Results for “solve for equilibrium” 136 found
A note on overtourism, solve for the equilibrium
“At the end, this story is just a numbers problem,” Mr. Tourtellot said. He noted that in 1960, when the jet age began, around 25 million international trips were taken. Last year, the number was 1.3 billion.
As for the cities that are the major destinations? They are “the same size they were back in 1959, and they’ll probably stay that way,” he said.
That is from Farhad Manjoo at the NYT.
Solve for the Hilfiger hoodies equilibrium
This week, Tommy Hilfiger introduced Tommy Jeans XPLORE , a new line of clothes and accessories that all come bugged with “smart chip technology,” which tracks how often you wear them and where you go with them on.
There’s even an exclusive game, sort of like Pokémon Go, that you can use to earn rewards like gift cards and concert tickets.
“It’s all of your must-have Tommy Jeans favorites with smart chip technology,” the brand’s website reads…
The company said in its announcement for the line that it hopes the chipped clothes and game will help create a “micro-community of brand ambassadors.” In essence, they’re rewarding you for wearing the products more often.
Here is the story, and for the pointer I thank the excellent Samir Varma.
Solve for the music legal equilibrium
Pop superstar Miley Cyrus now being sued for copyright infringement — with damages potentially hitting $300 million. That is, for one lyric in her hit single, “We Can’t Stop”. The song is from her fourth studio album, Bangerz, released in 2013.
The lawsuit is coming from Michael May, better known as Flourgon, a Jamaican dancehall artist. Flourgon had several Jamaican hit singles in the late 1980s and 1990s, and remains an active performer today.
May alleges that Cyrus ripped off his catch-phase, ‘We Run Things,’ which is actually the name of a song written by May. In “We Can’t Stop,” Cyrus repeats the lyric ‘we run things’ in the chorus.
“We run things/Things don’t run we” are the lyrics of Miley’s single.
In May’s track, the lyrics are: “We run things/Things no run we.”
Here is the full article, via Ted Gioia.
Solve for the equilibrium
In the place of U.S. support, Japan has offered to step in.
“Japan is the only state willing to help India in its Indian Ocean project to develop islands there,” said Abhijit Singh, head of the Maritime Policy Initiative at the Observer Research Foundation, a New Delhi think tank. The reason, he added, is that other nations—notably the U.S.—consider offering such help too provocative to China.
Here is the full WSJ story.
Solve for the equilibrium
In the latest example of marketers entering the living room, Burger King will release television commercials on Tuesday that are intended to prompt voice-activated smart speakers from Google into describing its burgers — after the 15-second spots end.
A video from one of the fast-food chain’s marketing agencies showed the stunt in action: “You’re watching a 15-second Burger King ad, which is unfortunately not enough time to explain all the fresh ingredients in the Whopper sandwich,” the commercial’s actor says. He continues, “But I got an idea. O.K. Google, what is the Whopper burger?” Prompted by the phrase “O.K. Google,” the Google Home device next to the TV in the video lights up, runs a search and states its ingredients.
Here is the story, via the excellent Michael Rosenwald.
Solve for the equilibrium are British people really like this?
The first self-driving cars to be operated by ordinary British drivers will be left deliberately unmarked so that other drivers will not be tempted to “take them on”, a senior car industry executive has revealed.
One of the biggest fears of an ambitious project to lease the first autonomous vehicles to everyday motorists is that other road users might slam on their brakes or drive erratically in order to force the driverless cars into submission, he said.
This is why the first 100 self-driving 4×4 vehicles to be leased to motorists as part of a pilot scheme on busy main roads into London will look no different than other Volvos of the same model, said Erik Coelingh, senior technical leader at Volvo Cars. The scheme will start in 2018.
Americans wouldn’t talk this way:
One driver interviewed for the survey said: “I’ll be overtaking all the time because they’ll be sticking to the rules.”
Another said: “They are going to stop. So you’re going to mug them right off. They’re going to stop and you’re just going to nip around.”
Here is more, via Michelle Dawson.
Addendum: Via Anecdotal, here is an Australian perspective:
Well, I am here to tell you: that’s OK. We’ve all had it drummed into us from infancy that humans bullying cars = bad.
But we can’t let our bourgeois notions of propriety in auto-human interactions stop us from letting out our inner Johnny from Karate Kid.
We must, rather, get on with the vital and necessary work of bullying, haranguing and insulting these contraptions every chance we get. Because I cannot stress this enough: these cars must not be allowed to develop self-esteem.
From another corner of the world, I can tell you that Kiwis do not drive as politely as they talk.
Solve for the equilibrium
Most people assume a degree in the arts is no guarantee of riches. Now there is evidence that such graduates also rack up the most student-loan debt.
