EclectEcon

Dragon Lady

I think she was a teacher at my junior high school.



[photo taken a couple of weeks ago in Ms. Eclectic's garden]

Kosher Suits?Shatnez

MA sent me this link, which is pretty interesting/funny/revealing:

It is a little-known fact that according to Jewish law, even your clothes have to be "kosher." I don't know why it's little-known. Unlike kashrut, the laws of shatnez aren't hinted at or requiring of Talmudical gymnastics. It's written right there in your Bible: "You shall not wear shatnez, wool and linen together" (Deut. 22:11). There's no reasoning given for this. It seems to be one of those laws that prohibits unlike kinds from being used together. You know, like using a ram and a cow to plow, or wearing one black sock and one blue sock, or mixing the Hellman's with the Miracle Whip...I could go on ad nauseum.

That's only about a tenth of the posting — you will probably enjoy the whole thing.

Choke Cherries

At least that is what we used to call these things when we were kids.

The New Anti-Semitism

Victor Davis Hanson nails it in this Op-Ed in the Baltimore Sun [h/t to JJ]. Here are some choice excerpts, but I strongly recommend your reading the whole piece. It captures better than anything else I have read recently why I am so concerned about anti-Semitism.

A recent ... type of anti-Jewish odium ... is a strange mixture of violent hatred by radical Islamists and what amounts to more or less indifference to it by Westerners. [emphasis added]



Those who randomly shoot Jews for being Jews - whether at a Jewish center in Seattle or at synagogues in Istanbul - are in large part Muslim zealots. Most in the West explain away the violence. They chalk it up to anger over the endless tit-for-tat in the Middle East. Yet, privately, they know that we do not see violent Jews shooting Muslims in the United States or Europe. ...



The state-run, and thus government-authorized, newspapers of the Middle East slander Jews in barbaric fashion. Mein Kampf (translated, of course, as Jihadi) sells briskly in the region [EE: as do the lies in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion]. Hamas and Hezbollah militias on parade emulate the style of brownshirts. In response, much of the Western public snoozes [emphasis added]. Many Westerners are far more worried over whether a Danish cartoonist has caricatured Islam, or whether the pope has been rude to Muslims when quoting from an obscure, 600-year-old Byzantine dialogue. ...



We see the unfortunate results in frequent anti-Israeli demonstrations on campuses that conflate Israel with Nazis, while the media have published fraudulent pictures and slanted events in southern Lebanon.



The renewed hatred of Jews in the Middle East - and the indifference to it in the West - is a sort of "post-anti-Semitism." Islamic zealots supply the old venomous hatred, while affluent and timid Westerners provide the new necessary indifference - if punctuated by the occasional off-the-cuff "amen" in the manner of a Louis Farrakhan or Mel Gibson outburst.



The danger of this post-anti-Semitism is not just that Jews are shot in Europe and the United States - or that a drunken celebrity or demagogue mouths off. Instead, ever so insidiously, radical Islam's hatred of Jews is becoming normalized.

Let me just add to the above that the current anti-Semitism in the West is more than just indifference. It is fear. It is fear of being harmed by Muslim radical terrorists. It is fear of being accused of being an anti-Muslim racist. It is fear not only of being politically incorrect but of simply being accused of being politically incorrect.



And in addition to the indifference recognized by Hanson, these fears help draw otherwise kind and decent people away from recognizing and rejecting anti-Semitism.

I Am NOT a Lush!

It is homecoming weekend at The University of Western Ontario. Many students will paint their faces purple and many students will drink too much of a horrible concoction made from grape Kool-Aid and vodka. The homecoming parade will take over the main streets of London, and various neighbourhoods will shudder in preparation for loud but generally peaceful student parties long into the night.



On a tangent to these events, yesterday I was going over my VISA bill for the past month. This is the truth: the two largest charges on it were at the local LCBO [Liquor Control Monopoly of Ontario].



Here is part of the explanation. Scotch sampling:

Ms. Eclectic prefers single malt, non-smoky scotches like Glenlivet; I prefer the peatier ones.

Moneyball and the Efficient Markets Hypothesis

David Berri has a fascinating posting at The Sports Economist about a recently published paper by Skip Sauer and John Hakes. Many, many people in the sports establishment have had a difficult time wrapping their heads around the importance of on-base percentage and slugging percentage, but at least most general managers understand their importance these days. And, of course, as more people learn the importance of OBP and SLG (especially OBP), it no longer remains undervalued. Markets do, over time, tend toward efficient allocation of resources; discovery values last only so long ... until others discover them, too.



I posted a rather lengthy comment to David's piece there. Here it is, slightly edited, for those who don't read comments:

Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the old internet newsgroup rec.sport.baseball was full of people talking about the importance of using OBP and SLG (instead of the triple crown stats) to assess the marginal physical product of batters in baseball. It was tonnes of fun.



