June 4th, 2009 ecoli
Freakonomic’s Steven Dunbar has an interesting post positing why its cheaper to buy a kiwi from New Zealand than to mail a letter there. This is particularly weird concept if you consider that fruit is always more technically challenging to ship due to packaging requirements and damage concerns.
I suggest that maybe we should attach our letters to fruit to bring down the mailing costs!
Dunbar also asks why a kiwi, banana and apple cost about the same, even though the apple is coming from much closer (probably upstate New York) and banana’s are pretty robust to ship. So Dunbar posits the question to Will Masters, an agricultural economist at Purdue. The answer, of course, is about supply and demand but Masters’ reply is a must read even if you already think you know the economics…
Damn supply and damn demand:
Why cheap hogs and costly ham?
Bargain wheat, expensive flour,
The oldest villain’s market power.
Just one seller makes us nervous,
Like that U.S. Postal Service:
They may offer bargain prices,
But who disciplines their vices?
Middlemen have long been blamed
For every market that’s inflamed,
Yet better explanations come
From many a Hyde Park alum.
Modern views from Chicago-Booth
Give a nuanced view of truth,
Steven Levitt and John List
Made each of us a freakonomist.
We let data speak its mind
No matter what Friedman opined
And find the price of fruit and veg
To be driven by the market’s edge.
Like the tail that wags the dog,
Marginal thinking clears the fog:
Sellers, buyers, traders too,
Interact and prices ensue.
A kiwi costs 33 cents
Simply because no one prevents
Another farm or New York store
From entering and selling more.
In contrast apples may be dear,
For reasons that will soon be clear:
Picking them’s below our station,
To lower costs we need migration.
Bananas have a different story,
Seedless magic, breeder’s glory,
Cheap to harvest and to ship,
Who cares if workers get paid zip?
Each crop’s method of production,
Where it grows and how it’s trucked in,
Satisfies some needs quite cheaply
While other costs will rise more steeply.
A buyer’s choices matter too,
For nonsense stuff like posh shampoo,
Prices are not down to earth,
The more you pay the more it’s worth.
Behavior is as behavior does,
Maybe some things are “just because,”
Much of life’s a mystery,
A habit due to history.
For prices, though, it’s competition
Plus tariffs set by politicians,
That determines whether we see
Such delightfully cheap kiwi.
Posted in economics., link out | 5 Comments »
June 2nd, 2009 ecoli
Brazil air force pilots think they’ve spotted debris from Flight AF 447 in the Atlantic ocean. But does anybody else have the nagging suspicion that the passengers are somewhere on the island from Lost?
This map would would put the island somewhere between South America and Africa. Or somewhere completely different than that.
UPDATE: The alleged debris apparently does NOT come from the Air France flight. The plan and passengers are still Lost.
Posted in link out, news | 2 Comments »
May 28th, 2009 ecoli
Dr. James Holland Jones has an (older) post on scientific uncertainty and fat tails on his monkey’s uncle blog. Its one of the better explanations I’ve read, so do your self a favor and get educated. He also asks:
As scientists with an interest in policy, how do we communicate this type of uncertainty?
Before you can even ask this question, you have to ask if scientists, biologists in particular, are even interested in communicating uncertainty. Statistics and math are just not stressed in undergrad bio courses, and not at all in high school, so students are coming up with very little conceptions about uncertainty in data. I admit to being guitly of this but, unlike myself, how many scientists are willing to learn? Do their egos permit discussing statistical uncertainty?
This reminds me of one of Jorge Chan’s PhD comics on the science news cycle:
The cycle is exacerbated even in the first step, when scientists are not even well trained to understand or compute uncertainty themselves.
Posted in education, link out, mathematics, musings | No Comments »
May 26th, 2009 ecoli
As someone who is about to lose their previous form of health care insurance coverage, I thought the front page “conversation” on scienceblogs is appropriate.
I don’t want to get into the specifics of the debate, but I thought it was especially interesting that the overwhelming perspective on scienceblogs.com is from the left ‘pro-universal’ side. What is it that makes scientists particularly liberal, especially on this issue? Consider that the economics of the issue is far from settled and that scientists are intimately familiar with the darkside of government funding.
