Endersby essentially chronicles the development of modern biological science starting before Darwin with the curious case of the Quagga. From there Endersby traces the history of biological science forward, each chapter devoted to a particular organism that helped make the discovery. My favorite chapters actually ended up being the ones on Drosophila and Oenothera (a kind of fruit fly and the evening primrose, specifically). However, the chapters on the hawkweed, passion flowers, phage, guinea pigs and the rest are all remarkably entertaining and quite informative. The next to last chapter, on zebra fish, is almost entirely devoted to the University of Oregon’s program and their pioneering zebra fish work, which came as a nice surprise.

Looking at the way in which major discoveries in biological science were made, and the somewhat strange things believed by even leaders of the discipline such as Darwin, has got me thinking more about what Khun was on about. Emphatically not his acolytes’ view that truth is, like, socially constructed…maaaaan. Not that, but that science happens in a sort of unplanned path on which personalities are just as important as the facts at hand. Anyway, for that reason alone Endersby’s book is worth picking up.

The only place where it really goes off the rails at all is during the final chapter on the OncoMouse - a mouse that has been genetically modified in order to have a particular gene that raises its cancer incidence. Endersby tries to make a couple of economic points as he does in other parts of the book, and while his earlier economic statements are usually at least plausible, those in the final chapter are just sort of silly. Not eye-rollingly silly, but they evoke the deep sigh so often associated with moderate liberal economic views. It’s like he understands just enough economics to be a little bit wrong in exactly the kind of way that irritates me. However, this is no reason not to read his book. Read the book, it’s good.

To: Economist
From: Christian Michael

Hi,

I am writing to you again in case your spam filter ate my last email. I had written to you basically to offer a business deal. The deal namely is purchasing text-links on your site http://www.onehandedeconomist.com/. In case you have already thought over this, let me know of your views pronto.

Looking forward to your reply,
Regards,
Christan

To: Christian Michael
From: Economist

I will place one text link for $50,000 a month.

To: Economist
From: Christian Michael

Timothy,

Which planet are you from? Are we talking about a link on Amazon.com?

First deserve, then desire.

Christan

To: Christian Michael
From: Economist

Hey, I’ve named my price, you’re free to take it or leave it. Also, you have not indicated what exactly it is you would like to advertise. First deserve, then desire.

From: Christian Michael
To: Economist

I wonder you’re still thinking at that? It was initial email asking
whether or not the site accepts custom advertisement offers. I got my
answer in your first reply.

Thank you for your time.

Cheers,
Christan

To: Christian Michael
From: Economist

Well, obviously your product cannot be that profitable if such a meager sum causes you such consternation.

To: Economist
From: Christian Michael

Every worthwhile thing has a price tag over it but that price should
be somewhat equal to the value provided. Its simple rule of business.
It matters little on what product I have and how much profit do I
reap. I am not new to this and know how much a text-link will cost per
month at any website. Honestly, I wanted to email you the stats of
your website but I preferred to let you enjoy your ignorance .

Forget about it. I have many others to deal with and you’ll get many
other advertisers. The day you get an advertiser willing to pay
US$50,000 per month for a text-link, do let me know please. I hope
I’ll be alive by then. Have a good day.

To: Christian Michael
From: Economist

You obviously did not know what a text link costs per month at MY website. Therefore, sir, you cannot claim to know what a text link costs at any website. TOUCHE!

Further, please do not insult my intelligence by assuming I am unaware of the massive amount of traffic that sucks up my bandwidth capacity on a monthly basis.

To: Economist
From: Christian Michael

I’ll repeat, the day an advertiser agrees to pay you US$50,000 per
month for a text-link, do let me know and please do spare some amount
out of those $50K to purchase additional bandwidth for your website.

To: Christian Michael
From: Economist

I will certainly keep you abreast of any advertising developments in regards to the OHE. You will rue the day you declined my generous offer! RUE!

As of press time there has been no response from Mr. Michael.

Firstly, I understand that like any employer the border patrol is going to recruit, sure, makes sense. I disagree with their policies and their objectives, but none-the-less, they’re going to try to get new employees. What confuses me is the selling point being ease: are people attracted to low entry requirements really the folks we want to go handing that kind of authority? I’d say not.

