EclectEcon

Mark Steyn on the Administration's Apparent Use of the IRS to Intimidate Its Enemies

The news keeps getting worser and worser:

A couple of weeks back, cancer patient Bill Elliot, in a defiant appearance on Fox News, discussed the cancelation of his insurance and what he intended to do about it. He’s now being audited.

Insurance agent C Steven Tucker, who quaintly insists that the whimsies of the hyper-regulatory bureaucracy do not trump your legal rights, saw the interview and reached out to Mr Elliot to help him. And he’s now being audited.

As the Instapundit likes to remind us, Barack Obama has “joked” publicly about siccing the IRS on his enemies. With all this coincidence about, we should be grateful the President is not (yet) doing prison-rape gags.

Meanwhile, IRS chief counsel William Wilkins, in his testimony to the House Oversight Committee over the agency’s systemic corruption, answers “I don’t recall” no fewer than 80 times. Try giving that answer to Wilkins’ colleagues and see where it gets you.

The Grey Cup, a Retrospective

As you know from this, I was in Regina, Saskatchewan last week and weekend for the Grey Cup, the championship game of CFL (Canadian Football League). I play trumpet in the Roughrider Pep Band and was there in that capacity. Here are some thoughts:

• I absolutely love playing in the Roughrider Pep Band. They have some excellent musicians, undying energy, and they just love to have fun.
• This was my fourth consecutive Grey Cup. The Pep Band's role at Grey Cup is absolutely crazy: we get up every morning at or before 5am and play at schools, parties, offices, and on tv. We do this starting on Thursday and continue through Saturday. It's tiring (hell, exhausting), it's painful (my lips were bruised and calloused by the end of the week), it's grueling (I had to take a nap or two between gigs), and I love it all. In all four years, we must have played 70-80 gigs each year. We just throw ourselves into it and play a LOT. This link might show us on Canada AM (but I'm not sure it will work).
• I will never, ever attend another Grey Cup game that is held in a cold outdoor venue. It was horrible trying to walk two blocks from one gig to another when the temperature was -27C with a windchill of -36C, but that was nothing compared to sitting in the stands for 3 hours during a football game, even though the temperature during the game was only -5C or so. I was chilled to the bone, but couldn't leave because it looked as if the Roughriders would win (which they did, 45-23).
• The sea of green in the stadium was impressive with all the fans wearing green. But I've seen that before at other games, so it didn't impress me all that much. And I think I was personally at least as excited when the London Tigers won their league championship over 20 years ago as I was on Sunday when the Roughriders won the Grey Cup.
• Nevertheless, it felt special when Taj Smith (wide receiver for the Roughriders) came up and joined the band at the end of the game. He has always been a strong supporter of the pepband.
• Over the past four years that I have been playing with the pep band whenever possible, I have acquired an appreciation for the CFL. I used to prefer the NFL hands down. Now I'm not so sure.
• It was great for the Roughriders that they won the Grey Cup at home this year, but to be honest, playing in the pep band at Grey Cup is more fun when the game is not in Regina. I realize that saying  this may seem like sacrilege to many fans in Regina, but this year the band members were less-connected because every evening everyone went home instead of back to the hotel or out to some karaoke bar.
• Scotch is a marvelous salve for sore, bruised, swollen lips.

Related articles

The CFL Cheerleaders

The John Palmer Memorial Urinal

Regina and Grey Cup

What Would You Buy?

Every year my older son, David Ricardo Palmer, and I line up with the crowds outside Walmart on Boxing Day (the day after Christmas). We rarely, if ever, buy anything*, but we enjoy being with the crowds and experiencing the joys. In the past few years, people have rushed into the store looking for big-screen TVs and other electronic goods. But what will be the big-rush items this year?

*One item I bought last year just reached out to me and was totally irresistible. I laugh every time I see it:

 

Happy Thanksgivukkah

Hanukkah begins at sundown today, and U.S. Thanksgiving begins at midnight tonight.

From Wikipaedia,

Thanksgivukkah is a pop-culture [name] given to the convergence of the American holiday of Thanksgiving and the first day of the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah on Thursday, November 28, 2013.^[1][2][3]

It is a result of a rare coincidence between the lunisolar Hebrew calendar (whose dates reflect both the moon phase and the time of the solar year, and which can have between 353 and 385 days per year) and the Gregorian calendar.^[4][5][6][7] Because the calendars are not calculated the same way, Chanukah appears at a different time each year on the Gregorian calendar.^[8][9]

History

Thanksgiving Day has fallen during Hanukkah at least twice between 1863 (when Thanksgiving was proclaimed a U.S. federal holiday by President Abraham Lincoln) and 2013: in 1888 Thanksgiving was the first day of Hanukkah, and in 1899 it was the fourth day.^[12][13] Thanksgiving occurred later in those two years than is possible under current U.S. law (as a result of changes between 1939 and 1941); as a result of this confusion, some media reports have mistakenly claimed that Thanksgivukkah has never occurred since Lincoln.^[14][15][16]

Because the Gregorian and Jewish calendars have slightly different average year lengths, over time they drift out of sync with each other. As a result of this, Thanksgiving Day will not fall entirely within Hanukkah again in the foreseeable future. (One physicist has calculated that, if the Jewish calendar is not revised, Thursday, November 28 will not fall during Chanukah again until the year 79811.) ^{[12][17][18][19][20][21][22]} However, since the Jewish day does not begin at midnight, but on the sunset before it, those celebrating both holidays will light the second candle of Hanukkah 2013 the evening of Thanksgiving Day, the first candle having been lit on Wednesday, November 27; there will continue to be occasional years in which Hanukkah and Thanksgiving partially overlap, with the first night of Hanukkah beginning in the evening of Thanksgiving. For example, 2070 will be one such year, when the first night of Hanukkah will be the evening of Thursday, November 27.^[12][23][24] 1918 was another such year.^[25]

 

Governor Isaac Shelby, The War of 1812

Nearly two years ago I auditioned to be in a documentary series about how the War of 1812 affected Southwestern Ontario between Niagara and Detroit. I was initially offered a role of a 32-year-old, and I immediately wrote to the producers that I was flattered that they thought I could play such a role. They, of course, rescinded that offer and instead offered me the role of Governor Isaac Shelby (of Kentucky), who was a general during that war. The filming for my very minor role was done in August, 2012, and will be on TVO sometime during the winter of 2014. Here is my very brief role, in its entirety, in Episode One.

