The Incidental Economist

On my commute home I struck up a conversation with a stranger about the approaching hurricane. “I wish it would hit during the week. Then I would have an excuse not to go to work,” she said.

“Oh, I wouldn’t like that. I love to go to work. I really enjoy what I do,” was my response.

“What do you do?”

Simplifying, a lot, I just said that I’m a professor and I like to do research.

“Yeah, you get to sit back and relax while your students take exams. That’s easy,” she said.

“Well, no. I don’t give exams. I don’t teach. Even if I did, I would still not enjoy sitting and watching students take tests. I like to do research. I like to be at my computer, analyzing data, writing papers, thinking.”

Not yet convinced that this could be why I love my job, she said, “You get school vacations! Long summer vacations! You must love that.”

“Um, no, I don’t get long vacations. But I really do like the actual work. I love my job.”

We had reached our destination. Exiting the train and walking away she just shook her head and muttered, “Professors …”

I think pocket zippers zip the wrong way. Can someone tell me why the current pocket zipper direction default is best?

Up should be open, down closed. The reason is gravity. It tends to pull the zipper to the down (= open) position.

When you want it closed it’s usually important that it remain so. You know, to keep stuff in. When you want it open it isn’t usually important that it stay that way for a long time. You do your business and then close it up, right? With the default being up is closed then gravity acts counter to your best interests. (Truth is, I’ve seen some pocket zippers go the other way, but the majority seem to be backwards in my view.)

This criticism does not apply to the main jacket/coat zipper. That’s best as is, with up being closed, because it’d be too hard to start the zipper way up under your chin. Sight is handy for that and under your chin is a blind spot.

I posed this question on Friday: what’s so special about 10,213,223?

Answer: It’s a self-describing number. Read it in English as, “One zero, two ones, three twos, two threes.” That’s a description of what’s in the number. Not with me yet? Read that English bit in quotes again and write down each number as it appears (ignoring the pluralization “s”s). Go on, write it down as you read the bit in quotes: 1…0…2…1…3…2…2…3 or 10,213,223. Isn’t it true that the number so described contains one zero, two ones, three twos, and two threes? Indeed it does! The number describes itself.

Practical applications: Seriously? You want to know how this is of any use? Well, it isn’t really. But it is related to run-length coding data compression. More in my prior post on the “look and say” sequence.

There are a lot of funny Intenet videos out there. But for my money, Drunk History by Funny or Die is one of the best.  The gimmick is that someone gets plastered and then retells some historical event.  The narration is played over famous actors who re-enact the historical vignette.  This one tells the story of the feud between Tesla and Edison:

Science?  Check.  Alcohol?  Check.  Tesla?  Bonus!  What more could you want?  If you know that this series is fake (ie no one is really drunk), don’t spoil it for me.

By the way, if you love Tesla as much as I do – and there’s no good reason for that to be true – I hope you’ve seen The Prestige.  It’s a great movie, in no small part because David Bowie is the most awesome Tesla ever.

(Terms of use.)

I haven’t offered a puzzle in a long time (some readers may recall many on game theory, among other topics, from last year). Here’s one for this weekend. I’m also including some hints, in case you want them. You can get the answer from Google, but if you want to cheat, save yourself the trouble and just read this blog on Sunday when I will deliver the answer.

Question: What’s so special about the number 10,213,223?

Here come the hints. Stop reading if you don’t want them. To distract yourself from reading the hints, go here for more integer fun.

Hint 1: Don’t do any math. Do more English.

Hint 2: Remember the “look and say” sequence?

I so rarely read a full post on the Health Care Blog because, despite my prodding, it doesn’t offer a full feed (seriously, guys, get with it!). So, it has to catch my interest with a good title. Today, they got me, and I was treated to a very entertaining post on linguistics by Michael Millenson. As you can tell from the title of this post, it’s about “health care” vs. “healthcare.”

Millenson’s historical analysis is riveting. I won’t spoil it. And then wraps it up with the following delightful paragraphs:

However, I think a tipping point for fusing “health” and “care” was reached with the federal legislation setting up the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality at the end of 1999. AHRQ was a renamed and refocused version of the old Agency for Health Care Policy and Research, created in 1989. AHCPR, in turn, had almost been named the Agency for Health Care Research and Policy until an alert Senate staffer realized that the abbreviation would be pronounced, “ah, crap.”

Speaking of abbreviations, Tom Scully, the first administrator of the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services, once explained to me why it is known as CMS, not CMMS. It seems that Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson wanted an agency name with a catchy three-letter abbreviation, like FTC or CIA, to replace the old HCFA (Health Care Financing Administration). So a legal opinion was obtained from the HHS counsel that employing an ampersand to separate the words “Medicare” and “Medicaid” permitted the use of the CMS designation. Some might suspect this Solomonic ruling of caving in to a bit of pressure from above.

Which brings us to God. Some years back, the AP decided that while “God” would remain capitalized (the pope was not similarly blessed), the second reference would be “his,” not “His.” As influential as the AP might be in this world, those concerned with a Higher Authority still write about God as if He were something more than an ordinary man.

I keep waiting for the AP editor who made that decision to be struck down with lightning by the Deity. But, on the other hand, She may have a sense of humor.

See the Healthcare [sic ] Blog for the rest. You won’t find it all in your Reader, sadly.

