2006 November | B&G’s Excellent Adventure

Have some fun

November 25th, 2006

Make your own fun and useful warning labels.

And not the low spark kind. As a follow up to the post on traffic management we have an interesting post from Greg Mankiw on a recent recent traffic study which basically showed that properly pricing the traffic externality will result in less driving and thus less traffic.

On one level this seems so obvious - of course if externalities are priced behavior will change. What is so great about this study is just how empirical it is, somewhat dramatic - and readily applicable. Seattle has some of the worst traffic in the nation, and the technology exists at a reasonable price to actually put scheme in to effect that would properly ‘tax’ driving in an efficient way. I’m all for it - if, and only if, the taxes associated with roads/maintenance/etc are reduced accordingly. Oh, and maybe remove the speed traps, that would be nice too.

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Very Black Friday

November 24th, 2006

I think it is called ‘black Friday’ for a reason - mostly because it seems like the worst aspects of human nature come out on this day. Makes me glad to have been at work and not even thinking about being at a store. While there are some tempting deals, I’d rather just wait until I can afford the items and leave it at that. There is no way I would be willing to stand in the cold from 0100 to 0600 just to get a half price monitor or something.

Back to the human nature - seems like people just get rabid for these deals - economics breaks down - these people are no longer ‘rational agents’ - all bets are off. Take a look at the video below and the comments from Digg. I think we should be concerned that a deal on electronics brings significantly more excitement than election day. Maybe the new strategy should be for politicians to skip the lame TV ads and just give people $200 off a HDTV.

G and I made our best efforts to stay away from shops, and G celebrated Buy Nothing Day. I almost did, but got hungry and bought some snacks from the vending machine. I think vending machine snacks don’t really count - people get hungry y’know.

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A solution to our traffic woes?

November 22nd, 2006

Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution has an interesting post about an idea to eliminate traffic signals to reduce congestion.

My first thought was ‘have you seen India?’ - and it turns out I am not alone. A number of comments reflected the same sentiment, but one linked to the video below that shows what I have had so much trouble describing to people about traffic in India. As you watch this, note that the traffic depicted in the video is quite light by Indian standards and could be considered flowing quite nicely. In Chennai the traffic I saw was always much heavier, many more people (in all parts of the road) and many, many more animals. At any rate, take a look.

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The Simpsons are going to Africa…

November 19th, 2006

…but our family is going to Thailand. Just moments ago we booked our flights to Bangkok - and amazingly, on of the tickets was free!

There are going to be a number of very interesting blg posts coming up.

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The evironment is fine

November 17th, 2006

Contrary to what I may have led some people to believe in this post about the environment apparently the earth is just fine. This comes from the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works - listen here: Think Progress » Inhofe: Don’t Worry About Global Warming Because ‘God’s Still Up There’

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End of an era

November 16th, 2006

Nobel wining economist dead at 94.

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Saving the Earth….

November 15th, 2006

…..one sperm at a time.

That’s right, I said it. The problem we’re facing is not just global warming, but the fact that there are too many people warming the globe. This article on birth control from Ecogeek goes in to it in some detail, not enough detail, but the premise is sound. Basically, the article talks about the fact that the human race is the first, and only to avoid Malthusian Catastrophe - which should have confined humanity to much smaller population.

Somehow, we have taken the natural challenges we have faced and invented ways to avoid this doom. Fertilizers, tools, GMO crops - we’re finding ways to defy what appears to be a simple natural law: a group can only grow as much as the food supply allows. Where other species lose population to lack of food supply, humans find ingenious ways to increase the food supply to match our growth.

So, I guess on one level, I have to agree with the article, not having children has a greater environmental impact than driving a hybrid or a SUV, than being vegetarian or following the Atkins diet - and there is no way to be ‘carbon neutral’ if you have kids (sorry Al Gore). Some people of course need to have kids, or everything falls apart. And my economist self kicks in and reminds me that we are constantly borrowing from the future and if I don’t want the economy to collapse we need positive, or at least neutral population growth, so of course, there is more to it than the environment.

No offense to anyone who’s children will be paying for my future - I appreciate it. But don’t ask me to babysit. Unless you want a drunk baby.

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Passing by

November 15th, 2006

Passing by Hooters on the way to the gym, I was treated to a lovely view of inflexible and obviously uncomfortable 21 year olds trying to spin hula hoops on their orange thighs. That’s right– Hooters waitresses are getting desperate to lure in the customers.

While not an opponent of public hula hooping in general, this little observation made me sad… To quote BK: