Category: Current Affairs

Michael Jackson and Kobe Bryant make the front pages for their possible misdeeds. The tabloids are full of news about Reese Witherspoon’s baby boy. Why do we care? Here is one account:

On the surface, the celebrity rags seem to be about sex. But their real subject is reproduction and the future of the human tribe. On the savannah, we needed to monitor how our clan was faring, and given our small populations we could do the job by ourselves, gossiping about how Gronk had left Zumba and that last night she slipped into Uggah’s cave to make a baby, and what our chance might be to steal one of them as a mate. But in a country of 290 million people, where even our next-door neighbors are strangers, we still need to flex those savannah needs for gossip and information in order to measure our species’ prospect. What better proxy than the young, wealthy, handsome, and visible alpha-male and -female breeding stock that Hollywood employs?

So writes Jack Shafer on Slate.com, see his full analysis. I agree, though I would be reluctant to write with such a reductionist tone myself. Furthermore I think we use celebrities for more prosaic reasons as well. We are fascinated by what produces relative status, something we all seek. We also use celebrities as a topic of social conversation, a means of showing that we are in touch, a way of signaling our views on various issues, and as a vicarious outlet for our hopes and fears. For more, see my What Price Fame?, also shown on the right bar on this blog.

You might try bsr-inc.com, they offer a two-day anti-terrorist driving school, which includes surveillance and 180-degree spins. You can even give your loved ones a gift certificate for the camp.

Why stop at driving? A three-day anti-terrorist camp in Arizona also teaches espionage and combat pistol techniques, for only $3800, try incredible-adventures.com. They offer a special course on Russian martial arts, promising “If you do spend time in a hotel, it won’t be a five-star.” You learn the “Systema” method of self-defense, enabling you to strike from virtually any position, dating from the Russian cossacks. Oddly, the course promises only two hours a day, I suppose you spend the rest of the time sunning yourself at the hotel pool. Their driving adventures include a course in Southern truck racing.

Many Hollywood movies, by the way, suggest that you overtake a car in pursuit by bumping it in the rear. Anti-terrorist driving instructors assure us this is the wrong way to go. Bump them from the back side, cause their car to spin around, and then pin them against a wall. Warning: do not try this on your own.

From this month’s issue of Popular Science. Oh, yes, if any of those anti-terrorist courses are beyond your means, consider a simple computer game for $50 or less, or perhaps the new John Woo movie, due out Christmas day, for $8.50 or so. That will be my pick of the lot.

The energy bill might die, read here for more. Six rebel Republicans, including John McCain, are supporting a filibuster against the bill. If you don’t already know why the bill, a corporate welfare monstrosity, is a bad idea, click here.

Just click here to see it. It is called “Lunar Stunt Car.” I can’t for the life of me imagine what is special about it, though of course I am not the typical buyer in this market. It is already hard to get in stores, but of course they are not raising the price, creating yet another puzzle in price theory, in fact they are advertising that it is on sale.

My best guess: They keep the prices low to generate publicity, to drive a fad, and the artificial scarcity makes it an especially sought-after item. Furthermore it may generate trips to the toy store, leading parents to buy other toys, although whether these gains rebound to the Lunar Stunt Car manufacturer is unclear. That all being said, once the toy takes off, I still don’t see why they don’t raise the price to capture higher profits.

Score one for Lieberman, read Jacob Levy’s comparison of the two on economic policy. Dean recently called for the “re-regulation of business”, Lieberman countered with the following:

“Howard Dean doesn’t understand how Bill Clinton created 22 million jobs in 8 years. By responsibly deregulating markets, Bill Clinton allowed exporters to sell more American products to foreign markets and brought competition to existing monopolies.

“Howard Dean would usher in a new era of big government with his re-regulation proposal. He would give us a treacherous trifecta of policies that turn back the economic clock: new trade barriers, a larger tax burden on our middle class, and now bigger bureaucracy. Either he doesn’t know how to turn the economy around, or this is another reckless mistake.

“We need to toughen the integrity of our marketplace, put real enforcers in regulatory posts, and put wrongdoers in jail. We don’t need to cripple the economy with a whole new set of broad re-regulation as Howard Dean proposes.”

It is a shame that Lieberman has no chance within the Democratic party.