A Wall Street Journal analysis of new Department of Education data shows that median debt loads at schools specializing in art, music and design average $21,576, which works out to a loan payment of about $248 a month. That is a heavy burden, considering that salaries for graduates of such schools with five or fewer years’ experience cluster around $40,000, according to PayScale.com.
The story is here. And here is some sad news in particular:
New York’s Manhattan School of Music had the second-highest median debt load, at $47,000. Graduates with up to five years’ experience earn an average of $42,700, according to PayScale.
Which school is number one?:
Among the 4,000 colleges and universities in the federal database, the Creative Center in Omaha, Neb., a for-profit school that offers a three-year bachelor’s in fine arts, had the highest average debt load, at $52,035. Median pay for graduates of the school with five or fewer years’ experience is $31,400, according to PayScale.com.
I say that’s a school in future financial trouble.
Solve for the equilibrium
An environmental entrepreneur whose plan to dump iron in a patch of the Pacific Ocean was shelved four years ago after a scientific outcry has gone ahead with a similar experiment without any academic or government oversight, startling and unnerving marine researchers.
…The entrepreneur, Russ George, said his team scattered 100 tons of iron dust in mid-July in the Pacific several hundred miles west of the islands of Haida Gwaii, in northern British Columbia, in a $2.5 million project financed by a native Canadian group.
The story is here.
Solve for the equilibrium
The job categories projected to grow over the next decade include nursing, home health care and child care. Of the 15 categories projected to grow the fastest by 2016 — among them sales, teaching, accounting, custodial services and customer service — 12 are dominated by women. These are not necessarily the most desirable or highest-paying jobs. But they do provide a reliable source of employment and a ladder up to the middle class. It used to be that in working-class America, men earned significantly more than women. Now in that segment of the population, the gap between men and women is shrinking faster than in any other, according to June Carbone, an author of “Red Families v. Blue Families.”
From Hanna Rosin, here is more. And:
More important than the particular jobs available, which are always in flux, is a person’s willingness to adapt to a changing economy. These days that usually requires going to college or getting some job retraining, which women are generally more willing to do. Two-thirds of the students at the local community college are women, which is fairly typical of the gender breakdown in community colleges throughout the country.
Here is a description of one equilibrium:
The former Russell [a now-closed manufacturing firm] men are sometimes categorized by people in town as one of three types: the “transients,” who drive as far as three hours to Montgomery for work and never make it home for dinner; the “domestics,” who idle at the house during the day, looking for work; and the “gophers,” who drive their wives to and from work, spending the hours in between hunting or fishing.
The article is interesting throughout. The new Hanna Rosin book is here.
Please solve for the equilibrium
That’s what some environmentalists said they feared when Planktos, a
California-based concern, announced it would embark on a private effort
to fertilize part of the South Atlantic with iron, in hopes of
producing carbon-absorbing plankton blooms that the company could
market as carbon offsets. Countries bound by the London Convention, an
international treaty governing dumping at sea, issued a “statement of
concern” about the work and a United Nations
group called for a moratorium, but it is not clear what would have
happened had Planktos not abandoned the effort for lack of money.
Here is the whole story.
What is the equilibrium in higher education policy?
That is the topic of my Bloomberg column, here goes:
Critics of the policy see it as rewarding Democratic supporters and interest groups, including university faculty and administrators but most of all students. This perception, regardless of whether it’s true, will influence political behavior…
Republicans, when they hold political power, are likely to strike back. They may be more interested in draining the sector of revenue. The simplest way of doing this would be to limit tuition hikes in state universities. De facto tuition caps are already common, but they may become tighter and more explicit, especially in red and purple states. Such policies might also prove popular with voters, especially during a time of high inflation.
A second set of reforms might limit the ability of public universities to spend money on hiring more administrators, including people who work on so-called DEI issues. Given the fungibility of funds, and the ability of administrators to retitle new positions, such restrictions may not be entirely enforceable. Still, they would mean less autonomy for public universities as policy in many states tried to counteract their current leftward swing.
Another possible reform could tie funding for a school or major to the future earnings of graduates. That likely would penalize the humanities, which already tend to be one of the more politicized segments of the modern university…
Longer-term, a future Republican administration might decide to restructure the entire system of federal student loans. How about making student loans dischargeable through normal bankruptcy proceedings? That might sound like a pretty unremarkable idea to most voters, and many economists, including Larry Summers, favor it. It would also allow for some measure of debt relief without extending it to the solvent and the well-off.
Still, the long-term consequences of this reform would probably lead to a significant contraction of lending. Most enrolled students do not in fact finish college, and many of them end up with low net worth yet tens of thousands of dollars of debt. (By one estimate, the net worth of the median American below age 35 is $13,900.) So the incentives to declare bankruptcy could be relatively high. This would make federal student loans a more costly and less appealing proposition. Private lenders would be more wary as well. Higher education would likely contract.
