Knowing and Making

Brendan O'Neill raises the important issue of how filling in a form forces us to indelibly define our lifelong identity by ticking a box. But for some reason he is only willing to tackle the easiest question: religion. There are bigger issues here. Campaigning cyclists are gear-gnashingly worried that insufficient numbers of people will tick the “Cars In This Household: None” box. The Rail Passengers Association is on a mission to encourage as many non-drivers as possible to declare their non-driving. It argues that only by getting a realistic snapshot of how many cars there are in modern-day Britain (fewer than we think, apparently) can we challenge such allegedly problematic institutions as multi-story car parks, and the privileging of Jeremy Clarkson in various prime time BBC TV programmes. But if lots of non-drivers choose not to tick “Cars In This Household: None”, I won’t be surprised. Why? Because people generally don’t like to define themselves negatively, by what th...

I have been listening to a charming pop song by the delightful young artist " Jessie J ", prompted by the ravings of a tipsy man on the tube (long story, don't ask). Some of the lyrics go like this: Seems like everybody's got a price, I wonder how they sleep at night. When the sale comes first, And the truth comes second, Just stop for a minute and s mile It's not about the money, money, money We don't need your money, money, money We just wanna make the world dance, Forget about the price tag What a refreshing attitude, I thought! This insightful young woman has not only written a song about the important and neglected issue of pricing, for the first time since the rapper Meaningful Contribution To Human Progress changed his name to 50 Cent. But she has expressed a subtle understanding of the fact that not all economic incentives are material ones. In many situations, consumers really do just want truth, or a smile, and not a material object. This is...

Oops. I have just tried to check out some train times on the National Rail website . Seems they have been doing some maintenance and deployed something slightly wrong to the live server. As soon as I try to enter the station I'm going from... This makes it ever so slightly impossible to use the site. Of course, anyone who's written a web app has done this at some time, but it's very reassuring to see one of the busiest sites in the UK making the same mistake. And the best thing is the smug feeling of knowing exactly what they have just done and why it happened. Maybe my web development days are not entirely behind me...

Despite Chris's warning , I went to Tim Worstall's book launch today. I even bought a copy which I will review on here when I have read it (on the bus tomorrow). But before that, I learned something nice from his answer to an audience question. Apparently, there's a clear relationship between GDP per head and population growth. We already know that people in poorer countries have more children, and the population of those countries grows faster. It seems that there's a measurable cut-off point: at $16,000 per head of GDP, fertility drops to around replacement rate (just over two children per mother) and the population stabilises. Which reminded me of another statistic I read recently: national happiness grows with GDP until a certain point, at which it levels off and people stop getting happier. That level? $17,000 per head *. Now perhaps there's something important in that $1,000 difference, but the two figures are within the margin of error for cross-coun...

Bruce Schneier ( via Farnam Street ) makes the by-now-unoriginal observation * that: ...we pick a defense, and then the terrorists look at our defense and pick an attack designed to get around it. Our security measures only work if we happen to guess the plot correctly. If we get it wrong, we’ve wasted our money. This isn’t security; it’s security theater. Probably true. But then, terrorism isn't exactly "real" either: by design, it's a theatrical exercise too. Or perhaps a reality TV show. The clue is in the name - terrorism isn't designed to kill people, it's designed to make them scared . Thus, if we design this game for terrorists to play, they can win it just by smuggling a bomb through the security measures, regardless of whether it goes off. Notice that all the recently-discovered terrorist plots - the shoe bomber, the underpants bomber, the soft-drinks bomber, the printer-ink bomber - have failed? If the goal is simply to make us worry, make us r...

I thought I'd seen it all. But no. Commenter "zadok" on Robert Peston's blog has discovered the real  culprits behind Britain's economic malaise. From comment 5 on " Can the UK close massive deficit with China? ": The english ( anglo saxons ) are the most inventive people in the world but unfortunately,like everything,the normans highjacked their flair and trashed it. (Punctuation and spelling in the original) I have seen the Americans blamed; the Labour government; the Tory government; the Chinese; the rich; the middle class; the unemployed; the banks; the EU, the IMF, the World Bank, the capitalists, the socialists, the communists, and even the behavioural economists. But it never occurred to me that it could have been...the Normans .