I recorded this snippet on my smartphone from a disk sent to me in advance of the TVO showing of the series. 

In this scene, I am assuring the women of Amherstburg that we Kentuckians will not destroy their homes so long as they do not harbour any of their men folk, whom we would consider to be soldiers for the British. The narrative over the video suggests that I might be playing General Harrison giving these assurances, but that isn't exactly what I was told nor what the credits say (and is especially bizarre since General Harrison is played by a different actor).

Oh well, another gig, another credit.

Coincidentally, Shelby, Michigan, less than an hour north of where I was born and raised, was named for Governor Shelby:

Shelby was originally established as Churchill’s Corners in 1866, named after Walter H. Churchill who was the first postmaster. It was renamed Shelby in 1885 when it was incorporated as a village - after General Isaac Shelby, who along with his famous Kentucky Rangers, took back Detroit from the British in the War of 1812.

It's interesting that in the full narrative of the documentary, Governor Shelby's role in the War of 1812 is not mentioned even once.

And you know what? If I hadn't played this role and done lots of reading about it, I'd have had no idea who Shelby was, what he did, or why that village was named Shelby.

The Deal with Iran. Was It REALLY This Bad?

On the face of it, it looks as if Iran is giving up next-to-nothing in the deal and will now have the economic sanctions lifted, during which it can repatriate zillions of dollars worth of foreign assets.

Stratfor is far from optimistic but hopeful. See this.

The logic here suggests a process leading to the elimination of all sanctions in exchange for the supervision of Iran's nuclear activities to prevent it from developing a weapon. Unless this is an Iranian trick to somehow buy time to complete a weapon and test it, I would think that the deal could be done in six months. An Iranian ploy to create cover for building a weapon would also demand a reliable missile and a launch pad invisible to surveillance satellites and the CIA, National Security Agency, Mossad, MI6 and other intelligence agencies. The Iranians would likely fail at this, triggering airstrikes however risky they might be and putting Iran back where it started economically. While this is a possibility, the scenario is not likely when analyzed closely.

Apparently Stratfor thinks that speaking quietly and carrying a big stick is still a viable option in the Middle East.

Melanie Phillips heaps scorn on this view [see this]. [update: the link and quote are now correct]

Journalists who would normally ask themselves ‘why is this lying bastard lying to me?’ if a western politician merely said ‘hello, nice day isn’t it’ (apart, of course, from The One) have suspended all independent powers of observation and thought over this risible farce of a deal. 

Viewing it through the prism of ‘after-Iraq-don’t-give me-any-more-lies-about-Islamic-terror/anything-that-sounds-like-compromise-and-lets-us-put-our-heads-back-in-the-sand-must-be-good/war-with-Iran-is-sooo-much-more-terrifying-than-a-nuclear-Iran/new-Iranian-President-Rouhani-sounds-charming-and-moderate-so-phew!-we-can-believe-anything-that-he-says/anything-Benjamin-Netanyahu-is-against-I’m-for’, the chattering classes have apparently decided that yup, this really is peace in our time and any comparison with you-know-what in 1938 is well, just hysterical, and anyway we’ve had it up to here with Israel and they can just shut up.

Phillips goes on to list 17 different points about the agreement that should be raising eyebrows everywhere.

The Canadian gubmnt is also concerned about the apparent lop-sidedness of the deal [see this]:

Canada vowed Sunday to keep its sanctions regime against Iran after a preliminary deal on the Islamic republic's nuclear program, calling for a more conclusive accord. ...

But Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird insisted that Ottawa would keep its "tough" sanctions "in full force" until negotiators clinch a permanent agreement, because "Iran has not earned the right to have the benefit of the doubt."

I worry that Phillips is right. Elsewhere I have pondered whether it is a case of John Neville Kerry-lain and "Peace in our time."

Shirts (again) and Standardization

At one time in my life, I wore custom-tailored shirts. I worked carefully with the tailor and had the shirts made to compensate for different shoulder sizes and slight variations in my arm lengths.

I don't do that anymore. But I do find it difficult to buy shirts "off the rack", so to speak. The sleeve lengths are never satisfactory (and not just because of the minor variations in my shoulders and arms).

What I'd like to buy are shirts with 16" necks and 33 1/2" sleeves. You can't get these, except maybe with custom-ordering, and that's fairly pricey.

My first-world-problem, though, is that in too many stores these days, you can maybe find 16" necks, but the sleeves are listed as either 32-33 (i.e. probably about 32.5") or 34-35 (i.e. probably 34.5"). The former are an inch too short and they look funny; the latter are an inch too long, and unless they can be tightened at the wrist with extra buttons, look equally funny.

So I won't buy the standard, off-the-rack shirts anymore. Instead I buy only shirts that are 16-34. Their sleeves are a bit too long, but they suit me better than 16-33, which is what most clothiers would have me wear.  But it isn't all that easy to find even 16-34 shirts these days at many stores. I guess the inventory costs of carrying such a wide variety of sizes and colours are too high for most stores.

Tassimo? Keurig? The Single-Cup-Coffee-Maker War

There seem to be two leading competitors in the single-cup-coffee-maker war that has been raging for the past several years. Keurig, on the one hand, uses a system that has a wide variety and that allows people to make their own K-cups. Tassimo, on the other hand also has a wide variety (see photos below) and employs barcodes to identify how much hot water to run through the system, from espressos to giant-sized cupfuls of coffee.

