Sunday, October 26, 2008

Something's amiss in Nascar Nation

IQ is a hard thing to measure, but I think the people who made this ad used a test based on the recitation of Harry Gant sponsors, or took an especially bad sample. The only explanation I see is that they happened to survey a group of Dartmouth students when they were at Loudon, Berkeley and Stanford students at Sears Point, Northwestern and Chicago at Chicagoland, and the rest were Elliott Sadler fans like myself.

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Markets fail when there are information and access asymmetries

If you give your nice clothes to a needy person, you are wasting money. Logically, you are almost guaranteed to reach a suboptimal net benefit. Poor people need other stuff first. I'm sure there is something snarky to be said about the "free market" candidate not knowing any better, but I'm feeling more beaten than witty right now. OK, I'll try: As a real American, Sarah Palin should know that the logical process is to auction the clothes the public at least in part bought for her, then use the proceeds to fund abstinence only education. Silly.