"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.
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My email address: [email protected] My 2005 post about the housing crisis, before it happened, is here.
The Fraser Institute has just released its ranking of Ontario's secondary schools. It is a convenient and easily searched ranking. Click here.
As has long been the case, London's Central Secondary is near the top (ranked second of 676 high schools). Interestingly, the new catholic school on the north end of town is ranked reasonably highly for being a new school.
Also, I see that what many parents believed to be the case still holds in Clinton: St. Anne's significantly outranks Central Huron high school, which is roughly on a par with the Goderich secondary school.
I was interviewed last month about the Nobel Prize in Economics, as well as about general conditions in Israel. Not surprisingly, I opined that Richard Posner and Deirdre McCloskey should both win Nobel Prizes in economics at some point. Sooner would be better.
The photo was taken at The University of Regina. Note that I am wearing the "official" economics department necktie.
I cannot imagine that having a light rail transit system run from downtown London to Masonville through UWO would pass any reasonable cost-benefit assessment. And yet it looks as if the plan has a good chance of happening.
Tell you what: I'll get on board the proposal if they run the rail line up The Parkway.
The Parkway is a residential area of snooty trouble-makers right near the university. I had some serious run-ins with these clowns nearly 25 years ago and would be happy to see them all worked up. See this. In addition, at some point in the past two decades, the residents of The Parkway have managed to block off a trail along the Thames River, an amazingly social-welfare-reducing move on their part.
In econ-speak, I quite clearly have an interdependent utility function such that anything that makes the folks living on The Parkway worse off makes me better off.
It feels good to be motivated to smile by happy, joyful events. But this article suggests there are benefits from smiling even if you don't feel like it. Actually, I suspect the article and the research it reports may have the causation backwards. Here are the salient points from the article:
Here are four science-backed reasons why smiling is good for you.
It can help you through stress
Smiling could improve your memory
It may help you live longer
It makes others feel good
I wonder, though, if maybe the causation is different. Perhaps it is just that happier people smile more, are less stressed, live longer, etc. I'm not convinced that forcing oneself to smile more will make one happier, less stressed, live longer, etc.. If it works, though, great!
The trouble is, it's hard to force oneself to smile when one doesn't feel like smiling. It feels fake and hypocritical.
According the rezoning proposals rubber-stamped by London City Council, the proposed 8-story and 28-story buildings at 50 King Street would have little or no impact on the heritage Middlesex County Courthouse.
Balderdash.
I took some photos today at 11am, showing the shadows cast by the current 3-story building at 50 King. I also took some photos of the shadows cast by the Renaissance Tower on King Street. The shadow from the Renaissance Tower stretches all the way from the south side of King Street north to the north side of Dundas, more than a block in length. Here is a photo of the north Renaissance Tower, 11am, Feb 18, 2016, casting its shadow onto the Budweiser Gardens.
And here is a photo of that shadow across the Bud Gardens (located directly east of the heritage Middlesex County Courthouse):
And here is a photo taken at the same time, showing the reach of the shadow from The Renaissance all the way up to and onto Dundas Street, more than a block north of the 20-story Renaissance Tower.
Quite clearly, a 28-story building located on the north side of King Street, slightly to the west of the current building at 50 King, would cover the heritage Middlesex County Courthouse in shadows much of the day, even in the summer when shadows are shorter.
But that's not all.
The other portion of the proposal includes an 8-story building where there is presently a 3-story building. Even this lower building will cast shadows that reach the heritage Middlesex County Courthouse much of time. Here are some photos I took at the same time. These show the shadow cast by the present 3-story building. You can see the shadows reach halfway or more to the heritage Middlesex County Courthouse.
An 8-story building, especially the planned building which would be even closer to the heritage Middlesex County Courthouse, would cast shadows that would reach the heritage building some of the time and would cover the space between the two buildings most of the time. Putting an atrium between the 8-story building and the 28-story tower would not provide much relief from these shadows.
This overshadowing will have a strong, negative effect on the heritage value of the Middlesex County Courthouse, but it will also greatly darken the space between the proposed building at 50 King and the heritage Middlesex County Courthouse. The entire heritage value of the property associated with the heritage block will be severely diminished.
These heritage issues need to be addressed by the London Heritage Advisory Committee and need to be considered by the Ontario Municipal Board.
Some companies choose to invest huge amounts in building up their brand names. Their advertising says, "We are committed to providing customers with quality goods, reliable products. If we don't give you good products, our advertising expenditures will have been wasted."
