Tyler Cowen's Blog, page 154
July 5, 2014
Can America hold Great Britain together through haggis importation?
The British government is pulling out all the stops for Scotland with a referendum on independence two months away, going so far as to lobby the United States government to allow the importation of that famous Scottish delicacy made from sheep’s innards, haggis.
The problem, it seems, is sheep lungs, which the United States banned for consumption in 1971. But lungs are vital to traditional haggis, which usually also contains minced sheep heart and liver, mixed with onion, oatmeal, suet and spices. It’s all stuffed into a sheep’s stomach, which is then simmered for several hours. Delicious, no?
There is more here. But is the market really there? I hope not. Please keep this in mind:
There is apparently a shocking lack of knowledge about haggis. According to a not-very-scientific online survey in 2003, carried out by the haggis manufacturer Hall’s of Broxburn, a third of American visitors to Scotland believed that haggis was an animal. Nearly a quarter thought they could catch one.
Assorted links
1. Bathroom breaks for Wimbledon (surprisingly complicated questions).
2. Eight-minute video on the cinema of Michael Bay.
3. The journalism of García Márquez.
4. Matt now has a blog-like entity on Vox.
5. How old were the Founding Fathers in 1776?
6. Jeremy Bentham’s scathing critique of the Declaration of Independence.
7. Zoo animals and their discontents.
What is the summer’s most read and most unread bestseller?
You can get a good sense of this by seeing the distribution of “most marked” Kindle passages within the book itself. For the winner, Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch, “all five top highlights come from the final 20 pages.” That suggests many readers actually finished the book (as did I, though I found it forgettable). So that wins the prize as the most read bestseller this year, although it does not seem every single bestseller was sampled. Not so well read are Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow, Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time, and coming in last (first?) overall is a book which has been covered rather frequently on MR as of late, can you guess the name?, 700 pp. or so and “the last of the top five popular highlights appears on page 26.”
The full article, by Jordan Ellenberg, is here.
Would you rather shock yourself than just sit there?
People, and especially men, hate being alone with their thoughts so much that they’d rather be in pain. In a study published in Science Thursday on the ability of people to let their minds “wander” — that is, for them to sit and do nothing but think — researchers found that about a quarter of women and two-thirds of men chose electric shocks over their own company.
“We went into this thinking that mind wandering wouldn’t be that hard,” said Timothy Wilson, University of Virginia professor of psychology and lead author of the study. “People usually think of mind wandering as being a bad thing, because it interrupts when you’re trying to pay attention. But we wanted to see what happens when mind wandering is the goal.”
Wilson didn’t think his subjects would struggle with the task. “We have this big brain full of pleasant memories, and we’re able to tell ourselves stories and make up fantasies. But despite that, we kept finding that people didn’t like it much and found it hard.”
The full story is here. Among other issues, I believe this has implications for how Principles of Economics should be taught.
For the pointer I thank Samir Varma.
July 4, 2014
Cambodia fact of the day
93% of that country is satisfied with the degree of freedom in that country, ranking it #3 in the world (New Zealand is #1 by that standard).
There is more here. U.S. is #36.
Happy Fourth of July!
July 3, 2014
China fact and product placement of the day
Transformers: Age of Extinction opened this weekend with $100 million in America and $92 million in China (with $22 million in Russia).
Here is more, mostly a series of broader points about China, many of which I do not agree with but interesting nonetheless. Here is my previous review of Transformers.
Here is a bit on Chinese product placement in the movie:
…everyone in the audience was puzzled as to why Jack Reynor was drinking Chinese Red Bull in Texas. Is it even available there?
Culturally, some aspects did not translate. There was puzzlement in the audience when Reynor pulled out a laminated photocopy of a Texas legal loophole that meant his relationship with Nicola Peltz, who is 17 years old in the film while he is supposedly 20, does not come under statutory rape laws.
The article has a variety of points of interest. There is also this:
One Chinese man who was dumped by his girlfriend seven years ago for being too poor spent $40,000 booking four whole IMAX cinemas for the first-day showings of Age of Extinction.
He then posted the receipts on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, which is banned, presumably in case the Decepticons plan to try and attack China.
Can classic moral stories promote honesty in children?
Here is the latest in a rather long-standing debate:
Kang Lee et al.
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
The classic moral stories have been used extensively to teach children about the consequences of lying and the virtue of honesty. Despite their widespread use, there is no evidence whether these stories actually promote honesty in children. This study compared the effectiveness of four classic moral stories in promoting honesty in 3- to 7-year-olds. Surprisingly, the stories of “Pinocchio” and “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” failed to reduce lying in children. In contrast, the apocryphal story of “George Washington and the Cherry Tree” significantly increased truth telling. Further results suggest that the reason for the difference in honesty-promoting effectiveness between the “George Washington” story and the other stories was that the former emphasizes the positive consequences of honesty, whereas the latter focus on the negative consequences of dishonesty. When the “George Washington” story was altered to focus on the negative consequences of dishonesty, it too failed to promote honesty in children.
The pointer is from the excellent Kevin Lewis.
Fragments about the Export-Import Bank
…the data shows that less than one-third of the Bank’s FY 2013 portfolio goes towards the stated goal of “meet[ing] competition from a foreign, officially sponsored export credit agency.”
That is from Veronique DeRugy, there is more here.
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