"We saw a lot of road kill and thought of you." —my sister
For more information on oil prices, click here. Podcasts of My Intro Economics lectures (in .wma format) For my 2005 Radio Economics MP3 podcasts, go to the bottom of the page that lists the lecture podcasts.
Canada
United States
Israel
My email address: [email protected] My 2005 post about the housing crisis, before it happened, is here.
As most people know by now, Donald Sterling [owner of the Los Angeles Clippers of the National Basketball Association] has been banned for life by the NBA because of some remarkably racist statements he made to an ex-mistress. The other 29 owners of teams are also expecting to find a way to "induce" him to sell the Clippers.
Yesterday a friend wrote to me, wondering how libertarians would react to the NBA's decisions. Much of my reaction is probable and surmise.
On the one hand, if someone is selling a product or service I want, I am not always aware of or even interested in their religious or political beliefs.... a sort of live-and-let-live attitude.
At the same time, if I know they hold views I find abhorrent, I will assiduously try to avoid patronizing them.
Knowing that if the NBA did nothing in response to Sterling's remarks, there would be bad publicity for the Clippers in particular and the NBA in general, the NBA quickly realized that attendance would drop, sales of merchandise would drop, and the overall profits of all the teams in the league would decline if they did nothing.
And that is why they presumably have by-laws, regulations, rules, whatever, by which every member must abide if they wish to remain members of the league in any capacity.
I'm guessing the league has used these by-laws about behaviour detrimental to the league, or blatantly discriminatory, or some such to justify legally the sanctions imposed on Sterling.
If so, those sanctions are covered by freely entered contracts, which most libertarians (or quasi-libertarians like me) support.
In other words, the banning of Donald Sterling by the NBA is fully consistent with the views held by most libertarians. He joined an organization and did something likely contrary to the by-laws of the organization, so they expelled him. So long as their own by-laws are legally acceptable, no problem.
I loved the movie, "A Beautiful Mind," starring Russell Crowe. However, I did not much care for its treatment of game theory or economics.
The movie showed Nash arguing that if everyone else hits on the blonde, he should hit on the brunette and he'd be more likely to get lucky. That is pretty simplistic; if everyone thinks the way he does, then everyone will hit on the brunette, and he will be more likely to get lucky with the blonde. Most likely a mixed strategy is called for in situations like this. Or better yet, wait to see what the others do.
And Peter Foster [via Jack] rightly attacks the movie's criticism of Adam Smith and "the invisible hand":
The violence done to Smith in A Beautiful Mind was just one in a long series of misinterpretations and attacks, which at least confirmed Smith’s continued iconic status. To rationalist intellectuals, Smith’s “natural order” has always seemed not merely implausible but downright objectionable, not to mention leaving them little room in which to exercise their own large brains and acute moral sentiments. ...
What sort of guidance does the hand provide? Friedrich Hayek gave perhaps the clearest explanation of its ministrations in his seminal article “The Use of Knowledge in Society.” Hayek pointed out that the issue in commerce wasn’t one of planning versus non-planning, but of who should do the planning, and at what level. He noted that everybody plans according to their own perspectives and desires. The sort of knowledge people use in such planning is not analogous to scientific knowledge. It is “knowledge of the particular circumstances of time and place.” It cannot be known by others, much less in toto by any individual or group. It cannot be captured by statistics or fed into government economic plans.
The key question is how to utilize all this dispersed knowledge. That is what the market does, by providing a vast arena for promoting, judging and rewarding efficiency and innovation. This fact, wrote Hayek, is a “marvel” but an unacknowledged and underappreciated one. Not only is the market not “designed,” but those who participate in it “usually do not know why they are made to do what they do.” This, suggested Hayek, is a good thing. He quoted the Cambridge philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, who had pointed out that “civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.”
However, there is a downside to this unconscious aspect of the natural order. If you don’t have to think about it, you don’t have to understand or appreciate it, and you become more vulnerable to taking “thoughtful” actions — or pursuing policies — that might damage or destroy it.
Last week, Jack sent me this link about the preventive health and aspirin [it is called ASA in Canada unless it is produced by Bayer]. This article seems to be a thorough summary of the literature.
I have been taking low-dose aspirin daily for about a decade because both my parents died of heart disease, but I had no idea that low-dose aspirin might also play a role in reducing the risk of some cancers.
From the conclusion,
The benefits of aspirin in secondary prevention of cardiovascular events are well established, with significant reductions reported in the risk of MI, stroke, and other serious vascular events in men and women.... Aspirin has been shown to reduce the overall risk for total cardiovascular events and nonfatal MI, but the evidence is not consistent regarding the risk for CHD, stroke, cardiovascular mortality, and all-cause mortality. There appear to be differences in the benefits for men and women; in men, it is associated with a reduction in MI and cardiovascular events, but not stroke and cardiovascular mortality. In women, aspirin treatment is associated with a reduction in the risk of ischemic stroke but not MI or cardiovascular mortality. Although the use of prophylactic low-dose aspirin for primary prevention of CVD is recommended in several clinical guidelines, there remains intense debate among experts about its value in low-risk populations due to the increased risk of GI and intracranial bleeding. Guidelines stress the importance of assessing the risks and benefits on an individual patient basis, and some experts argue that general guidelines are not justified.[10] ...
There is a growing body of evidence for the benefits of aspirin in reducing the risk of cancer, most notably colorectal cancer, with the effect becoming clinically apparent after approximately 5 years. Several potentially relevant clinical trials are due to be completed between now and 2019, and these may clarify the extent of the benefits of aspirin in reducing the risk of cancer incidence and mortality.[4] The chemopreventive benefits of aspirin appear to be long-term and the bleeding risk from aspirin use is short-term and appears to diminish over time. For most individuals the risk-benefit assessment appears to be weighted in favor of the anticancer benefits from aspirin. Although current data do not allow a definitive conclusion to be made about routine use of aspirin for cancer prevention, ongoing study findings make it more likely that recommendations for aspirin use in primary prevention will be broadened in the future so that the benefits of aspirin use are not restricted to CVD alone.[8]
I.e., if you haven't had a heart attack, low-dose aspirin might help reduce the odds of having one, but the evidence is not overwhelming. Also it might help reduce the risk of developing colorectal cancer.
JR sent this link, which seems slightly more skeptical:
Aspirin works to reduce events among patients who have a higher likelihood of having an event, and there remains an argument for aspirin in patients who are at exceptionally high risk but who have not yet had a heart attack or a stroke. This has led to some controversy in this issue, and varying interpretations. However the potential for aspirin to be beneficial in this group remains largely speculative, and the source article cited above examined even the highest risk patients who had not had a heart attack or stroke in trials, and there was no demonstrable benefit to aspirin even for these patients (though this subgroup was small in these trials).
And he also sent this link, which seems quite skeptical concerning the use of low-dose aspirin for primary care (i.e. as a preventive treatment for people who have not had previous incidents).
I carry uncoated aspirin with me all the time. One of the best things to do if you feel you might be having a heart attack is to take a couple of uncoated aspirins right away.
In case you missed it elsewhere, here is the link to the collection that is being put together. The early Newsweek editorials, Capitalism and Freedom, and Free to Choose all played a role in my growth as an economist. A partial list of the collection, with links:
It’s a testament to Milton Friedman’s influence and legacy that many contemporary politicians, economists, and academicians still ask, “What would Milton say?” Rather than attempting to put words into Milton’s mouth, why not let Milton answer that question himself? Click on a topic to see Milton’s thoughts on issues ranging from bureaucracy to taxes.
If you like to unwind with a glass of wine, then this might be the news you’ve been waiting for. Because according to a leading scientist, drinking just over a bottle a day won’t harm your health.
Colour me skeptical. But I'm willing to consider trying! Unfortunately, there are two problems with the advice, at least for me:
Wine has carbs; scotch doesn't. So for my low-carb diet, I probably need to drink more scotch, though probably not a bottle a day.
For me to drink even a bottle of wine/day, I'd need to start early in the morning because alcohol affects me quickly and effectively (i.e., I'm a cheap drunk).
I think I understand and follow the argument here. At the same time it repulses me. The essence of the argument is, "It's okay to lie about global warming so we jolt people into taking action."
According to a pair of economists who have recently published a peer-reviewed paper in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, lying about climate change in order to advance an extremist environmental agenda is a great idea.
