Friday, April 15, 2011
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Butterfield Ate...
...BUtterfield 8-3000. It's Johny Carson Carnac joke, explained here:
"The ironic connection is the telephone number of New York‘s funeral home to the stars, Frank E. Campbell. For years the funeral directors that laid the likes of Judy Garland and Rudolph Valentino to rest used to advertise: ―In the event of death call BUtterfield 8-3000."
Friday, February 25, 2011
Who Said It? "Human Beings are not "Individuals"...
That would be the granddaddy of all Chicago economists, Frank H,. Knight, in "Fallacies in the Interpretation of Social Cost," reprinted in Frank Knight, The Ethics of Competition 209-28 at 227-8 (1977)/
Friday, January 21, 2011
The Wobbly Table
For the four-legged table: you take a matchbook; you get down on your hands and knees; you shove the match book under the wobbly leg until it is even.,
For the three-legged table. If the three-legged table wobbles, you'd better quit drinking. The three-legged table cannot wobble. Indeed, an alternative correct solution to the four-legged table problem is to chop off the fourth leg; then you have a three-legged table which does not wobble.
Per BBC, men know this; women pull out another matchbook. BBC says that men get it right because the conceptualize the problem, and women get it wrong because they go straight to the solution. In my sample set of one (not Mrs. Buce), my subject firmly insisted that a three-legged table can wobble and that she was going right home to try. Haven't heard back.
For the three-legged table. If the three-legged table wobbles, you'd better quit drinking. The three-legged table cannot wobble. Indeed, an alternative correct solution to the four-legged table problem is to chop off the fourth leg; then you have a three-legged table which does not wobble.
Per BBC, men know this; women pull out another matchbook. BBC says that men get it right because the conceptualize the problem, and women get it wrong because they go straight to the solution. In my sample set of one (not Mrs. Buce), my subject firmly insisted that a three-legged table can wobble and that she was going right home to try. Haven't heard back.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Who Bears the Loss?
The answer is: Roomie. He pays 15 pounds to buy the right from Romeo, but he'll have to pay another 15 pounds to recover the 20--plus, probably, a transaction cost (Romeo is out only 5 pounds net). But the real puzzle is: how could anyone have been puzzled by this puzzle? Isn't it obvious? Or am I speaking now, perhaps, as a commercial lawyer?
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