If you’ve driven along the border recently, or really, if you’ve driven along a major highway within a hundred miles of the border recently, you’ve likely been subject to the random (and I’m sure 4th amendment compliant…right) stop-and-search by these guys. They do the whole “are you a US Citizen?” thing and have a dog sniff around your car without so much as suspicion, let alone cause or a warrant. They routinely detain people, and treat everyone as a criminal. Do we really want to go recruiting law enforcement officers who are drawn in by the low requirements? Further, does anyone think that a month-long seminar is sufficient to train a bunch of people about the relevant legal considerations? It sure took me more than a month to become competent enough to do my job properly (four years of college, three years in a different job), so I’m pretty sure it’s going to take longer than 30 days to get a border patrol agent up to speed. Unless you just want him to tase random motorists and try to keep brown people from picking fruit…that’s probably pretty easy.

i am a student studying economics,i was wondering if you could help me out with some answers please.they are multiple choice questions and i have been doin revision and i want to confirm my answers are correct or nt.if you could please reply with the answers i would be very grateful!!!i no this is alot to ask……

my exam is on the 15th of jan,would be grateful to recieve a reply before then.

1.which of the following would cause a shift in supply?
a)income level of consumers change
b)the price of production inputs change
c)the production technology changes
d)both b and c are correct.

Answer: This is the kind of thing that should be so bloody obvious that I would beat any child over the age of 10 for failing to identify the answer correctly. That you’ve decided some random person on the internet should hand you this on a silver platter indicates exactly how pathetic you are.

2.if the price of a complement good increases,we would expect equilibrium quantity to ____ and the equilibrium price to ____?
a)increase,increase
b)increase,decrease
c)decrease:increase
d)decrease,decrease

Answer: Believe it or not this exact same question was on an exam for my intro micro class back in the day. I got it right. Because it is easy, why don’t you try looking up the definition of a complementary good and then using your little brain for a few seconds.

3.the opportunity cost of anything is measured by :
a)value of every other alternative available
b)the highest value of foregone alternatives
c)one of above

Answer: I’d pick C here, just to cover all of my bases if this is a multiple guess exam. Opportunity cost is one of the concepts in intro micro econ that people struggle with. People struggle with this concept only if they have no business wasting a valuable seat in an economics course.

4.key diff. between micro and macro economics:
a)examines decision making
b)focus on individual units in economy
c)deals with scarcity
d)looks at resource choices

Answer: Look, there’s only one problem in economics - resources are scarce and wants are unlimited. That doesn’t have anything to do with how to answer this question, but if you think for a minute about what those scary Latinate words micro and macro mean for a second the answer will present itself in due time.

5.if price elasticity is elastic ; total expenditure will_____ as the prce rises:
a)increase
b)decrease
c)stay same
d_depends amount of the price changes

Answer: Actually, I’ll give you a protip - the way you phrased this question is completely redundant. “If prices are elastic” would be a better way to put that together. Again, if you go look up what that means in your little intro text book the answer will become obvious.

6.at a price of $1 tom buys 15 candy bars at a price of $3,he would buy7.toms ara elasticity of demand would be:
a)-11/8
b)-8/11
c)-1/4
d)-4

Answer: Look, fine, okay, elasticity is the slope of the DEMAND KURVE. There, now you can answer that question using basic algebra that you should’ve learned when you were ten. The end.

7.two goods are complements if:
a decrease in the price of one reduces demand for other
(is this correct?)

Answer: No, you’re an idiot. You may, in fact, be made entirely of FAIL.

8.the firms short run marginal cost is the change in the shot run:
a)total cost due to the use of one more unit of output
b)average cost due to the use of one more unit of output
c)total cost due to the prodcution of one more unit of output (answer?)
d)avg.cost due to the production of one more unit on output

Answer: I hope to whatever cosmic forces you hold dear that you’re an ESL student because you didn’t even type this question up in a way that makes it clear, you may be missing a preposition. Actually, you’re probably not missing a preposition, I am missing it, you’ve likely been lobotomized and can no longer feel normal human emotions like loss. I’d pity you if I thought you’d care. And none of those answers is exactly right, by the by, total, average and marginal costs are all different things.

8.given tht a firm is a price taker the ____ the marginal physical prodcut,the_____ the marginal cost of output
a)higher,higher
b)lower.lower
c)lower.higher
d)none —

Answer: Again with the question that doesn’t really make any sense. If your marginal physical product is high you should probably stop feeding it peyote and quaaludes. If a firm is a price taker they generally end up at P=MC as the profit maximizing value (presuming the market model is one of those intro perfect competition deals that only exist on chalkboards). Meaning they’ll keep producing until the marginal cost is equal to the market price and supernormal profits will be zero. There, look, one actual answer. Congratulations.

9)a homogeneous good is a good:
with many perfect substitutes?

Answer: Do you hear that? It’s me. Laughing at your utter failure to grasp what the word homogeneous means. Somebody needs an OED, stat. Hey, I’ll actually be nice again for a second because I am still feeling generous: try using this handy website. Honestly, how weak is your google fu?

