Indian Forecast Error
India receives 90% of its rain during monsoon season so forecasting monsoons is critical for productive farming. Fortunately, according to an article in Nature (subs. req.), the Indian Meteorological Department has found a way to make its forecast better than any other available – they have suppresed publication of the other forecasts. The Indian government says this is necessary to prevent "confusion."
The main competitor to the government’s statistical model, which has not reduced its forecast error in 70 years, is from an Institute based in Bangalore which uses a climate model. The Institute and government forecasts can differ dramatically. The Institute, for example, forecast that rainfall would be 34% below average in June and 12% below average in July while the government forecast "normal or above normal rains."
The rainfall in June? 35% below average. No confusion about that.
Thanks to Robin Hanson for the pointer.
TSA captures a rogue
Warning: Do not travel on airplanes with a picture of Mohammed Atta in your luggage.
Who eats meat without feet?
Earlier I wrote, "We will soon need a new word for people who eat meat but not animals." Most of the suggestions I got were awful (no, not your suggestion that was great). Seriously, thanks to everyone who wrote. Here are a few that I thought especially interesting.
From Brock Cusick, synthetarian. I like it but I fear that synthetic still has negative connotation and we want a word that will be adopted by those who practice it.
From Chris Rasch, Cultivore, Cultivarian or Ameglians (scroll to Dish of the Day.)
From Travis Corcoran, Soylent-atarians. Also good but a mite obscure.
In the end my choice is for VeggieTechie or VT, as in I’m a VT (also good for putting on restaurant menus). Thus in the hopes of scoring a Google cascade:
Definition: VeggieTechie – a person who eats vegetables and synthetic meat but not meat harvested from an animal.
In the meantime AntiGravitas has another question, Is it cannibalism to eat vat-grown human meat?
Bounty Hunting, the sad part
The sky was dark as I drove to Baltimore to try my hand at bounty hunting; it was 5:15 am. Fugitives from the law tend not be early-rising types so bounty hunters search homes in the morning and the streets at night.
Dennis, who has been in the business 21 years and has volunteered to show me the ropes, hands me a photo. Our first fugitive is a surprise. Taken a few years ago in better times, the photo is of an attractive young woman perhaps at her prom. She has long, blond hair and bright eyes. She is smiling.
We drive to the house where a tip places her recently. It’s a middle class home in a nice suburb. Children’s toys are strewn about the garden. I’m accompanied by Dennis and two of his co-workers, a former police officer and a former sherrif’s deputy. One of them takes the back while Dennis knocks. A women still in her nightclothes answers. She does not seem surprised to have four men knocking at her door in the early morning. She volunteers that we can search the house. We enter and get the whole story.
"Chrissy" is her niece. She was at the house two days ago and may return. Chrissy has had her life ruined by drugs. Or, perhaps she has ruined her life with drugs – sometimes it’s hard to tell. She is now a heroin addict whose boyfriend regularly beats her. The aunt is momentarily shocked when we show her the photo. No, she doesn’t look like that anymore – her hair is brown, her face is covered with scabs and usually bruised, she weighs maybe 85 pounds. "Be gentle with her," the Aunt says even though "she will probably fight."
The Aunt gives us another location – Chrissy is living out of her car with her mother. We are about to leave when the Aunt thanks us for being quiet, there’s a child in the house who was scared when the police last came. The child is Chrissy’s son.
Rogue Economist!
A famous economist is trying to capture terrorists by combing through data on banking records. Wimpy. Wimpy. Wimpy. A real rogue economist would go after them with his bare hands. Grrrrr! 🙂
Today, I am in Baltimore, one of the roughest cities in the United States. Not content to study bounty hunters from the safe confines of my desk I am going hunting with the real thing. Is this my dangerous summer? Nah, that is next summer!
I am really going to Baltimore to learn. Tyler writes on development and globalization and spends a lot of time traveling and living in poor countries. It’s a good model to emulate. Blackboard economics can only get you so far. I am working on a book about bounty hunting but also about bounties and prizes more generally. I figure one less equation and one more story about Doc Rock and the Fugitive will double my sales.
Markets in Everything: Secret Lovers
The SecretLover collection of cards is "the first
line exclusively for people having affairs." There are cards to give to your secret lover on birthdays, special occasions, even anniversaries!
I want to go on record as saying that I am totally opposed to this depraved idea. I hope that this business fails utterly. It’s hard enough to remember my wife’s birthday, Valentine’s day, our anniversary etc. And now I’m supposed to send my secret lover cards as well? Outrageous.
Thanks to Avery Katz for the pointer.
Global Warming and the US Economy
Laurie David, comedy developer turned environmental activist, writes in the Huffington Post:
Last week at the G8, President Bush restated his favorite global
warming canard: that mandatory curbs on fossil fuel pollution will “cripple the U.S. economy.”WELL, WHAT DOES HE THINK GLOBAL WARMING WILL DO TO THE ECONOMY!?!?
