The .Plan

When I fly, I am usually struck with the misfortune of being placed next to or behind a person of wide girth. If behind her, then the seat tends to recline a few more inches than normal, squishing my knees or making it impossible for me to use my laptop; if next to him, then he spills over the armrest into my seat, making it impossible for me not to touch him. Hasten the day that airlines implement girth-based pricing.

In the meantime, there are some new devices that will help me in my war to reclaim my personal space on the airplane:

Some companies have devised gizmos to thwart recliners. Among the gadgets are a wedge that fits in with a tray table to restrict seat movement and a car-key size contraption called a “Knee Defender” that slides onto the arms of a seat-back tray and up against the seat, limiting recline. But airlines say they have prohibited use of recline-limiters, which can lead to broken tray tables when passengers push back forcefully.
–Scott McCartney, “Recliners vs. Uprights: Tighter Seating Puts Passengers at Odds”, Wall Street Journal, November 28, 2006

Why is it difficult to find high-quality apples in Seattle?

Back in the days when my father was still in medical school, economists Armen Alchian and William Allen correctly noted in their University Economics textbook that patterns of consumption are determined by relative, not absolute, prices. They therefore reasoned that high transportation costs should lead consumers to shift their consumption towards higher-valued goods. Fourteen years later, Thomas Borcherding and Eugene Silberberg illustrated what is now known as the ‘Alchian-Allen Theorem’ in a paper, published in the Journal of Political Economy, motivating their analysis with an example based on apples — after a local irate apple-eater wrote to the Seattle Times complaining that high quality apples were nowhere to be found:

Suppose, for example, a ‘good’ apple costs 10 cents and a ‘poor’ apple 5 cents locally. Then, since the decision to eat on good apple costs the same as eating two poor apples, we can say that a good apple in essence costs two poor apples. Two good apples cost four poor apples.

Suppose now that it costs 5 cents per apple (any apple) to ship apples East. Then, in the East, good apples will cost 15 cents and poor ones 10 cents each. But now eating two good apples will cost three-not four poor apples.

Though both prices are higher, good apples have become relatively cheaper, and a higher percentage of good apples will consumed in the East than here.

More recently, in the Financial Times, ‘Natasha’ writes in to the ‘Dear Economist’ section to inquire about optimal strategies to keep her long-distance relationship afloat. Tim Harford replies:

Dear Natasha,

I understand your concern, but your future looks bright. A long-distance relationship will always put pressure on both of you, but it’s a question of how you use that to your advantage.

Economist Tyler Cowen, a professor at George Mason University, has pointed out that the Alchian-Allen theorem applies to any long-distance relationship.

The theorem, briefly, implies that Australians drink higher-quality Californian wine than Californians, and vice-versa, because it is only worth the transportation costs for the most expensive wine. Similarly, there is no point in travelling to see your boyfriend for a take-away Indian meal and an evening in front of the telly. To justify the trip’s fixed costs, you will require champagne, sparkling conversation and energetic sex. Insist on it.

Meanwhile, optimal- experimentation theory suggests that at this tender stage of life you are highly likely to meet someone even better. Socialise a lot while your boyfriend is not around.

Finally, consider your bargaining strength with potential new boyfriends with regard to, for instance, who pays for dinner. Your best alternative to a negotiated agreement with the new boyfriend is. your old boyfriend, who by your admission is an excellent catch.

This puts you in a sound negotiating position - unless, of course, the boy is maintaining a long-distance relationship of his own.

Yet another career possibility…

For Debbie Frazier, every day is a dog day. She scoops poop for a living — and makes a killing doing it.

Frazier’s business, called Poop Busters, specializes in low-tech removal of dog waste. She’s been cleaning yards in and around Albuquerque for the better part of 22 years. “It’s hard to beat. You’re outside petting dogs all day,” she told the Albuquerque Tribune. Frazier estimates that she makes more than $100,000 a year, but she said it’s working with the animals that makes her happy. “Dogs are a gift from God,” she said.

Looks like I chose the wrong line of work…

A decade into the practice of medicine, still striving to become “a well regarded physician-scientist,” Robert H. Glassman concluded that he was not making enough money. So he answered an ad in the New England Journal of Medicine from a business consulting firm hiring doctors. And today, after moving on to Wall Street as an adviser on medical investments, he is a multimillionaire…

Just how far he had come from a doctor’s traditional upper-middle-class expectations struck home at the 20th reunion of his college class. By then he was working for Merrill Lynch and soon would become a managing director of health care investment banking.

“There were doctors at the reunion — very, very smart people,” Dr. Glassman recalled in a recent interview. “They went to the top programs, they remained true to their ethics and really had very pure goals. And then they went to the 20th-year reunion and saw that somebody else who was 10 times less smart was making much more money.”