10)assuming a competitve market,positive profits for firms in the short run will:
a)shift demand function
b)cause the price ofthe input to increase in the longrun
c)cause the total markey quantity of output to decrease in the long run—-
d)cause new firms to enter the market

Answer: If you can’t answer this question you should see about getting that W instead of walking into your exam and facing complete and utter destruction. Honestly, did you just not go to class all semester? Were you drunk?

11)a competitve market is intially in long run equlibrium.there is an increase in market demand for the good.after long run adjustment,the new equlibrium price will be:
a)lowr for a decreasing cost industry
b)higher ” ” ” ” ” ”
c)lower for an increasing cost industry
d)higher ” ” ” ” ” “

Answer: Dude, which way does supply slope? Are you that dense? Have your fraternity brothers not stopped hazing you long enough that you can study a little?

And this goes on like this for another 30 questions or so, and you know what, I’m done. I’m not even going to waste any more of my time making fun of this kid. Could I have answered his/her questions in the time I just wasted mocking them? Probably, but let this be a lesson to anybody with the same lazy approach to learning: you will fail, and I will be glad about it. Toodles.

And people wonder why I, in general, believe that only people with a great propensity for evil become armed agents of the state. Honestly, fuck this cop and may he be mauled by a thousand dogs. And fuck anyone who would attempt to justify anything like this. And fuck his employers for allowing him to stay on duty.

When it’s all reported in the media, a bunch of apologists show up to explain that the kid’s rights weren’t violated because “cops have a hard job” and “the kid should’ve known.” Yes, because the sensible thing to think is that a 12-year-old should know enough about a situation to listen to two random adults yelling at them to stop and that the burden of proof is on the kids rather than the adults. Not to mention that toy guns are required, by law, to have bright plastic tips. Furthermore, THE KID WAS TWELVE GODDAMN YEARS OLD! Read the comments, they’ll make you furious. I hope each one of those apologists is targeted in a wrong door raid, that would teach them. Assholes.

[Via The Agitator]

You see, in Spanish papá, with the accent over the second a, means Father, but papa as pronounced by a small, monolingual child means potato and for my entire life that’s who he was: Papa. And he loved it. And he loved me, despite that when I was growing up his most common utterance was “Goddamn it, Timothy!” in that deep, resonating baritone. I was a bit of a rascal, I probably had it coming. My memories of him are a bit of a jumble, so many of them coming in that hazy early childhood few of us can recall, but I will do my best to dutifully recount a representative sample despite being neither a writer nor orator of any great skill.

When I was very young, probably two or three, I remember curling up next to him in my grandparents’ seemingly infinite bed and making him read me Rikki, Tikki, Tavi over and over and over again. Every time I would see him, I’d say “Papa, read to me” and he would, patiently, recounting every last syllable with grace. He never tired of it, although I secretly suspect that teaching me to read a couple of years later was a direct result of my insistence that he must read me that story at every opportunity. To this day I love that story, I love mongooses, I get a thrill out of the Rikki saving the lives of that family, and killing those nasty cobras. And when I read it, every time, I can hear Papa’s voice in my head.

Years later, but while I was still small because it was before we moved from Houston, Papa decided that he should take me to the ballet. The Nutcracker, to be precise, in order to help me learn to appreciate culture. It may have had something to do with his heavy involvement in the Houston Opera, but I don’t really know. In any case, I was having none of it. By the intermission I’d had enough: crying, wanting to leave, exhorting him that, “Papa, I don’t like cwassical music, I like wok and woll.” That quote was delivered in the manner he used when teasing me about the incident up until the very end. Last Christmas, I think, or maybe last spring, was the last time he gave me a hard time about that particular thing…that happened when I was five.

Long after we’d moved to Oregon, Papa and my grandmother came to visit, and we trekked up to Vancouver, BC for a few days. On the trip my sister was given a copy of There’s A Carrot In My Ear and Other Noodle Tales by Alvin Schwartz, and one day Papa decided to read it out loud for all of us. The punchline of the titular story is something like, “There’s a carrot in my ear, but I have no idea how it got there: I planted radishes!” I wish that I could describe the way in which he laughed at that, it was the kind of laugh that becomes legendary, almost a caricature of itself. He panted, he turned bright, bright red, he cried, he wheezed, and he carried on for what seemed like an eternity. I have never seen such joy at something so simple come from a person, I’ve known no one else with such levity and lightness of spirit.

I suppose that’s pretty emblematic, Papa loved puns and word games of all sorts. For as long as I can remember he complained that the NYT Sunday crossword was simply not a challenge, he ruthlessly completed every crossword book we could throw at him. In pen! I could never think of a clever enough riposte or claim victory in a contest of puns against him, never, not once, and I promise that I have him to thank for my skill in such things.

