Seahawks coaching change

Jim Mora is out of a job as Seattle Seahawks head coach.

That was fast!

I can remember when he was on the market last time reading a lot of people who said he should replace Tyrone Willingham at Washington and that he would be the football savior of all football saviors. Evidently not, though he is a good coach and if he wants to stay in Seattle, where he is from, then UW should try to find something for him to do.

And why would Pete Carroll take the Seahawks job and leave USC? The extra $$ at the margin can't mean much and he fits so well in LA.

The new economy in Detroit

The University of Michigan now has more employees in the Detroit Metro Area than two of the "big three" automakers.

Amazing.

Darwin awards

I always find the Darwin Awards almost as sad as they are amusing.

They also have an entertaining page of perhaps even more enjoyable stupidity-related quotes, including this one:

Just think how stupid the average person is, then realize that half of them are stupider - George Carlin

Too bad George does not know the difference between the mean and the median (or maybe they left out the preceding sentence, which surely included the assumption of a symmetric distribution).

Over there with Powerpoint

This bit about the military issuing Powerpoint presentations rather than actual orders is rather scary.

Hat tip: Charlie Brown

Dave Barry reviews 2010

Dave Barry at his best - I laughed out loud several times.

A taster:

On the economic front, California is caught on videotape attempting to shoplift 17,000 taxpayers from Nevada. General Motors files for bankruptcy and announces a new sales strategy under which it will go around at night leaving cars in people's driveways, then sprint away.

Justin Wolfers on cheap economists

Justin Wolfers responds to a Wall Street Journal piece on cheap economists.

It is very important to distinguish being cheap from economizing. Spending an hour driving around to save a few dollars when your consulting rate is $100 an hour is cheap but not economical unless you really, really enjoy the driving or the feeling of snagging a low money price. Also, spending time trimming the tree yourself, as Justin notes, is perfectly compatible with being a rational maximizer as long as you get enough utility from it.

I made a decision when I moved to Maryland not to worry anymore about any expenditure of less than $20. This means I occasionally buy things that I would not have purchased if I had agonized over the decision, but on the other hand I avoid a great big heap of decision costs. Does this rule make me cheap, or not?

I chatted a bit with Justin at the just-completed American Economic Association meetings in (cold and bleak) Atlanta. We both were at the reception hosted by the IZA, a German research institute with a focus on labor economics. The nice folks at IZA were offering free alcoholic beverages at their reception and had attracted a pretty big crowd. Could this be evidence that economists are cheap?

More on Samuelson's textbook and comparative systems

A fine post from marginal revolution that summarizes a new paper on the topic of why Samuelson got his Soviet economic predictions so wrong for so long: were the blinders methodological or ideological?

The comments are fun too. My favorites:

"Krugman temper-tantrum in 3, 2, 1..."

and

Perhaps Robert Conquest's words on the USSR were intended for people like Samuelson and his fellows: `I told you so, you f[***]ing fools.'"