1. Why is there sex segregation for cheese rolling?
2. MIE: Groper insurance, for those accused of such behavior on Japanese trains. Talk about moral hazard…
3. Krugman notes on bilateral imbalances, with respect to Germany (pdf).
4. I am interviewed by the Swiss on-line periodical Watson (in German).
5. Over 1200 “covfefe” products on Amazon — “Did you mean: “coffee””?
6. Relatively masculine and relatively feminine activities, across societies.
5. An illustration of the rapid dissemination of innovation in a modern technological society.
This is an interesting situation. I’ve known people like Trump; they make mistakes, they miss things, they are as human as anyone else, but have as we say colloquially a horseshoe up their ass.
An inadvertent typo ends up consuming the best minds of a nation for a week. It tells us all quite a bit about why Trump is there in the first place. In any game you simply have to beat your opponent.
Pfft. It is a comedy break. No one is consumed.
Yeah this is pretty much the same as Obama and the 57 states. Did that derail his plan to turn America into a communist Muslim caliphate? Hardly.
Totally the same. I remember there were headlines from every single major news source. I remember that CNN covered the “57 states” with panels and linguists and experts instead of covering Dennis Miller holding a realistic, bloodied, severed head of President Obama.
Then I woke up.
Thomas has nailed it.
And do you remember the part when Famous Economists wrote posts about how many “57 states” products were being sold online?
Always Google first, man. Always Google first.
https://www.zazzle.com/57+states+tshirts
Oh boy, did Anonymous mess up your snark?
This guy was ahead of us. He crossed the streams a day ago:
“I drove a 1982 #Covfefe through all #57states.” – @Hammy413
Obama beat his political opponents like a drum as well. The fuss over the 57 states was, to quote an expert on political controversies, a nothingburger.
I think the days of a misstep ending a political career was more an indication of the centralized media’s ability to portray a politician to a wide swathe of the electorate. Those days are gone.
Did anyone else here have the urge to mess up Romney’s hair? I’m thankful that I’m in a different country; I probably would have been one of the Secret Service’s statistics if my urge had found an outlet. I like humans as politicians; they are in fact human. Anyone who tries to convince me that they aren’t are simply being dishonest. That cloying smile he had that looked like he was preoccupied with his next bathroom visit was rather annoying. I think Hillary had the same affliction.
You ever hear of Twitter?
I am personally aware of multiple friendships that have ended as a result of the recent election. That is batshit crazy. Way beyond consumed.
That’s a different question. I am saying that “covfefe” is not about serious politics. I mean, I love serious politics re. Trump. Even I could make a “rapid dissemination of innovation in a modern technological society” joke and leave it at that.
And, remember the time he said, “If you like your doctor/insurance, you can keep your doctor/insurance.”? And, when he told us our health care costs would go down,.
I haven’t stopped laughing in six years from those whatchamacallitz.
You should totally have gone with Kathy Griffin.
And in that spirit I will give you a meme, for free. Griffin is a deplorable! No one should defend her or say “I’m a deplorable too!” They should renounce her (if they were ever actually followers). At this point she should just go off to live quietly in the woods and contemplate her errors. Reince Priebus can get a cabin just down the road.
covfefe – “the news as presented by reporters for newspapers or radio or television” in the shrill manner of the fife to lead people away from reality and into a constant state of agitation.
#3 – Krugman jumps on the now fashionable “measurement error” aka Hausmann- Sturzenegger Dark Matter thesis, which was underrated when it came out about a decade ago. Fashion is fashion in economics. One of these days economists will catch up to the “engineer drives the economy endogenously” thesis, which is also underrated, and eventually to the “a better patent policy would increase total factor productivity” thesis, maybe in 50-100 years.
I thought June 1 would never arrive.
3. At his blog, Krugman adds the following to this post: “[A correspondent notes two factors: a technical issue involving the timing of VAT collection, and the advantage of shipping some US containers to a single European destination, typically Rotterdam, then breaking up for different Euro locations; a corresponding shipment to the US wouldn’t raise the same statistical issues.]”
Not sure I understand why the second argument is not symmetric.
