Turns out eBay is useful for something

Somewhat counter-intuitively, it has lowered the looting of antiquities.

Fine by me, although I am rather unsentimental, and don't really care about the age or province of something to begin with (I'm trying to think if that's really true. I think it is).

The picture frame matters alot

Here's something to keep in mind with the relentless news cycle about how bad everything is: It isn't that bad. Yes, things are messed up and I appreciate that this is done to advance the political agenda, but the Hooverville "crisis" talk is way out of proportion and I suspect that the unintended consequences of our remedies will be more of a problem than the problems they are intended to fix.

In fact, my rule, if it doesn't exist already, is that social planning's intended and unintended consequences are comparable, and the way to bet is that the outcome is that it won't be better than you expect. Or, to put it glibly, government is kinda like chemotherapy.

NYCotD

[stolen from]

P.J.

Fairness, idealism, and other atrocities...

Classy

How Class Works (big caveat: According to the NY Times)

This is fun, but I strongly disagree that class is determined by education and income percentiles. Suggesting that your wealth only depends on your relative standing is asinine in an age where the major problems in most people's lives is that they eat too much in order to distract themselves from the ennui of owning too many things. Likewise, advanced degrees are not some unalloyed good. Cracker please. The unexamined thinking that went into this presentation has a blind spot that an Escalade could hide in, or at least a Lexus.

The one surprising thing is that their poll says people are much more optimistic than I expected. As usual, I was optimistically pessimistic. Apparently everyone thinks they are doing great, but not so much for their poor neighbors.

Meta Andy Rooney

Since I'm complaining about people complaining about the internet, let me add that I hate bitchy grammar-cop comments. Down on the comments for that Pad Thai recipe I linked to, someone wrote:

In English we do not say "shrimps". It is always "shrimp", just like "fruit". Please remember this.

Thanks.
Joanna

Argh! Nothing in that post justifies this tone. I don't know the Pad Thai blogger, and she probably doesn't need me sticking up for her, but still!

Anyway, I was happy that someone did:

Dear Joanna,

In civilized society we do not leave curt, nitpicking comments (in English or any other language) on someone else's blog without even thanking them for the recipe they have just shared in generous detail. I'm sure your Thai grammar is absolutely perfect, but that is still no reason to be so persnickety about Pim's English grammar.

Nell

P.S. Also, Joanna, there are circumstances under which "fruits" is the correct word, not "fruit." Look it up.

Or, recently, in response to an irreverent blog entry about Paris on the Economist:

Each time I read an article on FreeExchange, I come across a typo or two. Or maybe a missing auxiliary verb. Or the word "mile" repeated twice. Given the quality of the print edition of the Economist, it is really quite regrettable that the editors should not take extra care to ensure that the same high standard of quality is maintained throughout the newspaper's website. I find it hard to believe that proofreading the posts a few more times would be too much of a burden for the online editors.
Posted by emeraldwhite at January 31, 2007 9:44 PM

Now, I'm all for typo-extermination and brain-fart eradication, but I find it hard to believe that after emeraldwhite carefully proof-read their comment several times to ensure they weren't zinged with the rather common "you made an error in your comment about an error" parry -- that they didn't conclude that they are a complete douchebag. What a weird blind spot. Also, they forgot to add "Harrumph!" at the end.

Harrumph!

The Ivory Tower

Via Greg Mankiw, The Ivory Trade [from The Economist]:

AMERICA is the home of the efficient-market hypothesis, which says financial markets have become so keenly contested that it is impossible for investors to keep beating them. Yet the very universities that peddle this theory so confidently also gleefully undermine it by doing precisely that: over one year and over ten, their endowment funds beat the S&P 500 and hammer most other institutional investors, including pension funds.

The final figures for the most recent fiscal year will be out next week. But according to preliminary numbers from the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO) and TIAA-CREF, a financial-services group, university endowments made an average return of 10.7% in the year to June 30th 2006, net of fees and expenses.