Of course this is all probabilistic. Some firms play games with the above mechanism and cheat (VW mileage, anyone), but for the most part it holds true.
Cellulose [wood fibre] is a safe additive [to reduce clumping], and an acceptable level is 2 percent to 4 percent, according to Dean Sommer, a cheese technologist at the Center for Dairy Research in Madison, Wisconsin. Essential Everyday 100% Grated Parmesan Cheese, from Jewel-Osco, was 8.8 percent cellulose, while Wal-Mart Stores Inc.’s Great Value 100% Grated Parmesan Cheese registered 7.8 percent, according to test results. Whole Foods 365 brand didn’t list cellulose as an ingredient on the label, but still tested at 0.3 percent. Kraft had 3.8 percent. ...
According to the FDA’s report on Castle, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, “no parmesan cheese was used to manufacture” the Market Pantry brand 100% grated Parmesan Cheese, sold at Target Corp. stores, and Always Save Grated Parmesan Cheese and Best Choice 100% Grated Parmesan Cheese, sold by Associated Wholesale Grocers Inc., which along with its subsidiaries supplies 3,400 retail stores in 30 states. Instead, there was a mixture of Swiss, mozzarella, white cheddar and cellulose, according to the FDA.
In other words, the brand name products in which companies had invested considerable advertising expenditure tended to be more reliably within acceptable limits of cellulose content. This expenditure to enhance their "reputation asset" is consistent with the signaling theories of advertising.
These theories argue that simply by spending a lot of money on advertising, firms like Kraft are telling the customers that Kraft has made a commitment to the quality of their products. It would be unprofitable for them to spend all that money advertising a product, and then produce an inferior good.
And this argument is repeated succinctly by Ms. Eclectic, who often says, "I don't buy no-name products."
A number of us living in the downtown area in London, Ontario, recently tried to object to a rezoning application for county land overlooking the Fork of the Thames River and adjoining the heritage-designated Middlesex County Courthouse [see this and this]. We lost.
My own, personal objection raised at the planning committee meeting was that during much of every day the proposed 28-story and 8-story buildings, joined by an atrium, would cast shadows over the best-known heritage building in London, Ontario: the Middlesex County Courthouse.
Not only did the presenters to the planning commission waffle (likely prevaricate) about the shadow effects of the proposed building over the heritage courthouse, they also neatly sidestepped the fact that (to the best of my knowledge) they did not do a heritage assessment of their proposal, as would be required of anyone else, nor did they hold open, public consultations with local residents, as would be required of anyone else.
I've written about those issues before.
Here is what really adds insult to injury
Today the residents of our building (and, I presume, thousands of other residents in the designated areas) received this postcard, sent out at a likely cost of $2 or so per card, to cover design, printing, postage, personnel work, etc.
I live downtown in the yellow area, the same area where the rezoning was approved by City Council and where the proposed high-rise building(s) would be erected.
Here is the back of the postcard:
I received this card because we own a unit in 30-year-old condo building; I doubt if our building is a "heritage property".
Apparently, though, one group of folks at City Hall is all about heritage, and anyone who wants to alter their property must get a "Heritage Alteration Permit".
Meanwhile, Middlesex County, which owns the property under discussion (yes, the county owns land inside the City of London) and which was just rezoned, has proposed alterations to their heritage-designated property. Where were the folks in the Heritage Permit office when all the rezoning proposals were being discussed?
I have strong doubts that they obtained a Heritage Alteration Permit. And if they didn't, I expect the entire rezoning process was bogus.
Lovely snow, and a sunshiny day. A great day to try some extensive, difficult, complex snow stomp art. Well, I got partway through what I had intended to create and realized there was no hope of doing what I had planned. What's more, it looked terrible. So I went to a different part of the lawn and wrote this:
I was really frazzled; I even put the tail on the wrong side of the Q!
I was so disappointed and embarrassed by my first effort that tonight I went down and "modified" it considerably. I call the new piece of work, "Slash and Burn" because I slashed through my earlier work and then did some stylized flames coming out of it.
I always knew the great pyramids of Egypt were right near Cairo, but the photos of them always show them as if they are totally isolated in the desert. I was surprised, and amused with myself, when I looked at Google maps and Google Earth some years ago to see just how close modern (comparatively?) building has come to encroaching on the space around the pyramids.
Perhaps zooming in a bit makes the point better:
But while I'm sure there are numerous photos of the pyramids like the one below, this one brings home just how close the pyramids are to the bustling metropolis of Cairo.