The abstract of their paper notes:
It appears that news media and some pro-environmental organizations have the tendency to accentuate or even exaggerate the damage caused by climate change. This article provides a rationale for this tendency by using a modified International Environmental Agreement (IEA) model with asymmetric information. We find that the information manipulation has an instrumental value, as it ex post induces more countries to participate in an IEA, which will eventually enhance global welfare. From the ex ante perspective, however, the impact that manipulating information has on the level of participation in an IEA and on welfare is ambiguous.
In other words, "Trust us. We know what's best for you."
Many of you may remember a sacharin-sweet book by Shel Silverstein, called "The Giving Tree". A few days ago, my older son (David Ricardo Palmer) posted this amusing variant of that book's cover on Facebook:
Seems a little less touching than The Giving Tree, but also a bit more realistic. Reminds me a bit of Pierre Trudeau's response to some protestors back in the 70s.
Despite what you might hear from some members of the interventionist left, the middle class is doing pretty well in Canada. In the piece at that link, Andrew Coyne summarizes the research. An excerpt:
Not only are Canadian middle class incomes among the highest in the world, but so is their rate of growth: up 20%, after inflation, in the decade after 2000, allowing us to catch and pass first Germany and now the United States. This isn’t just a story of American decline, in other words. It is a story of Canadian success.
The study confirms previous data showing the middle class in this country has never been as well off in our history: Whether you look at median incomes, real wages or household net worth, the story is the same. (Again, for those in any doubt, these are all in constant, inflation-adjusted dollars.) The more the evidence piles up, the more it discredits the thesis, popular in certain quarters, of a “struggling middle class.”
With fossil fuel prices continuing to rise and be uncertain, heavy users of fossil fuels have a strong incentive to look for alternatives or to look for energy-efficient ways to reduce their uses of fossil fuels. Here is one interesting example [via JR]:
Container Ships to Use Kites to Save Fuel
Minnesota based Cargill has just signed an agreement with Skysails that aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the shipping business by using a giant kite. That’s right…a kite. Skysails, based in Hamburg, has developed a patented system which uses a kite to propel large shipping vessels across the sea. The wind-harnessing propulsion system, In theory, could end up reducing fuel consumption by an impressive 35%.
Here’s how it works: A monstrous 3,444 square foot kite is attached, via rope, to a control pod that electronically manipulates the kite to maximize potential wind benefits. The kite itself flies anywhere from 300 to 1300 feet in the air, whipping around in a figure 8 formation. Since the system is controlled electronically, it requires little attention from the crew. The computer system makes all the necessary adjustments to maximize available wind and relates telemetry back to a monitor located on the ship’s bridge.
What intrigues me about this example is that these container ships will not be using solar panels or windmillls to generate electricity. They are using the wind power directly. Furthermore, they will be instituting the plan in response to market forces, not gubmnt subsidies.
I thought I really, REALLY knew cars from the 1950s, but I scored only 85% on this quiz [via Jack]. Maybe my long-term memory is going, too?
More seriously, I wonder if I've posted a link to this quiz before (see below). Oh well, it's a fun quiz and worth seeing again...
Yup I posted it over a year ago. And you know what? I got 100% then. That'll teach me to (1) to get older and (2) to take such quizzes after enjoying too much Islay scotch.
You know those height charts that parents and grandparents keep of their children and grandchildren? Every time we visited my grandmother, we had to stand against a door frame and have our heights marked (and dated). The house is gone and to the best of my knowledge, there are no photographs of the height charts of me and my sister.
We did the same thing with our granddaughters but at least had the good sense to take photos of them before we moved.
Ms. Eclectic and I are going to start a new version of height charts. We are aging, and as we age, we are losing height [digression: which means, of course, that our BMIs are going up despite weight loss, dammit.]. I've had some compression fractures in my vertebrae. And one of our granddaughters says she is now taller than Ms. Eclectic despite not having grown any more herself. Along this same line, I can recall being surprised by how short my mother seemed in her later years, and it wasn't just because I had grown.
So here is our suggestion. When people reach the age of about 45 or 50, they should put up height charts designed for children. Then as they [we] shrink, we can keep track of the shrinkage on the height chart.