Loved this headline: Bernanke Beats Schumacher in Korea as Brains Finish First . I don't really know what else to say about it. I'll post something more intelligent tomorrow.

Thanks to Jonah Thomas , commenter on Marginal Revolution, for this beautiful story: I once talked to a Marine who had served in the Philippines. There was a guy who sold bananas right outside the base. He sold one bunch of bananas for ten cents, and he sold three bunches of bananas for 35 cents. The Marine tried to explain to the man that his pricing was wrong. "Look. I buy one bunch of bananas. Here's a dime. I buy a second bunch of bananas. here's another dime. I buy a third bunch. Three dimes. I came out ahead! I got 3 bunches of bananas for thirty cents! But you wanted to sell them for thirty five cents!" The man would stare blankly at him and never understood, no matter how hard he explained. Lots of Marines tried to explain it and the man never figured it out. Later my friend noticed that in town he could buy a bunch of bananas for 3 cents.

The French MEP and ex-justice minister Rachida Dati has entertained legions of Youtube viewers  with a slip of the tongue - intending to state that "inflation" was close to zero, but instead claiming "fellatio" was close to zero. Fortunately, we hear, the European Central Bank is responding in a timely manner to this problem, with a "moral easing" or ME policy. In contrast to its attitude to inflation, the ECB board - especially its French and Dutch members - are quite concerned about a shortage of fellatio in the economy. They are willing to print as many euros as it takes - and distribute them wherever necessary - to return fellatio to its trend rate. As precedent they have cited Oval Office policy during the Clinton administration. Some economists have claimed that fellatio targeting is not the appropriate measure, and instead the overall level of orgasms in the economy (also known as NGDP, or Number of Groans Derived from Poking) should be the con...

Paul Krugman bemoans an externality imposed on him by Narayana Kocherlakota (or his ancestors): the need to fit more letters into a short column, the more he is discussed. While this problem has been solved over at WCI (see what I did there?) by compressing him to NK, this is a risky policy due to the frequent mentions of New Keynesian models alongside his name. Paul suggests that all economists should have short names like Ip and Ng. If this a problem now, surely it was a bigger problem in the days of mechanical movable type. With modern typesetting software and the greater readership of electronic media, long names are now more affordable to the reader. We can test this hypothesis statistically. Let's start with the founders of economics in the 18th century: Hume, Smith and Mill. So far, so good. Indeed, the first entry in my Routledge " Fifty Major Economists " is the tiny-surnamed Thomas Mun. In the 19th century the theory was developed further by Ricardo,...

News headlines naturally need to be compact and punchy, and they have a certain distinct grammar which is recognisable at a glance. Often a noun is used as an adjective, or a verb elided, as in "Labour leader vote close". But the headline I saw on the BBC website today takes this principle just about to its outer limit. Six nouns are converted into adjectives one after the other, each one raising the stakes of an extraordinary portmanteau noun phrase: MS charity respite home closure protest vote fails The story is here , if you can figure out quite what it means.

The blog has been a bit inactive the last couple of weeks as I've been in Spain celebrating my brother's 30th birthday, followed by a bit of holiday time. Just arrived back, and ready to get some new ideas into writing. In the meantime, a message kindly provided to me in one of my own birthday cards, a couple of weeks previous: Birthdays are good for you. Statistics prove that the people who have the most live the longest.   - Larry Lorenzoni

See that "Most believe retirement is over" link on the right? When you click on it, you get the article on the left . Which says that fully 8% of people expect never to retire. I know that the definitions of some words are variable, and subjective, and that reasonable people can disagree even on the meaning of "majority". The US Senate certainly does. But it's rather difficult to stretch the definition of "most" to mean 8% of people .