I wish there was an even bolder bold on this computer to emphasize how
insane this logic is. Non-stop flooding, killer heat waves, energy and
food shortages: what will these do to the economy?
Actually Laurie, and PGL of Angry Bear who links to David, the best study of the issue indicates that global warming is most likely a net benefit to the US economy. Carbon dioxide and greater temperature makes plants grow faster. The author, Yale economist Robert Mendelsohn writes:
Climate change is likely to result in small net benefits for the United States over the next century. The primary sector that will benefit is agriculture. The large gains in this sector will more than compensate for damages expected in the coastal, energy, and water sectors, unless warming is unexpectedly severe. Forestry is also expected to enjoy small gains. Added together, the United States will likely enjoy small benefits of between $14 and $23 billion a year and will only suffer damages in the neighborhood of
$13 billion if warming reaches 5C over the next century. Recent predictions of warming by 2100 suggest temperature increases of between 1.5 and 4C, suggesting that impacts are likely to be beneficial in the US.
Speaking personally, I have undergone a greater shift in mean temperature by moving from Canada to the US than will occur in 100 years of global warming and I like it! My fellow Canadians, still stuck in the frozen north, will be glad to know that in the future they too can have warmer temperatures without giving up their prized health care system.
For the developing world the effects of climate change are most likely negative but not so negative that further development – combined with some modest changes in first-world technology, such as greater use of nuclear power – is not the best solution.
Markets in Everything
Today is a twofer. Buy the icepick used to kill Trotsky and have his house cleaned.
Does the Pope Read Marginal Revolution?
In a new op-ed, an important Catholic theologian apparently accepts the logic of my argument (and here) on theism and evolution. Coincidental timing? Perhaps. But the probability that the Pope reads MR now increases! 🙂 From the NYTimes.
An influential cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church, which has long
been regarded as an ally of the theory of evolution, is now suggesting
that belief in evolution as accepted by science today may be
incompatible with Catholic faith.The cardinal, Christoph
Schönborn, archbishop of Vienna, a theologian who is close to Pope
Benedict XVI, staked out his position in an Op-Ed article in The New York Times on Thursday,
writing, "Evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true, but
evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense – an unguided, unplanned process
of random variation and natural selection – is not."
Thanks to Roger Sweeny for the pointer.
Meat without Feet
Earlier I wrote that the animal-welfare movement will explode as in-vitro meat becomes commercially viable. A new paper discusses some novel techniques for growing in-vitro meat. New Harvest, a non-profit firm, has been created to experiment with and promote the technology. We will soon need a new word for people who eat meat but not animals. Email me if you have suggestions and I will publish the best.
Guest Blogging from Liberia
We are excited to have Lee Coppock, an economist at the University of Virginia and friend of mine from graduate school, guest blogging for us over the next week. Lee is visiting Liberia on a private aid mission and will be giving us an on-the-ground perspective on economic growth, culture, institutions and aid. Lee visited Liberia last year but tells me that at that time he was afraid to visit the downtown internet cafe. This time he promises to risk it on behalf of the revolution, the Marginal Revolution! Thanks Lee!
Two New Newspaper Services
NewspaperDirect offers 270 papers from 50 countries in the exact layout of the original, including color photos. Watching America translates articles from the foreign press about America, very useful for getting that second opinion.
Thanks to Carl Close for the first pointer.
Don’t Eat This Book (or buy it)
In a new blog, Radley Balko destroys Morgan Spurlock and his new book on the fast food industry – and it didn’t take him thirty days. Lots of amazing stuff including this hilarious takedown of ACORN.
Thanks to Julian Sanchez at Hit and Run for the link.
Efficient Markets or Very Efficient Markets?
Thanks to Daniel Strauss Vasques for passing on the photo. The original source is unknown. Of course, if my colleague Robin Hanson is correct the photo was taken before this morning’s annoucement!
Addendum: Alas, it’s a fake. Thanks to Eric Goff for the pointer.
Lunch Matters
At lunch with Bryan and Tyler last week the question arose as to what we would do differently if we were immortal. After a nerdy discussion to clarify what sort of immorality we were talking about; the kind where you can’t be killed but can be imprisoned or the kind where you are forever young but may be hit by a truck? (it was the former) – I answered that I would travel more.
Later the question was asked, what would you do differently if you found out you had only a short time to live. I answered again that I would travel more. Click, buzz, whirr…does not compute, does not compute. Even before Bryan or Tyler could point out the inconsistency I realized there was a problem. Given that I would travel more if I was to live either less or more the probability that I was at just that level of mortality that I should not be traveling now must be vanishingly small.
I leave for a solo trek to Machu Picchu July 25. Lunch matters.
