Nobel Prize in Economics

Paul Milgrom (one of the authors of our textbook) shared the prize with Robert Wilson.  You can read the announcement here.

Not a quiz, but.....

This one I posted in Facebook back in 2013.  It is still apropos.

le début des vacances
twas five days before christmas and wielding a grin,
lanny was happy 'cause he got his grades in.

Happy holidays to one and all. 

Bah, Humbug. Scrooge was an economist!

When gift exchange goes awry.  For your amusement only.  I thought you'd find the title of this piece interesting.  There is an economics paper  published in the American Economic Review (the top journal in the U.S.) back in 1993 that got all of this started.  You can find the paper here.

The Economics of Wasteful Spending: The Deadweight Loss of Christmas | PBS NewsHour via kwout

Not Course Related - I need some advice

My sister is turning 70 in 4 weeks.  I need an original idea for a present for her.  All thoughts on the matter are welcome as comments or send me email.

A little humor and....

.... if you've never seen it before an essential part of anyone's education about American culture.

A Few Oddities (Instead of a Quiz)

Longest Palindrome in English - A palindrome reads the same forward and backward (ignoring the punctuation and capitalizations).

Doc note.  I dissent.  A fast never prevents a fatness.  I diet on cod.

Paul's Law - Very useful for parents with young children.

You can't fall off the floor!

Theorem:  All horses have an infinite number of legs.

Lemma:  All horses have the same color.

Proof of Theorem: Take your average horse. It has two hind legs and forelegs. That makes six legs. Six is an even number, but it's an odd number of legs for a horse. The only other number that is both even and odd is infinity. So a horse has an infinite number of legs. You may say you can find a horse with other than an infinite number of legs. But by the lemma - That must be a horse of a different color.

End of Holiday Quiz

Many of you have an IT interest so I thought this one was appropriate.

Q: How many software engineers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: None.  It's a hardware problem.

I got this one from my son, who is a software engineer.  If you want to contribute jokes to the class collection, you must get over the bar set by this joke.  (I hope that doesn't discourage you.)

Has anyone in the class seen, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood?

If you have seen it (a description is here) I wonder whether you liked it and, if so, why.  I'd also be interested to know if you watched Mr. Rogers at all when you were a kid. 

This past weekend I've read several pieces that are related.  In the New York Times Magazine there was a long piece about The Mr. Rogers No One Saw.  Within that piece there is a link to another Magazine piece about Tom Hanks, who plays Mr. Rogers in the movie.  Apparently, Tom Hanks is a really good guy, off the screen as well as on it.  The article is called, This Tom Hanks Story Will Help You Feel Less Bad.   The there is the article from 1998 in Esquire Magazine on which the movie is based called Can You Say...Hero?   I'm guessing this is getting such a splash now because people are desperate for some good news.  I did find it heartwarming to read these pieces. 

Holiday Quiz

This one is about Star Trek, the Original TV Show, the Motion Picture,  and the various sequels.

Q: How many ears does Captain Kirk have?
A: Three.  The left ear, the right ear, and the final front ear.  ;-)

Happy Thanksgiving.

Today's Quiz

Then there was the Bigger family with Mr. Bigger, Mrs. Bigger and baby Bigger.

Q: Who was bigger?
A: Baby Bigger, because she was a little Bigger.

Today's Quiz

They are selling academic brains in Heaven.  Historian brains are $10/ounce.  Physicist brains are $8/ounce.  Economist brains are $1,000/ounce.

Q:  $1,000/ounce!  Why so expensive?
A: It takes a lot of economists to get an ounce of brains.

(Supply side humor.)

Today's Quiz

In France they make an omelette with only one egg.
Q: Do you know why?
A: Because in France one egg is un oeuf.

