December 16, 2015
All the major reviews for Star Wars seem to be positive, but no one is calling it an “intense personal vision.” So it probably isn’t very good.
My father-in-law was watching the debate last night, and so I caught some of it after giving my final exam for the evening. I ended up being persuaded by Justin Wolfers’s “signaling theory,” not even mainly for Trump but for most of the candidates. They feel an extreme need to signal to voters that something is deeply, deeply wrong and that they won’t just leap on the establishment bandwagon if elected. In this sense the Republican candidates have more in common with the Progressive Left than might be evident on first glance. That they feel induced to go so far out on various limbs is, most of all, a sign that GOP primary voters still do not believe their sincerity. Fiorina strikes me as the one who is running “straight up,” and giving some semblance of her actual views, and perhaps that is why she has failed to achieve traction after a boost at the very beginning. She is signaling she will be a female, conservative member of the Republican political establishment, rather than that she will side with the frustration of the voters. The former is not such a marketable political commodity these days.
The law of one price almost holds:
…most fancy bills trade only slightly above face value. And many of the most sought-after by collectors really have only sentimental or personal value, like their child’s birthday or an anniversary (04072004, say, for April 7, 2004); ZIP Codes (00090210, where the final five digits in this instance represent the postal designation for Beverly Hills, Calif.); tombstones (19182014, here representing the birth and death years of a long life as they might appear on a gravestone; and others known by such names as Fibonaccis after the mathematical sequence and flippers whose digits look the same right-side up or upside down.
One well-known fan in this universe of collectors, Jim Futrell, for a long time focused on bills featuring the number 27 in some fashion—for example, 27000027. “The number 27 is pretty special in my family,” he says. “Not only is it my birthday, but my mom’s, grandfather’s and at least 10 others that I know of.”
The solstice approaches, and I am waking up slightly later than usual.