Here is Andrew Sullivan, quoting John McCain and commenting on him:

“I’m not saying that this bill won’t generate some energy. It will certainly fuel the coffers of big oil and gas corporations. It will propel the wealthy special interests. And it will boost the deficit into the stratosphere. Indeed, this legislation can be fairly called the Leave no Lobbyist Behind Act of 2003.
There are also four proposals known as ‘green bonds’ for construction of commercial buildings that will cost taxpayers $227 million to finance approximately $2 billion in private bonds. One of my favorite green bond proposals is a $150 million riverfront area in Shreveport, Louisiana. This river walk has about 50 stores, a movie theater and a bowling alley. One of the new tenants in this Louisiana Riverwalk is a Hooters restaurant. Yes my friends. Here we have an energy bill subsidizing both hooters and polluters.” – Senator John McCain, on the monstrosity otherwise known as the Energy Bill. How any principled, small-government, free-market Republican could vote for this vast waste of public money is beyond me. But we’re beginning to realize that GOP has nothing to do with small government or fiscal sobriety. It’s a vehicle for massive debt and catering to the worst forms of corporate welfare. Thank God for McCain. Bush should veto this bill, until it is de-porked. He won’t, of course. He has yet to veto a single big-spending bill. He doesn’t seem to give a damn about what is happening to the fiscal health of this country.

For a less polemical assessment, but ultimately a similar evaluation of the substance, see the ever-reliable Lynne Kiesling, start at this permalink and scroll downwards for running commentary and links.

Addendum: Senators from both parties criticize the bill as well, read here.

After years of government deregulation of energy markets, telecommunications, the airlines and other major industries, Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean is proposing a significant reversal: a comprehensive “re-regulation” of U.S. businesses.

And what are the proposed candidates for such a re-regulation?

…utilities, large media companies and any business that offers stock options. Dean did not rule out “re-regulating” the telecommunications industry, too.

He also said a Dean administration would require new workers’ standards, a much broader right to unionize and new “transparency” requirements for corporations that go beyond the recently enacted Sarbanes-Oxley law.

Somehow either Dean or the source article left out mutual funds.

OK, some of these are complex issues, where you might argue that laissez-faire is impossible, and that more regulation could be better than current hybrid structures. But we are not choosing policy today. For the time being, forget the detailed debates, and ponder what this suggests about Dean’s instincts, what kind of campaign he will run, and what kind of voters he will appeal to. Ugh, and the libertarians should have never wondered whether Dean might be a small government guy in disguise.

Mexicans in Tijuana will pay you up to $1500 a piece to drive them across the border. If you are caught you receive no more than a slap on the wrist, the first time you are caught that is.

At the most, 1 in 50 vehicles is searched. Today’s Wall Street Journal describes smuggling as “a mini employment boom” for single mothers, military personnel, and especially teenagers.

My prediction: This can’t last forever.

Or, if you are looking for another job, you can drink pesticides, for $200 a day. I’d rather drive across the border.

It’s not market timing, not according to Mark Hulbert. He writes:

Market timing, as the phrase has traditionally been used in the stock market, refers to shifting a portfolio from equities to cash in the hope of sidestepping a market decline, then moving back into the market in anticipation of a rally. There are many approaches to market timing; they vary according to the techniques used to forecast rallies and declines and in the frequency of the switching. Market timers’ track records also vary widely.

Strictly defined, market timing has little to do with the fund industry’s current troubles.

In part, late trading allows some shareholders to trade after the market close. But much of the real problem is — stale pricing:

Some mutual funds have been accused of allowing certain investors to take advantage of out-of-date securities prices used by funds in calculating their net asset values. Because those stale prices were sometimes too low or too high, investors who frequently switched into and out of these funds could realize substantial profits at the expense of other shareholders.

This stale-price arbitrage, as the practice is sometimes called, happens most often in international stock funds. When funds calculate their net asset values at 4 p.m., they generally use the prices at which their portfolio stocks traded most recently. For international funds, those prices can be several hours out of date.

Here is a related New York Times article, on Eric Zitzewitz, who is developing means of measuring asset values more correctly, to prevent stale pricing. The problem: fund managers themselves engage in the practice, and so they are reluctant to adopt these innovations. The solution?: Enforce current laws, already on the books.

See also my earlier post, on how much the mutual fund scandals cost investors.

Yes, Kasparov comes back to take the third game from Fritz. Here is the link.

The computer played weakly and aimlessly throughout, showing that the machines are still often inept at positional play and strategic thinking. Kasparov, after a horrid blunder in game two, was masterful. The machines have not yet taken over!

The bottom line so far: In the first two games the machine pulled out a draw and a win, largely because Kasparov committed uncharacteristic outright blunders. It is clear that the machine is not capable of outplaying Kasparov from scratch. The deciding game is this Tuesday, and it is up to Kasparov, who will have black, whether he should play for a win, and thus risk losing, or settle for a draw.