About two years ago, Ms. Eclectic bought a Tassimo. I don't think the coffee from our Tassimo is quite as good as the coffee we used to make. But it's good (better than adequate) and the ability to decide what kind of coffee we want, each time we make a cup, is great. We have a HUGE inventory of Tassimo disks, and part of the fun of having coffee (or tea) each morning is deciding, "Hmm. What'll I have today?" Here are some of the disks we have:

 "But wait! There's more!"

"But wait! There's even more!"

No more photos, but yes, we have tonnes more on other shelves.

Last month when I was in Michigan, I noticed that the Walmarts and JCPennys I visited carried only Keurig-related products. They had no Tassimo machines or disks. They also carried non-Keurig machines that use Keurig K-cups. And I see that this week's advertising for Canadian Tire features only those machines which use K-cups. I have begun to wonder. Is this a duopoly battle in which one rival will emerge victorious? Or is this a market in which the two can survive?

At first I thought of the VHS-Betamax war. In that war, one technology had to emerge as the victor because people rented, borrowed, and exchanged videotapes so often. And there are some similarities: Tassimo, like Sony and Betamax, has been less aggressive (to put it mildly) about licensing their technology for the makers of other coffee machines. I think Sony learned their lesson in the videotape wars and was a bit more open in licensing BluRay technology in the HD video disk wars.

Of course the Coke and Pepsi rivalry came to mind, too. This is a type of competition that can support two or more major rivals, apparently ad infinitum. People have different tastes and different loyalties, and there is no reason there cannot be more than one (or two or three or more) successful firms in this market. But this market is not like the Tassimo-Keurig war because soft drinks do not require consumers to purchase machinery with different technologies.

Maybe the best analogy is the razor war: Gillette vs. Schick. There's a hardware component and a replaceable component, and nothing is interchangeable between the brands. Both survive, however, because there is no requirement of compatibility between different users. People don't rent or borrow or exchange razor blades. Similarly, I expect there is little exchange between customers of the Keurig or Tassimo systems.

Is the battle for shelf space and consumer adoption in the single-cup-coffee-maker business being won by Keurig? It looks that way, judging from what I have seen in the US and judging from the number of people I know who have bought Keurig machines lately. But in our area, Tassimo still seems at least as strong and popular as Keurig.

But over time, Tassimo might well fade unless they do several things:

1. license other brandnames to manufacture and distribute Tassimo-compatible machines.
2. develop methods for people to fill their own disks with their own coffee blends.
3. Aggressively seek even more licensing with additional major coffee brands.
4. And this one is minor but a constant annoyance: print the type of coffee on the top of each box. In the second photo above, you can see that I have written the name of what is inside on the top of the box. Doing so is a nuisance that could be readily solved by printing the name there as the boxes are printed and assembled.

The CFL Cheerleaders

Cheerleading in the CFL (and probably many other places) is basically an artistic, high-energy, athletic skin show. The routines the cheerleaders go through are beautifully and/or intriguingly well-choreographed, and the cheerleaders have to be supremely well-conditioned to perform 5-8 times a day while they are out here at Grey Cup.

I may be biased (in part because one of my former students is one of them), but the choreography of the Saskatchewan Roughrider cheerleaders is especially intriguing. The people move gracefully from one position on the floor to another, morphing seamlessly into new positions and shapes, shifting different people from front to back, etc.

By a slim edge, the best I've seen (cheerleaders often perform just before the Regina Pep Band, and so we've been able to see several different shows) are the cheerleaders from Edmonton. They have great skill but also seem quite lively and alluring. Their choreography is good (though not the same as the Riders cheerleaders) but just overall I enjoyed their performances more than any of the others.

Some observations:

• Old Fogey time: In the 50s and 60s, cheerleaders led the crowds in cheers. There was far less of the performance aspect to what they did.
• In the 70s and 80s, cheerleading changed from leading cheers to being gymnastic, athletic performances.
• Nowadays, what they do would have gotten them arrested in the 50s. The smiles, the moves, the hip thrusts, and other gestures are quite provocative, as are the extremely skimpy outfits. I think the cheerleader routines these days are far better than the stuff we saw from go-go dancers in the 60s.
• The music to which they perform their routines is always fast-paced, upbeat and well-chosen.
• Long hair seems to be a requirement for being a CFL cheerleader. Many of the routines involve flipping their hair around to the beat of the music. If a female wants to be a cheerleader and has kinky or tight curly hair, she must straighten it, I expect. Wavy is fine, apparently, and maybe even preferable to very straight.
• The exhibitions (!) seem like soft-core porn to me. Women display themselves provocatively and then go into the crowd to sell calendars and playing cards (and other memorabilia?) with their photos. More than once I was reminded of the musical I was in last spring, Cabaret.
• The cheerleaders have been staying at the RCMP depot in Regina for Grey Cup. We had lunch there one day with some of them. They really watch their diets. They eat tonnes of veggies and salads. But they need lots of protein and enough calories to make sure they have the energy to do all their shows.

 

Friends, Romans, Countrymen! Loan Me Your Ears!

I have always believed that "loan" is a noun and "lend" is a verb. I have gone so far in my writing as to change the economic term "loanable funds" to "lendable funds". And I yell at the tv whenever someone says something like, "I'll loan you that."

Internet correspondent MA has pointed out to me, however, that modern dictionaries have long seen the use of "loan" as a verb as acceptable. Here is just one example.

Although a surprising number of critics still voice objections, loan is entirely standard as a verb. You should note that it is used only literally; lend is the verb used for figurative expressions, such as “lending a hand” or “lending enchantment.”

So the title of this posting would not be acceptable, even with modern usage. And I don't care what the dictionaries say, using "loan" as a verb just doesn't sound right to me.

