voluntaryXchange

Micro vs. Macro

An interesting alternative set of definitions of microeconomics and macroeconomics is posted at Cafe Hayek. In short, micro is about how individuals respond to incentives, and macroeconomics is about tracing out the unintended consequences of those individual responses in large groups.

Couple of Cool Iceland Photos

These were so cool I had to link to them.

Coulda, Shoulda, Woulda

If only I'd known about rule 5.10 (C) (1) - and assuming it applied to softball - I would've faked a more serious injury.

To this day the vX spouse likes to joke about the horrible outcome of the biggest clutch hit I ever made.

It was the summer of 1988, and it was an extremely hot and dry summer in the northeast. It was a playoff game in our co-ed softball league (I said it was a clutch hit, not that it was important in the big scheme of things).

Down by a few runs in the last inning, there I was at the plate - a slapper rather than a power hitter, slow runners on first and second, and one out against a good fielding team - they were just waiting for me to hit into a double play.

Hitting to left was out of the question - their fastest and best fielder was there, and the fence was too far away to risk not hitting it far enough.

So, I picked my spot and clobbered one of the best hits of my life to deep right center field. If I'd hit that one to left I'm sure it would've cleared the fence, but in right center it came down steeply and rolled just a bit. Even so, it was going to be a slow running, almost trotting, run around the bases. Then I rounded second.

On the parched dirt of mid summer the cheap K-Mart base shout out from under my toe. I stumbled once towards third, stumbled again, pushed once more as hard as I could to get my center of gravity going back up instead of down, and finally belly flopped in front of the shortstop.

Stupid me ... wind knocked out ... bleeding from the mouth ... really dazed pretty badly ... I got up and tried to run to third. For the lack of an outfield fence in center and right field they tagged me out before I got there.

I sat out the rest of the game with the all-over-pain you get from something like a car accident. My 2 RBIs started the rally that won the game - although we lost the next championship the following week. But I looked the fool ...

Now I read about the application of rule 5.10 (C) (1) in the September 14 Red Sox - Blue Jays game. On a home run, the lead runner tore his Achilles tendon on the way from second to third and could not continue. In this case, play is stopped, the injured player is helped from the field, a pinch runner is substituted at the point of injury, and play continues with the players finishing their jog around the bases.

If only I'd known ...

Sexual Harassment Panda Meets Panda Sexual Harassment

The Chinese have put a new twist on a classic South Park episode in which the kids are given instruction on understanding sexual harassment from a man in a panda suit:

"Did you know that when one little panda pulls on another little panda's underwear, that's sexual harassment? That makes me a sa-a-a-a-ad panda"

Now we have this news that the Chinese are going to use satellites to spy on wild pandas sexual liasons.

Via the September 28 Best of the Web Today.

Sea Monster Captured on Film

The first photos of a live adult giant squid in its natural habitat have been released. Over 500 photos were taked over a 4 hour period, 3,000 feet deep, south of Japan. Another photo is here. The length of the animal was around 30 feet offering confirmation of age old visions of sea monsters.

Insurgency and Protests

Check this one out:

You really want to end the infidel occupation? Put down the ANSWER picket sign and book a group tour to Damascus. Flights leave daily, and Delta is Ready When You Are, Moby. We may be running short of martyrs, but we'll make sure to have an eastbound bus waiting for you at the airport.

Read the whole thing at Iowahawk.

Head Rolls In New Orleans

The superintendent of the New Orleans police force just announced his retirement.

This comes within hours of the announcement that the tally of New Orleans police officers who fled their posts during Katrina was 249.

What Happens After Witness Protection

Here's the latest on Henry Hill - he's living "the rest of his life like a schnook" in North Platte, Nebraska. Hill was played by Ray Liotta in the 1990 Martin Scorcese film Goodfellas - based on the broadly biographical book Wiseguy by Nicholas Pileggi.

   

An Opinion About the Mayor of New Orleans

The vX dad called last night. He'd been watching MSNBC, and he said that my former colleague Doug Brinkley repeatedly insinuated that the recent decisions made by New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin suggest that he has cracked under the pressure.

I've been looking for a transcript but I have not been able to find one.

P.S. My time and Brinkley's overlapped at the University of New Orleans, and we both flirted with Tulane University. I got an offer - of more prestige, along with a pay cut - which I declined. I wonder if he accepted because he got both?

A Little Wend Trivia

I've been enlightened to another European ethnicity, the Kashubs. They live along the Baltic coast of Poland, particularly in the largish city of Gdynia.

The Kashubs are a Slavic people from northwestern Poland. They still retain their own language, which some regard as a dialect of Polish.

More broadly the Kashubs are part of a Slavic group that lives further west than the Poles, but which speak a similar language from the Lekhitic sub-group of Slavic languages. Collectively these people have been called Wends (particularly in histories of the early middle ages), although the subgroups are the (still existent) Sorbs of Germany, the Kashubs of Poland, their close relatives the until recently identifiable Slovincians of Germany, assimilated Pomeranians of Germany, and the linguistically extinct Polabians from a bit further west in Germany.

I've been fascinated by the linguistic aspects of ethnography since my older brother brought home a college geography text when I was nine.

In this case, I was alerted by the fact that the new leader of Poland, Donald Tusk, is a Kashub.

In this little bit of research I also discovered that one of my favorite authors, Gunter Grass, is a Kashub as well - although his name provides a good example of the Germanization of non-Polish Lekhitic peoples.

P.S. Time to go pester the vX spouse about what she knows about Kashubs. My guess is not much - her family came from Poles who lived predominantly far away south in Austria-Hungary prior to emmigration.

UPDATE: Ethnologue's page on Poland lists Kaszubski as an alternative name for the language of the Kashubs. That brought back memories of a boss I had by that name when I was a janitor at a high school in 1982.