By the way I looked at the figures. The US deficit with Germany is 65 billion in 2016, the US surplus with Holland is 24 billion in 2016, with Belgium it is 15 billon. So if we imagine 25% of this surplus is actually surplus with Germany (25% is the share of Germany in Eurozone’s GDP), that makes a real deficit of 55 billion with Germany, still important.
Economically, what Krugman says is interesting, as always. Politically, it doesn’t make any sense, as almost always. Essentially, he says, but without acknowledging it, “Trump is right about Germany’s trade balance which is problematic due to to problematic policies, but instead of giving one figure he should give an array of figures together with a model and an analysis, because this one figure (bilateral trade balance) could be misleading even though, in this case, it is not.”
6. I’m pleased to learn that near the bottom of the list of masculine activities (top of the list of feminine activities) is “preparation of drinks” (I’ll have a gin and tonic with lots of ice, thank you) along with “water fetching” (needed for the ice). At the top of the list for masculine activities is “smelting of ores”. Can anyone enlighten us without a google search. Maybe saying it real fast reveals the meaning. Also up there in masculine activities is “working in bone, horn, shell” and “bonesetting”. Are these real activities or something men have made up to fool their feminine partners?
What I can say is, the generation of fire industry has made a deliberate effort to attract talented women and dodge calls for regulation.
‘denn in Amerika gehören fast alle zu dieser selbstzufriedenen Klasse’
You really, really need to get out more – maybe spend a couple of days out in Charles Town, W.VA It ‘s pretty close to Fairfax, and by West Virginia standards, affluent. Then ask the people you meet in that town of 5,000 if they belong to the complacent class, you know, the ones that never worry about their job or health insurance or retirement benefits. Like university professors have.
Nice job bobbling the point when questioned on this – ‘Aus ökologischer Sicht ist dies eine positive Entwicklung’ Especially as German speaking countries see being a part of a car sharing framework not as a lack of ambition, but simply an intelligent way to spend less while having access to a variety of vehicles, from something like a Smart to something like a Mercedes 7.5 ton van, without needing to own any of them. In a place like Germany, when autonomous autos arrive, already have a business model firmly in place, and it does not look like Uber or private car ownership, either one.
‘Generell haben die Amerikaner die Fähigkeit verloren, sich eine Zukunft vorzustellen, die fundamental anders ist als die Gegenwart.’ Mission accomplished, Prof. Cowen – they cannot imagine a society where cutting taxes is not seen as an intrinsic good, where the rich getting richer is apparently the only permissible goal for society.
‘Uber ist ein billiger Taxidienst, aber keine bahnbrechende Innovation, die alles verändert.’ This columnist might take issue with the complacency of that statement – ‘The real lesson here is an old one, namely that the fight between progress and protection never goes away. Progress is painful to some precisely because it is a big step forward for all the others.’ https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-09-08/computing-the-social-value-of-uber-it-s-high
‘Ob auf dem iPad, YouTube oder Spotify, stets kann ich genau das hören, was ich will.’ Or you could listen to wfmu.org, where one of their proudest boasts is that no one can stand everything that WFMU might play. The strange thing is, more people might share the experience of listening to a person do a free-form show than the number listening to exactly the same (generated) online playlist.
‘sind aber kaum noch daran interessiert, neue Grenzen zu erforschen’ Get back to us in 50 years. We cannot judge what those who follow us value.
‘Ich kenne einige Clinton-Wähler, die keinen einzigen Trump-Wähler persönlich kennen.’ Well, at least Prof. Cowen did not vote for Trump either, even if he knows people who did.
Did you not understand the population/resources question, because talking about America’s interest in having the Earth have a population over 10 biilion seems bizarre. Particularly when coupled with the total lack of humility in this answer, as America seems poised to pull out of the latest climate treaty framework – ‘Wir Amerikaner ticken anders: Wir brauchen grosse Träume und unverantwortliche Projekte, mit denen wir auch scheitern können. Natürlich könnten wir mehr so werden wie die Schweiz oder Dänemark.’ Is it an American blindness not to add ‘damage’ after that ‘we can do more’? (No guarantee on that translation – this whole thing is likely a game of telephone, as there are several hints that suggest this interview was conducted in English. Admittedly, translated into Swiss German, but this exchange ‘Sind die Menschen also träge geworden?/Ich will keine moralischen Urteile fällen.’ makes no sense unless one used the term ‘lazy’ – ‘träge’ is not ‘faul,’ and really does not have a moral component – much like ‘apathetic’ is generally not a moral judgment in comparison to ‘lazy.’)
