Market Power

The Permalink Problem is Resolved

I have resolved the permalink problem as well as the appearance problem I was having with the blog, so everything should appear normally now.  Thanks to Jen with the Typepad team for the help.

"Only Makes Me Want to Curse Harder"

K-man posts this one about every other day:

Just a reminder — this is a Times blog, so obscenities — even mild ones that you use all the, um, fleeting time — will get your comment deleted.

via krugman.blogs.nytimes.com

Why, oh why, won't the cursers listen?

That's Professor Whitehead.  Calling George Carlin. NSFW language (which only makes it more likely that you'll click it).  How many dirty words can you not write in a NYT blog comment?

The Sports Economist Still Lives

The Sports Economist blog still exists, but because of a problem in the database, readers are unable to access it and my fellow bloggers and I are unable to access the blog's dashboard.

What's Up With all the Football Posts? And a Couple of Mangino Cheap Shots

You've probably noticed that I've been writing more and more on college athletics in general and college football in particular.  There's an app a reason for that.  I have been reading up on the professional economic literature on college sports for a big project that I am working on.  Whenever I start a new project, I dive into the professional literature.  That's pretty standard in any field.  Because I am not as familiar with the literature on college sports as I am with other papers in sports economics, I have had to do a bit more diving.  I've also started writing on the subject.

I'll still be blogging on all the fun topics brought to you by the world of economics, but if you see me blogging sporadically and blogging a bit more on college football or college sports, it's not that I've given up on the rest of the science.  I've just immersed myself in one tiny little part of the vast Oceania Economica and am thinking about it a lot.  Thanks for bearing with me and, especially, for taking the time to read my blog.

By the way, Jason Whitlock's tweet about the need for a sturdy hotseat to hold Kansas' Mark Mangino and Notre Dame's Charlie Weis was pretty ripe.  My cheap shot tweet was that Kansas can't throw Mangino under a bus because he wouldn't fit.  They'd need at least a monster truck.

Doc Profiled at NormBlog This Week

My friend John Palmer of the University of Western Ontario, and the brains and brawn behind Eclectecon, is being profiled at NormBlog.

Testing for Twitter Part Deux

I'm still checking some Twitter connections with my Typepad account.  I apologize for any annoyance that this might cause.

Testing for Twitter

I am changing how I send my blog posts to Twitter.  Please disregard this post.

Hotel Mouse Pads

We're bloggers. That means we carry our laptops with us when we travel.

The internet access at hotels has been generally improving. It's usually free, now - a change from even just a year ago. The hotels are also doing better with the hardware (plugs and ethernet cable connections) than they used to.

But no mouse pads.

Post here (via Glenn Reynolds).

My wife and I stayed at a Westin in Chicago two weeks ago.  As you'd expect of a Westin - a hotel that caters to the business traveller who, in turn, is probably using other people's money (i.e. his/her employer's), they charged us for internet access, but they did provide us with a mouse pad.  It wasn't just any old mouse pad.  It was a round mouse pad.  It was about 8 inches in diameter and was plenty big enough.  I was afraid that I might miss the corners of a typical rectangular pad, but I didn't miss it in the least.

But I'd rather have internet access at no extra charge than a mouse pad.  You see, I always bring a handy dandy fake leather portfolio - nothing but the best - and an optical mouse with me when I'm on the road. 

Mouse pad?  I don't need no stinkin' mouse pad.  Even though I happily used that pad the Westin provided, I can blog without a mouse pad.  But I can't blog without an internet connection.

Anyways, my guess as to why they don't provide mouse pads:  with optical mice, substitutes that can easily function as mouse pads, and the fact that mouse pads are easy to carry, hotel-provided pads are unnecessary.

Posting from my Blackberry

Since I've started blogging again, It's unwieldly and good for, perhaps quick messages.*

*That's the original message, and I'm going to leave it like that.  Egads.  I better check with the grammar police before I post from my BlackBerry.  Either that or get more practice.

This Is Only a Test

This post is only a test.  I'm testing my hookup with Twitter.