voluntaryXchange

A Provocative Bundling Example

The Nazis had a big anti-smoking campaign.

Social scientists recognize that political parties are collections of - sometimes dissonant - positions.

Economists would call this bundling: something that you can't get a la carte - you must either take or leave the whole package.

The theory of optimal bundling says that you should bundle goods whose demand is negatively correlated, so that you can get buy in from both sides. It makes you wonder if there were any anti-smoking fanatics that joined the Nazi party because of this.

Hat tip to the "Today's Featured Article" section on the Wikipedia home page.

Technorati Tags: smoking,nazi

Pretty Good Evidence for Past Martian Oceans

One more piece of circumstantial evidence has been found that indicates that Mars used to have oceans.

The Mars Odyssey orbiter has shown that there is evidence of leaching of potassium and other minerals out of highlands, and accumulation of them in lowlands.

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Credit Suisse's Interesting Plan

Because the firm is cash-poor but asset-rich, it will be paying bonuses to some executives in the form of rights to future income from assets.

The trick is that some of those assets are the questionable ones that have gotten many financial firms into trouble - bought of course by the same folks now getting the unusual bonuses.

To get these off its books, Credit Suisse has shifted them to another entity, and contracted to pay bonuses out of that entity.

I like this: it feels like the airline requirement put into place after Lockerbie that you must fly with your own luggage.

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Cool Science - Microbiology Edition

Now that they know where to look, they are finding that it is common for animal cells can grow small tubes to communicate with each other.

These tubes can be used to transfer proteins, and organelles like mitochondria.

There is also speculation that they are used by viruses and prions to infect new cells without going outside the cell where the immune system can get at them.

They also seem to be used by cancerous cells to transfer immunity to chemotherapy from one cell to another.

Technorati Tags: nanotubes,animal,cell

Death Map

New Scientist has a panel of county level U.S. maps showing how death rates vary across the country.

Note that these panels show a lot more detail than the link in the HealthDay piece that's been syndicated out to newspapers.

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Cool Science - Memories On Your DNA

Neurons may store memories internally as modifications to DNA.

They figured this out by inhibiting short-term memory formation by blocking a form of DNA modification with a drug.

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Rectitude Chic

That's Peggy Noonan's name for the pervasive mentality. That phrase is a keeper. Enjoy your hairshirt ...

N.B. In a coda to the article she tosses off a great quote about this month's moron-at-large, Rod Blagojevich:

... A lipless, dull-featured, wig-wearing moron with a foul-mouthed harridan of a wife. (Oh, maybe it's not a wig, but I think Chicago should know everyone in New York thinks it is.) The minute I saw him I thought: That's exactly what a guy like that would look like! And then I thought: Oh, God bless him, because it's kind of a gift when things look as they are.

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OMG - It's the Sweeney Sisters

A touring holiday show from The Best of Broadway came to my burg on Friday.

I'm not a critic, but I play one on the internet, so here goes.

Yikes. Beware when you buy tickets to see people who made it to Broadway but couldn't make it stick.

The show began with 2 women in ball gowns, and it was clear that it wasn't a good combination within about a minute. Yes, the words "Sweeney Sisters" came out of our mouths before the first song was done.

The women were joined by two men, and things didn't get better.

All four are obviously talented (particularly the two on piano).

But, they don't go together. I don't know that I've ever seen a group in such dire need of outside artistic direction: as a whole, the thing just doesn't work.

It was made worse by voices trained for Broadway using microphones and the PA system. I've seen Ethel Merman movies that didn't bury the needle like this.

In their defense, this appearance list by one of the performers suggests that they don't actually do this enough to be well practiced, but sheesh, they're also doing rural Utah and rural Kentucky on consecutive nights. I think they need a road manager too.

Technorati Tags: holiday,broadway

LA Times Comes to Southwestern Utah

Yep.

They flew a reporter and a photographer up to St. George, and then had them drive for an hour up to Parowan to report on ...

Wait for it ...

The Parowan Prophet, the man of the doom and gloom billboards himself.

FTNItK: Like most of the others, he seems to have 1) declared himself a prophet when no one else did, and 2) did so because he successfully predicted (rather than predicted successfully) the end of the world.

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The Panic of 1907

My friend Sage reviews this timely book on the Wall Street panic from a century ago.

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