Showing posts with label humor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label humor. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 13, 2022

Biden's Transformation Into a 1970s President

It seems clear that President Biden is well on his way to achieving his obvious goal of becoming a redux of a 1970s American president. This would be some combination of Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.

Consider the checklist below:
  • Stumble repeatedly ✔
  • Misspeak and garble words ✔✔✔
  • Inflation ✔✔
  • Malaise 
  • Disastrously bungled Asian/Middle Eastern war retreat ✔✔
  • Extreme tensions with Russia involving their invasion of a neighboring country 
  • High oil prices 
  • Olympic boycott ✔

Still waiting on:

Deregulation...




Wednesday, May 19, 2021

Timelessness of Seinfeld Rendered Untimely by Tech Changes

Seinfeld, the greatest  sitcom in history (a title I don't give lightly), has a humor that I believe is timeless. However, most of the episodes contain elements that are today impossible because of technological advances. Obviously this is applicable to a great many movies and TV series episodes of the past. 

Here are some examples from Seinfeld where the main premise is null in today's world--mostly because of mobile phones and the Internet:

  • S1, Ep2 The Stakeout - Jerry and George stake out the lobby of an office building to find a woman Jerry met at a party but whose name and phone number he didn't get.
  • S2, Ep4 The Phone Message - George leaves several awkward messages on a girlfriend's answering machine, then decides to steal the tape.
  • S3, Ep6 The Parking Garage - The four get stuck in a parking garage for hours when they forget where they parked.
  • S4, Ep14 The Movie - Jerry does a set at a comedy club, then goes to meet George, Elaine, and Kramer afterward to see a screening of Checkmate. However, a simple miscommunication causes the four to keep missing each other at two different theaters.
  • S7, Ep8 The Pool Guy - Kramer discovers that his phone number is one digit off from that of a popular movie-finding service and offers help to those that mistakenly call his number.
  • S9, Ep20 The Puerto Rican Day - Jerry, George, Kramer and Elaine get stuck in standstill traffic due to the massive Puerto Rican Day Parade.



P.S. After creating this list I had the good sense to Google it. No surprise there has already been extensive research into this phenomenon

Friday, February 5, 2021

One-Two Punch, or . . .

. . . How to go down for the count.



Let's make a boxing analogy for "appropriate" humor: Know your sparring partner; know when it is the real match; there are rules (no below the belt, but the belt moves); stay in your weight class. 

I post this in reflection upon the recent blow up of a comedic tweet by Niskanen Center's now former vice president Will Wilkinson. 

As one who has always been very comedic, I both identify with and fear hitting below the belt. I’ve done it, and I have fortunately always been forgiven when it mattered. I also identify with and fear what got Wilkinson into trouble--not knowing when it was a real match. In other words making a joke in the "wrong" way at the "wrong" time. I use the scare quotes because I've never been big on this concept. It is "wrong" because you the audience (intended audience or accidental audience) didn't like it. 

I am ambivalent on the idea that an honest attempt at humor is wrong. I don't want to offend people, but I know it will have to happen from time to time as both a risk of comedy (and serious argument) and because everyone at one time or another is overly sensitive (or hears things the wrong way). In truth I agree with Scott Sumner that there are no offensive jokes. So my views are simultaneously: I am sorry you have taken offense and Too. Fucking. Bad. 

To one degree or another grown-up comedy (not necessarily “adult” but certainly mature in the sense of developed and sophisticated) makes the audience uncomfortable. The other elements of comedy (surprise and irreverence) are at play here too in that comedy has to push boundaries or it is too childish to be considered “grown up”.

Time and place are tricky, though. Elon Musk has been very active on Twitter either joking or promoting (or both) the GameStop, et al. and Dogecoin trades. Is he humorously trolling? Should he be? 

This is a thorny issue. He uses Twitter to promote serious ideas including his public company. People look to him as an authority figure. We know we lose context and tone in email. That shortcoming is often taken too eleven when on Twitter. Maybe what he is doing is going over my head, and I should see rule #3 below. Regardless, he is an adult speaking to adults . . . yes, rule #3 indeed.

A healthy society allows mistakes. Actually it embraces them knowing they are a cost of progress. If a comedian cannot bomb, he cannot ever entertain. 

Here are two rules we as the audience should follow:
  1. Assume good intent.
  2. Accept sincere apology.
  3. When offended, get over it. - if for no other reason, your own happiness
So back to Wilkinson. His comedic attempt was ruled a mistake by Niskanen who didn't accept apology. We don't live in a world where my rules above are followed. Rather we live in what Arnold Kling calls a Zero Tolerance Culture. And as Jason Brennan perfectly points out, this is a cancel culture with glaring hypocrisy. 

