Category: Television

Why do vampires attract so many readers and viewers?

by  Tyler Cowen in

Here is a WaPo piece which suggests it has to do with the transition from adolescence.  I recall another piece suggesting it had to do with the female fascination with gay men (is there one?).

Vampires are hardly "my thing," but I do like early Anne Rice, The Night Stalker, Herzog's Nosferatu, and I thought Coppola's Dracula movie was better than its reviews.  On the other hand, I couldn't get five pages into Twilight.  (Should I try True Blood?)

I believe vampire books and movies offer a few attractions:

1. You know from the beginning that the plot twists will have to be extreme.  Few movie makers offer up vampires who think pensively, talk inordinately, and live out ambiguous endings, sitting around in coffee shops.  A real vampire story is going to deal with death.

2. We are fascinated with the idea that people may be something other than what they appear to be.  You will notice that discovery and detection of vampires often plays a key role in the plot lines, sometimes commanding an inordinate amount of attention.

3. Vampire stories offer a platform for exploring the theme of pure, limitless, and eternal desire, yet without encountering the absurdities that might result from planting that theme in a realistic, real world setting, such as a man who loves cheese studded with raisins above all else.

4. Vampires play "hard to get" with women and they (for a while) embody Old World ideals of chivalry, in a plausible [sic] fashion.  Yet since they are fundamentally different beings, we can enjoy watching their strategies while simultaneously distancing ourselves from them.

5. Men may like vampire movies for date movies, for uh…priming reasons.  The movies prompt dramatic, emotional reactions in their companions.  Women may feel that such movies "test" how their men respond to highly fraught stories, with a potential for demonstrating protectiveness.  Or vice versa.  

6. Vampires do not seem to mind social disapproval, and in this sense many teens look to them as role models.

7. Some of the popularity is arbitrary with respect to the vampire theme itself.  There is a clustering of production in any successful cultural meme, once that meme gets underway.  You might as well ask why there is so much heavy metal music today.

8. Viewers and readers, who know vampire lore and thus vampire vulnerabilities, feel better informed than the high-status people who, in the drama, are fighting the vampires.

9. There are few successful songs or paintings about vampires, so the story-based aspects of the topic appear to be important in setting their popularity.

Here is an unorthodox answer to the question.

Innumeracy can get you killed

by  Alex Tabarrok in

"Statistically, it is very dangerous, but I have lived here a long time and I don't feel like I'm in any danger."

That is Justin Fenton, the Baltimore Sun's crime correspondent.

The quote comes from a longer article by a British reporter who switched places with his Baltimore counterpart because he wanted to see whether The Wire was accurate.  It is. 

John Stossel is jumping to Fox Business

by  Tyler Cowen in

John Stossel, the ABC anchor known for his libertarian bent, is moving to the Fox
Business Network to host a weekly prime-time program. He will also make
regular appearances on the Fox News Channel.

…Mr. Stossel will start work in October, and his weekly program,
named “Stossel,” will begin sometime in the fourth quarter. Fox said
“Stossel” would include news segments and conversations about
“libertarian issues in the United States and abroad,” including
free-market economics and civil liberties.

In a post on his ABC
blog, Mr. Stossel said he wanted to “dig into the meaning of the words
‘liberty’ and ‘limited government’ ” on the program.

“ABC enabled me to do some of that, but Fox offers me more air time and a new challenge,” he added.

The story is here.  I thank Yana for the pointer.

The Power of the Poor: Blog Contest

by  Alex Tabarrok in

On October 8, PBS will be showing, The Power of the Poor, a new documentary featuring the great Hernando de Soto and from the team that brought you Free to Choose.  You can see a preview below.  To increase awareness, Free to Choose Media is sponsoring a blog contest on the question:

What institutions can enable the world’s poor to realize their power
and achieve prosperity?

The best blog post–under 500 words–on this theme will receive $250 and a DVD of the show. See the rules for more information. Yours truly will be one of the judges.

Markets in everything: convert the atheist, on Turkish TV

by  Tyler Cowen in

From The Guardian, via Effect Measure:

It sounds like the beginning of a joke: what do you get when you put
a Muslim imam, a Greek Orthodox priest, a rabbi, a Buddhist monk and 10
atheists in the same room?