Addendum: We actually started something like this the other day. We marked our respective heights on a door jamb. And then we measured the heights of the marks. Indeed, we have both lost some height from our peak heights.
It doesn't take long on Facebook to discover examples of most of these logical fallacies. You'll have to click on the link to see it, but the map and the links are thorough.
The conclusions deal a blow to what are known as cellulosic biofuels, which have received more than a billion dollars in federal support but have struggled to meet volume targets mandated by law.
They actually increase CO2 emissions:
A $500,000 study paid for by the federal government and released Sunday in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Climate Change concludes that biofuels made with corn residue release 7 percent more greenhouse gases in the early years compared with conventional gasoline.
It looks more like cronyism than environmentalism to me.
I find that when I'm on a plane or train, my noice-cancelling headphones are a wonder. Even if I don't listen to any music or podcasts, the noise canceling dramatically reduces my discomfort and maybe even reduces stress levels.
Here is another reason to wear them [via MA]. They will likely make the food taste better.
[S]eparate research revealed the sort of noise we are subjected to inside aircraft cabin affects taste buds, reducing our sense of saltiness and sweetness - and increasing crunchiness. To test the theory, 48 diners were blindfolded and fed sweet foods such as biscuits or salty ones such as crisps, while listening to silence or noise through headphones at Unilever's laboratories and the University of Manchester. Each volunteer rated the foods for flavour and said how much they liked them. Background noise led to the foods being rated less salty or sweet. They were also perceived as more crunchy.
I'm not at all sure I believe this. And I'll grant that carrying over-the-ear noise-cancelling headphones is just another thing to worry about on an airplane. But often the bother is worth the effort.
I don't understand the chemistry, but there is apparently a product available and that has just been approved in the US called "powdered alcohol", also known as "palcohol". I couldn't imagine that adding water to something would yield a product with alcohol, but apparently what happens is the water releases the alcohol that is captured in the chemical compound.
According to food chemist Udo Pollmer of the European Institute of Food and Nutrition Sciences in Munich, alcohol can be absorbed in cyclodextrines, a sugar derivate. In this way, encapsuled in small capsules, the fluid can be handled as a powder. The cyclodextrines can absorb an estimated 60 percent of their own weight in alcohol.[1] A US patent has been registered for the process as early as 1974.[2]
Chemical structure of the three main types of cyclodextrins.
However, 2M2B is one of few alcohols potent enough for practical use. The potency allows a dosage to be delivered in a small number of capsules, which effectively eliminates the burning taste. ...
In spring of 2014 a company called palcahol announced it will be marketing powered alcohol in the fall.
Imagine the headaches palcohol can cause for many, many events.
Ballparks selling 3% beer will find people can get drunk by adding some capsules to the beer.
Tailgating need not end in the parking lot
Unscrupulous folks could drop a capsule in the drink of a date, friend, partner, enemy, etc.
In suppository form, it gives a whole new meaning to "butt-chugging".
No more corkage fees in restaurants: "No thanks. I'll just have water. Okay if I use it to 'take some medication'?"
More drunks on airplanes? help us, please!
More schoolyard drunks? "Psst. Hey, kid, try this..."
Increased instances of alcohol poisoning, especially among teens?
Some preachers will be confident that Jesus knew how to do this long ago.
My own belief is that the BDS people and their fellow travellers, whatever their background, are anti-Semites. They do all they can to stigmatize the Jewish state and reduce its ability to defend itself. They know that Israel is surrounded by neighbours who will never recognize its existence, much less sign a treaty developed in a “peace process” quarterbacked by Washington. The Palestinians and the Arab states who claim to support them are not hoping for a more generous Israel or a BDS-approved Israel or an Israel willing to hand over the West Bank. They are working for a day when Israel will be gone forever.
In order to satisfy this generation’s anti-Semites, Israel must meet standards that no other country in the world has ever met or ever will. At the United Nations Israel is condemned more often than all other countries combined.
It is, of course, an imperfect democracy, like Canada and all other free countries, and its human rights record could certainly be improved. But its treatment of Palestinians has never been even remotely comparable to China’s oppression of Tibetans or Saudi Arabia’s treatment of women, two among many outrageous practices that apparently never trouble the students who direct their anger at Israel.
