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Lucas's Strategy Guide to Gambling
So, my family took a trip back in May with a couple of our friends to Atlantic City, New Jersey. While there, I decided to try my hand at some low-stakes gambling (AKA "penny slots and video poker"). As the kind of person that likes to analyze things more or less to death, I did a lot of thinking during and after the trip. And here, my friends, ( Read more... ) -
Jar Jar Binks: Sith Lord - Evidence from Phantom Menace
So, one of my favorite fan theories at the moment is the "Darth Jar Binks" theory, with some evidence here: http://darthjarjar.com/original-theory-by-lumpawarroo/Read more... ) -
Canton Economic Data Analysis
As one of the relatively few academic economists in Stark County, I took it upon myself to start studying the economy of the area. Here are a summary of some of my findings thus far ( Read more... ) -
Loving Mark Forster's Final Version
So, a while ago - right around the beginning of the new year - I adopted Mark Forster's "Final Version" (FV) as a means of organizing my task lists. And I have to say, I'm LOVING it ( Read more... ) -
My State of the Union Response 2015
So, rather than going line-by-line as I occasionally do, I'm just going to hit some of the "high points" (or, perhaps, "low points") - just things that stood out to me. Which mean I'm going to be ignoring probably over 90% of the speech.
First, I will mention that I didn't actually watch the speech - I'm working off a transcript, but I trust NPR ( Read more... ) -
Thoughts on Pres Obama and Immigration
A handful of thoughts about Pres. Obama and Immigration ( Read more... ) -
Thoughts on Voting
So, yesterday, another election came and went here in the US. I honestly have very few thoughts about the outcome of the election at the moment. I'm much more interested in voting itself. So, here are a variety of voting-related topics.
(1) On "Rights to Complain"
( Read more... ) -
Fun with Statistics: Reading Edition
So, I ran across this on Facebook:
http://www.robertbrewer.org/disciple/surprising-book-facts-infographic/
I'm going to focus on one of the key points here: the relationship between poverty and poor literacy. To do that, let's make a table:
In Poverty
Not In Poverty
Total
Low literacy
High literacy
Total
Now, let's plug in ( Read more... ) -
Noah Smith on Austrian "brain worms"
Last week, Noah Smith (who teaches Finance at Stony Brook University, and runs the blog Noahpinion) has this piece on Austrian economist published on Bloomberg. I've been spending the last 12 hours or so deciding whether or not I needed to respond to it. On the one hand, it is clearly poorly informed about Austrian economics. On the other hand, it' ( Read more... ) -
Thoughts on "Laborless Production"
So, a discussion got started on Twitter - which is not a good platform for long, extended discussions. And my thoughts on this particular topic are long and extended. So, I came here to LJ, where the platform is MUCH more suited to such things ( Read more... )