voluntaryXchange

You Can’t Make This Stuff Up

Tyler Cowen:

My hotel toilet is complicated and I am afraid to press the one button which simply says “Enema.”

No shit?

(Yes … pun intended).

Technorati Tags: tyler,cowen,south,korea,toilet

What Is a Surface Good For? An Interesting Perspective

Matt Baxter-Reynolds argues that Microsoft’s new Surface tablet isn’t really about competing with the iPad. It’s about being able to use Microsoft Office on a tablet.

With the kickstand out, Type Cover keyboard deployed, and Word fired up, the Surface is an absolute joy to use. It's a truly, almost unfathomably good computing experience. I instantly went from "meh, what's the point of this thing?" to "OMG - this is the best device ever!"

That’s interesting … there’s a lot of people who’s biggest problem with tablets is the difficulty of getting their new ideas into it … since everyone agrees that the iPad is a great way to get older ideas out.

Technorati Tags: microsoft,surface,ipad,office

Swing State Sleight-of-Hand

JT directed me to the Washington Post’s election roundup. And I spotted something very fishy.

We all know the 10-11 battleground states: Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Nevada, Iowa, Ohio, Colorado, Virginia, Florida, North Carolina and Missouri. You might add Republican-leaning Indiana in there, since Obama won it in 2008 … although Obama wrote it off very early this time.

Those are in order of Democratic leaning. Romney needed to get the last 6 plus Indiana. He got 2 (3 with Indiana).

So what did the Post do? Here’s the screen capture:

Did you catch it? Probably not — thus the sleight of hand: two of the battleground states that Romney actually won aren’t shown.

Indiana isn’t on there. Perhaps that’s OK. But they left off Missouri too. This makes Romney’s performance look worse that it was.

And what did they put in Missouri’s place? New Mexico. You know … the state that’s gone Republican once since 1988. I think Romney went there once in the summer (his calendar isn’t searchable). That’s right: the Obama colored state in this map showing part of the campaign with no Romney campaign stops:

This is a battleground state?

Further, Missouri was a tighter race than New Mexico.

In fact, quite a few states that went Democratic were tighter than New Mexico … like Oregon … and Minnesota … and  Michigan … and Pennsylvania.

You gotta’ wonder what the motivation is to swap in a small state with a stronger Obama showing than a bigger one with a weaker showing … much less a handful of them.

In sum, the coverage makes Obama look like he had a 9-1 record, when it’s more like 8-3. Both are pretty good, but which record gets you a shot at a major bowl game, and which one gets you shunted off to the Astro-Bluebonnet Bowl?*

* I’m getting a warm fuzzy for remembering this obscure and bizarrely named gem, and incorporating it into a sentence.

Technorati Tags: washington,post,election,2010,missouri,new mexico,romney,obama

My Prediction: Romney’s Gonna’ Lose

This has been a tough one for me.

I voted against McCain in 2008 (charisma without ability), and for four years Obama’s been moving retrograde. I am no fan. But Romney has never done it for me (ability without charisma).

It should be an easy thing for me to pick a winner since I don’t have a horse in the race. Perhaps I’m having trouble because living in rural Utah when a Mormon is running is a bit like Bart and Lisa when they wanted to go to Mt. Splashmore.

So, here’s my gut feeling: 1) Obama isn’t Carter, they may not like him but they don’t regard him as a buffoon, and 2) it’s not a good sign that the Romney people are pushing Pennsylvania at the end … this is a move of panic.

Here you go: Obama with 290 electoral votes … holding Ohio, Iowa, Wisconsin, Nevada, New Hampshire and Colorado … so not even as close as Bush-Kerry.

Technorati Tags: obama,romney,2012,prediction

Group Projects In Business School

Business schools love teamwork. Here’s what one student thinks:

What’s that thing economists are always worried about? Ah yes … unintended consequences.

Via I Love Charts.

Technorati Tags: group,team,project

Barone Makes His Election Call

Michael Barone is one of the big names in election prognostication … and he’s called the election for Romney, and doesn’t even think it will be that close.

He’s saying 315-223, and is giving Romney the swing states North Carolina, Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Colorado, Iowa, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin … plus Pennsylvania.

Admittedly Barone is a conservative, but this is one heck of a bit of optimism.