The net effect of the president’s loan-forgiveness initiative — which is an executive order and thus does not have an enduring legislative majority behind it — could amount to a one-time benefit for students, no impact on rising educational costs, and the intensification of the culture wars over higher education.
Sad but true.
What does equilibrium look like for the book business?
Adam Davidson offers some interesting remarks. My take is a little more radical. I expect two or three major publishers, with stacked names (“Penguin Random House”), and they will be owned by Google, Apple, Amazon, and possibly Facebook, or their successors, which perhaps would make it “Apple Penguin Random House.” Those companies have lots of cash, amazing marketing penetration, potential synergies with marketing content they own, and very strong desires to remain focal in the eyes of their customer base. They could buy up a major publisher without running solvency risk. For instance Amazon revenues are about twelve times those of a merged Penguin Random House and arguably that gap will grow.
There is no hurry, as the tech companies are waiting to buy the content companies, including the booksellers, on the cheap. Furthermore, the acquirers don’t see it as their mission to make the previous business models of those content companies work. They will wait.
Did I mention that the tech companies will own some on-line education too? EduTexts embedded in iPads will be a bigger deal than it is today, and other forms of on-line or App-based content will be given away for free, or cheaply, to sell texts and learning materials through electronic delivery.
Much of the book market will be a loss leader to support the focality of massively profitable web portals and EduTexts and related offerings.
There is this funny thing called antitrust law, but I think these companies are popular enough, and associated closely enough with cool products — and sometimes cheap products — to get away with this.
The equilibrium (with apologies to Daniel Klein)
On September 5, the first Sleeping Beauty in Polataiko’s exhibition awoke to a kiss from another woman. Both of them were surprised. Polataiko shot photos of them laughing and looking at each other. Then he posted the images to his Facebook profile, where he has been live-blogging the entire event. Now the Sleeping Beauty must wed her “prince,” thus queering the historically heteronormative fairtytale. Gay marriage is not allowed in the Ukraine, however, so these two women will have to wed in a European country that does allow for same-sex marriage.
Here is more. I believe that none of you had solved for this equilibrium. For the pointer I thank Eapen.
Mongol
Matt Yglesias offers a good review of this excellent movie, which chronicles the early life of Genghis Khan, or one vision thereof. There are at least two increasing returns to scale mechanisms in this movie. First, leadership is focal, which tends to bind groups together and make concentrated rule possible. Winning battles makes you focal and winning larger battles makes you focal across larger groups. Second, if you walk or ride alone in the countryside, you will be snatched or plundered. That causes people to live in settlements and also larger cities. Put those mechanisms together, solve for equilibrium, and eventually one guy rules a very large kingdom and you get some semblance of free trade. Sooner or later, that is. The movie brings you only part of the way there and I believe a sequel is in the works.
The University presidents
Here is three and a half minutes of their testimony before Congress. Worth a watch, if you haven’t already. I have viewed some other segments as well, none of them impressive. I can’t bring myself to sit through the whole thing.
I don’t doubt that I would find their actual views on world affairs highly objectionable, but that is not why I am here today. Here are a few other points:
1. Their entire testimony is ruled by their lawyers, by their fear that their universities might be sued, and their need to placate internal interest groups. That is a major problem, in addition to their unwillingness to condemn various forms of rhetoric for violating their codes of conduct. As Katherine Boyle stated: “This is Rule by HR Department and it gets dark very fast.”
How do you think that affects the quality of their other decisions? The perceptions and incentives of their subordinates?
2. They are all in a defensive crouch. None of them are good on TV. None of them are good in front of Congress. They have ended up disgracing their universities, in front of massive audiences (the largest they ever will have?), simply for the end goal of maintaining a kind of (illusory?) maximum defensibility for their positions within their universities. At that they are too skilled.
How do you think that affects the quality of their other decisions? The perceptions and incentives of their subordinates?
What do you think about the mechanisms that led these particular individuals to be selected for top leadership positions?
3. Not one came close to admitting how hypocritical private university policies are on free speech. You can call for Intifada but cannot express say various opinions about trans individuals. Not de facto. Whether you think they should or not, none of these universities comes close to enforcing “First Amendment standards” for speech, even off-campus speech for their faculty, students, and affiliates.
What do you think that says about the quality and forthrightness of their other decisions? Of the subsequent perceptions and incentives of their subordinates?
What do you think about the mechanisms that led this particular equilibrium to evolve?
Overall this was a dark day for American higher education. I want you to keep in mind that the incentives you saw on display rule so many other parts of the system, albeit usually invisibly. Don’t forget that. These university presidents have solved for what they think is the equilibrium, and it ain’t pretty.