I couldn’t resist giving tonight’s ramble a fancy title. What I know about economic theory wouldn’t fill a thimble. It’s my inner naughty four-year-old at work.
Anyway, while moving snow around today (Portland got slammed with fourteen inches yesterday), I was thinking about the idea that economists can make predictions based on the assumption that we consumers are rational actors looking out for our own best interests.
Not! Hahahaha. I mean, what planet are they on?
In the interests of domestic harmony, I will refrain from using members of my immediate family to prove my points. Or at the very least, I won’t name names.
Suffice it to say that I would have to hunt long and hard to find examples of rational economic behavior in my family. If there is one theme that runs throughout, it is along the lines of: “It will make me happy if we __________.”
You can fill in the blank with statements like these:
buy a house.
buy a kayak.
remodel the kitchen.
take a vacation in __________. (Some of these I’ve managed to stave off, but it hasn’t made me popular.)
Lest I make it sound like I would be the sort of rational guy the economists had in mind, let me confess that I have committed my own share of stupid purchases which made me happy at the time. I was thinking the other day that it would be mighty nice to have the money I have wasted over the past 45 years or so.
But if I had, I’d probably have invested it in the stock market, and then I might be wishing I’d spent it instead.
Monday, December 22, 2008
Friday, December 12, 2008
NewsNoise
I was thinking today about the difference between news and noise. News, I assume, is supposed to inform us. Noise is jackhammers and trucks passing and airplanes roaring overhead and nearby cellphone conversations and all the rest.
But boy, there is a lot of noise in the news. For example, I defy you to find any “news” about Sarah Palin published in the last month. Plenty of noise and commentators asking each other whether or not she was being kept in the news by news commentators (even they know there’s no story there)—but news? News would be if the Alaska legislature impeached her. How much clothes she purchased and to whom they will be donated is not news. it’s gossip, and not even nourishing gossip.
I won’t bother to offer more examples. For one thing I’m beat after spending a few hours pushing slush across and down our parking lot at work. For another I’m still recovering from the shoplifter my daughter spotted in our store yesterday afternoon. First time we’ve ever had someone handcuffed and led away. This particular Christmas shopper had managed to stuff $1600 worth of beads into her large purse. Had lots in her pockets too. (Now for us, that was breaking news!)
Revenons a nos moutons, as my favorite Swiss French teacher at UCLA used to say, after one of her elegant digressions en francais. Mme Walker, I miss you!
So what if we put a tape delay on the news, make it a bit more historical. I remember being very impressed in school when I read that it took months for early Presidential election results to reach California. [I don’t even know if this is true, and I don’t want to check because the concept of a 2-3 month old newspaper arriving out west with the NEWS is so evocative.]
Perhaps if we sat on the news for a while, then the trivial stuff would have a chance to drain out through the holes in the media colander, and what ended up being reported would be tasty pasta instead of a lot of hot water and the occasional news noodle.
And then l’affaire Palin would be reduced to something like this:
So instead of several hundred million words on radio, television, and sprayed across the internet like foam on a runway when the jet’s landing gear ain’t working, we’d have a calm little paragraph suitable for one of those horrible textbooks we make our children read in social studies.
But that wouldn’t be any fun. And making noise and calling it news is entertaining, which is why so much of the news industry has long since devolved into just another form of entertainment.
There is still news, of course. The informative kind. But man, it’s often so grim. Like this story about cholera in Zimbabwe in today’s New York Times. It’s tragic in every possible way, and very hard to read. There’s the rhetoric—speeches by politicians, promises to do this or that—and there’s the reality that we are powerless to protect helpless people in Darfur, Zimbabwe, N. Korea, Burma and so on. Even as we witness daily tragedies here of home foreclosures and mass layoffs, it’s worth remembering that we could be worse off.
[The cynic in me here comments that we are, in fact, rapidly becoming worse off, and that we also seem to be powerless to solve problems here at home. Ask any Katrina survivor for a quick report card.]
See what an ice storm and lack of sleep can do? Oy!
But boy, there is a lot of noise in the news. For example, I defy you to find any “news” about Sarah Palin published in the last month. Plenty of noise and commentators asking each other whether or not she was being kept in the news by news commentators (even they know there’s no story there)—but news? News would be if the Alaska legislature impeached her. How much clothes she purchased and to whom they will be donated is not news. it’s gossip, and not even nourishing gossip.
I won’t bother to offer more examples. For one thing I’m beat after spending a few hours pushing slush across and down our parking lot at work. For another I’m still recovering from the shoplifter my daughter spotted in our store yesterday afternoon. First time we’ve ever had someone handcuffed and led away. This particular Christmas shopper had managed to stuff $1600 worth of beads into her large purse. Had lots in her pockets too. (Now for us, that was breaking news!)
Revenons a nos moutons, as my favorite Swiss French teacher at UCLA used to say, after one of her elegant digressions en francais. Mme Walker, I miss you!
So what if we put a tape delay on the news, make it a bit more historical. I remember being very impressed in school when I read that it took months for early Presidential election results to reach California. [I don’t even know if this is true, and I don’t want to check because the concept of a 2-3 month old newspaper arriving out west with the NEWS is so evocative.]
Perhaps if we sat on the news for a while, then the trivial stuff would have a chance to drain out through the holes in the media colander, and what ended up being reported would be tasty pasta instead of a lot of hot water and the occasional news noodle.