In devising their purposes the BDS campaigners have never shown even the beginning of a sense of proportion. It’s remarkable that the world needs a 29-year-old movie star to point this out.
Every once in awhile someone asks me why I am such a strong Israelphile and why I frequently raise the issue of anti-Semitism here on the blog. Things like this are one reason. From the article quoted there,
In another stage of the Passover celebrations, [the Jews] combined the preparation of matzas and the offering up of sacrifices with their enmity towards non-Jews, especially Christians, and mixed the blood of one of their victims into the matza [dough. This was done] especially on Passover, Purim and circumcision rituals. They also used blood in acts of sorcery and witchcraft...
...The draining of the victims' blood is done in [several ways. One method is] by means of a barrel lined with needles. This is a barrel the size of the victim's body, with sharp needles that stick into all his limbs when he is placed in it, so that his blood slowly trickles down from every part of his body. This entails excruciating torment, which gives pleasure to the Jews who become drunk with joy at the sight of the blood dripping from the victim's [body] to the bottom of the barrel and into a container placed there to collect it. [Another method] is to slaughter the victim like a sheep and collecting his blood in a vessel, or else slashing the victim's veins in numerous places so that the blood flows from the wounds into the vessels. Then the blood is handed to a rabbi who prepares a matza laced with human blood in order to please the Jewish god, Jehovah, who thirsts for blood. The Jews can rejoice in their holidays only if they eat matza laced with the blood of non-Jews. [emphasis added]
I once had a friend tell me all about the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as if that fabrication was factual. So I did some internet searches, discovered it was a fraud, printed off the results, and took them to him. His wife looked at him critically then as if to say, "See, I told you so."
As I have moved from being middle aged into the "under 90" category, my sense of peace, tranquility, gratitude, and happiness have all increased tremendously. At the same time, I have recently become grumpier. This study suggests I am not alone [via MA]. Here is what happens.
Physical ailments take a toll. They seem to occur more often, take longer to heal (assuming they ever do), and take longer to adjust to. For example, just in my own case see this and this.
Also, we rarely sleep as well as we did when we were 20 --- except during plays and concerts :-( And we cannot gorge ourselves or party as if we were 20 either.
We do get confused more easily and more often. And it is not just a deterioration of short-term memory. Ms Eclectic suggests it is also because we have too much going on in our lives, despite being mostly retired. We also agree that the ability to multi-task seems to deteriorate when we reach the "under 90" category.
But it is not just personal. Good friends are more likely to have died or become seriously ill among us under-90s. Good friends are more likely to have had debilitating injuries. Partners, spouses, and friends are more likely to need help in one form or another. And even if these things don't happen to them this year, we worry about our partners, spouses, and friends. It is difficult just to keep breezing along happily when these things happen.
And you know how all those old people [us "under-90s"] seem to walk funny? We do it for one or more of these three reasons:
Our bodies simply don't work as well as they used to. We can't move as fast and aren't as lithe as younger people.
We are in pain. I guess it's something "under 90s" learn to live with.
We are extremely worried about tripping, falling, etc. and injuring ourselves. We tend to have bones that are weaker.
Had anyone told me this even ten years ago, I'd have understood.... intellectually. But being here, experiencing it, makes it real.
Despite all this, and lest anyone be concerned, I'm still more grateful and happier than I ever imagined possible. Ain't life grand!
We divide the drinking in our house. Ms. Eclectic drinks pairs red wine with anything, I drink pair white wine with anything. I like smokey, peaty scotch, she likes non-smokey single malts.
Soon, though, we'll have to see which, if any, of these low-price wines are available at the LCBO [via MA, who understands my tastes pretty well]. Not many, I expect, partly because this is a UK article, partly because.... LCBO.
Update: MA writes:
Something must have gone wrong. This is the linkI meant to send.
Quite frankly I am more likely to enjoy something from the first link along with the cash left over from not having purchased something on the second list.
Apple seems to be betting that the nominal price elasticity of demand for the iPhone6 will be even less than it was for the initial offerings of the iPhone 5C and 5S. Or so it seems. There are rumours the price will be $100 higher for the new version of the iPhone when it becomes available in the fall. From Slate:
Jefferies analyst Peter Misek says, “Our checks indicate Apple has started negotiating with carriers on a $100 iPhone 6 price increase. ....