Some Possible Lessons for Us from Movies and TV

Recently I've been watching a series on Netflix called The Kominsky Method.  The lead character, played by Michael Douglas, is a former well-known movie actor, who now runs his own school for fledgling actors to teach them their craft.  He's also quite an old man.  And his agent, played by Alan Arkin, is even older.  The show is a comedy, which a mixture of old-man humor and the humor in teaching students when there is such a large age difference between them and the teacher, also humor about acting in particular and the need to be original rather than simply to a remake of what somebody else had already done. I found all of this interesting and somewhat related to our class.  It occurred to me that we should turn our class into a comedy or make a comedy about our class?  If anyone has ideas on this score you can write them in a blog post rather than write to the current prompt.  If you do this, have fun with it.  I think we all need some levity now.

The other item is an opinion piece by Martin Scorsese in today's New York Times.  Scorsese is a very well known director.  Recently, he had given an interview where he commented, "Marvel movies are not cinema." That caused quite a stir.  The opinion piece explains and defends that comment. While Scorsese is 12 years my senior, we both grew up in Queens, New York, and quite likely have similar sensibilities on a variety of matters as a consequence.  If you read this piece, you might find it remarkably similar to what I argued in class on October 29, that blockbusters have crowded out the more interesting movies.  I will say there is one part of Scorsese's argument that I don't buy into.  He says that movie makers want to have audiences watch their movies on the big screen in theaters.  If I were half my age, I might agree with that.  For me, however, I want to be physically comfortable when I'm watching something that might interest me.  That often doesn't happen when I'm at a theater.  I'd rather be sitting in my own furniture and on my own screen, so I can be comfortable.  And dare I say this, it matters to me that I can pause the movie when I need to, for whatever reason.  That caveat notwithstanding, the rest of what he wrote gave me a sense of deja vu.  If you read his piece and you were in class on October 29, I wonder if you experience a similar sensation.

In case you are looking for Halloween ideas for economists

This picture is from 1955.  Arnold Harberger is in a get up as Triangle Man.  This was in the first course in graduate microeconomic theory at the University of Chicago.

A Little Bit of Math Humor

It's that time of year

You've got to take the world seriously.

Go Yankees!  

Some follow up items to class today

First, the responses to the survey about which class produced the most learning for you coupled with your answers can be found here. The identifying information is removed, so if you want to share with others you are free to do so.  I thought the variety in responses was itself interesting.  You have different criteria by which to evaluate when a learning situation is good for you.

Second, some students had trouble setting up their blogs because they were somehow still into their campus accounts.  Overhearing them, they tried it with an anonymous Web page.  I'm not sure what the means.  If they want to elaborate on this they can do so as a comment to this post.

Third, I found myself shouting so that you could hear me in class, but at the end of the session my throat was hurting.  As I had pneumonia in the spring, I'm not wanting a repeat of that.  I have requested from the AV people to see if they have a microphone I can use that would amplify my voice through the room sound system.  That is plan A.  Plan B is that I might record chunks of presentation to play so I can take a break from shouting and you hear the recording for a few minutes, then we resume.  Plan C might be one of you, or a group of you, running the session instead of me.  Are there any volunteers for that? 

Fourth, I seem to always forget to do something I had prepared for in advance.  Have any of you seen the movie The Paper Chase, which came out in the early 1970s?  (There was a subsequent TV show based on the movie.)  Indirectly that movie had an impact on how I conduct class.  For now, let me ask this question.  Which is better for learning, a formal approach where I call you Miss or Mr. along with your last name, or an informal approach where I call you by your first name?   Can you justify your answer based on issues we've already talked about in class?  Let's start with this one on Thursday.

Fifth, on my trying to match names with faces, today I had more success with the women than with the men.  While I applaud the guys growing beards, I've had mine for quite a while now, it makes you harder to distinguish from one another.  I'll eventually get this, but it might take a bit longer than I expected.

A Necessary Part of Every Econ Student's Education

Found here

A Little Nostalgia About Me

This post might be most interesting for what's in the sidebar on the lower right, which gives how I described myself to people who came to my blog back then (August 2006).  At the time the blog was hosted on a campus site, a server meant for other functions.  I had to move the blog when that server shut down.

Skinning a cat (found at the Wayback Machine)

Sarcasm and Humor in a Bundle

Important stuff they won't teach you in Business School.

Murphy's Laws of Middle Management