Middlesex County and the City Council of London, Ontario, have decided to proceed with rezoning plans that would involve tearing down the five-story Middlesex County Health building that is located at 50 King Street, just south of the heritage castle-like Middlesex County Courthouse building in the heart of London, and build a 28-story high-rise at that location. Here is an artist's rendition of their proposal.
That land is really valuable for this type of use. The units in the building would overlook the Fork of the Thames and have ready access to the parks along the Thames River and to all the downtown amenities -- theatres, Budweiser Centre, the market, and many nice restaurants.
And yet some people (not including me) have filed an objection with the Ontario Municipal Board [OMB] to the proposed zoning change that would allow this redevelopment of this plot of land (see this):
There were concerns voiced at the time that the original concept — a monolithic design — would block the view of the river for residents of the two Renaissance Towers. [EE: one and half of these are shown to the right in the above drawing]
Other concerns were that the tower, a design unseen in London, would overshadow the historic Middlesex County building, formerly the county’s courthouse. [not shown in the above drawing but immediately to the left of the proposed high-rise.]
But those are not the only objections (and let me add that I know of no one in the Renaissance Towers who raised the objection at the latest public hearing that the proposed tower would block their views. I don't know why the Freeps keeps mentioning this.).
The original plan was rejected by the former city council by a vote of 14-0. The new plan isn't all that different, no matter how the planners tried to dress it up, and yet the new council voted 14-0 to approve it. The consultation with neighbours was perfunctory at best, and there was no heritage assessment (as is ordinarily required) of the proposal.
As I wrote last year, the proposed high-rise would not only "overshadow the historic Middlesex County building", it would cast shadows over it much of the day. [see this earlier posting]. To address this issue, the latest proposal calls for the building to be a bit west of the original plan. But it will still cast shadows over the historic Middlesex Courthouse at least as much of the day. The city's planning committee and the full council brushed this fact aside.
Further, the proposed 8-story portion of the building (east of the tower) will also cast shadows over the green space between the building and the courthouse. The walkways and parkland between the current building and the historic courthouse are nice. With the proposed buildings, they will be smaller, and they will be in shadow much of the time; also, they will more likely than not become dark, dangerous places for people (see the walkways around the current courthouse and Bell Building).
Another point that has not been addressed adequately is that the proposed building will remove about 70 parking places and replace them with about 150 parking places. 80 or so additional parking places for who knows how many people working in the offices and/or living in the residential units? Surely there will be hundreds of residents, not to mention employees in the offices planned for the lower levels of the building. That is insane, and the reduced number of publicly available parking spades will greatly tax the available parking available in the downtown. Furthermore, this decreased number of publicly available parking spaces will substantially reduce access to the Fork of the Thames, in direct contradiction of the City Council's recently approved desire to increase access to and public use of the parkland there.
Yet another problem with this proposal is that it will greatly increase traffic on the narrow streets around the building, especially during rush hours in the mornings and evenings. As it is, the streets are often backed up a block or more in this area during rush hours. Extra office space and extra residential space, all with people expecting to gain entrance and egress to the building from a small side street, will spell zillions of Advil moments. It will also create even more problems for people trying to gain access to the parks along the river (again, so much to the city's "Back to the River" campaign). And it will play havoc with the various parking lots in the area that are designated for guest of the residents of the already existing residential buildings.
Finally, and this really frosts my cookies (and exemplifies the heavy-handed, unthinking processes of our city planning office and city council), a recently approved development only two and a half blocks away which would have done much more to help repopulate and rejuvenate the downtown has been canceled because some offices in the city (I'm not sure which) decided the developers of that plan would have to sacrifice loads of valuable space (but they weren't sure how much and wouldn't commit to how much!!) to form a hub for the city buses. This proposal would have provided considerably more residential and parking space and would be adjacent to a huge dying/dead mall that would provide tremendous retail space to serve the development. It is an ideal location for a massive development. ... and maybe one of it's residential towers could incorporate the fascinating and beautiful twist of the proposed building in the above photo.
If the City of London is serious about "Back to the River", here's what it should do:
Trade land elsewhere in the city to the County of Middlesex and let the county work with developers to put that neato-looking twisted building up somewhere else. Maybe even in south London along the South Branch of the Thames.
Put in truckloads (ok, carloads) of parking under that space where the current Middlesex County health building is at 50 King street.
Make sure the area where the building now is gets converted to additional parkland above the underground parking, facilitating and encouraging pedestrian and auto traffic access (with the additional parking) to the Fork of the Thames.