I was intrigued recently to learn of the existence of the World Blind Football Championship - the BBC has now written a detailed article about it  so I have found out some more. Footballs with ball bearings...some careful and limited shouting techniques between the five players on each team...rebound walls and no throw-ins...opaque eye patches to keep players on an equal footing, since some of them have partial sight and others are fully blind. Would be fascinating to watch, although I don't think it will have TV coverage. It's interesting to read about the various compromises they've designed into the game to keep it competitive and exciting and allowing visually impaired players to fully express their talents for the game. The goalkeepers, for example, can be sighted and do not wear the eyepatches, but may not leave their areas. And there's no offside rule. Apparently they also tried to find blind referees to officiate the matches... ...but they are all busy ...

Called Vodafone today because they've just charged me £250 on one of my handsets. They mentioned a new price plan which is available now that my contract period is finished. £20/month for 900 minutes and an infinite number of texts. Pretty good considering that I just paid £250 for 900 minutes and a distinctly finite number of texts. So I asked to switch plans. Should they have told me about this option - costing less than a tenth of what I was paying - without me having to ask for it? An interesting question, for a company claiming to provide the highest quality customer service of all the British mobile networks, but that's not what this post is about. This post is about me remembering that my work mobile is on an old contract too, costing me about about £65 for much less than 900 minutes. So I asked to have that one switched to the £20/month deal too. And so the paradox started. I haven't changed plans for about ten years on this one. I don't use it enough for ...

From my email today, this is a charming attempt from an Indian software company to make themselves look relevant: Dear Leigh, Hope you are well. It was a pleasure to travel to some very nice cities like Crawley, Brighton, Worthing, Southampton, Stoke-on-Trent, Birmingham, Stevenage, Bushy, Cambridge, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Oxford, London and meet some very nice people. British readers will spot several obvious flaws in this assertion. I will try to avoid offending readers around the country by suggesting which are the flaws.

Profitable and not-at-all exploitative recommendations for transport and accommodation providers seeking to make the best of this week's Icelandic volcano: Create a steep demand curve for your tickets but start low. If you simply ramp up the prices of your train tickets, ferry berths or car rentals, you'll be accused of price gouging. Short-term gain but long-term hit to reputation. Instead, sell the first few tickets at the same price as you normally would, so that you can claim not to be exploiting anyone, but as your capacity fills, increase price steeply. I suspect this is what Eurostar is doing, but they're still being criticised for exploitation - so the next tip is: Make a big noise about how you're contributing to the rescue effort. We're all in this together you know, it's the Dunkirk spirit and all that. You're laying on extra  buses, trains and ships - and while you need to ask a fair price to help cover your costs, you're saving people hu...

David Cameron has been criticised for saying during the debate that China was a potential nuclear threat to the UK. However, Chris Huhne's slip of the tongue in the post-debate analysis went almost unnoticed. He claimed that the risk was not from China, but instead from rogue states like Iran...and South  Korea. I now await the set to be completed with David Miliband's declaration of the imminent nuclear threat from Japan.

Boris is, as always, the most entertaining man on the political circuit. This morning he contradicted official Tory policy by saying that the "citizen service" scheme for 16-year-olds should be compulsory and not voluntary. Presumably he's been slapped down by Conservative Central Office, so he has now clarified the position : London Mayor Boris Johnson has clarified his earlier comment, in which he said the National Citizen Service for teenagers should be compulsory - at odds with his party's plan for a voluntary scheme. He told me he believes the National Citizen Service should be as compulsory as you can possibly make it without "cheesing people off", the BBC's Carole Walker says. I hope the Conservatives are going to take this approach with all their new laws. If they do raise VAT, freeze public sector pay or restrict welfare benefits, I look forward to being able to exempt myself from the rules by getting "cheesed off".

Easy people to confuse: Casey Mulligan Carey Mulligan One is a talented young ingenue who has received lots of media coverage recently and can look forward to a prominent Wall Street role...and the other is an actress.