Is he seeing something I’m not? I’m still going with Intrade, which continues to predict a narrow Obama victory.

I’m not big on tendencies, but there’s one that’s bugging me about the election. When incumbents lose electoral votes in their reelection bid … they tend to lose a ton of them.

I’m thinking right now that Obama might lose 70-100 electoral votes off of 2008, but still win a majority.

And that just doesn’t happen very often. Here’s the incumbents that have won reelection in the last 90 years: G.W.Bush, Clinton, Reagan, Nixon, Eisenhower, Roosevelt. Every single one of those guys got more electoral votes the second time around.

And here’s the incumbents who’ve lost: G.H.W. Bush, Carter, Hoover. Each of them lost over 240 electoral votes the second time around.

There just isn’t much middle ground for Obama to lose some electoral votes and still win the election. To find someone who did this, you need to go all the way back to Wilson, who lost 158 votes and survived to (not) fight another day.

I dunno … I just don’t see Obama as another Wilson. Although … Barone’s prediction is in line with Wilson’s result, although Wilson started out with a much bigger electoral cushion than Obama did.

Technorati Tags: 2012,election,barone,prediction,forecast,electoral,votes

I Had Some Trouble With This Before

I couldn’t get this image to load in a September 30 post:

Technorati Tags: romney,most,exciting,things,discharisma

Pumpkin Eaters

We carved 4 jack-o-lanterns over the weekend because we wouldn’t have time during the week.

The vXwife read online that if you soak them in water every day, and spray them with bleach, they’ll keep their good looks for longer.

So on Tuesday night, I’m in the patio in the back yard soaking jack-o-lanterns in a tub. They didn’t all fit at once, so I did more than one round, and at the end of the night one of the “tops” was missing. I just figured I’d left it in some dark corner where I couldn’t see it.

Halloween afternoon I went out to bring the jack-o-lanterns out front. And there are 4 “heads” and zero “tops”.

F**k! Dogs!

I go out and look around the yard. I found one top intact, one with a couple of bites out of its edge, one with so much bitten off that it would let too much light out, and one top was completely gone.

We have 2 hounds and a terrier. If you “ask” the hounds to find something by scent, they’ll show you. So I asked them (separately) and they both “said” they left it by the big gate. That must be where they finished the last bite.

My daughter and I saved the day by pinning a witch hat on one jack-o-lantern, and a top hat from a magic set she got for her birthday a few years ago on the other.

The hats got many complements. :) Unfortunately, some teenagers took the top hat at the end of the night. :(

The moral of this story? Don’t make your pumpkin parts both juicy and easy to carry if you have dogs.

Technorati Tags: pumpkin,dog,jack-o-lantern

Word Tip # 23: Landscape Page with Portrait Headers

I edit an online academic journal that’s supposed to look like a print journal. The journal’s orientation is portrait. But, sometimes there are tables that need to be in landscape. That’s easy.

The hard part is getting the headers to appear in the same place on portrait and landscape pages: in the former they’re at the top, while in the latter they should be in the right margin.

In a TechRepublic post on how to put text in the margins of Word documents, Susan Harkin covers 3 methods. The last one is a much better solution to putting the header in the right margin than the one I’ve been using.

Here’s an example of the problem. In the linked file, the header on page 87 is at the top of a portrait page, and on page 88 it is at the top of a landscape page. But if you print those two pages out and bundle them with the pages all in portrait, the header is in two different spots.

The workaround is bizarre, but it works. Here goes:

• Open your header for editing (ALT N H E).
• Insert a text box (ALT N X).
• Cut the header that isn’t where you want it, and paste it inside the text box.
• Rotate the text inside the text box (ALT J X G).
• Now here’s the weird part. Drag the text box outside of the header to wherever you want it on your page. That text box is still part of your header, but it doesn’t appear in your header.

As long as the landscape pages are in their own section, with “link to previous” turned off, this methods works like a charm.

Technorati Tags: word,text,margins,headers,landscape,portrait

Pick Your Coffee

This is the sort of thing they need to have around Starbucks, except that most of the customers seem to be spending their hypercaffeinated periods memorizing the details of their favorite drinks:

My favorite is element (1,2) for the linear algebraists out there (or students trying to suck up).

Via I Love Charts.

Technorati Tags: coffee,chart

ists out there.