The issue of language grows more interesting when one thinks that it might just be a strategy to say things in a language that few within your complacent class use, sentences you would never write in English under your own name. With the possibility to always claim a mistranslation (though maybe it is not a Swiss journalistic convention to credit a translator, as it broadly is in Germany?)
Und jetzt, erinnere ich mich zu Deutsche studieren.
#2: interesting that you mention moral hazard rather than adverse selection.
Hey Profe Cowen
how many tongues u talk? I want to speak German
Tongue up fart hole
“We conclude that penises are not best understood as the male sexual organ, or as a male reproductive organ, but instead as an enacted social construct that is both damaging and problematic for society and future generations. The conceptual penis presents significant problems for gender identity and reproductive identity within social and family dynamics, is exclusionary to disenfranchised communities based upon gender or reproductive identity, is an enduring source of abuse for women and other gender-marginalized groups and individuals, is the universal performative source of rape, and is the conceptual driver behind much of climate change.”
Peer-reviewed settled science, folks. Don’t ever deny what a journal in social science says, or Bill Nye will have you arrested.
http://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/conceptual-penis-social-contruct-sokal-style-hoax-on-gender-studies/
Vanity publisher publishes anything you send them for a few bucks. That’s news?
You really do need to get out of your bubble: http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2017/05/conceptual-penis-hoax-just-big-cock/
Point taken. This is a weak hoax.
#3 How Krugmanesque.
Although correctly acknowledging that Trump’s text is absolutely accurate, the US does run a large trade deficit with Germany, Krugman is obviously unaware that taxation and regulation of trade between Germany and EU states is quite different than German trade with non-EU states, nor do all EU member states tax imports from non-EU states uniformly. Not only do US exporters to Germany face the EU common customs duty, they must also pay excise and VAT taxes that can vary significantly. The EU sets minimum excise taxes which EU countries are free to increase as high as they like. Each EU country can fix VAT rates according to the following limits:
– the standard rate may not be less than 15%.
– EU countries may also apply either one or two reduced rates, which should not be less than 5%, and shall only be applied to very specific supplies of goods.
– the Directive allows the application of a reduced rate not lower than 12% (the “parking rate”) for some goods or services.
– it also allows certain EU countries to maintain reduced rates lower than the 5% minimum (super reduced rates).
And that is not to mention the formidable non-tariff barriers Germany erects.
And Germany does in fact have bilateral trade negotiations and agreements with non-EU countries. For example, recent developments with Australia: http://dfat.gov.au/geo/germany/pages/germany-country-brief.aspx
But if you want to know why an exporter would use Rotterdam or Antwerp rather than Hamburg or Dusseldorf, you would want to look at handling charges, transit efficiency, storage capacity, vessel draught, and the population’s purchasing power within the multi-modal redistribution service area. Sorry boys, your macro is meaningless here. And once again President Trump and his tweets are proven vastly superior to the smarty-pants set and the mindless vitriol they pass off as expertise.
#1: for the same reasons that there is age segregation.
6. I was hoping that “Posting on MR” was one of the categories studied.
Uh, I already know the answer, if you pay me $500 I’ll give you a study.
Why is it that a space which does not provide any way to prove gender is gendered? And if your point is that our society doesn’t encourage women to participate in online debate, ask yourself, “would others think better of me if I related to them my habit of arguing on social media?”.
Perhaps if the internet were a utility, we could get a strong application of civil rights to right the wrong of heteropatriachal sexist internet message boards?
It’s not that complicated. This place is a sausage fest because so many of you are total assholes to women.
#2: How long until US college students start buying sexual harassment/assault accusation insurance?
Great minds run in the same direction….
#1 – for the same reason nearly any other running event is sex-segregated perhaps?