Many of those same folks have progressed to interesting careers in sports and sports management; one example can be seen in Baseball Prospectus" and many other publications and websites that directly emerged from the work people were doing back then and talking about on the internet; others from that same era are now, finally, doing background work for many major league teams. But back then, MANY of us wondered why on earth some smart GM didn't hire a few of these folks and use the information they were producing. Billy Beane clearly found some discovery value. He (and Skip's work) showed that the efficient markets hypothesis is correct in the long-run, but the adjustment sure isn't instantaneous.



Meanwhile, several posters back then noted that Branch Rickey at an early stage in his career thought that using (Hits + BB)/(AB + BB) was a pretty good measure of batting effectiveness.



Given that Rickey knew this, and given that we rec.sport.baseball regulars knew that OBP was important, David Berri's question becomes even more interesting: why did it take so long for the importance of OBP to even approach getting into mainstream usage? I honestly don't think it has made it yet; too many announcers and baseball folks still say "Moneyball" with a bit of a sneer in their voices.



As one of those early proponents of using OBP and SLG, when I did play-by-play for the AA London Tigers in the early 90s, I refused to mention RBIs, and I consistently and constantly explained to the various co-announcers that I worked with (and the listeners) why OBP and SLG were so important. Then in the mid-90s, when I did play-by-play for the independent league London Werewolves, I actually had it written into my [puny] contract that the screen stats for each player had to include OBP and SLG and not RBIs.



Some of the people I worked with have gone on to work with MLB teams. They certainly understood the importance OBP before Moneyball was published. I think they even regretted its publication, just a little bit, because it gave away some of their secrets.

I highly recommend that you read David's piece. Also check out the comments before mine — they have some interesting observations about Steve Levitt, that's for sure.

Some Implications of the Appreciating RMB

The NYTimes reports [reg req'd] that the RMB has been appreciating against the US dollar (but, then, what currency hasn't been?).

[T]he Chinese government has sharply stepped up the appreciation of its currency, allowing it to push through an important level against the dollar on Thursday for the first time.



The recent climb — less than a full percentage point since the beginning of September — is still modest and perhaps will not last. ...



The strengthening of the currency in September, at an annualized rate of 10 percent, compares with an annual appreciation of less than 2.5 percent for most of the year after China’s small revaluation in July 2005.



“The reality is they’re moving at a faster pace,” said Jonathan Anderson, the chief Asia economist at UBS. Others said the pace was likely to be temporary.

This is potentially important news. It provides further evidence that even more foreign central banks are losing confidence in the US dollar at its previous value and expect, eventually, that the US may have to monetize more of its massive debt. This expectation leads them to expect that the US is in for another bout of stagnation, inflation, or both — stagflation. And with these expectations, they simply do not want to hold as many US-dollar denominated financial assets.



One way for foreign gubmnts to shed some of these assets, without causing too much of a stir, is for their central banks to stop buying so many of these assets (and letting others lapse) to keep the US dollar price of their currencies, such as the RMB, artificially low.



These central banks can say nice things, and economists can put a nice spin on what is happening, (from the same NYTimes article) like this:

“The Chinese are doing this as a gesture of good will,” said Tao Dong, the chief Asia economist at Credit Suisse, while adding that he expected the pace of appreciation to settle down soon to about 5 percent a year.

I really doubt it is just a gesture of goodwill. Certainly the managed appreciation of the RMB is, in part, a response to the Smoot-Hawley-type tariff sabre rattling in the US Congress. But just as likely, another, more subtle, explanation is that China simply wants to divest itself, slowly, of ownership of so much US paper that will have reduced purchasing power in the future. I don't really blame them.



Watch for additional flight from the US dollar. And that will have serious ramifications for the US economy.



For more along these lines [h/t to MA], see Brad Setser who, just a few days ago, wrote that the most important price in the world today is not the price of oil or sugar or soybeans: it's the RMB/US$ price. For his latest on the yuan, see here.



Update: Bill Polley has a posting about this news, too. He has a comment here about it, but here is more:

[W]hile the politicians may spin the recent trend in yuan appreciation as a result of our tough talk by certain senators, I think that would be arrogant and naïve. The discussions between Secretary Paulson and the Chinese leaders [are] likely to have been a lot more nuanced--getting to the nuts and bolts of how to pull off the biggest feat of prestidigitation in currency history. That is, getting to the question of how to proceed with a substantial revaluation of the yuan without letting anyone see how you're doing it. At least I hope that is the case.

And David Altig's analysis of a couple of days ago is also relevant here, where he discusses the implications for the US if all its borrowing is not for capital-deepening but is used either for gubmnt, consumption or residential real estate.

