voluntaryXchange

Protesters’ Home Teams (On the Left and Right)

Will Wilkinson:

There’s something about the union demonstrations in Madison, and the excitement it has caused on the left, that reminds me of the Tea Party. I think I’ve figured it out what it is. The advent of the labor movement is at the heart of the left’s sacred creation myth. The sense on the left that unions are under siege gives them something to fight for with a bracing sense of historically-rooted identity and moral authority. Similarly, the sense on the right that America’s foundational values are under siege gave the Tea Party something to fight for with a bracing sense of historically-rooted identity and moral authority. Of course, the Tea Party has about as much to do with the values of the American founding as John Adams has to do with Raytheon, and public-sector unionism has about as much to do with preventing worker exploitation as Eugene Debs has to do with unfireable $100,000 a year public-school teachers. But it’s nice to have a team …

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IRS Idiocy

My idiocy first: I did make a big mistake on our joint 2008 taxes. I got mail audited, and when I agreed to my mistake, I called for a total and sent in a big check. They put a little cushion in that total to account for compounding, and sent me back a small refund.‡

First idiocy: now they have sent me a bill for what we already paid.

Second idiocy: they also sent a bill to my wife for the same amount.

Here’s what I want to know: how many couples pay both of them? It would seem to me that this mistake must occur thousands of times a year, and must entail some short-run financial hardship until the duplicate payment is returned.

‡ Even Ph.D’s make mistakes when an item has to be subtracted out, then added back, then have tax calculated on that subtotal, and then have the item added in once more. I missed one of those four, for my own bit of idiocy.

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What Your Favorite Band Says About You — McSweeney’s Version

McSweeney’s:

The Grateful Dead: Your stories about the seventies make your daughter's roommates at Tufts very uncomfortable.

I’m not a fan, but this is so true of the ones I’ve known:

Chicago: You are incapable of talking about Chicago without mentioning their horn section.

No comment:

Allman Brothers Band: You do not own a bong, but can quickly make one from a piece of fruit or an abandoned toilet.

Fleetwood Mac: You have snorted cocaine off a copy of The Hobbit.

Yes: Your ideal partner would be into both tantric sex and fat guys.

Hat tip to MJ.

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Human Land Use History as a Visualization

From ScienceNews — a visualization of how humans have used land since the neolithic period.

Via Paul Kedrosky’s Infectious Greed.

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Ma Bell Infographic

I loved this infographic that appeared in today’s issue of The Wall Street Journal:

It shows the evolution of the 7 baby bells and other phone companies from the mid-80s into the big 3 we see today.

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What Makes Macroeconomics So Hard? The Reciprocity Recognition Deficit

A new addition to my “What Makes Macroeconomics So Hard” list. This one is from Lynne Kiesling at Knowledge Problem. I’ve quoted most of her post, but I’ve added a little bit, as you can see in my skinny.

In short, people fail to recognize reciprocity. I would add that they are more likely to fail to recognize reciprocity when the remaining semi-idea can be painted in a negative light.

Here’s Lynne:

I am listening to an NPR story right now on the conflicts over the construction of the new pipeline to bring Canadian heavy crude oil from the tar sands to the US. Steve Inskeep introduced the story by observing that as Canadian tar sands production increases, US consumers will “become more dependent on Canada”.

This error is more than just a rhetorical one; it’s an error of logic and a failure of basic economic understanding, because it shows that Inskeep and his staff don’t grasp the reciprocity and the mutuality of trade and exchange. You could just as easily say that more oil transactions between US consumers and Canadian producers makes Canada “more dependent on the US” …

Obviously, the reciprocity recognition deficit is a big reason why liberals see no problem with spending increases and conservatives see no problem with tax cuts.

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An App People Don’t Know They Want Yet

It’s called Color.

If you turn it on, and take a picture with your phone, it creates an elastic network with everyone else taking pictures nearby.

What exactly does that mean?

It means you can see their pictures, and vice versa. If you want every picture or video of your kid’s concert, it will be there.

And, because it is a network, you can also stay connected to the people who took those pictures. Not so useful at your kid’s concert, but very useful if you’re a crime victim. But, it’s all anonymous — you can merely text the phone that took the message.

And … the network is temporary … if you stop looking at it, it goes away on its own. Great for a lecture you were having trouble keeping up with.

Color is in development right now, but has attracted VC money already.

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Excel Tip # 15: Restrict Users Free Space

Got a worksheet whose blank space you don’t want users to use for scratch work?

Open your Developer menu† (you may need to add this through Excel Options). Then paste this code into a module for the file (you may need to create one‡).

Private Sub Worksheet_Activate()

  'Set/restrict sheet's scroll area.

  Me.ScrollArea = "A1:G15"

End Sub

One drawback of this is that you will now have to save as an XLSM file, and your users will have to enable macros when they open it.

† To display the Developer Tab, click on the Office 2007 button in upper left corner, then on options, and select Developer.

‡ Click the Developer tab, then “Visual Basic”. A window will open. On the left, right-click VBAProject and choose “Insert” then “Module”. Paste the code above into the new window that opens.

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How the Pac-Man Ghosts Work

Via Brian Gongol and Yahoo Games:

When you play the game, it might seem as if the four ghosts are actively chasing you. That's not exactly true. Iwatani intentionally avoided programming them with that purpose, since that would have resulted in Pac-Man zipping around the screen with four ghosts always right behind him.

Instead, it's only Blinky, the red ghost, who doggedly pursues you throughout the game. Pinky, the pink ghost (naturally), simply wants to position itself at a point that's 32 pixels in front of Pac-Man's mouth.  The blue ghost, Inky, is seeking to position itself at a similar fixed spot. And Clyde, the orange ghost, moves completely at random.

Because the player constantly has Pac-Man on the go, however, the ghosts are always changing direction and trying to achieve their goal, which adds to the challenge of the game.

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Scientology and Paul Haggis

Got an hour? Read The New Yorker’s expose on the director Paul Haggis’ decision to leave Scientology (Fair Warning: it’s about 25K words).

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