Economics of unions

Gilles Saint-Paul writes the post I've been meaning to write over at the Economist debate site.

Note the power of straight, dispassionate analysis to cut through the misleading moral fog.

I've only met Gilles once. We ended up somewhere in Germany, I don't recall where now, on the same day, and had a joint seminar dinner. My recollection is that he is quite entertaining, so if you get the chance to share a beer (or maybe wine) or a meal, take it.

First single I ever got

As best I can recall, this is the first single I ever owned. I think I do still own it now but it is buried somewhere in the basement.

I am not sure what this proves other than that I already had a bit of an off-kilter sense of humor at age seven.

Oh, and for the student readers, that thing in the picture is a 45 rpm (revolutions per minute) record, which contained one song on each side and was called a "single" (though perhaps it should have been called a "double" as there were two songs). It was played on something called a phonograph or record player.

Assorted links

1. David Friedman's North African dictator exam question. His mead is good too.

2. Hooters in Tokyo. The intellectually interesting bit is how they re-position the chain for a country where (a) no one knows what "hooters" is slang for and (b) men are not into large breasts.

3. China regulates reincarnation (again?)

4. A tool for monitoring lazy reporters who regurgitate press releases under their own names.

5. Female to male transsexuals and the economics (and sociology) of gender differences in the workforce. I am not sure I buy the before-after estimator here in a literal sense, but this is surely still research worth doing.

Assorted links

1. The "snake fight" portion of your thesis defense.

2. A thoughtful response to (among others) my comments on the American Sociological Association's statement about Glenn Beck and Francis Fox Piven. My concern was not with Piven so much as with the ASA stepping outside the boundaries of its reasonable mission.

3. Today's zero tolerance insanity.

4. Good that we have civilian control of the military. Yikes.

5. Some pretty interesting history of yoga as currently practiced. Apparently people fight about this when not meditating.

Hat tip on #1 to Jess Goldberg.

More on film subsidies

1. A reason interview with filmmaker Joe Gressis (the video directly above).

2. NYT on states cutting film subsidies.

3. Scandals with film subsidies in Iowa.

4. CBPP (never thought I'd link to them) on film subsidies, but it looks like a reasonable survey.

Libya

Slate offers up some tart words from Christopher Hitchens (not all of which I necessarily agree with, but he is always worth reading) and here is the LSE thesis of one of his kids.

The day they took the laptops

Via Ann Althouse