You Don’t Surpass Simon & Garfunkel If You Don’t Take Chances
[UPDATE below.]
Not even sure how I stumbled upon this… It’s definitely time for night-night:
UPDATE: This is freaky. The thing that actually led me to the above video, was an SCTV clip featuring Hall & Oates singing “Did It in a Minute.” Turns out the guy who posted that YouTube was none other than our own Bob Roddis.
Are Lizard People Bound By an Undercover Cop’s Code?
You know how if you ask an undercover agent, “Are you a cop?” he’s supposed to be truthful? (I don’t know why I believe that, but for some reason I filed that away when I was younger as a “fact.”) Well listen to Louis C.K. interview Donald Rumsfeld, from 2:30 to 4:00.
(HT2 somebody on Tom Woods’ page on Facebook.)
Krugman’s Stately Contradiction
As an old Nickelodeon show would ask: “Kids, fair or unfair?” I accuse, you decide.
Koch Speaks Out
I hadn’t noticed this, but Glenn Greenwald linked to a WSJ op ed by Charles Koch (I’m guessing the name rings a bell with most readers). I wish he would have taken on the accusations more directly, since I like a good brawl (in words of course, not fists), but I imagine his media consultants said it was better to err on the side of too little.
Here’s an interesting line: “In spite of looming bankruptcy, President Obama and many in Congress have tiptoed around the issue of overspending by suggesting relatively minor cuts in mostly discretionary items. There have been few serious proposals for necessary cuts in military and entitlement programs, even though these account for about three-fourths of all federal spending.”
For what it’s worth, I can report that among the right-wing but serious about fiscal issues people, it’s now OK to talk about cutting the military budget. I dipped my toe in the water in non-Auburn circles and it was fine; I confess I would have been afraid to do so in (say) 2005. I think Rand Paul showed everyone that it would be OK to meekly suggest cutting the military budget.
Going back to the Koch piece, he talks about the success of fiscal austerity in Canada. David R. Henderson has done some good work [.pdf]* on popularizing this episode.
* And by “good work,” I mean, “Paul Krugman says it’s stupid and doesn’t count.”
P.S. If you follow Krugman’s link to Stephen Gordon, be warned that Gordon misinterpreted the author affiliation. David R. Henderson does not teach at GMU. (“Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”)
Now I Know Someone Is Messing With Me
Earlier today I expressed my astonishment that Ralph Nader was interviewing Andrew Napolitano on CSPAN about the tyrant Lincoln. I mean, what the heck? That would be like…oh I don’t know… OK I got it: That would be like seeing Alex Jones…on THE VIEW (!!!)…talking about Charlie Sheen (!!!)…who is Alex’s good buddy! Ha ha crazy right?
(HT2 LRC)
UPDATE: Just to clarify, I really mean it when I say I tune out celebrity gossip. I had no idea Charlie Sheen even knew who Alex Jones was, until I saw the above YouTube. I had heard that Sheen had a “radio rant” and his show got canceled for the rest of the season, but that’s it.
On Those Twin/Adoption Studies…
The lynchpin in Caplan’s case that “parents don’t matter” is the evidence from twin/adoption studies. I confess I haven’t delved into them yet, but my arms’ length understanding is that if you look at identical twins who are raised by different families, and then again if you look at children who are totally unrelated genetically and yet were raised by the same parents, then it looks like parenting has very little to do with how the kids turn out.
So here’s my question: On both ends of these studies, we are looking at parents who adopted a kid who wasn’t their biological child, right? I mean, if you’re studying identical twins, then at least one of them is raised by a non-biological parent, and maybe both. And then on the other end, you’re clearly studying adopted kids.
If so, then doesn’t that represent just about the biggest bias in the study you could imagine? What Caplan is saying is that if we focus on people who go out of their way to amplify their parenting on the world, AND whom the relevant authorities deem as worthy parents, then we don’t see much difference in the effects of parenting on the kids.
I would be much more interested in the results of a study that randomly took kids and assigned them to different households. Of course, I would rather remain ignorant than having someone carry out such a study.
Napolitano Not a Fan of Lincoln
Wouldn’t it be neat if, say, you had Andrew Napolitano talking about Abraham Lincoln? Oh, and the person asking him about it was, say, Ralph Nader? (This sounds like a really high-brow Frank Caliendo sketch by this point.) But actually, it happened (HT2 LRC):
Hidden Assumptions in Option Pricing
Here was my response yesterday to Landsburg’s discussion of option pricing. From the conclusion:
Landsburg’s discussion of option pricing is fine, interpreted correctly. But whether he realizes it or not, his “lesson” is very misleading. All he has done is show that certain prices must bear a particular relationship to each other, lest arbitrageurs exploit a pure-profit opportunity.
The problem arises when people read too deeply into the significance of these results. For example, one could use an analogous argument to show that “all we need” to price stocks is to look up the interest rate and the price of a call option. We might erroneously conclude that no investor ever needs to worry about what the stock will actually do in the future.
Yet that is absurd; of course investors and speculators in the real world need to form expectations about the future levels of stock prices. It is the seductive elegance of the entire “Efficient Markets” approach that led Landsburg to suggest otherwise.
The nicest compliment I got was this:
This is of course exactly right, and (as I’d expect from you) exceptionally well put….Thanks for posting this. Your penultimate paragraph is perfect.
And the author of that comment was…Steve Landsburg. Which made it all the more ironic, when others in the discussion thread told me I had misunderstood Landsburg’s argument.
(Something similar happened at EconLog when David R. Henderson agreed that my criticism of one of his posts had been right, and so he retracted his claim. I really am nonplussed when this type of thing happens. I didn’t realize it was possible to resolve an internet argument. Most of the people I debate with are like soldiers on Bataan.)
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