Astronaut self-insurance durable goods monopoly problem
During the 60s and 70s it would appear that private life insurance was not available to astronauts. Autograph Magazine has a good post about how astronauts of the time used their own autographs as a form of life insurance for their families.
From Neil Armstrong
I fully expected that, by the end of the century, we would have achieved substantially more than we actually did.
And this:
I guess we all like to be recognized not for one piece of fireworks, but for the ledger of our daily work.
And finally:
I was elated, ecstatic and extremely surprised that we were successful.
There are more Armstrong quotations here.
The new Thomas Nagel book
The title is *Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False*. Here is a brief summary of his “teleological” argument. My bottom lines on it:
1. He is good on attacking the hidden hypocrisies of many reductionists, secularists, and those who wish to have it both ways on religious modes of thinking.
2. He fully recognizes the absurdities (my word, not his) of dualism, and thinks them through carefully and honestly. Bryan Caplan should beware.
3. The most typical sentence I found in the book was: “We can continue to hope for a transcendent self-understanding that is neither theistic nor reductionist.”
4. He doesn’t take seriously enough the view: “The Nagel theory of mind is simply wrong.”
5. People will dismiss his arguments to remain in their comfort zone, while temporarily forgetting he is smarter than they are and furthermore that many of their views do not make sense or cohere internally.
6. It is ultimately a book about how Christian many of us still are, and how closely the egocentric illusion is connected to a broadly religious worldview. I don’t think he would see it that way.
For the pointer to the book — now out early on Kindle — I thank David Gordon.
New and noteworthy
Justin Yifu Lin, The Quest for Prosperity: How Developing Economies Can Take Off.
There is also Diane Coyle, editor, What’s the use of Economics? Teaching the Dismal Science After the Crisis.
Solve for the equilibrium
Here is the short video. Here is text with photos and another video. Five Ukrainian women, in an Ukrainian art museum. They are sleeping, or rather pretending to sleep, dressed up as Sleeping Beauty. Men come along and kiss them, on the lips, with each man allowed only one kiss. They have all signed legally binding contracts. If a woman responds to a kiss by opening her eyes and “waking,” she must marry the man. The man must marry the woman.
Who will kiss? When do eyes get opened?
The museum gives out free breath mints.
For the pointer I thank the excellent Daniel Lippman.
Assorted links
1. Via Chris F. Masse, robot stand-ins for professors.
2. Is the falling U.S. birth rate a temporary or permanent demographic shift?
3. Response to Orszag on competitive Medicare bidding.
4. Keeping Indian roots music alive.
5. The Chinese electricity numbers are scary.
6. “The fact that I don’t hear more people delivering the same clear message suggests to me that we don’t have enough objective observers.” Link here, that is James Hamilton, “Federal Receipts and Expenditures.”
Relative price effects
The worst drought in decades has destroyed more than half the U.S. corn crop, pushing prices to record levels and squeezing livestock owners as they struggle to feed their herds.
To cope, one Kentucky cattle farmer has turned to a child-tested way to fatten his 1,400 cows: candy.
“It’s so hard to make any money when corn is eight or nine dollars a bushel,” said Nick Smith, co-owner of United Livestock Commodities in Mayfield, Ky.
The chocolate and other sweet stuff was rejected by retailers. It makes up 5% to 8% of the cattle’s feed ration, Smith said. The rest includes roughage and distillers grain, an ethanol byproduct.
The candy’s high caloric content is fattening up the cows nicely, Smith said.
The full article is here. For the pointer I thank Dave Bieler.
Which countries benefit the most from euro depreciation?
Based on these calculations, Ireland is a clear first. Pulling up the rear are Italy, France, Greece, and Portugal comes in last. Note that these calculations assume a kind of average/marginal equality.
A new RCT look at educational vouchers
From Matthew M. Chingos and Paul E. Peterson (pdf):
In the first study using a randomized experiment to measure the impact of school vouchers on college enrollment, we examine the college-going behavior through 2011 of students who participated in a voucher experiment as elementary school students in the late 1990s. We find no overall impacts on college enrollments but we do find large, statistically significant positive impacts on the college going of African American students who participated in the study. Our estimates indicate that using a voucher to attend private school increased the overall college enrollment rate among African Americans by 24 percent.