My most recent, truly vivid memory was at Christmas last year, I think. We were all milling about waiting on dinner to be ready and Papa, seated at the head of the table as if holding court (as always) looked at me and said, “So, Tim, did I ever tell you about the time I met Harry Truman?” He then proceeded to tell me the story, it involved his uncle Dorsey Hardeman and was really quite intriguing, but he told it in the most nonchalant, factual, way. In a way that made it obvious he wasn’t bragging because he kind of didn’t care but thought the story was interesting.

That’s the way it always was with Papa, for a man so admirable and accomplished, he didn’t particularly enjoy being the center of attention. He always made time to listen, to understand, to probe. He was deeply curious about the world, about the people in it, and about those around him. He always made time to listen, to advise, to read a story to an excited little boy or, better still, to teach that boy to read himself. He was a great man, and the closest thing I had to a hero. So goodbye, Papa, potato, but most of all, thank you.

Love always,
Tim

PS: Your dear friend Steve Clack got them to write a very nice obituary. I wish you could’ve seen it, you’d be so proud.

And that brings me to this little gem from Glen Reynolds in which he writes about some bed-wetting book. A quote from the book, then:

It is unimaginable that Francis Biddle or Robert Jackson would have written Franklin Roosevelt a memorandum about how to avoid prosecution for his wartime decisions designed to maintain flexibility against a new and deadly foe. . . . Many people think the Bush administration has been indifferent to wartime legal constraints. But the opposite is true: the administration has been strangled by law, and since September 11, 2001 this war has been lawyered to death.

Wartime? Has Congress declared a war on anyone other than Iraq? Is there some sort of existential threat of which I am not aware? Please, feel free to edify me on the subject so long as you don’t simply make declarative statements and expect that I will believe them. The assurance that only bad men are being targeted and that we just have to trust the President to “Do The Right Thing” rings pretty hollow, and is antithetical to the very idea of an open, representative government. Furthermore, “Many people X, but Y is really the case” doesn’t exactly add up to evidence, or even really an argument. It’s the thesis of a terrible 100-level composition paper.

The rest of Reynold’s post quotes a few paragraphs that try to use the number of lawyers working on the War Against Funny-Hatted Cave Dwellers as proof that the Bush administration takes legal considerations very seriously. Frankly, it doesn’t surprise me that they have thousands of attorneys scouring the law looking for the easiest but technically legal way to violate over half of the Bill of Rights in one go.

I do, though, have to point out Reynold’s concluding statement:

In his book about the 9/11 aftermath, After, Steven Brill reports that John Ashcroft’s instructions to his subordinates — repeating President Bush’s instructions to Ashcroft — were not to ever let something like that happen again. It hasn’t, but that command certainly affected attitudes — and, now because nothing like that has happened again, we find ourself back in more of a 1990s mindset.

That’s special isn’t it? It’s a complete logical fallacy, post hoc ergo propter hoc to be specific. Reynold’s is assuming that Bush’s post-9/11 behavior is the reason that there have been no further attacks on the US. I think it’s far more likely that a bunch of semi-literate extremists living in caves just aren’t that damn scary.

For the record, this paragraph may be the worst description of anything related to the Phillips Curve I’ve ever seen.

Even though inflation has been going down and probably will continue to fall, we’re going to starve the banks of cash because some long-dead central planner named A.W. Phillips said that growth is bad for prices.

That short paragraph basically embodies all that outlets like NRO and the Weekly Standard have done to discredit arguments against state intervention. That entire piece essentially amounts to standing in a room full of people shouting DEMAND KURVE! in that Matt Damon voice from Team America. Look, you’re not going to find a more pro-market sort of person than I am, but you’re also not going to find somebody who hates bad arguments more. So, if you’re going to argue that Bernanke shouldn’t have loosened in an attempt to smooth the transition, fine, go right ahead, and I’ll probably agree with your main point…but if you don’t have the sort of understanding you can glean from reading the output of millions of virginal nerds, it’s probably time to go home and let the adults talk about policy.

And this is a lesson a lot of people need to learn, disagreeing with somebody’s policy conclusions without calling him or her an idiot. It’s a lesson I’m still working on, which reminds me I need to update the “About” page and remove that calling Paul Krugman an idiot thing if I haven’t already. He’s a lot of things: bad columnist, weirdly obsessed with liquidity traps, suffering from a big hatred of Bush..but the man won the Clark medal and he teaches at Princeton. And he’s done a lot of really good an interesting economics over the years.