We Are On Our Own

MA has recently recommended this book to me. Here is a brief excerpt from one review:

It is a memoir recounting how she and her mother faked their deaths and fled Budapest after the Nazis occupied the city. With forged papers obtained from a black marketer, they escaped to the countryside in the guise of a servant girl and her illegitimate child. Katin relates their harrowing lives there and her mother's desperate search for her missing husband after the war. Brief passages set decades later reveal how Katin's traumatic experiences left her without any religious faith to pass on to her own child. ... Katin's understatement makes the story all the more chilling and heartbreaking.

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Quote of the Day

from BenS:



I have often thought that economists were to blame for the frequent epidemics of consumption we have so often suffered.



[note: Ben is a retired socionomologist.]

Death to Mozart!

Today's Clement editorial cartoon [h/t to Jack; apologies for no link] in the National Post shows angry young men (presumably radical Muslims) carrying signs that say, "Death to Mozart", reacting to the situation described here.



That's pretty funny. But here are some pertinent facts that make it even funnier:

The production — which was also mounted by Deutsche Oper in 2003 — is intended to shock. Mozart never included the severed-heads scene. Indeed, Idomeneo's original libretto never even mentions Islam or Mohammed. But when Idomeneo, the king of Crete, breaks a vow to Poseidon and the sea god sends a monster to the island as punishment, the director of the Berlin production chose to have the title character slay the monster, then stagger on stage carrying the four heads and proclaim, "The gods are dead!"



Such post-modern revisionism of classic texts has become trite. We might well object to this one on artistic grounds. Still the decision whether to mount it or not should be left to tastes of the Deutsche Oper and its audience, rather than the possible rage of a mob. [emphasis added]

The editorial continues in a scathing tone:

he German press agency DPA said Berlin police so far had recorded no direct threat to the opera company, although one patron had passed on an anonymous concern about security. And when the company's directors asked police for a security report, police advised that the possibility of "disturbances" could "not be excluded." All of which makes the company's decision worse: It is crumpling in the face of a potential threat, not even an imminent danger.



When artists, writers, politicians and even ordinary citizens start to self-limit their basic rights to avoid provoking the irrational anger of Muslim street protestors, then rights to such things as free assembly, thought and speech become meaningless. What would Solzhenitsyn, Sharansky and Havel — men who spoke their minds in the face of totalitarian repression — think of such pusillanimity in the face of a tyrannical ideology?



Fortunately even most German politicians are disgusted with the cancellation.



Wolfgang Schaeuble, who as interior minister is Germany's top security official, told a news conference, "This is crazy ... I will not accept that there will be violence because people don't like some pictures [or images on stage]." He said non-Muslims have gone too far in accommodating Muslim sensibilities.



Peter Ramsauer, chairman of the Bavarian Christian Social Union caucus in the German parliament, went further still. He called the cancellation decision "pure cowardice."

Update: Also see Rondi's comments here and here.

Bald is Beautiful: Leviticus"God loves a cue-ball, baby!"

From Blogging the Bible, a very enjoyable, eclectic set of musings, analyses, and summaries:

Leviticus ... reassure[s] men that, yes, it's OK to be bald. "If a man loses the hair of his head and becomes bald, he is pure." And it gets better! God also approves of male-pattern baldness. "If he loses the hair on the front part of his head and becomes bald at the forehead, he is pure." So throw out that Rogaine! God loves a cue-ball, baby!

Mr. Purity in Salisbury, England, May, 2006



Update: Rondi Adamson pointed me to this site, and its posting, "Hail to the Coif", which says, in part:

Better than the mediocre hair, to the mind of the Manolo, are the example of those politicians, like the Ike and the Gerry Ford, who gracefully went bald without resorting to the dreadful combovers, or the hair plugs, or the ridiculous and expensive custom “hair systems”. This willingness to stoically face the follicular misfortune is the testament to their personal rectitude and the strength of their characters.

I stoically faced follicular misfortune many decades ago. ... And for protection against the sun and sleet, I wear a hat more often than I did as a teenager.

Bill Clinton and al Qaeda in Somalia

His middle name is Pinocchio, not Jefferson [from Let's Fly Under the Bridge]:

Bill Clinton Nose Watch



The former President told Fox News' Chris Wallace that:



OK, now let’s look at all the criticisms: Black Hawk down, Somalia. There is not a living soul in the world who thought that Osama bin Laden had anything to do with Black Hawk down or was paying any attention to it or even knew Al Qaida was a growing concern in October of ‘93.