The biggest endowments are big investors: between them, Harvard and Yale have some $50 billion, around one-seventh of the total. They tend to do better than their smaller peers and pretty much everyone else. Indeed, these eggheads even beat the quants. Endowments larger than $1 billion returned 15.2% on average last year, more than the main hedge-fund index (see chart). The best-performing endowment in 2005-06, which belonged to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, gained a handsome 23%. That put it a whisker ahead of Yale's (22.9%), run for more than 20 years by David Swensen.

[...]

According to one former Harvard official, its endowment fund has done so well because it has avoided taking advice from the economics faculty.

Ha ha, but seriously, 10 years isn't a long enough period to really evaulate their above-market performance claims. There are mutual funds which show 15-20% for 10 years, but they eventually crash and burn. Hence the popularity of no-load index funds for long-term investments. Basically, Return = Dividends + Risk. Also, never underestimate the power of compounding interest over a long period of time.

Second, Harvard + Yale = $50 billion, and both private schools I went to have huge endowments. Hence I can't picture myself giving either one a lot of money. There are more important things to do.

Third, this is The Economist. They are always wrong.

Another round on the house

People like to worry about the US deficit because people like to worry, but the truth is it is no big deal. Borrowing money that you invest to make a net profit from is wise. Relax. Have a wine cooler.

Guilty pleasures

1. The Economist: How can they always be wrong? How is that even possible?*

2. Road House vs Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man: Sure, nobody puts baby in a corner, but honestly, Mickey Rourke and Don Johnson had some good chemistry. The Billy Baldwin Leather Terminator Trenchcoat mafia is beyond belief, and the Niponphobic Japanese serving evil yuppie boss with Tia Carrere as secretary of the month is just icing on the cake. Incidentally, these are terrible awful movies.

3. I mention the above two movies because they were on TV last week, in part, because I added HBO back to watch the new season of The Wire. Which isn't a guilty pleasure at all. So far, season four has been not bad, but the last episode was the first to feel like anything is going on and we are already 5 episodes into the show. That hardly makes me feel like I got my money's worth each time I pay my much-higher-than-I-wish-it-was tv bill**. Given that this season is supposed to be about the crumbling inner city school system they are getting way too preachy. They are pretty much playing the straight teacher's union line. McNulty has appeared for a grand total of 15 seconds. Dear The Wire - you are on notice, sir.

4. Volvo's. I'd like to own one someday. It makes no sense.



*Yes, that is subjective, but I'm still right.
**Yes, if I am going to whine about the cost, I could just cancel my DirectTV, but basically it's at the threshold price. I've gone without on and off again the last couple of years. I am hoping that one day omnipresent broadband internet access allows for much cheaper access to shows, although I'm not sure how much room there is to move due to the current market inefficiencies. For what it's worth, I haven't been to the movies in months.

Veritas Airlines

The Economist grows a sense of humor:

GOOD morning, ladies and gentlemen. We are delighted to welcome you aboard Veritas Airways, the airline that tells it like it is. Please ensure that your seat belt is fastened, your seat back is upright and your tray-table is stowed. At Veritas Airways, your safety is our first priority. Actually, that is not quite true: if it were, our seats would be rear-facing, like those in military aircraft, since they are safer in the event of an emergency landing. But then hardly anybody would buy our tickets and we would go bust. More

If this follows the NY Times/GM protocol, we should hear a response from the FAA about something called Veritas Magazine...

The dirt on your shoes gives you away

From the Economist's Style Guide [via Greg Mankiw] comes this nice link to The English-to-American Dictionary, just in case you were ever bothered by "centre/center." Much English commentary on American is tinged peevish, considering that when the UK and the USA language diverge, the American form is often older. But I agree about entrée:

entrée n. Everywhere in the world except America this is a word meaning a starter - in America it's a main course. Perhaps because American starters are about the size of everyone else's main courses*.

*People's morals are often only as strict as their options.