Three Books I Want To Read And The Dilemma Of Special Offers

1. Tyler Cowen's book came out Tuesday. The link offered a special offer that I did not take advantage of. I will be doing a significant amount of flying over the next few weeks. But I am too cheap to buy the hard cover edition. I got his Discover Your Inner Economist for $5, and it yielded significant consumer surplus. I am just not sure about paying full price, especially now that the special offer has passed.

2. Joe Posnanski is coming out with a book in September. I thought his Soul of Baseball was the most life-affirming book I have ever read. He is going to have some special offer from his blog too, but he hasn't decided exactly what to do yet.

3. Bill Simmons also has a new book coming out too. I don't think he will have any special offers, but I would like to read the paper.

My dilemma is as much as I enjoy reading good books, I don't enjoy buying new expensive books. I get a big kick out of going through the bargain bins and picking out books that might be good or classics that I should read one day. I probably read 1 out of 4 books I buy. I have many books in my library that have not been read.

I guess the point is I need to get a job and/or get busier, so I don't spend so much time thinking about what books to buy.

"Let's Go Racin' In The Streets"

I grew up with the guys at the grocery store. These guys were a collection of fuck-ups. With apologies to my dad (and he was from a different generation), you don't work at the grocery store past your twenty-fifth birthday unless you have a little fuck-up in you.

There was the guy who left but came back after his third DUI forced him to live with his parents. There was the guy who married a girl for six months leaving just enough time for her to ruin his credit and steal every dime he had. There was the guy who married a mail-order Russian bride getting a teenage son as part of the deal. There was the owner's son who could never be a functional addict like his father. There was the guy who was an heir to a 1000 acres who died way too young.

They were all good guys. But just like me, they were fuck-ups.

The thing about being a fuck-up is like any other addiction. You never get past it. No matter how many times you don't fuck-up, you know a fuck-up is coming. That knowing can eat you alive. It gnaws and chews at your stomach. It sucks at your soul. You never escape it. Most men learn how to put up a confident facade, but that knowing will always be there.

Maybe it is original sin, maybe it is the curse of knowledge, maybe it is me. But:

"Tonight, tonight the highway's bright
Out of our way, mister, you best keep
'Cause summer's here and the time is right
For racin' in the street."

The Power Of YouTube

I watched this video. I was impressed. This led me to watching/listening to everything else she had on YouTube.

But I haven't spent a dime on her. This worries the economist in me. Advertising dollars are only effective if people eventually buy what you're advertising. I am sure someone smarter than me will make this work, but I probably should enjoy it while I can.

Additional Thoughts From Last Post's Number 2

This Jeremy Mayfield thing is interesting from a legal-sports perspective.

I question a league's ability to take an individual player's livelihood away without due process. I would rather Mayfield's sponsors or team owners (if he tries to drive for another team) take it away. I have always felt this is the most effective form of punishment.

I also would rather see a criminal judge or jury determine if Mayfield is a meth (ab)user. If he has it in it his system, then he is probably still doing it or has done it repeatedly. I am sure a good detective could find the criminal evidence needed to convict. A criminal sentence is much harsher than any league suspension.

I also think the media mis-reported what the judge's ruling was. All he said was NASCAR could not suspend Mayfield while he was "appealing." He said nothing explicitly about Mayfield's guilt or innocence. The Stallworth case is another example of reporters not explaining law and rulings properly. From what I read, the reason he only got 30 days was because the prosecution didn't have much of a case showing Stallworth was negligent. If Stallworth wasn't drunk and stoned, he would have probably had no charges filed against him. (Admittedly, I might be wrong on my interpretation of the events.)

MLB implicitly suspended Barry Bonds last year. Jose Canseco said MLB did it to him too. I have a feeling Vick and Pac-Man are going to go through the same thing. These implicit suspensions because no one is willing-to-pay (put up with your shit) are much more effective and hold more deterring power.

Morning Reads

1. GGM sent me this about my parents' Representative. I took offense to this sentence: "The rest wouldn't take the political risk of voting for even a fairly weak climate bill that doesn't even come close to doing what science demands." You have to read the article and link within the article to get what I saw as the contradiction. It keeps coming back to what I've been trying to get at in these last few posts. Politics and life is a big debate. What is important is the debate not one particular point of view. David Brooks also addresses this and larger issues this morning.

