The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design. – F.A. Hayek
Posted in Education, Environment on Dec 31st, 2011
The entire National Park Service has a budget and staffing level that is just about identical to the budget and staffing level of my very own University of Rochester. The NPS budget request for this year was $3.1 billion. The U of R budget for the last year they reported it to the government was [...]
Posted in Fun Facts on Dec 31st, 2011
Nearly 60% of the residents of Bloomington, Indiana are single – making it (by this admittedly misleading measure) the loneliest place to be on New Year’s Eve.
Posted in You Can't Have it Both Ways on Dec 30th, 2011
When we grade our students each semester, inevitably there will be students who fall a very miniscule percentage point below some grade cutoff. For example, I award an A to students scoring a 94% or better, an A- to students scoring from 90% up to and not including 94% and so on. There is always [...]
Posted in Economic Illiteracy, Economics Problems, Environment on Dec 29th, 2011
In the year 2000 there were 8,354 oil and petroleum based product spills in US navigable waters. 5 years later? 4,073. In 2008? 3,633. In 2009? 3,492. How much oil has been spilled? 2000: 1.43 million gallons 2005: 2.36 million gallons 2008: 777,000 gallons 2009: 196,000 gallons While 10x less oil spilled in waters since [...]
Posted in Environment on Dec 28th, 2011
Let’s imagine a truly horrific scenario for what a warming planet might do to the United States (these are unrealistic). Imagine that a rapidly warming planet so destroys our natural industries that they lose 50% of their value. In other words, let’s imagine that agriculture, forestry, farming, fishing, hunting, wood-product and paper-product manufacturing, and all [...]
Posted in Resources on Dec 27th, 2011
Oh no! There’s only 4,200 cubic kilometers of Krypton left in the entirety of Earth’s atmosphere. If humans keep using Krypton at current rates … oops … scratch that.
Posted in Education, Environment, Institutions on Dec 26th, 2011
If only it was $11,500 we were talking about. At the same time as our university installed the Solar-Dok, it broke ground on a new student dormitory. This time the stakes are a little bit higher – the dorm is slated to cost $17 million. How is this relevant, don’t we need to build dorms to [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Dec 24th, 2011
A former student of mine, Sam Wecker, and his sister put together this little ditty. Enjoy!
Posted in Regulation on Dec 24th, 2011
How come the FDA does not inspect postal mailing envelopes? Licking glue is probably not the safest thing in the world, and gosh just think of the evils that could come from it. Or maybe the FDA does indeed inspect them?
Posted in Flotsam and Jetsam on Dec 24th, 2011
Here I run a little ditty in the same exact form as it appeared in 2008. Sad that so little of it is out of date, and of course you’re all welcome to whistle a few new versus to keep up with the times. … and all through the land consumption is slowing, and investors [...]
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