new post:
itsallendogenous.wordpress.com

Two new posts
itsallendogenous.wordpress.com

At my new blog: itsallendogenous.wordpress.com

Also, how come I have 60 myspace hits this week, and only 18 hits at my new blog?  All I have posted this week is that I have new posts on my other blog.  Are 2/3 of my myspace visitors not clicking through?  What gives?  My other blog is schnazzier people!

    itsallendogenous.wordpress.com

No more extremely slow logging in and posts lost half way written--I am starting a new blog.  I will keep posting here for a while to let you all know when I write something new

The new blog is here: itsallendogenous.wordpress.com

Its a bit bare at the moment...I will be improving it as time goes by.

trying to decide whether taxi cab or delivery truck drivers deserve the title "most likely to kill someone in Taipei."  Delivery truck drivers are definitely more erratic, and are constantly doing dangerous things like speeding out of the alley next to this coffeeshop onto the main road without looking or stopping, but there are less of them and everyone expects them to be crazy.  There are tons of taxi cabs everywhere, and only occassionally do they do something incredibly stupid, like suddenly change lanes right in front of you for no reason.  However, it’s impossible to predict.

The other thing I was thinking about was ownership bias.  My parents love living in Sturgeon Bay and can’t imagine why anyone would choose to live in a big city.  I feel somewhat opposite.  I bet this has something to do with our respective living decisions.  If you live in a city, you think someone would be crazy not to, thus reinforce the correctness of your choice.  Ditto for living in a small, scenic town.

The same principle goes for buying anything.  The moment someone purchases something they give it higher ratings than they did before they purchased it.

Yesterday I had lunch with my ex-roommate Guowei.  We went to a fried rice place right next to campus.  As we were eating, we noticed that the other little restaurants around had all recently raised their prices, often pasting paper over their old prices on their signs--the price hikes, of course, due to the rising price of food all over the world.

Anyway, we were talking about why the fried rice guy still hadn’t raised his price, and concluded that the price of rice must not be rising.  We were very wrong.  Check out this piece in today’s New York Times.  I guess we should have realized since when we paid the bill, the rice chef asked us if the amount of fried rice he gave us today was enough to fill us up (it must have been less than usual...I didn’t notice).

Somewhat unrelatedly, the New York Times piece describes export controls enacted by many Asian and Middle Eastern countries to keep domestic prices low.  This might work this year since farmers have already invested in their crops, but what happens next year when rice farmers realize that they can make more money switching to something else?  Remember, the governments goal is to get more rice to the people who need it, not produce less rice.  In general price controls-direct or indirect-make for silly, counterproductive economic policy.