There are two ways to look at this if you’re Apple.
On the one hand, an internal presentation from Apple last year showed that people around the world want cheaper phones with bigger screens. This suggests it needs to cut the price and bump screen size.
However, Apple believes it’s not really susceptible to the pricing pressure of Android phone-makers. The iPad, for example, was originally going to sell for $400, but Apple figured people would pay $100 more, and it was right.
If, in fact, market conditions have changed such that customers who want a new iPhone really want one (even more than customers really wanted the earlier versions), then it will be a profitable move for Apple charge more for their new iPhones.
Econo-geek speak: If they are right, the intersection of the MR and MC curves will occur at a lower q/t, but their revenues will rise and their total costs might even decline. The implication is that Apple is guessing that if they price the iPhone6 the same way they priced the 5s, they would be in or mighty close to the inelastic portion of the demand curve [granting truckloads of assumptions].
Apparently house prices in London, UK, are rising quite dramatically. See this and this.
At the same time, though, house prices in the north of England are not rising and have still not risen back to where they were in 2007. See the contrast between London vs the north in this graphic from The Economist:
As I wrote to a friend about this,
My prediction: look for some head offices and other shops to relocate to the north and out of London. Also look for more telecommuting from the north [our friend who lived on the Wirral did a lot of telecommuting, even back then]. And look for more mid-level and upper-level managers to resist relocations to London unless they are offered enormous relocation packages, which will then spur managers to look for the above solutions.
The Elder of Ziyon makes some telling points about the recent attack on people (not all Jews, it turned out) at Jewish centres in Overland, Kansas.
In general, the US is a great place for Jews to live. Jews have little to fear in most of their communities. It is not at all like many places in Europe or in the Arab world.
But antisemitism exists, both from the right and the left, and it regularly manifests itself with extreme violence.
Yet when was the last time antisemitism merited a front page story in a major newspaper or magazine?
Time Magazine in 2010 had a cover story on Islamophobia. As I noted then, the number of antisemitic incidents in the US in 2010 dwarfed the number of anti-Muslim incidents.
Unless I am mistaken, there has not been a single Muslim fatality due to an anti-Muslim hate crime in the US since 9/11. (One Sikh was killed in an anti-Muslim attack and two other Sikhs were killed since 9/11 under unclear circumstances, plus a horrific murder of six Sikhs who were killed by a white supremacist.) .)
There is real hate out there in the US, and real people willing to kill people in service of that hate. And the objects of that deadly hate are not Muslims.
Outside of occasional stories like these, you wouldn't know that.
The Canadian federal gubmnt has consistently underestimated how much it will have to pay out to retirees in the future, and it has consistently overestimated how much income investments will generate. The result is that it has severely underestimated how much the pension liabilities will add the federal budget deficit in the future.
An economically meaningful fair-value estimate of the unfunded liability of federal government employees’ pension plans puts it at $272 billion – some $120 billion higher than reported. The same approach to determining the annual cost of benefits accruing in these plans shows it to be between 45 and 60 percent of pensionable pay – more than twice as high as reported, and a far higher rate of tax-deferred wealth accumulation than is available to other Canadians. The federal government should incorporate these numbers in the official measures of its net debt and annual budget balance. This would be a key first step toward reforms that would alleviate a burden that few taxpayers know they bear, and that would protect taxpayers from risks few know they run.
Please note that this study refers only to the federal pension liabilities. I expect many municipal and provincial pension liabilities are in even worse shape. As a result, the net drain to future taxpayers will be even higher when these net liabilities are added to burden.
With the news that Russian military spending is greater than US military spending, is another arms race in the offing?
If so, it's a good example of a negative sum game. Both sides feel as if they'll be bigger losers if they don't play than if they play. The only solution is defeat [Reagan vs Gorbachev?], capitulation [Obama vs Putin?] or shaky co-operation.
At one point, the UWO economics department was one of thirty economics departments claiming to be in the top 20 of all economics departments in the world. We were damned good. And by some metrics, we were in the top ten. David Laidler and Michael Parkin were two important reasons we were there, but so many of us had great publication and citation records then.