And then l’affaire Palin would be reduced to something like this:
Senator John McCain chose Sarah Palin, Governor of Alaska, as his Presidential running mate. After an initial burst of popularity, questions were raised about her qualifications to be President should Senator McCain become ill or die in office. Governor Palin also did not fare well in interviews with the press. Following the election of the Obama-Biden ticket, Ms. Palin returned to her post as Governor of Alaska.
So instead of several hundred million words on radio, television, and sprayed across the internet like foam on a runway when the jet’s landing gear ain’t working, we’d have a calm little paragraph suitable for one of those horrible textbooks we make our children read in social studies.
But that wouldn’t be any fun. And making noise and calling it news is entertaining, which is why so much of the news industry has long since devolved into just another form of entertainment.
There is still news, of course. The informative kind. But man, it’s often so grim. Like this story about cholera in Zimbabwe in today’s New York Times. It’s tragic in every possible way, and very hard to read. There’s the rhetoric—speeches by politicians, promises to do this or that—and there’s the reality that we are powerless to protect helpless people in Darfur, Zimbabwe, N. Korea, Burma and so on. Even as we witness daily tragedies here of home foreclosures and mass layoffs, it’s worth remembering that we could be worse off.
[The cynic in me here comments that we are, in fact, rapidly becoming worse off, and that we also seem to be powerless to solve problems here at home. Ask any Katrina survivor for a quick report card.]
See what an ice storm and lack of sleep can do? Oy!
Friday, December 5, 2008
GPS vs Human
I was outside earlier this evening, attaching some rubber anti-slip treads to our wooden front steps so we don’t kill ourselves the next time it’s icy, when an SUV pulled up to the curb. The conversation went something like this:
Passenger: “Hey, do you know where the Maine Mall is? We’re driving in circles!“
Me: ”Sure. Actually the easiest way to get there is to go back to the bottom of the hill, take a right and then your next left...“
Passenger, pointing uphill and interrupting: ”But the thing says to go this way and take a left!“
Me, seeing the GPS unit on their dashboard: ”Yes, you can get to the Mall that way too, but it’s more complicated and it’ll take you longer.“
Passenger: ”Do you know where Maine Mall Donuts is?“
Me: ”No, but I can tell you how to get to the Mall.“
Passenger: ”What street is the Maine Mall on?“
Me: ”Maine Mall Road.“
Passenger, yelling at the driver who might have been his son: ”Reset that thing, will you?“ To me: ”It says we’re supposed to go this way. Where is Stevens Ave?“
Me: ”If you stay on this street, it’ll run right into Stevens.“
Passenger: ”But it says to turn left! Listen, we’ll just do what it says and take our chances. Thanks.“
And away they went. If you’re not going to trust the locals, why bother to ask them for directions? Heck, I would have drawn them a map if they hadn’t been in such a hurry.
On the other hand, Maine is one of the places where natives reputedly tell tourists things like ”You can’t get theah from heah...“ And in thinking about the tone of the conversation, I don’t really think they wanted me to give them directions. More like they wanted me to reassure them that the GPS unit’s directions were okay. So probably when I told them to turn around and head back the direction they’d just come from, it made me appear unreliable.
But not as unreliable as our front steps. Last Saturday it rained all day and then the temperature dropped right down to 32 degrees overnight. The next morning our front and side steps were slick as seaweed and I made a quick decision to find some sort of treads to put on them before winter sets in for real. So now the treads are screwed in place and I’m ready.
Footnote: My son googled ”Maine Mall Donuts“ and it does exist—on the Maine Mall Road, too.
Passenger: “Hey, do you know where the Maine Mall is? We’re driving in circles!“
Me: ”Sure. Actually the easiest way to get there is to go back to the bottom of the hill, take a right and then your next left...“
Passenger, pointing uphill and interrupting: ”But the thing says to go this way and take a left!“
Me, seeing the GPS unit on their dashboard: ”Yes, you can get to the Mall that way too, but it’s more complicated and it’ll take you longer.“
Passenger: ”Do you know where Maine Mall Donuts is?“
Me: ”No, but I can tell you how to get to the Mall.“
Passenger: ”What street is the Maine Mall on?“
Me: ”Maine Mall Road.“
Passenger, yelling at the driver who might have been his son: ”Reset that thing, will you?“ To me: ”It says we’re supposed to go this way. Where is Stevens Ave?“
Me: ”If you stay on this street, it’ll run right into Stevens.“
Passenger: ”But it says to turn left! Listen, we’ll just do what it says and take our chances. Thanks.“
And away they went. If you’re not going to trust the locals, why bother to ask them for directions? Heck, I would have drawn them a map if they hadn’t been in such a hurry.
On the other hand, Maine is one of the places where natives reputedly tell tourists things like ”You can’t get theah from heah...“ And in thinking about the tone of the conversation, I don’t really think they wanted me to give them directions. More like they wanted me to reassure them that the GPS unit’s directions were okay. So probably when I told them to turn around and head back the direction they’d just come from, it made me appear unreliable.
But not as unreliable as our front steps. Last Saturday it rained all day and then the temperature dropped right down to 32 degrees overnight. The next morning our front and side steps were slick as seaweed and I made a quick decision to find some sort of treads to put on them before winter sets in for real. So now the treads are screwed in place and I’m ready.
Footnote: My son googled ”Maine Mall Donuts“ and it does exist—on the Maine Mall Road, too.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)