Hat tip goes to Michael Petrilli, via ModeledBehavior.
The new Nobel Prize in literature odds
The Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami has emerged as the early favourite to win this year’s Nobel prize for literature.
The acclaimed author of titles including Norwegian Wood, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and, most recently, IQ84, Murakami has been given odds of 10/1 to win the Nobel by Ladbrokes.
Last year the eventual winner of the award, the Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer, was the betting firm’s second favourite to take the prize, given initial odds of 9/2 behind the Syrian poet Adonis, at 4/1. This year Adonis has slipped down the list, given odds of 14/1 alongside the Korean poet Ko Un and the Albanian writer Ismail Kadare.
New names in Ladbrokes list this year include the Chinese author Mo Yan and the Dutch writer Cees Nooteboom, both coming in with strong odds of 12/1 to win the Nobel prize.
And:
Britain’s strongest contender for the Nobel this year, which goes to “the most outstanding work in an ideal direction”, is – according to Ladbrokes – Ian McEwan, who comes in at 50/1, behind the singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, at 33/1. American novelist Philip Roth is at 16/1, alongside his compatriot Cormac McCarthy, the Israeli author Amos Oz and the highest-placed female writer, the Italian Dacia Maraini.
The article is here.
Boo hoo
Is Arnold Kling quitting blogging?
Sorry for being abrupt, but this is something I have been thinking about for months.
In the future, I plan to do my writing in essay format.
As far as blogging goes, I am opting for exit rather than voice, as it were.
Did he just get too fed up? Any chance he will pull a Michael Jordan?
Another Chinese bridge collapses
According to the official Xinhua news agency, the Yangmingtan Bridge was the sixth major bridge in China to collapse since July of last year. Chinese officials have tended to blame the bridge collapses on overloaded trucks, and did so again on Friday.
Bridges in the United States are built with very large safety margins in case heavy loads cross them, however. Many in China have attributed the recent spate of bridge collapses to corruption, and Internet reaction to the latest collapse was scathing.
Here is more.
Assorted links
1. MIE: sun-safe swimwear, and the forward march of progress.
2. Funny old photos, sometimes of wrongdoers.
3. Claims about hoboes, some of them speculative.
4. Data on Chinese nationalism.
The other Malthusian problem
After three decades of torrid growth, China is encountering an unfamiliar problem with its newly struggling economy: a huge buildup of unsold goods that is cluttering shop floors, clogging car dealerships and filling factory warehouses.
…The severity of China’s inventory overhang has been carefully masked by the blocking or adjusting of economic data by the Chinese government — all part of an effort to prop up confidence in the economy among business managers and investors.
…Business owners who manufacture or distribute products as varied as dehumidifiers, plastic tubing for ventilation systems, solar panels, bedsheets and steel beams for false ceilings said that sales had fallen over the last year and showed little sign of recovering.
“Sales are down 50 percent from last year, and inventory is piled high,” said To Liangjian, the owner of a wholesale company distributing picture frames and cups, as he paused while playing online poker in his deserted storefront here in southeastern China.
Wu Weiqing, the manager of a faucet and sink wholesaler, said that his sales had dropped 30 percent in the last year and he has piled up extra merchandise. Yet the factory supplying him is still cranking out shiny kitchen fixtures at a fast pace.
…The Chinese industry’s problems show every sign of growing worse, not better. So many auto factories have opened in China in the last two years that the industry is operating at only about 65 percent of full capacity — far below the 80 percent usually needed for profitability.
Yet so many new factories are being built that, according to the Chinese government’s National Development and Reform Commission, the country’s auto manufacturing capacity is on track to increase again in the next three years by an amount equal to all the auto factories in Japan, or nearly all the auto factories in the United States.
…“Inventory used to flow in and out,” said Mr. Wu, the faucet and sink sales manager. “Now, it just sits there, and there’s more of it.”
Here is more.
Very good sentences the culture that is Iceland
Seven-year-old Jón Haukur Vignisson unexpectedly won the highest score among non-professionals in the annual national ram groping tournament organized by the Sheep Farming Museum in Hólmavík, the Strandir region in the West Fjords, last weekend.
The article is short but interesting throughout, every line a gem and the site has a puffin ad too. Perhaps the hat tip should remain anonymous but I can assure you the person is excellent.
Here is a photo of Hólmavík.