Knock knock
Who's there?
Boo
Boo who?
Why you cryin'? It's just a joke.

Sunday, June 28, 2020

A Parable On Perspective

"I saw a terrible, just tragic sight, last night at Chez Paul. A couple couldn't afford the wine pairing with the chef's tasting menu. I heard him lament something about his job at DrillRock. You know they've been one of the worst hit by the industry downturn. I can only imagine their worries... 'Do we sell the lake house--it was just in Architectural Digest!?! Will the kids have to go to public schools? At what point do I downgrade to a social membership at Bushwood?...' It all makes me question my own good fortune and if I am blissfully ignorant of how precariously close I actually am to a dramatic scaling back in my life."

"Oh! And while the valet was getting the car we saw paramedics assisting a homeless man ... heard a bystander say something about him passing out and hitting his head. He looked downright skeletal. That was sad too."

Friday, October 25, 2019

Like A Boss: Universal Rules For Looking The Part


Robin Hanson & Kevin Simler may understand this... 

Borrowing heavily from my memory of an article I believe I read in Fortune ("acting like a CEO" or something) about 15+ years ago. You can take this as advice, observation, criticism, or any way you like. I am not singling anyone out in particular, but if the shoe fits...
  1. Laughter is poor form. Shows a lack of control. At best smirk with a "hmph", which could be mistaken for a throat clear. If a slight chortle escapes, shake your head as if to deny the appropriateness of it. Any accidental laughter should leave witnesses unsure if you thought it humorous or thought it humorous that one would think it to be humorous. Never, NEVER giggle.
  2. Avoid any hint of sarcasm and give no indication of any appreciation or even perception for it. 
  3. Refrain from eating sweets in front of others. Act as if to show the slightest attraction to a dessert is to yield to all childish pleasures and reveal a total lack of control. 
  4. Your enthusiasm is just matter-of-fact support for those things self-evidently worthy of praise. You are a charter member of Team Winners. If "they" fail to succeed, it is simply due to some lack of confidence they shamefully did not possess--a concern you had all along. 
  5. In circumstances when normal humans are overcome with visible worry or anxiousness, you are overcome with calm. Emotions are for the weak. You are a stoic. 
  6. If asked to give a solution to a hypothetical problem, instead of a direct answer just reflect poignantly on how you would build a process for avoiding such dilemmas from the start. If asked to give advice, challenge the presumptions behind the question. Never waste an opportunity to obfuscate and go meta.
  7. Never bring your own copies of materials to a meeting. If it is important enough for you to need it, it is important enough that someone will provide it. 
  8. Play dumb if you can use that to your advantage to put an adversary or underling on edge. 

Saturday, August 10, 2019

The Beary Best

Partial list of the best bears:

My strange mind had thought of this some time ago, but it was Bearmageddon's appearance on The Remnant Podcast with Jonah Goldberg that inspired me to post it.

Saturday, May 18, 2019

What Are You Signaling By Your Sport of Choice?


This is meant to be primarily tongue-in-cheek, but if the shoe fits...
  • Football - I am in the tribe of macho
  • Basketball - I am a socialite sports fan
  • Soccer - I am worldly and sophisticated
  • Baseball - I am in love with Americana and yearn for the ways of the past
  • Golf - I am elitist (by desire/choice or caste)
  • Hockey - I am accepting of violence to solve problems
  • NASCAR - I am intolerant
  • Formula 1 - I am tolerant, no really, I swear I am
  • Horse racing - I am superstitious
  • Boxing and MMA - I am accepting of violence as an ends in itself
  • Wrestling - I am in the true tribe of macho
  • Tennis - I am a true socialite sports fan
  • Olympics - I am a fan of theater
I don't know enough to hazard a guess on these: Cricket, Rugby (probably the same as American football), Field Hockey, et al.

Saturday, February 9, 2019

One High Net Worth Investment Manager's Plea: "Raise Tax Rates to 70% NOW!"

Shout it (and dance it) from the rooftops! We need higher tax rates on the rich. I'm not greedy. This is all I ask.

Please raise rates like in the good ole’ days.

Give me a way to help rich people shelter income from the tax man.

Bring back all the intentional loopholes, the legal methods to ensure that old money stayed on top.

Help me tie up capital in ways that benefit the haves and fill my pockets as well as those of tax lawyers and Wall Street financiers. It isn't just me that is hurting. Plenty of other people were promised lifetime high incomes and prestigious positions. Now we are forced to sully ourselves with talk of "adding value" and "matching the benchmark"--as if I should have to justify my 6-figure bonus. I have an MBA, for God's sake!