2. I am not a lawyer or a legal scholar. But I don't know what to think of Madoff getting 150 years. I would rather him be making as much money as he can for the rest of life to pay off as much as he can of the civil suits. The line between criminality and civility seems to be really blurry, and the punishment seems to not fit the crime. Not to beat a dead horse, but how many dogs could Vick's salary have saved if was allowed to continue playing in the NFL? Putting a guy in jail for 150 years isn't going to create wealth or retribution for any of his victims.

3. I don't discuss the Iraq war much. Mostly because I don't know exactly what I think of it. But the following quote from this article sums how complex the situation is:

“Right now we are balanced on a knife’s edge,” said Hamid Majeed, a Sunni speaking near the rubble of a Shiite mosque that was blown up in 2006. “We do not like the Americans, but we also thank God when we see them with the Iraqi Army, because we know we can trust them more than the government forces.”

This editorial also explains some of the complexities.

We All Knew They Couldn't Hold It

I guess it goes back to: "Root for good stories. Bet on talent."

I have always wondered what Mike Vick could do if he was a soccer player (raised playing soccer to get the foot-eye coordination). He would be competitive with these Brazilian guys, wouldn't he?

For some odd reason, I would like to find out the answer.

Bad Science Or Bad Research II

From the New York Times

I have always been of the opinion that many of the most important discoveries come when you are looking for an answer to a question but then find an answer to another more important question. The question becomes can a grant-making process be developed that puts people in position to answer important questions without quelling their creativity and their ability to answer other questions that were not in their original grant proposal? I guess it comes back to the ex ante versus ex post thing. Research involves so much ex ante uncertainty but also requires so much ex ante funding. Ex post, research results are "taken care" of by the market. But ex ante expectations rarely equal ex post returns, as evidenced by my dissertation which I am going to start working on right now.

Hopefully Last Post Of The Day

When I get bored, I read my blog. This serves a few purposes:

1. I recognize that I have experienced little growth. Many personal posts are about the same issues over and over. I find this both depressing and encouraging.
2. I realize I am not that bad. I have a few readable ideas. I write okay. I build confidence.
3. I realize that the blog represents recorded practice. Practice can be a good thing.

Number 2 is the most important function of reading your own blog.

Bad Science Or Bad Research

I was going to compare the batting statistics of Red Sox and the Braves. My point was that the Braves have a similar batting average to the Red Sox, a better ERA, but their OBP and OPS was much lower. Therefore they score a lot fewer runs and win fewer games.

This is all true, but it is no where near as pronounced as I thought. (This page's team statistics started my thought pattern. This page's more detailed statistics ended my thought pattern.)

So I wasn't going "publish" anything. The data didn't exactly fit my theory, so I was just going to keep it to myself. And really, in the middle of a season even if my theory was true, it has very little prescriptive value. What are the controllable variables in a Major League baseball player? Terry Pendelton isn't able to get Francoeur to walk more (take more pitches) especially mid-season. I somewhat doubt if you can get many Major League batters to change their approach in the middle of their careers. My theory is like saying "The sky is blue." Who gives a shit?

I am afraid that is much research. The Kevin Murphy interview I linked to in the last post discusses some of these problems as related to health care.

Unexpected Things I Have Read This Morning

1. Farrah Fawcett and Ayn Rand were somewhat friends. Rand was a complex character.

2. Kevin Murphy and the Chicago economists do have a wide breadth.

(These first two links came from MarginalRevolution.com.)

3. The New York Times is beating this Sanford thing to death. I guess they did the same with Spitzer. I read a few commentaries on the hypocrisy of the "right." But I didn't see any commentaries about: "This is why we can't give any person too much power. This is why well-intentioned government is corrupted by individual politicians. This is why we have to be careful about government. It isn't the affair as much as it is the lying and mis-spending of tax-payer dollars in a really poor state. Power can corrupt anyone, so we have to be careful." The New York Times coverage isn't unexpected, but the number of articles on a South Carolina governor surprised me.

4. Milton Bradley is crazy as hell. Lou Pinella isn't going to take it anymore. This isn't unexpected, but I have never liked the Cubs.

5. The Braves suck. This certainly isn't surprising. All I can say is I would rather have Barry Bonds in the outfield than Anderson or Francoeur. I actually think you could put McClouth in left-center and another young-fast guy in right-center and have Bonds be a de facto DH and have a better chance at winning. The lack of offense is going to kill Jurrjens and the other young pitchers. Read Pat Jordan's A False Spring to learn about what confidence means to young pitchers.