June 23, 2009
Jane Austen Just Can't Be Killed By Conventional Weapons
It was bad enough the speculative alternative perspective (eg see here) and sequel novels about Darcy and Elizabeth (eg see here), the Bridget Jones saga (and other pretenders to it), the trashy Harlequin romance meets Hustler type send ups, the the interactive approach, self-help and advice, "Lost in Austen", etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.
.....AND NOW ZOMBIES?!?!?!
Will I ever be rid of this woman? Can't you cruel people behind this understand that you are feeding an addiction more powerful than that of heroin, and one that afflicts millions of thirty-something women besides my wife??
Posted by dag at 7:14 AM | Comments (1)
Viking Smoker
Attention all slavish worshipers of the Holy Smoke: the Viking gravity feed smoker has arrived. Believe it or not, Time magazine has been among the first to have something to say about it.
Posted by dag at 6:58 AM | Comments (0)
May 28, 2009
Never Mind: I Want This
After some research, I am leaning away from "The Grillworks" and toward the Braten GS (pictured above). The chief advantage of the Braten is the hood.
However, this will still require some serious mulling over a glass or two of Lagavulin.
Posted by dag at 7:18 AM | Comments (1)
May 17, 2009
Long I'll Toss on the Rolling Main
I am on the cusp of a long, tough and, I hope, ultimately rewarding journey: I am finally going to tackle O'Brian's saga of Royal Navy officer "Lucky" Jack Aubrey and his friend, ship surgeon, and amateur naturalist Stephen Maturin. I have been toying with this for several years. There are some necessary preliminaries, of course. For one thing, I have purchased a volume or two of the Anatomy of a Ship series, if only to get around the ships of the Napoleonic era (it would behoove me to know the difference between the binnacle, cathead, topgallant and a mizzen channel before this series is out).
I have also purchased a copy of Lobscouse and Spotted Dog: Which It's a Gastronomic Companion to the Aubrey/Maturin Novels, so that I can cook along with the series. This morning I have learned that, apparently, I am not the first to think of this. All I'll need then is a bunch of mates with whom to stuff my face, knock my liver flat, and belt out Don't Forget Your Old Shipmates:
Safe and sound at home again, let the waters roar, Jack.
Safe and sound at home again, let the waters roar, Jack.
Chorus
Long we've tossed on the rolling main, now we're safe ashore, Jack.
Don't forget yer old shipmate, faldee raldee raldee raldee rye-eye-doe!
Since we sailed from Plymouth Sound, four years gone, or nigh, Jack.
Was there ever chummies, now, such as you and I, Jack?
Long we've tossed on the rolling main, now we're safe ashore, Jack.
Don't forget yer old shipmate, faldee raldee raldee raldee rye-eye-doe!
We have worked the self-same gun, quarterdeck division.
Sponger I and loader you, through the whole commission.
Long we've tossed on the rolling main, now we're safe ashore, Jack.
Don't forget yer old shipmate, faldee raldee raldee raldee rye-eye-doe!
Oftentimes have we laid out, toil nor danger fearing,
Tugging out the flapping sail to the weather earring.
Long we've tossed on the rolling main, now we're safe ashore, Jack.
Don't forget yer old shipmate, faldee raldee raldee raldee rye-eye-doe!
When the middle watch was on and the time went slow, boy,
Who could choose a rousing stave, who like Jack or Joe, boy?
Long we've tossed on the rolling main, now we're safe ashore, Jack.
Don't forget yer old shipmate, faldee raldee raldee raldee rye-eye-doe!
There she swings, an empty hulk, not a soul below now.
Number seven starboard mess misses Jack and Joe now.
Long we've tossed on the rolling main, now we're safe ashore, Jack.
Don't forget yer old shipmate, faldee raldee raldee raldee rye-eye-doe!
But the best of friends must part, fair or foul the weather.
Hand yer flipper for a shake, now a drink together.
Long we've tossed on the rolling main, now we're safe ashore, Jack.
Don't forget yer old shipmate, faldee raldee raldee raldee rye-eye-doe!
This is a long, technically dense (I was not kidding about how much I have learned about the Royal Navy of the time and her ships in order to follow the action) series filled with occasionally challenging period jargon. So it will be a challenge.
But I think the difficult part is knowing that it will end. I have heard from others who tackled the series that it ends before you were really prepared to part with Jack, Stephen and their circle.
Perhaps similar sentiments are behind the speculative novels regarding the fate of Fitzwilliam Darcy and Elizabeth Bennett of which my wife is so fond.
Posted by dag at 3:34 PM | Comments (2)
April 26, 2009
I Want It!
This is simply a machine for grilling: a "gross physical salute" to all that is great and good when you put meat to heat.
Posted by dag at 5:09 PM | Comments (0)
April 15, 2009
The Taxman, and Mexicans, Cometh
"Let it be known that British liberties are not the grants of princes or parliaments. That many of our rights are inherent and essential, agreed on as maxims and established as preliminaries even before parliament existed. We have a right to them derived from our maker. Our forefathers have earned and bought liberty for us at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasures and their blood. Liberty is not built on the doctrine that a few nobles have a right to inhherit the earth. No. No. It stands on this principle that the meanest and the lowest of the people are, by the inalterable, indefeasible laws of God and nature. as well entitled to the benefit of the air to breathe, light to see, food to eat, and clothes to wear as the nobles or the King. That is liberty. And liberty will reign in America."
-John Adams (or at least the HBO version)
Today is April 15th, and the occasion has produced the usual debate (see here or here, or pretty much anywhere) about taxes (or rather tax levels) in these United States. I've even heard talk or a Tea Party or two. No commentary on my part is necessary: if you are old enough to read this, your mind is probably made up one way or the other. (I have to admit that pushed to their logical extreme, I find both positions a bit silly.)