I don't mean to lose my cool, but I have had enough. In this world of passive investing, low fees, minimal commissions, and democratized capital we desperately need a way to justify our enormous salaries which fund our lavish lifestyles.

I am so disappointed in recent politicians. I'll tell you something. This country is going to the dogs. You know, it used to be when you bought a politician, that SOB stayed bought. Now they are raising the standard deduction and taking away options like having taxpayers help rich people pay for stuff--no more tax breaks for $100,000 football suites, etc.

We had a great system. It was working just fine during the days of Ike. They warned that kid, Kennedy, not to go down that path of "rising tide lifts all boats". Don't let the camel's nose into the sheikh's tent. He did it anyway.

Dream of a better tomorrow starting today. Imagine how more complex and elaborate our schemes could be in the modern world of international world of finance. Give me a 1,000 billable hours and a few well lobbied-for loopholes, and I could craft a perpetual wealth-shelter machine to ensure no taxman or 99-percenter ever touched a penny of great-granddad's fortune.

First they come for the 150-foot yachts...


Taking my tongue out of my cheek, the sad reality is we are still far, far away from an efficient, effective, fair, and simple tax regime (see also the long version). Progress has been made, but so much remains.

Saturday, June 21, 2014

Highly Linkable

I'm back from the land of make believe. Time to catch up. I'll have a summary post of my travels very soon.

I want to go to there and there.

Drilling and filling cavities might soon be a thing of the past.

Melinda Moyer offers a sensible examination of the science around "carbs bad, fat good" and "fat bad, carbs fine".

Here is a nice bit of push back against the extremes of over-scheduling, over-planning, and over-perfecting our children s' summers.

Ten general consumer-oriented firms have tremendous reach because of their vast brand empires as summarized in this graphic.

I love this post by Steve Landsburg because it captures an important point I try to make often. It is a point lost on many people, and in making it I get (unfairly in my opinion) the reaction from others that I am confrontational, judgmental, and snobby. You can like red while I like blue. Those are opinions. There is no right or wrong without further context. But if you tell me you like red and then always choose blue, my telling you that your behavior seems inconsistent is a good observation--not a bigoted one. Further, telling me that red is the better color to paint the ocean in a picture may not stand up to scrutiny, and we may have left the realm of equal-value opinion with this added context. Further still, opinions that have no right or wrong cannot have any arguments to support or defend them. The existence of any logical argument for or against an opinion means there must be to some extent or another right and wrong (illogical) opinions in a particular case. In short, the interjection of "it's a matter of opinion" is in many cases a cop out. And "agree to disagree" is often the argument of the weak/lazy minded with a touch of condescension.

Sunday, April 6, 2014

Highly Linkable

We're back from an unintended hiatus. Let's begin with some jokes one might overhear in the Lambda^3 house. (HT: Mungowitz)

The world is spinning fast for the NCAA. Northwestern players, et al. can unionize because they have been ruled as employees. If this stands, this potentially changes everything. No apple cart is safe from tipping. Of course, the NCAA isn't hesitating one moment to provide comic relief as events unfold. But Jeffrey Kessler may get the last laugh.

Before we leave the sports realm, the Box Score Geeks want you to remember that the NBA is not McDonald's.

Scott Sumner reflects on what he has learned from Fama and Lucas.

The state will even license con men (and women). Apparently, there is indeed no end to state licensure. I'm sorry, what did you say about the current unemployment rate? . . .

Speaking of employment problems, perhaps your potential employer is agreeing with your current employer not to hire you away. I've witnessed this type gentlemen's agreement in a couple of different situations. Megan McArdle assumes the case against it while, I believe, making more strongly the case why it is not as simple as it would seem. There are complexities here that legislation with its good intentions and unintended consequences may undesirably unravel.

Mike Munger has completed his Mungerfesto with the fifth installment. I give the overall piece a B+. Simply refining the presentation would elevate it to A-. Giving a more thorough treatment to how this is largely a second-best but necessary approach to our world's political economy problems given that the first-best approach is unrealistic (I believe this is his argument of direction versus destination) would make it A+.

I look forward to reading the new book from Max Tegmark recommended by Steven Landsburg. It is always fun to read material completely over one's head. If nothing else, it offers a humility we all should seek.

Speaking of humility . . . wow.

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

A third-grader on the reason for a Pope

In answering a question on her religion test earlier this week, my third-grade daughter indicated where she falls in Kling's Three-Axes Model.


No word yet on her opinion if Pope Francis will be hard line enough. I may be raising the next Sister Mary Stigmata.