Super!
Ian at Truck and Barter on apartment policies.#
I found a place for a price I was willing to pay and just moved in. During the process of investigating the place, I was told repeatedly that the management company had a hassle-free, 30-day, don't-like-it-you-can-leave-for-free policy. At first I thought, well, ok, that's nice. But I didn't think much about it until later.
Later, of course, when I was considering taking them up on the offer and getting out of the place I now find myself. The apartment is passable, but has some features that, on the margin, would put it below other places I had seen. Of course, I didn't know of these until I moved in.
Which, conveniently or inconveniently depending on which side of the table you're sitting on, is when I thought more about the 30-day policy. While it's pitched as a way to guarantee that "you'll be happy" with your home, it really does something much different: it prevents the management from having to be responsive to situations that are brought up during move-in.
Robert Levy explains What the Supreme Court Really Said about Jose Padilla.#
Godless, on Gene Expression, writes about behavioral economics.#
Similarly, behavioral economics is dedicated to investigating the limitations of homo economicus. Experiments have so far revealed a general trend: humans use heuristics to figure out sub-optimal solutions rather than running a full optimization calculation in their head. Such solutions might have been good in prehistoric environments, but can often be disastrously bad in the modern world. In other words, human economic behavior is limited by human biology.
The failure to incorporate biological and evolutionary thinking is, in my mind, a much more systematic and widespread failure in economics than the failure to use mathematics. The guys who can't do math are rightfully mocked; but the guys (especially in micro) who refuse to do laboratory experiments with experimental subjects should get a share of derision as well. One cannot hope to understand the behavior of millions of humans in a non-laboratory setting if one cannot even predict their response to idealized scenarios in a laboratory setting.
A question I often have: Are there, perhaps, two different variants of economics, the one which attempts to define and study the real decision making process of humans (behavioral and folk economics) and the other which attempt to define and study the ideal decision making process of humans (where comparative advantage, a strange concept comes from) in an attempt to teach the natural mind correct economic calculation?
If so, are they by definition at odds with each other? If not, should this distinction exist? Also, if you disagree that the natural mind can be taught proper economics is there not a precedent with all technology and science--initially the mind seeks to fly by flapping wings but then studies and learns aeroscience.
For names I think Behavioral Economics and Economic Science (or the Development of Economic Technology) fit.
Michael Williams points to evidence that "an armed society is a polite society."#
Doug Miller quotes Kevin Smith, a journalist not film-maker, who says "Other locate it [Atlantis] solely in the long-decayed brain of Plato."#
The iTunes iPod preferences pane?#
Tyler Cowen links to a news release from a Orwellian institute. And, a Google search has just found for me Students FOR an Orwellian Society.#
Students for an Orwellian Society (SOS) is a nationwide student group. Although SOS has always been a nationwide student group, there is evidence to suggest that it first appeared at Columbia University. The mission of SOS is to promote the vision of a society based upon the principles of Ingsoc, first articulated by George Orwell in his prophetic novel, 1984.
"Because 2004 is 20 years too late."
Tyler Cowen links to Liberalism and Pareto Efficiency: Sen's Paradox, by Navin Kartik.#
I have argued that decisiveness is not a necessary condition of liberalism, and this is why Sen's Paradox cannot be interpreted as showing a conflict between liberalism and Paretianism. Where does that leave us? To start, I do not mean to suggest at all that Sen's Paradox is irrelevant for either social choice or the liberal tradition. To the contrary, it raises a host of important issues. Most importantly, it forces us to consider carefully how rights are to be modeled formally. Recent literature has moved away from the social choice framework and instead analyzed liberalism from a game-theoretic perspective. [23] While I do believe that this a very fruitful approach, I also think there is much to be gained from further analysis in social choice theory. [24] My thesis in this article, that decisiveness is not a necessary condition for liberalism, suggests an interesting line of research: can one find a precise characterization of when decisiveness does correspond with rights and when it does not? I have hinted that this has to do with independence and exercising rights naively, but these are complicated issues that beg for further consideration. Notwithstanding, social choice theory provides an analytic structure for systematically exploring how collective decisions are made, and this after all is at the heart of the liberal tradition. Sen's Paradox is one important example of the sorts of issues that we are able to understand more precisely and discuss intelligently in this framework.
Andrew Moroz quotes (?) Why God Never Received Tenure at Any University.#
Novelist, poet, and playwright, known for his detailed descriptions about the everyday live in Russia in the 19th century. Turgenev portrayed realistically the peasantry and the rising intelligentsia in its attempt to move the country into a new age. Although Turgenev has been overshadowed by his contemporaries Fyodor Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy, he remains one of the major figures of the 19th-century Russian literature.
A nice quote:
"Whatever a man prays for, he prays for a miracle. Every prayer reduces itself to this: Great God, grant that twice two be not four." (from Fathers and Sons)
Kool Keith - aka Rhythm X, aka Dr. Octagon, aka Dr. Dooom (who killed Dr, Octagon), aka Mr. Gerbik (the 208-year-old uncle of Dr. Octagon-half shark/alligator, half man), aka Black Elvis (his latest persona) - is one of hip-hop's most creative artists. He has as many styles and flavors as he does names and here you can find the dopest of the dope on this former member of Bronx's Ultramagnetic MCs.
Halfsharkalligatorhalfman lyrics
With my white eyes, gray hair, face is sky-blue yellow
Sideburns react, my skin is colored lilac
My skin turn orange and green in the limousine
People think I'm mixed with shark, drinking gasoline
Underwater I breathe and let loose on my sleeve
Walking down hollywood boulevard with a credit card
Three alligators behind me, feel my skin is hard
Transvestites, and people watch space parasites
I left his head in the store, legs in the street
Body in wilcox, with blood dripping off my feet
L.a.p.d. through gray clouds couldn't see me
I first turned rainbow, closed my eyes, watch my brain glow
People got scared and ranned away they think I'm weird
I was born this way, halfsharkalligator
Is he weird? ?