Interesting little presentation on the growing popularity of music-based games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero. Click through the slides and check the figures. Notice too the quotes from music-industry people about rights owners not getting enough money. Still, with the fight on to shore up the industry’s revenue base, it is hardly surprising that they are going in hard after this relatively new market.
A German aristocrat of my acquaintance has figured out that the price he will be paid for the output of a solar panel is so high compared with the price he will pay for his input of normal electricity, that he is thinking of rigging up powerful arc lamps to shine on solar panels on his extensive roof.
(HT: Bishop Hill)
Yesterday on Insiders Chris Uhlmann suggested that the Howard government had cut hospital spending. Joe Hockey denied that allegation saying that the States had increased spending over and above the Commonwealth spend, leaving Uhlmann mumbling something about spending share.
Today Paul Sheehan has this comment.
The big lie, repeated again and again, is that the Howard government stripped a billion dollars out of the health system. This claim cannot withstand scrutiny. Any government minister who repeats this mantra is lying. Read more »
It’s always nice to get a name for something that is rummaging round in one’s mind. Autoantonymy has – believe it or not been doing that in my tiny brain for many years. So I’m greatful to the great Three Quarks website for giving me the word (and grateful to Ingolf for telling us all about Three Quarks many moons ago).
As explained on the site: Read more »
A talk wth the author of the Sokal hoax. Some interesting excerpts:
… after the Social Text affair, most analytically-minded philosophers embraced Sokal as an ally. “The reaction from philosophers, at least in the English-speaking world, was generally supportive,” he says. “Most philosophers in the English-speaking world don’t go for relativism in general and certainly don’t go for the extreme, sloppy versions of it that you get from post-modernist oriented literary critics. Philosophers have been critical of that sort of sloppy philosophy for a long time. There was the famous debate in the New York Review of Books between John Searle and Jacques Derrida. So most philosophers were genuinely supportive.” Read more »
The other day I was at Toby’s Estate’s Wooloomooloo outlet when I became inordinately interested in the menu pricing.
From my notes (I did mean inordinately) :
Short Black/Ristretto : $2.20
Long Black/Piccolo Latte : $3.00
Latte/Flat White/Cappuccino : $3.50
Here’s my puzzlement. It’s clearly not marginal cost pricing. Whilst the extra labour and milk obviously add a slightly greater cost to the flat white compared to long black, these extra costs are also present to a marginally smaller extent in the piccolo latte which is priced the same. And the effort involved in adding already heated effectively free water to a cup for a long black can’t represent an 80 cent cost on top of a short black.
But we don’t expect perfect marginal cost pricing in many places anyway. Read more »
On Sunday I wrote: "It’s never been easier to check quotations". It’s time for an update.
While checking some of my own words on Monday, I discovered that many of my old blog posts had been attributed to Danger Mouse and Admin. A part of my online identity had been sucked down the memory hole.
While it’s easier than ever to check quotes from well known figures like John F Kennedy, Groucho Marx or Winston Churchill, it can be surprisingly difficult to check quotes from bloggers. As John Quiggin notes, some bloggers try to fend off criticism by stealthily correcting their mistakes. And some blogs just disappear. Read more »
Welcome back to another week at Pure Poison. Use this open thread to discuss anything that doesn’t fit the conversation under other posts.
Today is International Women’s Day, and it’s nice to see that some of our conservative commentators are taking the opportunity to raise important women’s issues.
Have at it.
It’s never been easier to check quotations. With tools like Google Books and the Yale Book of Quotations there’s no need to publish spurious or out of context quotes.
But even today, books, newspapers and academic papers are full of quotes that are just wrong. Here’s an example from Catherine Lumby’s and Duncan Fine’s book Why TV Is Good for Kids: Read more »
John Quiggin makes an interesting argument in a recent post.
if you can’t get basic stats right, you can’t get economics right either
I’d like to think that’s right, but I know it isn’t. First specialisation and the division of labour suggests that it would/should be possible to get economics right and not stats. Second, Deirdre McCloskey and Stephen Ziliak have tested that hypothesis. From the introduction of their 2003 Journal of Socio-Economics article. Read more »
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