Well, the Clinton Justice Department thought otherwise, as this 1998 indictment of bin Laden and friends makes clear:



* ...At various times from at least as early as 1989, the defendant USAMA BIN LADEN, and others known and unknown, provided training camps and guesthouses in various areas, including Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Sudan, Somalia and Kenya for the use of al Qaeda and its affiliated groups.

If the Clinton-Lewinski scandal had not occurred, maybe more of us would have taken the al Qaeda threat more seriously; too many of us saw it as an attempt by Clinton to divert attention away from his personal trials and tribulations.

Intellectual Anorexia

Melanie Phillips has two remarkable talents: she is very astute, and she has quite a way with words. Here is yet another wonderful example:

The speech by Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett at the Labour party conference was simply embarrassing. Thin? It was intellectually anorexic [emphasis added]. It was the speech of someone who seemed to have nothing original or even half-way thoughtful to say about anything. But one paragraph in particular caught my eye. Referring to the Middle East, she said, amongst other vapidities, this:



"No doubt there will be yet again those whose goal is to obstruct the prospect of peace. Because let’s not forget in the welter of accusation and counter-accusation it was the desire to obstruct such progress that led directly to the terrible events of the summer in Palestine and the Lebanon."



Excuse me? ‘Terrible events of the summer in Palestine and the Lebanon’? What about the terrible events of the summer in Israel, the country that was actually attacked from Lebanon and from Gaza — which is presumably what Ms Beckett means by ‘Palestine’? What about the terrible 4000 rockets that rained down during August on Israel’s northern towns in order to kill as many innocent Israelis as possible, the terrible deaths and injuries that did take place among the Israelis, the terrible flight of hundreds of thousands from the north of Israel, the terrible hardship of those trapped in shelters for a month? No acknowledgement of any of this issued from the lips of Britain’s Foreign Secretary.

Another Financial Pundit Predicts a Big Crash

Fred Hickey, as reported by the Boston Herald, says,

I think we’re going to have a crash, across the stock market...

His reasoning is similar to what I have written about in the past month or so [see my piece about Nouriel Roubini here and about Ed Leamer here along with the references cited there].

He thinks the real estate slump is going to develop into a crisis that will spread across the economy.



Hickey points out that housing sales have collapsed, prices are eroding, and a whole army of homeowners on adjustable-rate mortgages face sharp spikes in their monthly payments as their introductory periods expire.



And he thinks it’s going to get a lot worse.



...[H]e’s certainly putting his money where his mouth is. Hickey is betting against a wide range of U.S. stocks, including Google, IBM, Motorola, Intel, Apple, Research In Motion, Texas Instruments and Amazon. “I’ve got the biggest number of short positions I’ve ever had,” he says. [

Economists may be able to see this downturn coming, but getting the timing right is a different thing completely. The lags and delays are usually much longer and much less certain than most of us expect.



What impact will the US slowdown have on the Canadian economy? The opinions are mixed, as reported here, but no one seems to think Canada will slow as much as the US. My own opinion is that Ontario and the east, however, certainly could follow the US economy pretty closely; the west thrives on oil (which may or may not help insulate their economies from a US downturn over the next few years) but Eastern Canada's economy is more likely to move in lock step with the US economy.



[h/t to MA who put me onto this material long before I had begun to think about it].

Belinda: "If I had been a man..."

Belinda Stronach, criticizing the media attention that her alleged affair with retire hockey great, Tie Domi, received, wondered whether it would have received as much attention if she were a man.



Of course it would have. A male politician having an affair with Tie Domi would have been much bigger news. For those of you who are wondering, here is a photo of the happy couple, courtesy of the Globe & Mail:

Update: From a Clement editorial cartoon in the NatPost [h/t to Jack]: Tie says to Belinda, "I used to be right wing, too, Belinda."

"The Pie Was Asking for It"

King Banaian has an interesting quiz for politicians (and others) about morality.

Mismanaging a War, II

It is really hard not to think that the U.S. Pentagon has mismanaged the war in Iraq. Have they been using a misunderstood production function, trying to over-substitute capital for labour? It is hard to tell for sure, but it seems they used too few soldiers, bad and biased intelligence about local support, and now escaping insurgents attacking other cities. I certainly hope there's more planning behind all this than meets the eye.

I wrote that nearly two years ago, shortly after I began blogging. I recently posted similar thoughts. Has anything changed?

For one possible answer, read this by Kip Esquire, where he says,

How could one President, one Administration and one party do so much damage in such a short time?

Madness. Sheer madness.

And for a very interesting perspective on Islam, the evolution of democracy, and the middle east, read "Freedom and Justice in Islam" by Bernard Lewis.

Melanie Phillips agrees that the aftermath of the war, if not the war itself, has been terribly mismanaged:

The problem lay in what happened after Saddam fell. The strategic errors that followed helped create conditions for the war that now rages in parts of Iraq and which has turned it into a recruiting sergeant for the jihad — errors for which America and the coalition must bear a responsibility.