Look at the talent we attracted and turned out. And not just Steve and Tiff, but many others. And look at the influence the department had. The department went downhill from there for quite some time, but seems to be roughly among the top 50 now.
Addendum: let me just add that David, Michael and a few others could have built their careers at Never-Heard-Of U. UWO was lucky to have them.
I may have to take a nap on April 14th. Here's hoping for nice warm weather that night.
For the Western Hemisphere, the eclipse will "officially" begin on April 15 at 12:53 a.m. EDT (0435 GMT), when the moon begins to enter Earth's outer, or penumbral shadow. But even in clear weather, skywatchers will not notice any changes in the moon's appearance until about 50 minutes later, when a slight "smudge" or shading starts becoming evident on the left portion of the moon’s disk. ...
The first definitive change in the moon's appearance will come on its upper left edge. At 1:58 a.m. EDT (0558 GMT), the partial phase of the eclipse will begin as the Earth’s dark shadow, called the umbra, starts to slowly creep over the face of the full moon.
At 3:06 a.m. EDT, the eclipse will reach totality, but sunlight bent by our atmosphere around the curvature of the Earth should produce a coppery glow on the moon. At this time, the moon, if viewed with binoculars or asmall telescope, will present the illusion of seemingly glowing from within by its own light.
At 3:46 a.m. EDT, the sun, Earth and moon will be almost exactly in line and the light of the moon will appear at its dimmest. "Totality" ends at 4:24 a.m. EDT, and the moon will completely emerge from the umbra at 5:33 a.m. About 20 minutes later, the last vestige of the fainter penumbral shadow will disappear from the moon’s upper right edge, and the body will return to its normal brilliance.
Addendum: Unfortunately, it turns out we likely will not be able to see the eclipse here --- a forecast of clouds and possibly 5cm of snow overnight.
The 2014 London Fringe Festival will be held June 4 - 13 during which Out Of Sight Productions is presenting a one-hour play, "Academia Nuts" by Paul Kinsella.
The play is a romantic comedy about a theology professor (me) who is on sabbatical leave. An attractive female Romanian graduate student (Tiffany Blom) wanders into his office looking for help with conversational English. Much hilarity, confusion, tenderness, frivolity, joyful awakening, and compassion ensue. For more about the play and about Out of Sight Productions, see this.
Production Details:
Academia Nuts, at The Spriet Theatre (second floor of the Covent Garden Market, London, Ontario), Identified as Venue #1 for the Fringe Festival:
Wednesday, June 4, 5:30pm
Friday, June 6, 5pm
Saturday, June 7, 2:30pm
Monday, June 9, 8pm
Wednesday, June 11, 8:15pm
Friday, June 13, 5pm
Because "Academia Nuts" is part of the Fringe Festival, it is likely you will need to purchase a button as well as a ticket to see the play, but there are typically quantity discounts for packets of tickets, so it might be fun to see 5 or 10 of the shows during the festival. Last year the buttons were $5, and the tickets were something like $10, but I have no idea what the pricing will be like this year.
If Brandeis University doesn't want Ayaan Hirsi Ali for their commencement speaker, and apparently doesn't want me (at least I haven't received a call or email from them yet), perhaps they should invite this man [ht MA].
[Alain] Finkielkraut, 64, the son of a Polish Jew who survived Auschwitz, is retiring as a professor of philosophy and the history of ideas at the world-famous Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, a post he held since 1989. ...
Finkielkraut’s proud Jewish origins, his pro-Israel opinions and open Zionism, his critiques of Islamism and massive immigration to Europe, and of racism, have been for a long time controversial in the country, but much more since he published in late 2013 L’identité malheureuse (“The Unhappy Identity”), a book on the crisis of French (and European) identity.”...
He has been accused of Islamophobia (and of being an”agent of Sharon” after he defended during second intifada the right of Israel to exist and to defend itself – he participated to demonstrations for IDF soldier Gilad Schalit, then a captive in the Gaza Strip).
"I really enjoy your site, and I'm planning to assign your blog to my students. I love to find "real world" examples to supplement the text, and your blog is terrific for that. Thanks for writing it!" -- J.A.B.
