Update: Stating the Obvious

To my few, occasional readers—amazingly, there still are a few—allow me to state the obvious:

Because of life beyond the blog, particularly my pursuit of a master's degree in military history at Norwich University, new blog posts will likely be extraordinarily rare until I graduate in mid 2012. As time permits and my the need to vent demands, I will post new rants blog posts.

Incidentally, almost two months into my degree program, my experience has been consistently good. Norwich knows how to do online learning right. I've also been pleasantly surprised at the emphasis my program places on good writing, something that is desperately lacking in academia and elsewhere.

For now, I will continue to twit (I refuse to "tweet") on most weekdays, pointing to various interesting items I find surfing the Web. These are available (usually) in the Twitter feed in the left column.

Goal of the Week: Buddle Goal Against Seattle

An unbelievable strike by Edson Buddle (LA Galaxy) against the Seattle Sounders in the first leg of the playoffs. Kasey Keller, one of the best goalies in MLS, didn't have a chance. It was the only goal of the match, but what a goal.

The Laffer Cliff

The idea for this post has been bouncing around in my head for months, delayed by life beyond the blog. Hopefully, the idea aged well.

Who'd have thunk it? At least one practitioner of the dismal "science" can be both entertaining and informative.

Allow me to introduce Dr. Arthur Laffer of Laffer Curve fame, an economic theory that Ben Stein used as material in his classic portrayal of a deadly boring economics teacher in Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

[The movie clip may not appear until after the jump.]

Rediscovering Capitalism: Lessons from the Mistakes of Marxist-Leninism

Disclaimer: I copyedited this book, and the author is a friend and colleague.

More than a year ago, a colleague asked me to help copyedit a book she was writing: Rediscovering Fire: Basic Economic Lessons from the Soviet Experiment to Eliminate the Market. When she explained the idea behind the book--using the Soviets' experiences as a series of experiments to demonstrate fundamental laws of economics (i.e., capitalism)--I was intrigued, in part because of my background in Soviet and Russian studies. In a fit of generosity, I agreed, which I came to partially regret later when my schedule became ridiculously busy due factors outside of work. (I was already quite busy at work.)

When I actually began working on it, the regret disappeared. Her idea was as good as it had sounded. Repeatedly, the Soviets had destroyed the market and its mechanisms only to realize that they needed to recreate them to make the Soviet economy function at all. Naturally, their attempts to mimic market forces through central planning were at best half measures, which promptly failed, leaving the leaders to rediscover and reinstitute market forces under various thin disguises. The whole episode of Soviet economic experimentation would make a wonderful comedy if it had not condemned millions to misery and even death.

The book is well worth a read.

I take some pleasure in the cover by John Cox. I referred Guinevere to John Cox, a favorite cartoonist and caricaturist of mine, who has an eye for absurd.

Note: If you see any typos in this book, I don't want to hear about them. They are obviously the publisher's fault. :-)

Related Links
On Amazon.com: Guinevere Liberty Nell, Rediscovering Fire: Basic Economic Lessons from the Soviet Experiment to Eliminate the Market (2010).
John Cox Art, website

"Board at your own risk"

Photo courtesy of WMATA

Something unique happened on my commute home, which is usually a bad thing, but not so much today.

When I boarded a Metro train at Union Station, the driver started warning passengers that the air conditioning was out in all six cars of the train and that it was a "hot train." She continued by warning that anyone with a medical condition should get off and wait for the next train.

Hot Metro cars are nothing new to me, but an entire train is and so were the warnings. Either this driver was seriously concerned about the welfare of her passengers or Metro may actually be getting serious about improving customer service. Hopefully, both.


But this was not the end of the warnings. She topped everything with "Board at your own risk," which I found  quite funny and refreshingly direct. The irony of a train driver urging passengers not to board her train was delicious. I don't even remember if she followed silly Metro practice of referring to the passengers as "customers," which has always annoyed me as a needlessly imprecise term.

If I'd been going a longer distance, I would have waited for the next train. Hot cars can be quite exhausting. Instead, I enjoyed watching the other travelers react to the driver's warnings as they boarded at each station.

If the driver came up with this routine on her own, she should be immediately promoted to management, which appears to need some clear thinkers.


Related Reading
Dr. Gridlock, "Miserable weather for Metro," Washington Post
Unsuck DC Metro blog