But if you think Melanie Phillips has become anti-war, think again. Read her entire piece. Her position is captured by this:

In war things often get worse before they can get better because the enemy throws itself into the fight. The more ferocious the fight, the more you can be sure of that fight’s importance. The war in Iraq is ferocious because the stakes for the jihadis are enormous. If Iraq becomes a peaceful free society, the axis of terror throughout the Arab world becomes destabilised: the very reasoning behind the American strategy of regime change in Iraq. If they win in Iraq, the axis of terror is strengthened. So of course the failure to get on top of this is a cause for concern and constructive criticism. But to say that the increase in jihadis (a claim which, incidentally, does not seem to be backed up by any empirical evidence) proves the inadvisability of the whole enterprise is just idiotic.

It is possible that the leak, which is partial, misrepresents the document which puts this wider context. It is also possible that the intelligence world, which made such dreadful errors of judgment and strategic assessment during the 1990s, and which has constantly undermined President Bush over Iraq as much as anything to rewrite history and mask its own incompetence, is merely firing yet another shot in that dirty clandestine war against the President.

Investment Advice from Larry Summers

In a recent comment about an investment paper by Richard Zeckhauser, Larry Summners (yes, THAT Larry Summers) indirectly recognizes the importance of bounded rationality.

I have less confidence in Zeckhauser’s maxims as guides for individual investors. Consider as a first example his valid observation that there is a tendency to underestimate the range of outcomes of investments and his inference that investments with limited loss possibility and very large positive upsides may therefore be good ones. The theory is good but the advice in most cases I suspect is not. Buying out of the money options or betting on long shots at the track would seem to be this kind of investment and yet large literatures demonstrate that these are losing strategies.



The objection, I suppose, is that listed options or bets at the track are not really UU investments of the kind contemplated in Zeckhauser’s maxims. A better example of the kind of thing Zeckhauser has in mind is venture capital investments. But here too, history is not very congenial. Outside of the returns earned by a few investors with great acumen—the venture capital equivalents of Neff and Buffett—the returns of the sector have not been impressive. Those of us who lack access to the Kleiner-Perkins’s of this world are probably better off sticking with our index funds than trying to make our own venture capital investments. [emphasis added]

$1 Billion for the New Orleans Saints?

It has been widely reported (see this link and the original SI story) that a Canadian consortium, presumably based in Toronto, offered $1b for the New Orleans Saints last year. The offer was rejected, but I was not surprised to learn of the offer. Paul Godfrey, President of the Toronto Blue Jays has lobbied everyone he meets for several decades to try to put together some way to get an NFL franchise in Toronto, and Ted Rogers (one of the rumoured members of the consortium) owns the Toronto Blue Jays. Given the timing of the offer (shortly after Katrina), they might have re-named the team, "the Toronto Vultures."



For many good reasons, Stephen Brunt thinks it is unlikely that Toronto will succeed in its attempts to land any NFL franchise in the near future. Here are some of the reasons he puts forward:

• the league is not desperate to grow right now beyond its current 32 teams, meaning there will not likely be a new NFL franchise available for quite some time. So if Toronto is to obtain a franchise, it will have to be an existing one.
  
  
• the league does not see Canada as a prime market. Having a team in Toronto would not add much to the league's television base but might subtract from it.
  
  
• the league's first priority is to place a franchise in Los Angeles, a major US market.
• the NFL has no interest in harming the CFL, which would surely happen to some extent if there were an NFL franchise in Toronto. The CFL provides valuable player-inventorying and finishing services for the NFL.
• there are no NFL franchises being actively offered, but there are several active buyers seeking a franchise.
• Buffalo might object [EE: but so what? Teams don't have veto power and exclusive territories in the NFL (unlike MLB), do they? Wasn't that settled by the Raiders/Davis v. NFL antitrust suit?]

Brunt's most likely scenario for Toronto's obtaining a franchise is that Buffalo might eventually be bought and moves there. Toronto isn't a great distance from Buffalo, which currently attracts many fans from southwestern Ontario. But another possibility might be Jacksonville, if and when that franchise becomes available.



But really, let's face it. An NFL franchise in Los Angeles would be worth so much more than one in Toronto, it is difficult to imagine the Toronto consortium's outbidding competitors from the Los Angeles area. .... unless, of course, they are willing to pay one heck of an "ego premium".



Update: For more, see Skip Sauer's addition, plus the comments, at the Sports Economist, where the original of this piece was posted. You gotta love Skip's "Waiting for Godot" reference.