Put in more trails, footpaths, and (where necessary) boardwalks along the north side of the Thames west of the Fork of the Thames.
Disclaimer: Let me add that where I live, I would be affected by the congestion during the construction of the tower/buildings shown in the picture. I would also likely be affected by the traffic and parking issues that I have raised. But it will have absolutely no impact on my view.
It's probably confirmation bias but I have always enjoyed Scott Sumner's blog posts. Here is one recent example , in which he re-emphasizes his mantra "Never reason from a price change." Instead, try to figure out what caused the price change. And in this blog post he also emphasizes, "never reason from an interest rate change," but instead ask what caused the interest rate change. Scott's salient paragraph,
The market monetarist view is that easy money leads to higher inflation, and easy money sometimes lowers interest rates and sometimes raises them. Any reductions in interest rates tend to occur in the short run, whereas higher interest rates tend to result in the long run. In addition, it's more useful to think in terms of causation as going from inflation to interest rates, rather than interest rates to inflation.
The way I used to address this issue when I taught money-macro was to use this true-false exam question as an illustration:
[T/F/Explain] An increase in the money supply causes interest rates to fall.
[Answer] It all depends (That's always a good economist's answer!).
If the increase in the money supply is unanticipated (or more than is anticipated), there will be a short-term liquidity effect. The supply of lendable funds will have increased more than expected, putting downward pressure on interest rates.
If the increase in the money supply is believed to be longer-term, people will experience and then (through adaptive expectations) come to expect higher rates of inflation.
Through the Fisher Effect, when people in general come to expect higher rates of inflation, they will drive up the nominal interest rate.
Most students seemed to understand this material, at least for the exams. Whether it stayed with them is another question altogether.
First, let me say, I can't believe there have been 50 Superbowls, following the merger of the AFL and NFL.
Second, let me say that the spread sure has changed a lot over the past two weeks. Right after the conference championship games, the spread shown on Yahoo Sports opened at Carolina by 4. If I had made my pick then, I would have taken Carolina -4 for sure. [Other initials spreads were as low as -3.5; see below].
It shouldn't be a tremendous surprise: nearly 80 percent of the public money is currently on the Panthers when it comes to against-the-spread bets.
Most sportsbooks detailed a huge initial rush of money on the Broncos when the line opened with the Panthers as 5.5-point favorites, causing the number to head back down, as low as 4 points.
What followed was significant money on Carolina, with very little action on the Broncos.
"I can't remember a more one-sided betting Super Bowl," William Hill US's director of trading Nick Bogdanovich told ESPN.
As a result, books are moving the line higher and higher, although it stands to reason the Panthers might max out giving 6 points.
According to some earlier articles, the spread from some books went as high as Carolina by 6.5 points. But it looks as if the betting is settling down at Carolina by 5.5 points. From SB*Nation,
The line opened with the Carolina Panthers as 3.5-point favorites. Money quickly poured in on the Panthers following their thorough beating of the Arizona Cardinals, and the line climbed as high as six points. Some sportsbooks have seen some money on the Denver Broncos and brought it back down to 5.5 points, but it is holding steady otherwise.
The Denver defense is amazingly good. Well, so is the Carolina defense (though mistakes by Arizona made them look even better in the conference championship game.
At the same time, Newton and Manning are both superb quarterbacks, albeit with quite different qualities and abilities. I've noticed that some pretty knowledgeable people are picking Denver plus the points (see this).
It shouldn't need repeating. The Economist has a good article about academic freedom in this week's issue.
The Chicago Statement on Academic Freedom as summarized in the article:
“It is not the proper role of the university to attempt to shield individuals from ideas and opinions they find unwelcome, disagreeable, or even deeply offensive,” it states. “Concerns about civility and mutual respect can never be used as justification for closing off discussion of ideas, however offensive or disagreeable.” The responsibility of a university, it concludes, is not only to promote “fearless freedom of debate”, but also to protect it. ...
Even the Chicago Statement has reservations. Expression that “invades substantial privacy” or “constitutes a genuine threat” can be punished. The university has the right to regulate the “time, place and manner of expression”, so that ordinary activities are not unduly disrupted—though this should never be used to undermine an “open discussion of ideas”. The statement is, in short, written not only to allow speech, but to facilitate protest. When it first appeared, this may have seemed a bit academic. Not any more.
I was lucky. I did my undergraduate studies at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, in the 1960s. We had speakers from "Fair Play for Cuba", the ACLU, The American Nazi Party (George Lincoln Rockwell), and socialists (Norman Thomas) to name a few, not to mention the "sex seminars" that discussed, gasp!, pre-marital sex.