In other news, Mexican government demands that we renew the expired assault weapons (disclaimer: I have never really heard a satisfactory working definition of an assault weapon, and so use the term with great skepticism and only for purposes of consistency with the public dialogue on the subject) ban. The majority of the press is making sure everyone knows about the supposed situation and certainly appears to agree that the assault weapons ban should be renewed (eg here, here, etc.) or at least that something needs to be done (eg here).
I have to admit some degree of skepticism about the specifics regarding the factual claims the Mexican government is making to support their case. For instance, in his interview with Bob Schieffer, the Mexican Ambassador to the US made some really strange arguments to back the oft-repeated official Mexican line that 90 percent of the assault weapons seized from the cartels in Mexico originate in the US. For instance, when pressed by Schieffer to back this claim, he said:
"Look at the most recent large seizure in Reynosa, a town that is on the border. In November, in a military checkpoint, just about three or four kilometers into Mexican territory, we seized more than 250 assault weapons and half a million rounds of ammo. These had just crossed over the border from the United States into Mexico. By tracing back these weapons, by looking at the types of weapons, we're determining that most of these weapons are coming from the United States, Bob."
So, basically, if I understand this correctly, he is arguing that the US origins for most of the guns seized in a shipment of guns just arrived from the US is proof that most of the assault rifles in the hands of the Mexican cartels come from the US? I have heard other, similarly strange arguments when the 90 percent figure is challenged.
Continue reading "The Taxman, and Mexicans, Cometh"
Posted by dag at 3:28 PM | Comments (0)
April 8, 2009
How To Build an Empire Merely by Getting Your People to Do What You Want Them To Do
One of the disappointments of the professional life of an economist is that we spend so much of our time on sometimes (OK: always, beyond a certain point) tiresome and arcane methodological issues. To be sure, these are important: the difference between an instrument providing a local or population average effect can be really important for drawing, say, policy conclusions; the parametric assumptions behind a sample selection correction method can vastly influence model performance and hence the take-home (yes, policy once again) message from a given estimation exercise; the semantics can be really important (say, what do you mean by "structural"?); etc. etc.
The trouble of course is that we can sometimes feel as if we spend all our time sweating the details, never enjoying the chance to contemplate the big, sweeping ideas. Above all you can spend a lot of time as a professional economist without really tackling a problem through the lens of our field.
That's why a paper like "The British Navy Rules: Monitoring and Incompatible Incentives in the Age of Fighting Sail" serves as the kind of refreshing, fun and free intellectual vacation from everyday economics that soothes this Dismal Scientist's soul.
It basically tackles a simple but fascinating question: why was the British royal navy so dominant in the great age of fighting sail (roughly 1670-1827)? They had no real advantages over their opponents in resources, technology, etc. And their captains and crews had to fight under the constant threat of British cuisine.
Moreover, it was an odd age because you basically handed the keys to a stunning fighting machine over to the captain and then, limited communications of the time being what they were, had virtually no ability to monitor his actions. It was in that captain's interest to follow his own interests: French captains often went after the low-hanging fruit of less heavily armed but valuable commercial prizes more to their own personal advantage than their King's (he of course wanted to sweep the enemy navy from the seas) and wherever possible avoided fighting enemy navies (and hence did not put much work into preparing for a fight they had no intention of making anyway).
British warships, by comparison, generally behaved in a fashion much closer to what their Admirality wanted them to do: seek to engage their heavily-armed enemy naval opponents and with maximum aggression. But knowing that you were going to face this terrible trial by fire created all kinds of incentives for British captains to have their crews as battle-ready as possible (get off three shots to their two and all that).
In other words, there was a principal-agent problem created by the technology of the time that British somehow solved whereas their opponents such as the French did not. And the rest was (British Imperial) history.
This paper argues that the British solved these problems by developing a set of tactics and operational principals that got the incentives for Captains and their officers more or less right. In other words, they got those captains and officers to do what the admirality wanted, and not what their own narrow self-interest might have dictated.
This is not merely some historical curiosity, either: it is a great way of thinking about a basic challenge that confronts us in our own everyday lives (do you have a doctor? dentist? repairman? employees not constantly under your gaze? anyone that you want faithfully carry out some task per your objectives, but who might have their own objectives and you cannot easily monitor and evaluate their actions?).
Posted by dag at 9:37 AM | Comments (0)
April 7, 2009
Oh Yeah
Timelapse: Franklin Street after the victory from The Daily Tar Heel on Vimeo.
Posted by dag at 3:30 PM | Comments (0)
April 1, 2009
The Voice of a New Generation
Today I've been looking up from my work periodically to take in the images of protest at the G20 summit in London. Certainly the crowds represent a real demographic mix, but I think that my own sort gross casual empiricism, backed by unimpeachable visual evidence from SkyNews, MSNBC, Fox, and CNN, suggests that the dominant presence in the crowd are really angry young people. They are the great un-washed and un-washed-up voice of an angry new generation of Mastercard Marxists whose sense of entitlement has been unforgivably shaken by recent economic events.
This sign kind of captures the basic handle: for all their rage, these kids have so little to say.*
One of the really unfortunate consequences of the present crisis (which reflects above all policy errors, mostly at the Fed in the case of the US, and not some inherent flaw in the capitalist, market-based approach) is that is has opened the door to a kind of broad-based dismissal of so-called Anglo-Saxon capitalism that is simply intellectually unconvincing. This crisis is not the exclusive fault of the US (the blame is widely, widely shared) and does not in any sense overturn the case for capitalism.
* One group I exclude here are the environmentalists, who have a much more focused and persuasive argument that should give all societies, market and non-market (let's not forget how pollution intensive production was in the old Soviet bloc), pause.
Posted by dag at 12:43 PM | Comments (2)