My wife had knee surgery recently.* One of the great things about our then-current health insurer is that they provide complete data—list price, what they negotiated, what they paid, what you owe. Since we’re in the “doughnut hole,” I’m tracking more frequently than I usually would. And the bills—possibly because we were moving to a […]
Around 6:00 or 7:00a.m. tomorrow, we should know if if Rev. Camping is correct or liable to be sued. This time. (He must read Frederic Sheehan.) I’m lucky; I get to spend most of the time at a swim meet. For the rest of you, just in case, a selection featuring Mr. Tom Waits:
One of my favorite paper presentations ever was by Daniel Parent, who is a good enough reason in himself for pending Labor Economists to apply to HEC. He was trying to present data on income inequalities in the Financial Services industry and was forced to note—all right, I asked—that they didn’t have the data to […]
Excess Rents Datapoint of the Day: Since the NYT doesn’t pay Paul Krugman for his blog posts, why should reading those count as part of the “20 free articles” non-subscribers are allowed? I want the Grapelli track, but not enough to pay for a six-CD set. This—built by government employees—is the greatest accomplishment in music […]
The only time I personally owned MSFT stock was just after Thomas Penfield Jackson’s second break-up ruling, when there might have been an upside. I sold it shortly after the Appeals Court nixed the only good idea—breakup—in favor of “let them pay a fine to be determined, and let them dawdle long enough that the […]
Anyone who has ever worked with data knows that making certain the information is “clean” is much more important than what you do with it. Brilliant analysis of inaccurate data may make heroes (Chamley, Prescott, etc.), but it doesn’t make sensible policy. Witness the release of “public” data from the state of Texas. Jeremy once […]
For Mother’s Day, as it were, xkcd presents The Lawrence H. Summers Memorial History of Math and Science. Buce at Underbelly does this, probably saving me the trouble of a post. (Consider this a SlothBear moment.) The problem I want Drek the Uninteresting—or anyone else who knows the research—to address: if we assume that mercury […]
From his column in today’s FT: Even this is too simple, once one allows for banking: Ireland’s net debt was a mere 12% of GDP in 2007 In other words, in FT World, privatizing the profit and socializing the risk is A Great Idea that deserves the full support of the government.
Sadly noting that Lawrance G. Lux has declared that his blog is at an end. It does not take great skill reading between the lines to know that the blog is not the only thing nearing its end. This post seems to come from a happier time, not just a month ago.
Hoocoodanode that replacing someone described as “too Professorial” with someone whose concept of True Patriot Love was to spend the time of the Life of Legendary Jesus out of the country (being a Torture Apologist from the comfort of Cambridge, Mass while Maher Arar traveled different roads) and then act upon his return as if […]