The Tragedy of Babi Yar in the Ukraine

MA sent me the link to this article about preparations to honour the holocaust victims in Babi Yar in the Ukraine, where 34,000 Jews were massacred in two days.

The massacres at Babi Yar were on a scale that defies comprehension.



Nearly 34,000 Jews, many of them elderly, women and children, were forced to gather at Babi Yar by German troops just days after the Nazi invasion. They were shot along the ravine's edge on September 29 and 30, 1941....



The ravine continued to be used for executions and up to 60,000 more people - Jews, resistance fighters and Soviet prisoners of war - were killed there until 1943.



Before retreating from the advancing Red Army in 1943, Nazi troops exhumed and burned the corpses at Babi Yar in a last-ditch bid to hide the atrocities committed there.

Reading this article reminded me of the very powerful novel, The White Hotel by D. M. Thomas, which I read shortly after it was published back in 1981. The first half of it is pretty weird for my tastes, but the last half is an immensely captivating story about the events at Babi Yar.



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Toxic Chemicals, Laptops, and Greenpeace Lies

Last month, Greenpeace published a Guide to Greener Electronics.The following criticism of that publication from this site pulls no punches. It is certainly consistent with my priors.

Stephen Russell, a materials consultant to the IT sector, explained that the complete disconnect between what Greenpeace reported in their Guide and what they actually found in their lab tests “proves three things:



1. •that the criteria used by Greenpeace to award HP pole position in last month's Guide to Greener Electronics clearly didn't account for what is actually happening on the ground today.



2. •that other manufacturers' computers really don't contain toxic chemicals in concentrations that are of concern.



3. •that Greenpeace has an inexhaustible level of funds to burn on a chemical campaign the basic chemical principles of which they sadly don't appear to understand.”



... Yes, Greenpeace lied to sensationalize a report it spent a lot of money on, but which didn't provide data the group wanted to hear. While the group’s earlier press releases and information was mostly just incompetent and sloppy, the latest ‘poison Apple’ campaign was simply a malicious attack based upon lies.



...

Be sure to read the entire criticism (and some of the comments, which are also very informative).

Another Scholar Speaks Out On Islam and Justice

Here is an important piece of information and analysis from Salim Mansur, an award-winning moderate Muslim. In this piece, he says,

[I]nstead of dignifying outrage by striving to find any merit in what has led to the burning of Pope effigies in the Arab-Muslim world, I am reminded of another conversation worth recalling that took place in Baghdad in 1258.



It occurred following the fall of Baghdad, the capital of the Abbasid Empire and the seat of the Islamic caliphate, to Mongol armies led by Hulaqu Khan. The conqueror demanded eminent Muslim scholars of the time present themselves to him in Baghdad, and then he posed to them the question: "Which is preferable (according to your Islamic laws) the disbelieving ruler who is just or the Muslim ruler who is unjust?"



The assembled scholars sat in stunned silence, aghast at the question posed. Then one among them — history records a man by the name of Riazuddin Ali ibn Tawas — arose and signed a reply which read: "The disbelieving ruler who is just."



There is much here to pause and reflect upon in the exchange between a conqueror and a scholar that occurred in Baghdad over eight centuries ago.



One thing is certain from observing the contemporary Arab-Muslim world, it suffers from an excess of Muslim rulers who are unjust and religious leaders who never understood that faith without reason is as arid and life-denying as deserts of inner Arabia.

O.J. Toilet Paper? Who Has the Property Rights?

There has been a fascinating discussion at The Volokh Conspiracy along the following lines (very loosely):



Suppose someone decides to produce toilet paper with the image of O.J. Simpson on the squares and makes a lot of money doing so. Who would/should be entitled to the profits? Should the Goldman family, which won a suit for wrongful death against O.J. Simpson be entitled to use his likeness in such derogatory ways in partial satisfaction of the judgement against Simpson?

The theory is simple: O.J. owes Goldman, according to the Complaint, $38 million (the original $19 million wrongful death award plus interest). O.J. has a valuable asset -- his right of publicity, which is to say the right to distribute merchandising containing his name, likeness, signature, voice, and the like (e.g., autographs, T-shirts, coffee mugs, and the like), the right to license these items for merchandising, and the right to license these items for advertising. Goldman, the theory goes, may therefore seize the asset to help satisfy the judgment, just like he could seize real estate, tangible property, patents, copyrights, and the like.



If Goldman prevails, then Goldman would presumably be able to license people to make O.J. T-shirts and the like, and to sell them. He could license the use of O.J.'s name and likeness in commercials (the licensee couldn't force O.J. to act in the commercials, but it could use preexisting pictures, hire lookalikes, and so on). He could license O.J.'s names and likeness for derogatory uses (O.J. toilet paper?), though some such derogatory uses might already be permissible to everyone (not just the holder of the right to publicity or his licensees) under the not-yet-fully-established parody / transformative use exception to the right.