There's much more at About.com. From that site, for those who really care,

Usage Notes:

• "Although most expert users of English dislike loan as a verb ('I loaned him my pen'), except in financial contexts, it must be acknowledged that the usage is sanctioned by dictionaries. If you are not offended by 'Friends, Romans, countrymen, loan me your ears' or by 'Distance loans enchantment,' you may go along with the dictionaries and you will always have a defense."
  (Theodore M. Bernstein, Miss Thistlebottom's Hobgoblin's, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1971)

• "Some people are bothered by the word loan as a verb, preferring to use lend in its place. There's not much reason for the anxiety--loan has been a verb since around the year 1200, and I think an 800-year probation is long enough for anyone--but it's now little used in America. My advice: don't be bothered by loan as a verb but, if you want to avoid irritating those who have this hangup, it's never wrong to use lend."
  (Jack Lynch, The English Language: A User's Guide, Focus, 2008)

• "The verb loan is well established in American usage and cannot be considered incorrect. The frequent objections to the form by American grammarians may have originated from a provincial deference to British critics, who long ago labeled the usage a typical Americanism. Loan is, however, used to describe only physical transactions, as of money or goods; for figurative transactions, lend is correct: Distance lends enchantment. The allusions lend the work a classical tone."
  (The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th ed., 2000)

• "These are sometimes interchangeable, sometimes not. Only lend carries the figurative senses of adding or giving, as in lend strength to the cause or lend color to an otherwise routine event. But for other senses, as when property or money pass temporarily from one owner to another, either word could be used. . . .
  
  "In American and Australian English, the verb loan is readily used as an alternative to lend in such applications--but not so much in contemporary British English. The word was used in Britain up to C17, but a curious resistance seems to have developed there during C18 and C19, when the Oxford Dictionary (1989) citations are all from the US, and the word somehow acquired provincial associations. Fowler (1926) noted that it had been 'expelled' from southern British English, but that it was still used 'locally in the UK.' Yet Gowers writing after World War II found it returning to British government writing (1948, 1954) and weighs in against it in his 1965 edition of Fowler as a 'needless variant' (1965). This seems to be the basis on which British usage commentators argue that loan must be used only as a noun (except in banking and finance) and lend as a verb. Some British dictionaries (Collins, 1991) and the Canadian Oxford (1998) still echo the inhibition, while data from the BNC [British National Corpus] shows that many British writers are comfortable with it."
  (Pam Peters, The Cambridge Guide to English Usage, Cambridge University Press, 2004)

Pink Shirts

My granddaughter Lara was visiting last month. While she was here, she commented that I seem to have a lot of pink shirts. I guess she's right:

Okay, so one of them is pretty dark to be called pink, and one of them has a blue pinstripe. But counting those, I have 8 pink shirts.

"Gramps, why do you have so many pink shirts?" Lara asked.

"I think there are two reasons, Lara. The first one is that I like the colour pink. The second is that they were usually on sale, so I stocked up on them."

Even though I like pink, I like other colours for shirts and have "a few" in other colours, too. I expect that both of the reasons I gave Lara are correct. If the pink shirts had not been on sale, and if other colours had been on sale, I would probably have fewer pink shirts and more shirts of other colours. It's the substitution effect at work.

Careful observers will notice that

1. Despite my earlier-mentioned hang-up, not one of these shirts is on a pink hanger.
2. We buy quite a few clothes from Land's End. Even after paying all the import duties and taxes, they seem like good value for the money.
3. These are all no-iron shirts. I mistakenly ordered a shirt that wasn't no-iron once and gave it away.
4. These shirts all have pockets. I mistakenly have bought two shirts that have no pockets, and I gave one away. The other isn't pink. Maybe it's geeky, but I like to have a shirt pocket for my smartphone and a pen.

China's Great Shame: The Famine that Killed 36 Million People

It was a classic example of the failure of central planning.

There was an abundance of hubris by the planners, who believed they could do better than markets (sound familiar?).

There was an abundance of predictable bureaucratic behaviour in response to incentives as subordinates padded the numbers to satisfy their superiors (and out of fear for their lives if they didn't meet optimistic production quotas).

There was an abundance of force used to make peasants go along with the massive centralization that occurred (sound familiar?)

There was an abundance of stupidity (sound familiar?) as, for example, bureaucrats confiscated peasants' cooking implements to melt them down to make steel.

And there was an abundance of death: executions, murders, starvation, and cannibalism. Somewhere between 20 million and 36 million people died because of Mao's "Great Leap Forward".

I have been saving this piece from the NYTimes for over a year. It is a painful summary of the death and devastation that occurred from 1958 - 62. Some of the Amazon reviewers claim the author of Tombstone, which is summarize in the NYTimes piece, is lying, but for the most part it seems well-regarded and factual.

THIRTY-SIX million people in China, including my uncle, who raised me like a father, starved to death between 1958 and 1962, during the man-made calamity known as the Great Famine. In thousands of cases, desperately hungry people resorted to cannibalism.

The toll was more than twice the number of fallen in World War I, and about six times the number of Ukrainians starved by Stalin in 1932-33 or the number of Jews murdered by Hitler during World War II.

The horrors of life after central planners' decisions went awry are well-documented in many countries. Bureaucrats falsify numbers, higher-ups believe someone is hiding something, and those at the top set impossible goals, wanting to believe the padded numbers and biased information provided to them and dismissing anything contrary (sound familiar?).

At the same time, the higher-ups suffer little. The granaries are well-guarded, and the centralized crop is used to generate foreign exchange to fund larger projects.

How can people write about the evils of capitalism when there are so many horror stories about the evils of centralization in the 20th century? How can people write about the evils of capitalism when we see the failures of central planning in Venezuela, North Korea, or even in otherwise well-functioning markets?