But notice that I said, "According to their criteria...". Just what are the Amazon.ca criteria for being romantic?
According to annual rankings by Amazon.ca, Victoria residents buy more romance novels, relationship books, romantic comedies, romantic music, jewelry and "sexual wellness products" than any other Canadians.
Maybe it's just that the people in the higher-ranked cities aren't getting enough romance in their lives, and they are sublimating by buying these products from Amazon. Maybe those products are not complements to having a romantic life but are substitutes that people buy because they are missing romance in their lives.
It's interesting that Trono, Montreal, and Quebec City don't make the list, nor do any towns or cities in the Maritimes. Myriad explanations, other than romance, seem plausible.
Bryan Caplan has a very interesting and very provocative post at Econlog challenging the standard, typical medical classifications relating to mental illnesses in general and to ADHD in particular. I have come to respect Caplan's work, and so I never dismiss anything he writes without giving it careful consideration. His material in this post seems generally right to me. Two telling paragraphs about ADHD:
Overall, the most natural way to formalize ADHD in economic terms is as a high disutility of work combined with a strong taste for variety. Undoubtedly, a person who dislikes working will be more likely to fail to 'finish school work, chores or duties in the workplace' and be 'reluctant to engage in tasks that require sustained mental effort'. [see chart below] Similarly, a person with a strong taste for variety will be 'easily distracted by extraneous stimuli' and fail to 'listen when spoken to directly', especially since the ignored voices demand attention out of proportion to their entertainment value. ...
As the DSM uses the term, a person who 'has difficulty' 'sustaining attention in tasks or play activities' could just as easily be described as 'disliking' sustaining attention. Similarly, while 'is often forgetful in daily activities' could be interpreted literally as impaired memory, in context it refers primarily to conveniently forgetting to do things you would rather avoid. No one accuses a boy diagnosed with ADHD of forgetting to play videogames.
Caplan re-presents a checklist to help professionals diagnose someone with ADHD. Here it is:
If this stuff had been around when I was young, I'd have been a drugged-out zombie. All nine of these applied to me.
When I was in Grade 2, the teacher wrote that I did good work when I did it, but that I rarely finished it. Also on behavioural items, I think I was given 13 minuses and only 3 pluses over one report-card period.
Also about that time, a woman who was visiting our home for dinner told my parents I should be put on drugs because I jiggled my legs so much.
So much of what is termed ADHD behaviour is better dealt with via behaviour training. Thank goodness my parents didn't put me on drugs. Instead, I had to learn to cope and adjust in some settings.
As one of my FB friends posted yesterday on a completely different (yet identical?) topic,
"You think too much because there's work that you don't want to do." - Andy Warhol's advice to Lou Reed.
Naive, retired teacher! I wasn't exactly typecast (close, though), and I am thrilled to have been offered the role of Tom in 1-900-Dee-Lite. I'll be working with several talented friends with whom I've worked before, along with a couple of newcomers to the theatre scene.
In the play, Dee (a widow) earns money selling sex talk through a 1-900 phone number. Tom develops an interest in Dee but thinks she sells cosmetics. The love and confusion are compounded by the relationship between Dee's son, Scott, and his long-time friend, Jennifer.
We begin rehearsals soon. Performances will be May 17-21 at The Arts Project in London.
According to this post at the Washington Post, people who smoked pot regularly for at least five years had some (slight?) short-term memory problems in middle age, compared with those who didn't. But the posting also notes some caveats concerning the study:
One important caveat is that a study like this can't determine causality. It could be the case that heavy pot use makes your short-term memory bad, or it could be that people who operate at a lower level of cognitive function are more inclined to use marijuana heavily.
It's also worth noting that the other cognitive abilities researchers tested -- focus and processing speed -- did not seem to be significantly impacted by heavy marijuana use.
The association between short-term memory declines -- potentially permanent ones -- and heavy pot use is very real, according to this study, and shouldn't be discounted. On the other hand, it's also quite surprising that you can smoke weed literally every single day for five years, and not have it impact your problem-solving abilities or your ability to focus at all. [emphasis added] These findings also need to be understood in relation to what we know about the severe cognitive effects of persistent, heavy alcohol use, which include irreversible brain damage.
I would add another caveat: The presumption in the article is that the heavy marijuana users smoked it. What if, instead, people ingested it? There would be less damage to the lungs and less direct effect from shortages of oxygen to the brain.
Now, if only recreational use of marijuana were completely legalized, ....
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