Here is the link to the original posting. Here is one particularly insightful comment (among the many).

Inflation in Zimbabwe:It Just Keeps Getting Worser and Worser...

Continued reductions in aggregate supply, coupled with continued rapid expansion of the money supply, are maintaining upward pressure on the rate of inflation in Zimbabwe. As I wrote about Robert Mugabe over a year ago,

Unfortunately, he blames the intermediaries for the high prices, when it is Mugabe-created declines in supply plus an inflated money supply [see here] that are causing the rampant inflation.

Last February, I expanded on these thoughts here, noting then that some economists were predicting the annual rate of inflation might rise to as much as 1000% per year.



Can it get any worse? Of course it can — so long as the gubmnt continues to increase the rate at which it prints money [paper currency in Zimbabwe now comes with expiration dates!]. Here is an update from the Private Sector Development Blog [please check the original for the many links there]:

... [Y]ou can't buy gas with Zimbabwean dollars, and ... dollars are printed with an expiration date (with some optimism that they'll still be worth something by then).



The IMF heads to Harare next week, and conversation will certainly touch on the Regional Economic Outlook for Sub-Saharan Africa it published last Saturday. In particular:



For the region as a whole, excluding Zimbabwe, inflation is projected to decline to about 6 percent. In Zimbabwe, if current policies are maintained, inflation can be expected to accelerate to above 4,000 percent.

My only question: is that per year or per month?



[For more about the tragic devolutionary events in Zimbabwe, see this blog.

What is the Cross Price Elasticity of Demand between Beer and University?

Researchers have found that when university tuition fees increase, students drink less beer. One possible explanation is that they substitute within a given budget. Another possible explanation is that students must work more, and more students must take on part-time work, when tuition fees increase (and as a result have less time and inclination to drink). Either way, it looks as if education and drunken stupors tend to be weak substitutes in the utility functions of students.

A recent study led by Nick Foskett, professor of education at the University of Southampton, looked at the experience of fee-paying students in Australia and New Zealand, as well as asking British students about their plans and expectations. Among a number of broader conclusions, they expect an outbreak of sobriety in the student body.



This is partly for social reasons. As students pay higher fees, they become more likely to have some kind of job and more likely to be living at home. Neither trend is conducive to heavy boozing.



But there is another, more direct, channel of causation. Booze costs money, even at the Leeds student union bar. Students with less disposable income may, rather than mugging old ladies or turning to prostitution, simply drink less.

[see Tim Harford for details]



But if the price of beer changes, will university enrolments change by much? Probably not. "Gee, beer is cheaper now, so I think I'll sign up for university." That's probably not a very strong effect, is it?



And all my colleagues this summer thought my field trips to study pub pricing were just a joke (or an excuse to go drinking more often)...

Why Do Palestinians in Gaza Still Live in Refugee Camps?

Here is one plausible set of explanations [h/t to Judith]:

Why do Palestinians in Gaza still live in refugee camps? Did the Israelis force Palestinians to stay in the squalid, overcrowded camps?



Palestinians still live in refugee camps, even when the camps are in Palestinian Authority controlled areas, because the PLO opposes and prevents refugee resettlement. As the PLO slogan goes, A Palestinian refugee never moves out of his camp except to return home (ie, to Israel).



While the PLO has done its best to keep Palestinians in refugee camps, Israel has done its best to move Palestinians out of the camps and into new homes. Israel even started a heavily subsidized “build-your-own-home” program for Palestinian refugees.

I suspect this piece overstates the situation somewhat, but see for yourself. There is much more to this set of explanations; for more, read the whole thing.

The Rally in Beruit

A very insightful cartoon by Clement of Canada's National Post:

The Tragedy of Maher Arar Was Due to RCMP Incompetence

From Rondi Adamson's latest column at the Toronto Star:

The tragedy of Maher Arar might suggest any number of things. For example, that the RCMP were, at the time of Arar's arrest, unprepared for their post-9/11 duties, for the vastly increased workload that the attacks created, for new laws on the books, and for the de facto training on the job that accompanied the implicit changes. At worst, Arar's story might suggest the RCMP were incompetent, ignoring procedures, and that Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli should step down.

Be sure to check out her blog, too, Begin Each Day As If It Were on Purpose.

Which Irish Professors Want to Boycott Israel?