Here's how: As one of my friends says, “Every advocate of central planning always — always — envisions himself as the central planner.” This statement, known as Kip's Law, was first enunciated by Kip Esquire. Too bad he stopped blogging.

Sure, markets are not perfect. But we can look around and see how much better they are than centralization.

To read more about the tragedy in China, begin with the Wikipaedia entry "Great Leap Forward". It sets the death toll at between 18.5 and 42 million.

.

Related articles

The Great Chinese Famine

Great Leap Famine Denial

The John Palmer Memorial Urinal

I have always enjoyed my visits to Regina. Something clicks between the members of the economics department and me, between the Saskatchewan Roughriders and me, and between Ms Eclectic's relatives out here and me.

I cannot think of a more appropriate, fun, interesting way to capture and reflect this joy than to have a urinal dedicated to me in the men's room at the University of Regina Department of Economics:

I gather the wording on the original draft for the plaque commemorating this dedication read something like:

The John "P" Palmer

Memorial Urinal

(Because he is #1)

I think the more sedate version of the plaque in the photo is just fine, though.

Optimism, Joie de Vivre, and Enjoying People

I first met David Henderson in the fall of 1971. It was my first term of teaching at The University of Western Ontario, and he was here for that year taking courses that would qualify him as an undergraduate honours graduate (courses that, by the way, were the equivalent of Masters' level courses at most schools in the US).

I'm delighted that we have been able to stay in touch with each other off and on over the years, especially in the past few years via Facebook. I think one of the reasons is that David has a love of life, of learning, and of people. This outlook is captured beautifully in a post of his at EconLog a few days ago.

I had been wondering why I didn't connect at all with Bryan's March 9, 2012 post,"My Beautiful Bubble." Like him, I have very specific tastes and I judge everyone. So why do I love interacting with everyday people--at the supermarket, the drug store, heck, even the DMV? Well, my wife put her finger on it. When my friend Fred Jealous, as we were getting ready to patrol the streets of Seaside, along with some black ministers, the night of the Rodney King verdict, said, "David loves a challenge," my wife replied, "David loves people."

David not only loves to connect, he does connect daily. He takes people, all people, seriously; and he interacts as if he is on a constant mission. But he seems to love the entire process.

"Still Want to Raise Our Minimum Wage to $10?"

Scott Sumner at Money Illusion does some interesting comparisons of unemployment rates and the minimum wage for countries in Western Europe. Anyone want to collect the data to plot a scatter diagram? The section quoted below is all sort of an addendum to a different post, but is intriguing [ht Cafe Hayek]. I find it especially interesting that the Scandinavian countries have no minimum wage law. Here are his observations:

Regarding minimum wage,* here is some data for Western Europe:

There are nine countries with a minimum wage (Belgium, Netherlands, Britain, Ireland, France, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Luxembourg).  Their unemployment rates range from 5.9% in Luxembourg to 27.6% in Greece.  The median country is France with 11.1% unemployment.

There are nine countries with no minimum wage (Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Austria, Germany, Italy, Switzerland.)  Five of the nine have a lower unemployment rate than Luxembourg, the best of the other group.  The median country is Iceland, with a 5.5% unemployment rate. The biggest country in Europe is Germany.  No minimum wage and 5.2% unemployment.

Still want to raise our minimum wage to $10?  Germany used to have really high unemployment.  Then they did labor reforms to allow more low wage jobs, combined with subsidies for low wage workers.  Now they don’t have high unemployment.

Still want to raise our minimum wage to $10?

You can easily say, "Yeah, yeah, but there are other things going on that aren't taken into consideration with a simple two-variable comparison." Okay, but how do they affect unemployment? Or are those things AND a high minimum wage functions of something else?

Regina and Grey Cup

I leave London, Ontario, this morning for Regina. When I arrive this afternoon, I have some meetings at the university and then have been drafted to play in a cribbage tournament this evening with June, my hostess and friend from the pep band.

After that, my life belongs to the Saskatchewan Roughrider Pep Band, playing my green trumpet with them until Sunday evening. Our performance schedule is so full, I'm not sure whether we'll even have time to stop at the liquor store!

Here is the schedule of our expected gigs as of two weeks ago. More have already been added to the schedule, and I'm sure there will be many more added this week now that the Roughriders have won the Western Final and will be playing in the Grey Cup game on Sunday. By the time I return to London, my lips will be in shreds, I'm sure.

Wednesday, Nov. 20th – 11:30 am – 12:10 pm

Grey Cup Festival - Opening ceremonies

 

Thursday, Nov. 21^st  --  8:00 am (will be earlier) – 10:30 pm

CTV; Global; CKRM Morning shows – times to be confirmed

Harvard Property Mgmt (providing breakfast)

WS Hawrylak School

St. Peters School

Social Services (providing lunch)

Jean Vanier School

Atlantic Schooners – Guinness record attempt

Riderville

Telus Street Festival

Nissan Family Zone

CKRM – Sportscage

Supper – Chinese Food

Mosaic Underground Tent

Spirit of Edmonton

Atlantic Schooners

Riderville

CFL Pro Players

 

Friday, Nov. 22^nd  --  9:50 am (will be earlier) – 9:15 pm

Canada AM, CTV, Global, CKRM morning shows – times to be confirmed

Henry Braun School

Freightliner – decorating the float

RCMP Depot Division (including lunch)

Touchdown Manitoba

Royal Bank main branch

Mosaic Underground Tent

Nissan Family Zone

Telus Street Festival

Riderville

CKRM Sportscage

Eagles Club (including supper)

Spirit of Edmonton

Canadian Football Hall of Fame

Lions Den

Atlantic Schooner

 

Saturday, Nov. 23^rd  --  6:00 am – 9:30 pm

Grey Cup Marching Band

Spirit of Edmonton Breakfast

Grey Cup Parade

Riderville Luncheon

Lunch – Pizza from GCMB (may do subs as well)

U of R Alumni Grey Cup Party

Telus Street Festival

Mosaic Underground Tent

Double Blue Bash

Supper – Classic Buffet Company

Riderville

Spirit of Edmonton

Touchdown Manitoba

Lions Den

Atlantic Schooners

Mosaic Underground Tent

 

Sunday, Nov. 24^th 

 Riderville

 Fan Parade

5:00 pm   Grey Cup Game

Nine Resolutions against Israel "...when there is other really bad $hit in other countries"

From the Daily Mail and The Jerusalem Post [ht Jabber]:

A United Nations translator got egg on her face Thursday when a hot-mic caught her carping about a series of nine separate resolutions – 'It's a bit much, no?' she said – that sided with Palestinians in their conflict with Israel.