Posted in link out, medicine, musings | No Comments »
April 13th, 2009 ecoli
From Dr. Jekyll & Mrs. Hyde
I have been spending off hours on PubMed, trying to discover the rational basis for the host of rules pregnant women are adjured to obey:
–Don’t eat unpasteurized cheese (Brie, Gorgonzola, feta, chevre…all the good stuff)
–Don’t eat deli meats unless they’ve been heated to steaming
–Don’t even think about licking the bowl clean of cookie batter
–Sushi? Do you want the baby to die, or what?
–Lying on your back past the fourth month is going to give the critter brain damage
–A sip of wine? Why not just smoke crack and be done with it?
I’m not talking “old wives’ tales your grandmother produces.” These things are specifically listed as fetal death-traps in publications ranging from the leaflets I was handed at the ob-gyn to “What to Expect When You’re Expecting,” probably the single most popular pregnancy book available.
But here’s the funny thing. When you look for actual studies about these things on PubMed, you keep thinking that you’ve entered the wrong search terms, because so little comes up.
Expectant mothers are, generally, hypersensitive to urban legends and even random tidbits that sound like they could be scientifically plausible. Maybe they should chill out.
Posted in link out, medicine, musings | 1 Comment »
December 8th, 2008 ecoli
I couldn’t believe this story. Apparently, when smoked, the drugs are hallucinogenic. The problem is, of course, that there’s a limited resource of these drugs for the people that need them, but like any drug market, targeting abusers is more lucrative. HIV+ and health workers are the main suppliers to users in South Africa, which are mostly teens or high school age (15-21).
Posted in link out, medicine, news | 1 Comment »
November 20th, 2008 ecoli
Apparently these scientists have been turning Tequilla into diamonds. No, really. Apparantly, Mexican scientists have found another use for their most exported beverage. Anyone want to explain how they do it? I’ll buy a round for the first/best explanation.
Posted in link out, news | 3 Comments »
October 16th, 2008 ecoli
I guess you can’t really just sue anyone. I think scary part of this is that the court acknowledged the existence of God and “a consequence of that acknowledgement is a recognition of God’s omniscience.” Apparently, the only reason you can’t sue God is that there’s no address to serve the papers to
Look out Shiva, Zeus, Thor and FSM… you might be getting served next (I recommend de-listing your addresses from the phonebook).
Posted in humor, link out, news | 2 Comments »
October 10th, 2008 ecoli
story here
A necropsy revealed that a virgin shark was pregnant at the time of death and was nearly ready to give birth. Parthenogenesis was not thought to be common among sharks, the last documented case was at an Omaha zoo in 2002.
Genetic testing confirmed that the unborn shark had no father. The testing was done at Stony Brook University (always like giving a shoutout to my uni) at the Institute for Ocean Conservation Science. This could indicate that parthenogenesis could be more common in sharks than previously thought.
Posted in environment, genetics, link out | 2 Comments »
October 6th, 2008 ecoli
In the post peak-oil era (and even before it) the ability to walk (or comfortably bike, at least) to destinations will be come increasingly important.
What’s the easiest way to judge how walkable a neighborhood is? By determining if there’s anything close by worth walking to.
That’s what this website is designed to calculate. It takes into consideration the distances to destinations that Google maps has scores and assigns your neighborhood an arbitrary value based on the types of attractions around it and how far they are.
All you do is type in your address: The walking score of my neighborhood is a 32 (car dependent) :-(
The most walkable cities? In order: San Fran, NYC, Boston and Chicago.
It’s an interesting idea for a website that will no doubt play a significant role in the real estate market. I myself have used the website is helping decide my top picks for medical schools.
I feel that the increased urbanization of america is inevitable, and that the era of the suburban catastrophe will drawing to a close. With that in mind, (if you’re a real estate investor) buying property with high walking scores might not be a bad idea.
Post your scores here.
Posted in link out, musings | 7 Comments »
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