I’m joking (a riff on the “How many lives does insurance save” brouhaha from earlier this year). Today Scott Sumner estimated the value of his blog thus,

1. Suppose all the pressure from the blogosphere and pundits increases the Fed’s chances of easing by 10 percentage points.

2. Suppose that easing would produce social welfare gains of $1 trillion. …

3. And suppose that each of the bloggers pushing for monetary stimulus (me, Avent, Duy, Beckworth, Rowe, Harless, Woolsey, etc, etc) contributed 1% toward that total pundit pressure on the Fed. …

I think you see where I am going. If monetary stimulus can produce $1 trillion in expected gains (and I think it can do much more than that) then the expected value of the output of my blog is (1/10)*(1/100)*($1 trillion) = $1 billion. …

Heh, I’m underpaid!

We can joke about this, but it is a good question. What is the value of this blog or any serious blog that gets some attention from policy wonks? Normally I think the answer is, “Next to nothing,” unless your name is Krugman. But, as Sumner pointed out, Krugman cites his blog. He cites this one too, though nowhere near as much as he should. So, we get a little credit, don’t we?

I think if we have to resort to this degree of contorted logic to make our blogging feel like it has an impact, that’s a strong signal that it actually doesn’t. If it mattered much, we’d know it. But mattering is not why we blog, is it? Thankfully, in my case at least, the answer is, “No.” It’s just plain-old-fashioned fun. Kind of like writing to a bunch of people I don’t know and yet, strangely, appreciate. Fun!

OK, back to work.

This is sorta old, but I’ve yet to come across anything that so clearly distinguishes the myth of publishing a book from the reality.  And, it’s funny.  Enjoy:

I just finished my second book.  I mean literally – minutes ago.  There’s something satisfying about a 190 page document.

If you asked me when I was younger what the worst thing about school was, I would have immediately replied, “writing”.  English was always one of my least favorite subjects (sorry, Dr. Erskine!).  When I was picking classes in college I would always choose ones with tests over papers.  My writing was boring, formulaic, and dry.

It’s ironic, because the biggest part of my job now is writing.  And I’m not just talking about this blog.  I spend the vast majority of my day working on grants or papers, or filling out forms or applications for research.  And then one day, I convinced someone to write a book with me.  And now I write all the time on the Internet.

I sometimes wonder how that happened.  I think, unfortunately, most people think writing is a skill you’re born with; it is absolutely not.  I am never going to write the great American novel.  But I can say, with some confidence, that I have become much, much better at it over time.  It takes practice.  It takes work.  It’s like any other skill in that the harder you work at it, the better you become.

I’ve also been impressed at how much you can learn by reading books about writing.  Here are some of the best I’ve encountered:

Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer, by Roy Peter Clark.  No single book has helped my writing as much as this one.  It’s like the world’s greatest magician is taking you backstage and showing you how all the tricks work.  Here’s one of my favorite examples from “Tool 18: Set the pace with sentence length”:

This sentence has five words.  Here are five more words.  Five-word sentences are fine.  But several together become monotonous.  Listen to what is happening.  The writing is getting boring.  The sound of it drones.  It’s like a stuck record.  The ear demands some variety.  Now listen.  I vary the sentence length, and I create music.  Music.  I use short sentences.  And I use sentences of medium length.  And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of drums, the crash of cymbals – sounds that say listen to this, this is important.’

That, plus “Tool 20: Choose the number of elements with a purpose of mind” probably have done more for my writing than any class I’ve ever taken.  I can’t say enough good things about this book.

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, by Stephen King.  You may or may not like his fiction, but the man knows how to tell a story.  When I was a resident, one of my friends was a journalist and writer and when he told me that King was widely recognized for his craft as well as his stories, I was stunned.  It never occurred to me that the two could be so intertwined.  But he was right, and this book is a chance to learn at the feet of a master as he carefully explains why other authors succeed, and sometimes fail.

The Lost Art of the Great Speech: How to Write One–How to Deliver It, by Richard Dowis.  Yes, it’s a book about writing speeches, but I’ve found that blogging is a lot like giving a little speech.  And this book is great not only for its lessons, but also for its collection and transcription of famous speeches.  Reading some of them – Churchill’s “Their Finest Hour”, Roosevelt’s “Date Which Will Live In Infamy”, and Heston’s “The Awesome Power of Disobedience” – alone makes the book worth owning.  But again, when the techniques used are pointed out, you see how they can be applied to your benefit; you’d be amazed how much of a difference it makes.

And, finally, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Getting Published, by Sheree Bykofsky and Jennifer Bayse Sander.  When I was finally ready to take the plunge and try and sell our book, this was the instruction manual I used to learn how publishing works.  And I can tell you this book is good because I used the lessons to pitch Sheree, whose agency now represents us.

I’m taking a small break tonight.  Tomorrow, I’ll start editing the book.  It’s been a really long summer; but soon it will be better.  We’ll send in the completed manuscript.  I’ll smile.  Finishing a book is an amazing accomplishment, and now something I’ve done twice.  I never thought I’d write one book let alone two.  And yet I did.  And not only that, I’ve started my own blog, written for others, and now have the privilege of contributing to this one, where the words I write are read by people I admire and respect, whose voices have inspired me to find my own, and to try – in my own way – to add something unique to the world.

Do you see what I did there?