But by Sunday Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was offering her a job if she suddenly should need one.

The nameless and faceless woman abruptly stopped translating Spanish into English during an anti-Israel speech by Salvadoran diplomat Carlos Enrique García González, making what she thought were private comments to a colleague.

'I mean, I think when you have five statements – not five, like a total of ten resolutions on Israel and Palestine,' she's heard saying on a video feed, 'there's got to be something, c'est un peu trop, non? [It's a bit much, no?]'

'I mean, I know – there’s other really bad sh** happening' in other countries, she adds, 'but no one says anything about the other stuff.'

...

Netanyahu played the video clip during Sunday's weekly cabinet meeting, according to The Jerusalem Post.

'I hope nothing bad happens to the interpreter,' he said, 'but in order to remove all doubt I can say that a place of employment is assured her in Israel if things go in that direction.'

'Sometimes the veil of hypocrisy over the incessant attacks against us is ripped off, and this interpreter did that.' [emphasis added]

Risk Factors, Statins, and the "New" Risk Calculator

I had a blog post ready to go up on this topic. But it has changed now, in light of today's report in the NYTimes.

As regular readers of EclectEcon know, I am more than a little skeptical about (a) the relationship between cholesterol and heart health, (b) the effectiveness of statins in reducing heart disease as a primary treatment for those who have not had heart problems, and (c) the assessment of the side effects of statins. [For my earlier postings, see this and this.]

So when the major media were writing about a new report from the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiologists that included a risk calculator, I wasn't ready to accept their report holus bolus.

Sure as shootin', the risk calculator is flawed. I plugged in the optimal numbers for healthy people and found that according to that risk calculator any male over 65 has a sufficiently high risk of having a heart attack in the next ten years that he should be on statins. I thought to myself, "yeah, sure." That conclusion makes no sense in light of studies that using statins as a primary treatment reduces the risk of a heart attack by only about 1%. That's only one percent, not one percentage point.

And my suspicions have been confirmed. From today's NYTimes,

Last week, the nation’s leading heart organizations released a sweeping new set of guidelines for lowering cholesterol, along with an online calculator meant to help doctors assess risks and treatment options. But, in a major embarrassment to the health groups, the calculator appears to greatly overestimate risk, so much so that it could mistakenly suggest that millions more people are candidates for statin drugs.

Granted, that table does not include family history, weight, whether the person smokes or drinks or how much, etc., so as a risk calculator it is at best a rough and ready measure. But when it says that healthy males, 65 years old, have a 9 % risk of having a heart attack in the next ten years AND that anyone with a 7.5% risk or higher should be on statins, it is essentially saying every male over 65 should be on statins.

Frickn pill-pushers. I don't believe it. And I'm glad the NYTimes, in the linked lead article, has publicized the flaws.

This Sounds Like Fun but not so much fun that I'd give up tv sports...

A UK couple lures their children away from watching a lot of tv for a year. Instead they will, as a family, take on a bunch of challenges [ht MA].

A couple determined not to let their two daughters become couch potatoes set them 100 outdoor challenges to complete - in just one year. ...

 

So the parents from Arnold, Nottinghamshire, challenged their children and themselves to complete the gruelling activities in just 365 days. 

Walking on high ropes, foraging for food, snorkeling and cliff jumping were among some of the daring challenges which the family completed on Saturday after spending the night in a suspended tent tied between two trees.

 

 

The youngsters so enjoyed themselves they are now helping to draw up a fresh list of challenges for the next 12 months. Interestingly, they now only watch about three hours of television a week.

 

I have some questions and thoughts about the programme:

• • Yes! Doing those things as a family would be great! I have fond memories of doing things like this with my family as I was growing up and with our family as our children and grandchildren were growing up. If I had it to do again, I might try to do more.
    
  • Can I take my smartphone with me on the outings? I know I'm addicted to the internet. My grandchildren seem to be, too.
    
  • Getting rid of tvs and cable bills would just about pay for all those activities.
  • I would miss some tv -- mostly sports. I doubt if I could cut down to just three hours/week for a whole year, though I have been quite successful at not watching much, if any, tv when I've been in Molokai or in Regina.
    
  • Will the kids be social outcasts if they don't know what other kids are talking about? Does it matter?
    
  • How often do the kids watch tv somewhere else, for example at the home of a friend or neighbour? [cf a scene in Equus]
    
  • I love adventures. I love trying new things and going new places. This sounds like a great way to share that joy with children.
    
  • My parents sacrificed a great deal to take us on lots of "educational" trips. I'm grateful for what they did, but unfortunately I don't remember much of those trips --- maybe there was too much seeing, not enough doing.
  • At one point we had hopes of doing a family production of "Death of a Salesman". We're too scattered now; it won't work. But I have enjoyed doing different things with different children and grandchildren. Maybe a family reading of the play would work the next time we're together?
  • Maybe next summer some ambling/hiking.... on the Bruce Trail?

 

A Former Student (?) Urges His Ex-Wife to Take an Economics Course from Me

or so it would appear:

Details here [ht MA]. And for the background on the use of this gesture by my former students, see this.

Rye Bread?

