Tyler Cowen has a post on TSA screenings that I think deserves a lot of attention. In many ways, the post would be improved by dropping all the TSA screening baggage and just focusing on the abstract issues of doing economic analyses of security situations. A number of comments, in particular, bring up the often [...]
One of the most exciting things about Google is that even when they do cost cutting, they innovate.
There’s been some coverage in the New York Times of the recent e-book pricing dispute between Amazon and Macmillan focusing on the potential for consumer backlash over e-book prices. The coverage includes the following quote: “The sense of entitlement of the American consumer is absolutely astonishing,” said Douglas Preston, whose novel “Impact” reached as high as [...]
This editorial on Microsoft in today’s NYTimes is interesting on many levels. Part elegy, part exposition, even the choice to run an editorial of this sort is in many ways a bit of a puzzle to me. I suppose I’m too far down the Ubuntu rabbit hole to remember how common Microsoft is for most [...]
I think creative people ought to avoid getting bent out of shape the second the sturm und drang of capitalism interferes with their cash flow. In many ways, the attacks on Amazon are getting so much purchase because many authors have sandboxes and and are not afraid of using them. But here is another view. Amazon [...]
In an otherwise interesting but ill-thought-out comparison of cuckoldry and rape, I found this little nugget: We all know that women tend to be more expressive about their complaints – you can’t beat ‘em for wailing and gnashing of teeth. Really? That hasn’t been my experience. And anyway, even by the flimsy standards of economics [...]
I sometimes encounter arguments in Op-Eds and wonder whether these statements have supporting evidence, so I decided I’d ask the Internet. Here’s a snippet from the Washington Post today: If rewards for America’s entrepreneurs and firms are reduced through higher marginal tax rates, their incentives to earn, invest and create jobs will be diminished. Is [...]
So today I found myself trying to figure out how to pickle objects that are based on dynamically constructed classes. This is probably the simplest instance of metaclass magic in Python — the use of the ‘type’ builtin, a metaclass. A metaclass is a class whose objects are themselves class specifications. People use metaclasses to [...]
Okay, so I’ve been bailout obsessed. I used to work on Wall St. Well, midtown anyway. This will be the last bailout post for awhile. Some sensible analysis of the bailout. UPDATE: Deep thought — What if markets actually are functioning, and we just don’t like what they are saying?