known d**khead" as an excuse to hold you for three months, then...well, Angus and I need to go into hiding!

(Nod: Reason Brickbats)

Peak Idiocy

Mungowitz@gmail.com (Mungowitz) — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 00:56:00 +0000

Of all the idiotic things that people believe, the whole "peak oil" thing has to be right up there. It is literally impossible for us to run out of oil. We have never run out of anything, and we never will.

If we did start to use up the oil we have...(though, counting shale oil, we still haven't used even 10% of the total KNOWN reserves on earth, and there are lots of places we haven't looked)...but suppose we were on our way to using it up. Three things would happen.

1. Prices would rise, causing people to cut back on use. More fuel effcient cars, better insulation on houses, etc. Quantity demanded goes down.

2. Prices would rise, causing people to look for more. And they would find more oil, and more ways to get at it. Quantity supplied goes up.

3. Prices of oil would rise, making the search for substitutes more profitable. At that point (though not now!) alternative fuels and energy sources would be economical, and would not require gubmint subsidies, because they would pay for themselves. The supply curve for substitutes shifts downward and to the right.

This is econ 101. Even Paul ("I sold my soul to become a wanker") Krugman would credit this scenario.

But we ignore econ 101. And so we get this debacle. Ethanol was bad enough when it was just inefficient to produce and wasting more energy than it created. But we actually went further and bought too much of the stuff.

Yikes.

(Nod to Anonyman)

If You Tell Me This is Photo-Shopped, I'm Singing "LALALALA" Real Loud

Mungowitz@gmail.com (Mungowitz) — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 00:44:00 +0000

(Nod to Jake Russ)

Warmer....You are Getting Warmer....

Mungowitz@gmail.com (Mungowitz) — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 19:54:00 +0000

What an interesting guy this is. The title of the piece is "Why I think that Michael Mann, Phil Jones and Stefan Rahmstorf should be barred from the IPCC process."

He wrote this little firecracker.

Excerpt:

These words do not mean that I think anthropogenic climate change is a hoax. On the contrary, it is a question which we have to be very well aware of. But I am also aware that in this thick atmosphere -and I am not speaking of greenhouse gases now- editors, reviewers and authors of alternative studies, analysis, interpretations,even based on the same data we have at our disposal, have been bullied and subtly blackmailed. In this atmosphere, Ph D students are often tempted to tweak their data so as to fit the 'politically correct picture'. Some, or many issues, about climate change are still not well known. Policy makers should be aware of the attempts to hide these uncertainties under a unified picture. I had the 'pleasure' to experience all this in my area of research.

Will.I.Am.Not

Mungowitz@gmail.com (Mungowitz) — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 19:50:00 +0000

Gosh, this seems like a long time ago now.

Markets in everything: Stepford Wife edition

noreply@blogger.com (Angus) — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 16:29:00 +0000

Mrs. Angus and I had been debating whether Tiger's wife would leave him or stand by her man. Turns out she is planning to lease herself to him:

Elin and Tiger Woods had a prenuptial agreement, as expected. The couple is undergoing marital counseling, as you'd also expect. And now The Daily Beast is reporting that Elin Woods is renegotiating that prenup to get an immediate $5 million payout from her husband and as much as $55 million more to stay with him for two more years.

The initial prenup was worth $20 million after 10 years of marriage. However, the Chicago Sun-Times' Bill Zwecker has reported that Elin Woods will receive an immediate payment "into an account she alone controls," and that the 10-year timeframe -- which began when they married in 2004 -- has been shortened and the value increased "substantially."

The Daily Beast quotes "a lawyer familiar with the couple's negotiations" in reporting that the term of the prenup has been shortened to seven years, and that a series of staggered payments could increase the total value to $75 million.

But apparently there's also a behavioral component to all this: Elin Woods must "be a dutiful wife in showing up with him at social events and in public as if they were still the perfect couple, and sign a nondisclosure form that will prevent her from ever telling her story."

YIKES!

This pretty much negates any of the sympathy I had for Mrs. Woods, but I am surprised (guess I am naive) that Tiger's reaction to this situation is to just try to buy his way out of it.

The Grand Game!

Mungowitz@gmail.com (Mungowitz) — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 14:27:00 +0000

It's been a while since we played "The Grand Game." That's where KPC readers are referred to a remarkably idiotic piece of writing, and invited to go medieval on its ass. Here is this week's fresh meat:

What is Fair Pay for Executives? An Information Theoretic Analysis of Wage Distributions

Venkat Venkatasubramanian, Entropy, December 2009, Pages 766-781

Abstract: The high pay packages of U.S. CEOs have raised serious concerns about what would constitute a fair pay. Since the present economic models do not adequately address this fundamental question, we propose a new theory based on statistical mechanics and information theory. We use the principle of maximum entropy to show that the maximally fair pay distribution is lognormal under ideal conditions. This prediction is in agreement with observed data for the bottom 90%–95% of the working population. The theory estimates that the top 35 U.S. CEOs were overpaid by about 129 times their ideal salaries in 2008. We also provide an insight of entropy as a measure of fairness, which is maximized at equilibrium, in an economic system.

Me, I just enjoy saying "Venkatasubramanian." But: Wait! There's more. Here's an article about Venkat Venkata's work, here. An excerpt:

As a professor of chemical engineering at Purdue University, Indiana, Venkatasubramanian seems an unlikely candidate to dictate CEO salaries. It turns out that the maths behind thermodynamics, the study of heat and energy, can also be applied to economics.

Discuss!

(Nod to Kevin L, who is according to maximum entropy is underpaid by 130%)

Bay Em Vay Zwei

Mungowitz@gmail.com (Mungowitz) — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 13:27:00 +0000

The second BMW picture....my xmas present from the LMM!And here I thought I had been naughty...

Bay Em Vay Ein

Mungowitz@gmail.com (Mungowitz) — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 02:28:00 +0000

A tale of two BMW's, part one: Guess who owns this?Hint: it was taken in the Duke faculty parking lot, behind the Econ building.

Hint 2: Yes, Tim Bollerslev works at Duke.

I bet there wasn't much competition for THAT vanity plate.