The Veins of Bangkok

The Veins of Bangkok, originally uploaded by Stuck in Customs.

McNaught’s Comet

McNaughts Comet Eyre Peninsula South Australia, originally uploaded by john white photos.

Last year McNaught’s comet passed close to the earth. Luckily John White and other photogs were paying attention.

Michael Lewis on the Hidden Economics of Baseball and Football

Russ Roberts does a great interview with Micheal Lewis of Moneyball fame about finding hidden value.

Finally, a TV Shows That Gets the Law Right

For some reason I lose my mind when I watch a TV show that butchers the law. A while ago, on House, I just about threw my TV out the windows when the hospital’s attorney gave some horrendous advice about whether or not consent was needed for an operation. For some reason I can’t suspend disbelief when a show, or a book, mangles the law. So it’s good to see a TV show that actually gets the law right–even if it is 40 years old.

Another Reason I Dislike Sen. Jim Webb

Sen. James Webb gave the Democrats reponse to the State of the Union. What does he use this precious time on most of television sets in America to say? Here’s his first substantive point:

When one looks at the health of our economy, it’s almost as if we are living in two different countries. Some say that things have never been better. The stock market is at an all-time high, and so are corporate profits. But these benefits are not being fairly shared. When I graduated from college, the average corporate CEO made 20 times what the average worker did; today, it’s nearly 400 times. In other words, it takes the average worker more than a year to make the money that his or her boss makes in one day.

Yes, that’s right, “these benefits are not being fairly shared.” Nice work Jim, it’s all about class envy huh? It isn’t about working hard, keeping the rules, and living your own life, it’s all about keeping up with the Jones’. It’s all about envy and hate. Great message!

The Purpose of Government

US Capital

Originally uploaded by 8230This&That.

Andy Grove, the ex-chairman of Intel writes in the WSJ:

The first question that needs to be examined is this: If business’s task is to generate revenue and profits for its owners, what is the equivalent task for a nation and its government? The principal measure is the Gross Domestic Product of the country. Changes in this number are commonly used yardsticks of economic health. Moreover, when one compares two national economies, say the economies of the U.S. and China, the first measure we use in this comparison is GDP. But when we talk of GDP, we must consider not just the GDP of today, but the long-term stability of the productive capacity of our economy. This is how factors like national security enter into the objectives of a government.

I don’t think Grove could be more wrong about the purpose of government. Jefferson had it pretty close when he wrote:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

In other words, government should not be run like to business to create wealth, governments should be created to protect people’s rights.

The political reality however, is that politicians work hard to be re-elected, not to protect people’s rights. And many think they will get reelected by doling out pork to their constituents.

Russ Roberts has a similar argument on Cafe Hayek:

What he [Grove] appears to be saying is that the task of the government is to produce economic health and that the change in GDP is a measure of economic health.

But government can’t have tasks. That’s like saying the task of New York is to do increase property values or cure cancer. How can a diverse group of people with diverse interests have a task?

More importantly, even when you consider politicians individually and not as members of some imagined monolithic willful government, their tasks are very different from the tasks facing the executive in a business. You might hope that a politician cares about a particular issue the way that you. But why would you expect a politician to do so?

Read the rest of Robert’s comments here.

President Bush Hates Pork

President Bush really hates pork. You wouldn’t know that from the text of his State of the Union. He talked about a whole bunch of new spending, so you would think he is a big fan of pork. But oh no! He absolutely despises pigs.

He wants to force American to use 35 billion gallons of renewable and alternative fuels a year by 2017. This is a horrible idea. In 2006 20 percent of the total U.S. corn crop went into making an estimated 5 billion gallon of ethanol. President Bush wants to require us to use 7 times that amount, or 140% of the total US corn crop.

Where are we going to get this corn? Apparently Bush thinks, that “America is on the verge of technological breakthroughs that will enable us to live our lives less dependent on oil.” That may be true, but I doubt it. Carter thought we were on the verge of massive coal liquefaction breakthrough in the late 1970s. After wasting $1.5 billion on the scheme, the experiment was ended in the early 1980s when it became obvious that coal liquefaction technology couldn’t compete with oil.

Like Carter’s coal liquefaction debacle, we will fail in Bush’s ethanol goal. We only have ten years increase our ethanol production by 7 times the current amount. Somehow we need to get cellulosic ethanol and other next-generation biofuel technologies out of the lab, scaled up to commercial size, and producing another 30 billion barrels of ethanol. That’s just crazy talk.

Besides wrecking economic havoc on all Americans who will be forced to pay exorbitant prices for gasoline blended with ethanol, this is bad news for pigs. Pigs eat corn and corn prices are going to skyrocket under Bush’s ridiculous plan. There are few things better than pulled pork from a Boston butt or baby back ribs. But Bush’s scheme will drive up the price of feed and the price of pork. This is a real tragedy (besides the fact that the idea is an affront to common sense).

Actually, the worst part of Bush’s ethanol plan is that it will likely starve many people in the third world. Lester Brown argues:

The competition for grain between the world

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HBO To Turn A Song of Ice and Fire into TV Series

The biggest thing I like about TV and movies today is that studios have realized that they can tell big, long stories. The perfect example is the Lord of the Rings trilogy. But there are a number of examples of longer story telling on TV. Because of DVD sales, TV shows are no longer forced into 21 or 42 minute episodes. Now we have shows like 24, The Wire, Veronica Mars, and Prison Break that tell the stories that don’t fit into nice 42 minute bundles (I would have mentioned Lost, but Lost is an example of a show that has forgotten that it actually needs to tell a larger story).

I have been dreaming of a TV version of my second favorite fantasy epic of all time–George R.R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire.” It turns that out HBO just optioned the rights to the series. I’m pretty excited about that. I really hope it does well because it would provide more opportunities for good long-running story telling.

Martin is not a perfect writer. He needs an editor to cut down his books by a few hundred pages, but he is good. Because he tends to be long-winded and because he includes too many extraneous story lines, it is quite possible that a TV series would be better than the books.

Colbert Explains Cingular’s Name Change

March of the Penguins