From Andrew Denton’s Nov 6 ‘06 Enough Rope interview with Bono:

BONO: Look, on the God thing, I have to be really careful because I’m not a very good advertisement, and so I don’t want to sit there and — you say I’m a man of faith. I’m sort of, yes — there I am — I just can’t. You know, I just recently read, in one of St Paul’s letters, where it describes all the fruits of the spirit, and there was none of them — I had none of them.

ANDREW DENTON: You fulfil the Christian ideal though.

BONO: I don’t know. I don’t think so. I mean all the commandments are broken and the ones I haven’t I’ve probably wanted to. But, that said, I do have a faith, and it is - it is challenged on a daily basis by what I see in Africa, yes. And, yet, more than that, I have a sense that, really, people are the problem, you know, we’re the problem really. And we blame - God gets a lot of bad press.

The ‘psychological consequences of money‘ study made it into the New York Times:

The researchers say this effect of money is plainly evident in everyday life. People with resources do not recruit friends to help run a party. They hire a caterer. Students with money do not give a moving party with pizza. They hire a mover.

“We know there is a civilizing side to money, that people acting in a self-interested fashion depend on fellow humans in a community and tend to treat them fairly,” said George Loewenstein, a professor of economics and psychology at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. “But this study shows its pernicious side, how the pursuit of money can be isolating.

“This study really came out of the blue. I don’t know of any precedent for this work.”

In the study, people’s personal attributes made little difference. This effect of money on behavior was as strong in women as in men, and it did not change with the students’ backgrounds. Daughters of high-end bankers behaved just like sons of plumbers.

“And none of them realized the studies were about money,” Dr. Vohs said. “It was all unconscious.”

The downside of being the ‘nice intern’ is that, once you develop a reputation for being lax about accepting call trades, everyone and their freaking mother wants to trade with you. This weekend, somehow I traded my way into Q2 call in the PES. Oops.

Someday, I will drive down Jacob’s Ladder in Ben Lomond National Park, Tasmania (a.k.a. Van Diemen’s Land):

Click here for the New York Times’ recent article on tourist-travel in Tasmania.

Experimental results from a marketing/psychology study just published in Science, “The Psychological Consequences of Money“. The researchers ran a series of nine experiments in which they ‘primed’ a random group of participants to think about money (e.g., by showing them stacks of Monopoly money, having them read a text passage about enjoying massive amounts of wealth, showing them a screensaver with dollar bills) and left the other group alone — and then had the two groups of participants carry out specific tasks. Turns out that the mere reminder of money was enough to evoke feelings of indivdualism and self-sufficiency and in general prompt antisocial behavior.

The money-primed participants…

• …were less likely to ask for help with a difficult puzzle task;
  
• …were less likely to volunteer their time to help “an undergraduate student” with a drab coding task;
  
• …were less likely to help clean up a staged accident;
  
• …were less likely to donate money to a charitable fund;
  
• …were more likely to choose individually-focused leisure activities; and
  
• …were more likely to choose to work alone on a project task.
  

Spooky.

Brosnan Bond vs. Craig Bond:

In the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C., there’s an item on display called the “rectal tool kit” that was the object of a mild stir when the museum opened in 2002. (Pictures of the museum piece are not available online, but this image should give you an idea.) It’s a metal capsule about 4 inches tall that was issued to CIA spies on dangerous missions in the 1960s. A friend visiting the exhibit defined this object as the deal breaker par excellence for James Bond wannabes: Sure, you get the international honeys, the briefcase of fun gadgets, and the tricked-out Aston-Martin, but you have to go around with a tube full of minipliers up your butt.

Daniel Craig, the new Agent 007 in Casino Royale (Columbia Pictures), is the first Bond you can imagine actually availing himself of the rectal tool kit. (Sean Connery? Definitely not placing anything in that area. Pierce Brosnan? I don’t even want to think about it.) Craig’s Bond would use the tool kit in a pinch, because he’s hard-core.
–Dana Stevens, “Daniel Craig: the man who would be Bond”, Slate, November 16, 2006

…this is kind of ridiculous:

Best Buy noted on the front page of its nationwide circular ads on Sunday that it would have a minimum of 20 60-gigabyte PS3 models and six 20-gigabyte models per store on Friday. How much each store would have in stock above that allotment was up for speculation.

Jose Mota, 26, of Hayward isn’t worried. He was the first in the line of 33 people who had already camped outside of the Best Buy store in Union City since Tuesday.

The store manager told them to keep the place clean and left the light on for them overnight, he said. The group — now an ad-hoc community — also is conducting a roll call every four hours to make sure everyone still has their places. People are taking turns to go get food or grab a shower.
–“Stores brace for hordes of gamers”, Associated Press, November 16, 2006