I read this today and it reminded me of a conversation I had in Saga with Matt G. about sunk costs. I don't remember what either of us said, but this is pretty neat:
http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2004/03/when_is_it_rati.html

Don't tell me these guys are clean

It cracks me up how American sports commentators deride cycling as being too dirty, but turn a blind eye to runaway drug use among American sports players.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2007/baseball/mlb/09/24/bradley.padres.ap/index.html?eref=si_topstories

SAN DIEGO (AP) -- Milton Bradley is done for the season, Mike Cameron might not be in much better shape and the livid San Diego Padres tried to regroup Monday from a bizarre chain of events that left their outfield depleted with a week to go in the season.

Bradley will miss the rest of the year with a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee. He was injured when his own manager spun him to the ground while trying to keep him from going after umpire Mike Winters during an eighth-inning confrontation in Sunday's 7-3 loss to Colorado at Petco Park.

What a load of crap. Milton Bradley is juiced. But, hey, I guess he's never failed a drug test, right? What's that? He's not tested too often? huh.

Some folks just can't take a joke

Have you seen this? I'd heard of it before but not read the actual thing:

DATE: December 12, 1991
TO: Distribution
FR: Lawrence H. Summers
Subject: GEP

'Dirty' Industries: Just between you and me, shouldn't the World Bank be encouraging MORE migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs [Least Developed Countries]? I can think of three reasons:

1) The measurements of the costs of health impairing pollution depends on the foregone earnings from increased morbidity and mortality. From this point of view a given amount of health impairing pollution should be done in the country with the lowest cost, which will be the country with the lowest wages. I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that.

2) The costs of pollution are likely to be non-linear as the initial increments of pollution probably have very low cost. I've always thought that under-populated countries in Africa are vastly UNDER-polluted, their air quality is probably vastly inefficiently low compared to Los Angeles or Mexico City. Only the lamentable facts that so much pollution is generated by non-tradable industries (transport, electrical generation) and that the unit transport costs of solid waste are so high prevent world welfare enhancing trade in air pollution and waste.

3) The demand for a clean environment for aesthetic and health reasons is likely to have very high income elasticity. The concern over an agent that causes a one in a million change in the odds of prostate cancer is obviously going to be much higher in a country where people survive to get prostate cancer than in a country where under 5 mortality is 200 per thousand. Also, much of the concern over industrial atmosphere discharge is about visibility impairing particulates. These discharges may have very little direct health impact. Clearly trade in goods that embody aesthetic pollution concerns could be welfare enhancing. While production is mobile the consumption of pretty air is a non-tradable.

The problem with the arguments against all of these proposals for more pollution in LDCs (intrinsic rights to certain goods, moral reasons, social concerns, lack of adequate markets, etc.) could be turned around and used more or less effectively against every Bank proposal for liberalization.

Economists do this stuff all the time, but we never expect other people (i.e. idjits) to take us seriously. It's the kind of dark humor generated by being stuck in a totally coherent system that generates absurd results. Of course, that's what makes it fun, too.

More Labor Day

Reason Magazine's blog has been keeping track of various police shenanigans, including the peculiarly frequent occurence of SWAT teams knocking down the doors of the wrong houses! Apparently they can't be bothered to check the address before shoving guns in your face.

http://reason.com/topics/hitandrun/226.html#listing

Labor Day

I don't get out of class on Labor Day, which is fine. But that doesn't mean it's not still important.

Check this out if you think labor struggle are over:

Police attack non-violent union protesters.


Police are getting more and more out of control everywhere around the country. Better make sure that if you're going to exercise your rights to free speech, you have somebody recording the ensuing police brutality.