Viewers of Turkish television will
soon get the punchline when a new game show begins that offers a prize
arguably greater than that offered by Who Wants to be a Millionaire?

Contestants
will ponder whether to believe or not to believe when they pit their
godless convictions against the possibilities of a new relationship
with the almighty on Penitents Compete (Tovbekarlar Yarisiyor
in Turkish), to be broadcast by the Kanal T station. Four spiritual
guides from the different religions will seek to convert at least one
of the 10 atheists in each programme to their faith.

Those
persuaded will be rewarded with a pilgrimage to the spiritual home of
their newly chosen creed – Mecca for Muslims, Jerusalem for Christians
and Jews, and Tibet for Buddhists.

The real prize, of course, is the conversion itself.  But if you are faking it just to win the trip, I believe Islam is at a disadvantage.  By the way, they do "verify" that you are an atheist in the first place, using a panel of eight theologians (are they so hard to fool?), plus they monitor your behavior afterwards to see you truly have become a believer.

Markets in everything

by  Tyler Cowen in

Fake TV:

If you are looking effective, affordable way to deter criminals from breaking into your home at night, the FakeTV Burglar Deterrent is the perfect solution. FakeTV is a plug-in unit about the size of a coffee cup that simulates light output equivalent to a typical 27" TV. A built-in light sensor automatically turns the device on at night and/or when lighting in a room turns black (at 0.5 lux). From outside your home, it looks like someone is home watching TV.

I thank Denis Grosz for the pointer.

BloggingFrozenHeads.TV with Robin Hanson

by  Tyler Cowen in

You'll find it here.  Robin is awesome, as usual, and that is why I am grinning throughout.  The topics are (among others):

Agreeing to Disagree


Tyler vs. Robin on the merits of cryonics (12:23)


Does fiction weaken your grasp of reality? (06:52)


Are economists evil? (12:10)


How to estimate the value of a person’s life (06:04)


Will prediction markets ever really take off? (08:06)


Has fame made Tyler boring? (02:27)

Addendum: Robin and his readers comment here.

Why do people assume that Jim Cramer is smart?

by  Tyler Cowen in

This was the first reader request:

Why do people assume that Jim Cramer is smart? More bluntly: why
does possession of a JD from Harvard Law School signal to people that
they should listen to you?

Surely an economist has some insights into this odd quirk of human nature.

Not everyone assumes that Jim Cramer is smart but in fact Jim Cramer is smart (though his advice is no smarter than that of a monkey's).  Watch the early Jim Cramer and you will see (can anyone find a good YouTube link?).  But take the smartest person you know and put him or her on TV for hours a week, for years, and see what happens.  (See my book What Price Fame?.)  Usually only very smart people get to experience such fates.  Lots of screaming is an added bonus.

I'm not sure that the average person thinks so much of the typical Harvard Law graduate.

Megan McArdle had a good post on the Cramer dust-up with Jon Stewart.

Markets in everything: Boxing Day edition

by  Tyler Cowen in

After years of petty arguments over who gets the prime position in front of the television, West Yorkshire grandmother Bev Stewart was so sick of the Boxing Day sibling squabbles and infighting among her 25 family members, that she auctioned the front-row seat on eBay.

She claimed on the ebay advert that the prime position in her Stockbridge home was “a very comfy and popular item” before opening the auction to all members of her fractious family.

…Nanna Stewart’s daughter-in-law Alexis won the auction with her £13.50, outbidding the 17 other family rivals. Alexis is likely to share the coveted couch with her 11-month-old son Mark for the whole day the Boxing Day.

Nanna Stewart said: "There is always arguing over who gets it, it’s the perfect seat. It is straight in front of the TV and has got the coffee table at the side for you to rest your drink on and the TV remote, so everybody wants to sit there.”

Here is more.  I thank Mark Chambers, a loyal MR reader, for the pointer.

Regulatory accountability

by  Tyler Cowen in

A handful of the agency’s [Office of Thrift Supervision] officials were always on the scene at an
A.I.G. Financial Products branch office in Connecticut, but it is
unclear whether they raised any red flags. Their reports are not made
public and a spokeswoman would not provide details.

Here is the story, interesting throughout.  One response to this anecdote is to think we simply needed more regulators on the scene and indeed on many other scenes as well.  A different response is to conclude that institutions of many different kinds work less well than we used to think.