Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Just a theory...

It is usually argued the first rabbis were Judaic versions of minor Greek philosophers -- local teachers with local acadamies teaching local students, analogous perhaps to the thousands of non-famous storefront neighborhood restaurants one finds in most major cities. But consider the first of the female "saloneers": The hetaera, who were educated courtesans, were well-versed in the art of conversation. A hetaera named Aspasia, who was a companion of statesman and general Pericles', was known for drawing the most interesting Athenians to her home. Can the first rabbis have actually modeled themselves on these women?

Link posted by Steve Antler : 12:13 PM

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Time to absent-mindedly muse about the 60's...

Knew the dad at University of Connecticut. Shared moments of protest, even some courtroom drama together. Hope he's well.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:53 AM

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Life after Tower...

As I discovered during my absence from blogging, one of the things you can still do with both wrists in a cast is listen to music. Wes Phillips reports something in which I've been participating without thinking much about it: ...one newspaper after another has made note of Nielsen Soundscan's 2006 point-of-purchase data, which showed classical record sales up 22.5%, making it the "fastest growing" category for the year... I suspect that what the 2006 sales figures really indicate is that classical music lovers have finally figured out that there's life after the record store. Hard times for the record industry led to harder times for record stores...Tower closed last year, and other "superstores" have cut back on...shelf space they devote to marginal categories. Yet the Internet and the "long tail" theory may offer a sales model that is more efficient than the old brick-and-mortar paradigm. In his book, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More, Chris Anderson argued that conventional stores restricted choice, simply because shelf space was limited and expensive, but that Internet retailing allows near infinite choice and the leisure of long-return retailing[. That is to say] slow, steady sales accrue the same success as short-lived blockbusters[, meaning classical can now finally compete on an even footing with other categories of musical recording!].

Link posted by Steve Antler : 1:09 PM

Don't think they're safe for outdoors either...

I'll buy one when they come with a tiny remote camera in the nose, bundled with Microsoft Flight Simulator/Remote Drone Control Edition.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:58 AM

This just in...

From the "global warming is old news" desk: Computing a global temperature is like taking a city's phone book and computing the average phone number. (Yes, but who's actually seen a phone book in the last ten years?)

Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:52 AM

Monday, March 19, 2007

Okay, so exactly when will they be holding the recession? (Part I of a series)

Start by checking this week's economic calendar for the latest numbers. (You know, kinda get a feeling for where things are going.)

Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:43 AM

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

O my prophetic soul!...

U herd it here first.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 1:25 PM

Monday, March 12, 2007

Just wait...

The more you educate yourself on the subprime mortage market, the more you're amazed certain parties haven't linked the issue to the racial profiling debate.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 11:24 AM

But seriously folks...

Halliburton moves its head office to Dubai. How can this be? They were so loved in the US! To me this confirms lots of the Hernando DeSoto thesis. Although one can't deny DeSoto was talking more about poor folks, we can't see why his thoughts don't apply to rich ones as well.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 9:51 AM

Regular feature returns...

Here's your economic calendar for the week.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:00 AM

DST pajamablogging...

Is it really 7am? It doesn't feel like 7 am...

Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:58 AM

Friday, March 09, 2007

Jobs and state taxes...

Regarding the Blagojevich tax proposals -- some commentators are pointing out Indiana dropped its gross receipts tax in 2002. Here's a plot of Indiana total jobs from the 1970's to the present. I've added a grey line at the year 2002, when the tax was rescinded Note the dramatic reversal of job decline in the year 2002, and the onset of dramatic upward trend. UPDATE: Here's some background (with lots of good links) on this matter of state gross receipts taxes.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 9:37 AM

Global Warming as Settled (Social) Science

In case you missed it, consider: In a recent column on a U.N. report on climate change, Ellen Goodman noted..."The certainty of the human role is now somewhere over 90 percent. Which is about as certain as scientists ever get. ... (G)lobal warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers."... But of course Goodman is quite wrong about one thing: Scientists are far more than 90 percent certain about most scientific truths. It is social scientists who aim for 90 percent (or 95 percent) certainty, and the large margin for error -- a 1-in-10 chance by the authors' own estimate that the report is simply wrong about the cause of global warming -- is a telltale sign that what we have here is not a hard scientific fact, but a scientific judgment, a possibility, a probability perhaps, but hardly an undeniable fact like the Holocaust. And now consider this dilemma -- you're in a poker game, the bet is to you, you know with absolute 90 percent certainty you will win this hand, but the bet is huge (you've got to mortgage your house) and you don't know how much money is in the pot. What would you do?

Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:56 AM

Thursday, March 08, 2007

Fun with global warming...

I've been fiddling with some of the plotting routines and datasets at CO2Science.com to see whether one can informally confirm the urban heat sink effect. Here's an example of what you can do. Look at these two Illinois locations, one northern and urbanizing, the other southern and less-urbanizing: Here's a temperature plot of the northern urban environment over all the sample years: And here's a temperature plot of the southern less-urban environment over the same years: Our gut instinct may be to weight the two datasets in accordance with population -- to think, in other words, the Aurora rising-temperature results are somehow more significant because they affect more people than do the Anna results. But this of course mistakes premise for conclusion. In this instance, the noble little temperature-measuring-station out in the middle of nowhere is just as important as his big city cousin. Actually he's more important, perhaps, because he's not surrounded by ever-growing millions of acres of heat-holding concrete, asphalt, and brick. But don't take my word for it. Go to this page, find locations in your own state, and see for yourself how temperature histories compare.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 9:07 AM

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

The second time is farce...

I'm adding this site to the blogroll. Lotsa data, many charts, all under the secret auspices of Evil Big Oil, one supposes, but still lots of fun. And just by the way -- are we reaching some sort of "tipping point" on the global climate change issue? Has the general popular/intelligencia/commercial attitude started to shift somewhat towards the direction of healthy skepticism and away from religious fervor? I like take comfort in the stuffy old conservative position that no monopoly can be permanent -- that sooner or later, even the most airtight protected economic position crumbles against the weight of increasing competition of near substitutes. Do the mainstream media actually work like this in some way? Do firmly entrenched ideas eventually come to be boring, noncommercial, and ultimately subject to their antitheses? Are the mainstream media coming around to discover commercial possibilities in global warming skepticism? Start with Al Gore's Oscar Awards performance -- a true Paul Wellstone moment if ever there was one. Continue with tomorrow's widely publicized Great Global Warming Swindle documentary. And finish with a Chicago bus stop advertising poster I saw last night while driving home from evening MBA Economics: the poster advertised vodka with the catchy new advertising slogan "Fight global warming -- add more ice!" You know, it's like they say, the first time is tragedy, the second is ...

Link posted by Steve Antler : 10:26 AM

"Got a rocket in your pocket?"...

Yes, the above words appeared as lyrics in the original Broadway production of West Side Story. I keep trying to figure out what this story's rhymic equivalent would be. UPDATE: Please forgive the gross nature of all this. I'm just getting back on my feet blogging, remember.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 5:38 AM

Tuesday, March 06, 2007

We're baack...maybe?

We are trying to get back onstream but having major problems converting to the new blogger. Can anyone help?

Link posted by Steve Antler : 9:33 AM

 
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