I have been having some email discussions with various friends about the health benefits and harms of various foods. Because I am continuing to (try to) cut down on the carbs, I don't eat much bread at all. And because we have friends and relatives who are concerned about "wheat belly", we have been looking for something that, at the very least,  contains no wheat.

From Wikipaedia,

Rye bread contains a large amount of fiber and a small amount of fat. Rye bread has a low glycemic index, which means it does not cause a spike in blood sugar as white bread and other breads do.^[16] In addition, whole-grain rye flour has more soluble fiber than whole-grain wheat flour making whole-grain rye more effective for controlling the cholestrol level in the blood.

Related articles

Is rye bread really healthier than white?

Rye Bread

Is that bread REALLY gluten-free? Perhaps not!

Top Reasons to Drive a Manual Transmission? eehhhhh

I guess people with a macho-techno-masochistic-elitist bent might buy into this article. Not me. Even if the reasons have merit, they are not strong enough to make me have any doubts about the joys of driving a vehicle with automatic transmission.

You Can Maximize a Car’s Performance: Automatics may be the better choice for MPG these days, but what makes them fuel-efficient makes them boring. ...

It Makes You Pay Attention: Playing with your cell phone, reading from a tablet, eating a burrito– these are all things that people actually do behind the wheel when driving. ...

You Can Be More Effective in Braking/Turning: If you go to downshift in a manual, there is tendency to jerk forward as you lose momentum. ...

Your Friends Can’t Borrow Your Car: Have you ever had to loan [sic] your car to a friend? ...  If your car has a manual transmission, there is a good chance most of your friends will not be able to drive it. [EE: the proper verb is "lend"; the word "loan" is a noun.]

It Puts You In a Select Club: So many of your friends and family can’t drive stick. Like calligraphy or knowing French, it is a skill that sets you apart from the rest. ...

Build In Theft Prevention: Just like your group of friends, not everyone can drive stick. That includes criminals. ...

Fuel Economy: An 8-speed automatic gearbox has those extra gears so it can achieve better fuel economy, but the manual EPA ratings are an average as a result of standardized testing. If you know to shift early, you can actually get better than the advertised fuel economy. [EE: but of course this contradicts the first alleged benefit]

It Shows You Care: ... Any car is instantly more fun with a manual transmission, and the fact that you want more fun out of your car lets the rest of us know that you give a damn.

I learned to drive in a car with a manual transmission. And again I had a car with a manual transmission for three years when I was in grad school. I think they're a pain in the butt. And I am truly amazed that people would use the above items to tip the scales in favour of a manual.

That having been said, there are two points above that make some sense. If a car with a manual transmission is less likely to be borrowed and less likely to be stolen, that's probably a plus.

Humidifiers

We have long known that running forced-air furnaces in the winter lowers the humidity in the house. They promote health and they keep old furniture from cracking and falling apart.

In the past we have had pad/drum-type humidifiers attached to the furnace, and, quite frankly, they are a royal pain. The minerals in the water are deposited on the pad and the mechanism, requiring hours of cleaning now and then.

The last house we lived in we decided instead to use a cool-mist humidifier. We put it in the upstairs hallway, and the quiet noise (!) didn't bother us much. When we moved to our current home in a high-rise condo, we gave that humidifier away.

But now, two years later, we have realized the the air in our unit is pretty dry in the winter, and so, once again, we have been looking for a way to humidify the air.

We expected we would not want a warm mist humidifier because those humidifiers heat the water and leave deposits on the heating element. We've had them, and they work, but they don't seem very efficient.

So we were considering a cool mist humidifier and the newer, ultrasonic humidifiers.

The cool mist humidifiers have the drawback of being noisy, and the ultrasonic humidifiers apparently leave a fine dust all over the place. A difficult choice.

Our first attempt was a Honeywell cool-mist humidifier, advertised as being 30% quieter than othe cool-mist humidifiers. Ugh. We put it in the hallway, and it drove us crazy with the noise. One tankful of water, and it went back to the store.

Our second attempt was a Bionaire ultrasonic humidifier. We had anticipated the problem of its possibly leaving dust everywhere, so we filled it with filtered water (we have a Culligan filter on our kitchen tap, and it works very well). No problem with the dust, but the humidifier is too small to help much in our entire unit.

So I went to buy another one, but for some reason decided to buy a Honeywell instead. They have a larger-capacity ultrasonic humidifier, but it doesn't have a warning light to let you know when it is out of water, and we had already noticed that we liked that light on the Bionaire; it clearly isn't necessary, but it is handy.

Instead I bought a smaller Honeywell, with the red light that turns on when the unit is out of water. Unfortunately the window showing the water level is made of very dark plastic, so dark we could not see the water level!

So back it went to the store, and I just bought a second Bionaire. So far they seem to be working well, and it seems that our decision to use filtered water has licked the dust problem. Quite possibly using filtered water would also make the warm mist humidifiers more attractive as an option, too.

In the end, though, refilling these suckers once or twice a day, just to keep the humidity up between 35% and 40%, is probably going to become a royal pain. I expect that at some point we will have to look into seeing if we can get a small water line run to the furnace so we can install a drip-pad type humidifier.

                        ultrasonic humidifiers           

Requiem for a Restaurant

As many of our friends know, we used to go to Tru Restaurant & Lounge just up the street at least once a week. We raved about it to our friends and took guests there whenever possible.

It appears to be closing. The lights are rarely on, and a local auctioneer is advertising that the facilities are on the auction block.

I just walked up there and asked someone who was cleaning up the kitchen. Indeed, Tru is closed and going out of business.

We don't know what happened at Tru, but the more recent reviews at TripAdvisor, Restaurantica, and Google speak volumes. We had hoped things would turn around, but we were beginning to have similar experiences ourselves and had stopped going there. Nevertheless, we had such good memories of Tru and held out hope. I couldn't bring myself to post bad reviews (or to correct/update) my extremely positive reviews from the past.