Following up on yesterday's posting, I am pleased to see there are no bizskool or economics profs in the bunch:



HOUNAIDA ABI HAIDAR, Dept of Geography, TCD;

Dr KIERAN ALLEN, School of Sociology, UCD;

Prof JAMES ANDERSON, School of Geography, Queen's University Belfast;

Prof IVANA BACIK, School of Law, TCD;

KEN BOND, Dept of Zoology, Ecology & Plant Science, UCC;

Prof JAMES BOWEN, Dept of Computer Science, UCC;

Dr BARBARA BRADBY, Dept of Sociology, TCD;

HARRY BROWNE, School of Media, DIT;

NOREEN BYRNE, Dept of Food Business & Development, UCC [EE: not a real bizskool];

Dr JOSEPH CLEARY, Dept of English, NUI Maynooth;

Prof JOHN COAKLEY, School of Politics and International Relations, UCD;

Dr STEVE COLEMAN, Dept of Anthropology, NUI Maynooth;

DENIS CONDON, Centre for Media Studies, NUI Maynooth;

Dr LAURENCE COX, Dept of Sociology, NUI Maynooth;

Dr COLIN COULTER, Dept of Sociology, NUI Maynooth;

Prof SEAMUS DEANE, Institute for Irish Studies, University of Notre Dame;

MARY ELDIN, WERRC, School of Social Justice, UCD;

Dr NAZIH ELDIN, Head of Health Promotion, Dublin North East;

Dr ADEL FARRAG, Dept of Electronic Engineering, Institute of Technology, Tallaght;

Prof TADHG FOLEY, Dept of English & Chair of the Board, Centre for Irish Studies, NUI Galway;

CATHERINE FORDE, Dept of Applied Social Studies, UCC;

Dr KATHY GLAVANIS, Dept of Sociology, UCC;

Prof LUKE GIBBONS, Dept of English, University of Notre Dame;

Dr BRIAN HANLEY, Dept of Modern History, TCD; Dr DEANNA HEATH, Dept of Modern History, TCD;

CONN HOLOHAN, School of Media Studies, University of Ulster;

MARNIE HOLBOROW, School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies, DCU;

Dr KEVIN HOURIHAN, Dept of Geography, UCC;

Dr CAROLE JONES, Dept of English, TCD;

SINEAD KENNEDY, Dept of English, Mater Dei Institute of Education;

Dr HEATHER LAIRD, Dept of English, UCC;

DAVID LANDY, Dept of Sociology, TCD;

Dr STEVE LOYAL, School of Sociology, UCD;

Dr SEOSAMH MAC MUIRÍ, Rannóg na Gaeilge, Roinn na dTeangacha agus an Léinn Chultúir, Ollscoil Luimnigh;

Dr BREANDÁN MAC SUIBHNE, Institute for Irish Studies, University of Notre Dame;

Prof BRIAN MAGUIRE, Head of Faculty of Fine Art, NCAD;

Prof JOHN MAGUIRE, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, UCC;

Dr SANDRA McAVOY, Women's Studies, UCC;

PIARAS MAC ÉINRÍ, Dept of Geography, UCC;

Dr CONOR McCARTHY, Dept of English, NUI Maynooth;

Dr CATHAL McCALL, School of Politics, International Studies & Philosophy, Queen's University Belfast;

CAROLINE McHUGH, Dept of Geography, NUI Galway;

Dr DES McGUINNESS, School of Communications, Dublin City University;

Dr BILL McSWEENEY, Irish School of Ecumenics, TCD;

MONTSERRAT FARGAS MALET, School of Social Work, Queen's University Belfast;

Dr JOHN NASH, Dept of English, TCD;

Dr EMER NOLAN, Dept of English, NUI Maynooth;

Dr FÉILIM Ó HADHMAILL, Dept of Applied Social Studies, UCC;

GARRETT O'BOYLE, Political Scientist;

Dr EAMON O CIARDHA, School of Languages and Literature, University of Ulster;

GEARÓID Ó CUIN, Irish Centre for Human Rights, NUI Galway;

Dr RUAN O'DONNELL, Historian;

Prof PATRICK 0'FLANAGAN, Dept of Geography, UCC;

Prof DENIS O'HEARN, School of Sociology, Queen's University Belfast;

Dr LIONEL PILKINGTON, Dept of English, NUI Galway;

JIM ROCHE, Dept of Architecture, DIT;

Dr AILBHE SMYTH, WERRC, School of Social Justice, UCD;

Dr ANDY STOREY, Centre for Development Studies, UCD;

Dr GAVAN TITLEY, Centre for Media Studies, NUI Maynooth;

Dr HILARY TOVEY, Dept of Sociology, TCD;

Dr THERESA URBAINCZYK, School of Classics, UCD.



To all my current and former students: perhaps this list helps explain my sometimes unkind remarks about socionomology.



Update: Bill Sjostrom has some additional thoughts at Atlantic Blog.

Dominos, Rube Goldberg, and more

Check out this video (note: it takes more than five minutes to play).