We feel sad about the closing; we feel a sense of loss. It was once a wonderful institution. But we also feel a sense of relief; it couldn't possibly survive the way things were going.

Electricity Company Tries to Impose a Jobs Policy on a Major Customer

This is from a month ago, but I held onto it because it just flabbergasts me. It shouldn't, I know, but the hubris of interventionists seems to know no bounds.

Ormet Corp will immediately close its 270,000-tonne-per-year aluminum smelter in Hannibal, Ohio, a casualty of historically low metal prices and "uncontrollable" power costs, the company said on Friday.

The move follows a ruling on Wednesday by the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO), which approved some major changes to Ormet's power contract with energy supplier American Electric Power Co Inc.

The state power regulator listed a number of conditions, including requiring the company, which filed for bankruptcy protection in February, to employ at least 650 full-time workers through 2018. [emphasis added]

Under those terms, costs would have increased by some $108 million next year, rather than falling by $54 million as outlined in Ormet's plan.

Due to the decision, Ormet cannot emerge from bankruptcy and must immediately shut down operations," Ormet said in a statement.

It isn't really clear, but as I read this news item from early October, it looks as if the Ohio Public Utilities Commission is telling the firm, "We will give you a low price for electricity, but only if you guarantee that you will hire more people than you otherwise would hire.

I find this approach disturbing on two counts:

1. Offering electricity at a low cost to preserve jobs is inefficient. All consumers should be charged at least the marginal costs of providing the electricity. There is no good reason to ask other consumers (or the taxpayers in general) to subsidize the stockholders and (in this case) the bondholders of a firm to preserve jobs that shouldn't exist. At the same time, if the low price for electricity more-than-covers the marginal costs of providing the additional electricity, then the Ohio PUC should have offered the price without the jobs stipulation, for now they will lose some contribution to their overhead costs when Ormet shuts down.
2. But even if you disagree with my first point, using the electricity provider to implement a jobs policy is inefficient. If the gubmnt wants to subsidize a firm's stockholders and bondholders in an attempt to maintain employment in an otherwise failing firm [which seems blatantly foolish to me], they should do it with direct subsidies rather than go through some convoluted pricing scheme that is far less obvious to consumers and taxpayers.

Men Posing as Motorcycle Models

This is priceless. Click on the link to see all the photos.

Ducati dealer MotoCorsa recreated a typical “girl on bike” photo shoot with some of the guys from the shop doing the same poses. While promoting the Ducati 1199 Panigale bike, they decided to have a hilarious ad campaign run alongside their regular one. The second campaign features men trying their best to imitate female models by striking some alluring poses and strutting their stuff in front of the candy-red motorcycle.

Here are just two examples:

Related articles

Men Replace Woman In Sizzling Ducati Motorcycle Posters

If Men Posed as Motorcycle Babes

Motorcycle Dealer Puts Men in Sexy Poses to Sell Bikes

Role reversal: Dudes replace sexy pinup girl on motorcycle

Penis-Shaped Church?

Jack sent me this article from Weird News (in Huffington Press). I know I'm being juvenile but I loved the writing and the comments.

Here is the church:

And some excerpts from the article:

This erection has church officials hot and bothered.

"We didn’t design it to be seen from above," Scott Shepherd told SaukValley.com last week. Local architect John McLane, who did not design the church, told the site he believes it's "a little bit of a stretch" to claim that the aerial view of the structure looks like a penis.  ...

The church, which is located in the town of Dixon (indeed), was designed by an architect who McLane guesses "probably" designed it that way by accident, according to SaukValley.com. ...

In any case, the church has maintained a great sense of humor about the whole thing, posting a Facebook message late last month stating, "Fig leaf coming soon."

The church's slogan is "Rising up."

Some of the comments are pretty funny.

Armistice Day Recognition at Lloyd's of London

Apparently it is still called "Armistice Day" in England (at least the linked source of these photos does; but see this). These photos appeared near the bottom of this article [ht MA]:

 

Related articles

Armistice Day: London prepares for two-minute silence to remember the fallen

Armistice Day remembered in Edinburgh

Armistice Day silence to take place

Scotland holds Armistice Day silence

We Broken Men of War

My friend and fellow actor, John, is a very talented man. He wrote the music for and performs the song "We Broken Men of War" in this YouTube piece:

At the YouTube site, John writes:

The lyrics for this song, were written by Tom, a dear friend of mine, who experienced the horrors of war and the life one leads when coming home, and speaks from his heart. I simply added some music to his words.

The full lyrics to the song are available at the site as well. John played this piece for us Saturday night, after one of our recent performances. We urged him to submit it to a local radio station before today.

There are many more of John's performances on YouTube listed under "MonkeylessJohn"

David Suzuki Fears for Canada's West Coast (but hasn't sold his property there yet)

Jack sent me the following from Huffington:

"Fukushima is the most terrifying situation I can imagine," he [David Suzuki] said.

"Three out of the four plants were destroyed in the earthquake and in the tsunami. The fourth one has been so badly damaged that the fear is, if there's another earthquake of a seven or above that, that building will go and then all hell breaks loose.

"And the probability of a seven or above earthquake in the next three years is over 95 per cent."

Suzuki said that an international team of experts needs to go into the Fukushima plant and help fix the problem, but said the Japanese government has "too much pride to admit that."

"I have seen a paper which says that if in fact the fourth plant goes under in an earthquake and those rods are exposed, it's bye bye Japan and everybody on the west coast of North America should evacuate," he said.

"If that isn't terrifying, I don't know what is."

A 95% chance "all hell breaks loose" on Canada's west coast in the next three years. And he hasn't moved? Why not?

• Possibly he has confidence that, with his urging, teams of international engineers will fix the problem.
• Possibly he doesn't really believe it and he is just fear-mongering.
• Possibly he likes to live there and is willing to take his chances.