Taxes and Brushes with Fame

This April 15th, I had the pleasure of celebrating taxes in good company.

For concern of any stray tabloid-employds, I will not publicly assert any of the names of the involved parties, though I will mention that included in these parties was a hero in the world of economics and his wife.

Unfortunately, I did not get to, as they say, shoot the bull, with this particular Noble Laureate, however, I did have the chance to direct him and his wife to the restroom.  Let me tell you the story.

As there was a high price tag on the event, volunteer work was quite a hot item and I was one of the first on the list.  Furthermore, getting to the event just a tad late placed me in the “limbo” category of the volunteers - all of the roles were already assigned by the time of my arrival.

I was meandering with a sophisticated presence near the entryway when they approached.  They first looked behind a plant and then down a dark hallway; that is when I made my move.

“Are you looking for the restroom?” I rhetorically questioned.

Quickly, as the dark hallway exposed itself as simply a repository for chairs, the couple changed directions.  The wife looked my way and smiled with an inquisitive affirmation.  Surely, she had not heard a thing I said but, positioned awkward and available in the middle of the side of the room, I could only have one purpose.  I continued in a bit louder voice,  “Right at the other end of the hall on your left.”

Without breaking stride, she cordially replied “Thank you,” as she looked back over her shoulder and the wake of their high-speed trail came upon me as a small breeze from the elbow down.

From Dollars to Alpaca, Informal Markets Thriving

Is dollarization or improved printing technology leading to more counterfeiting throughout Latin America?  Or perhaps it is more intrinsic in the structure of their institutions and culture in these countries.

Here’s an interview on Peruvian women in the informal economy who are joining trade unions.  I wonder how much they think about the economics of unemployment in their negotiations?  Government concern for the Alpaca trade has led to a questionable program to put microchips in the Alpacas ears in hopes to keep good wool local, even though it is valued much higher abroad.

In other places, some are trying to change incentives on the informal market.  India has implemented a VAT that includes hopes of stunting the informal market for mobile phones.  This opinion discusses some features of the value added tax, including how it cuts into informal markets.

Loveboat with a Timecard

Outsourcing to international waters to avoid H-1B visa regulations.  Countries are just arbitrary, time-sensitive definitions anyway.

Tourism from Above

Using the satellite feature of Google Maps and resourceful users, the blog Google Sightseeing shares the world from above.

Friends From Above

You may not be able to zoom in on the owl house, but the barn, the driveway, the neighbor!  Google Maps now has satellite view.  The most reasonable uses that come right to mind are 1) star-perspectived entertainment and 2) writing invites for space-themed parties.

Copyright Communists and the Commons

Another of the Forbes rich listers is spamming copyright offices around the world:

Bill Gates is an intelligent man who has done a great deal of good in the world. So when he gets caught out in a bare-faced lie this should matter to all of us; and last week, when he called the opponents of American intellectual property law a "communist" movement he was encouraging a mistake that could impoverish the entire world.

Read more on the war against copyright communists.  Also check out Creative Commons who is leading the movement of sharing creativity with their ‘some rights reserved’ copyrights and encouragement of things like the up and coming music sampling commons, Mixter.

Yahoo! has even put out a beta Creative Commons search engine, so tally up on how easy home recording is these days and if you’re feeling entrepreneurial, turn your Mac Mini into a recording studio and, to Gates’ spite, head for the communes.

House Plan: Faucets

The faucet reads:
1 turn Cold
2 turns Warm
3 turns Hot

I’ve heard from the inside (inside the house that is, as I live in the illustrious, ex two-car “cottage”) that, this week, the only setting is really hot. Nevertheless, this is definitely an item that will be built into the architecture of my pipe dreams.  I’ll probably modify the heat feature in the water to be more compassionate, but I never know when I might be struck by the longing to re-create the weathered pains of a 99 year old shingle-style house in Professorville.

Thanks to mom (who apparently is a graphic designer in her spare time) for the photo and a pleasant visit.

High Price. Lots of Incentive

The drug war appears not to be having much of an effect on cocaine sales in the US.  Although Colombian cocaine traffic has been reduced by 22%, Bolivian production has increased by 17%.  The price remains steady or lower than historical levels.  Read here or here.

Fractal Finance and Business School

A great lead from Alina at Totalitarianism Today discusses randomness and rationality in markets through fractal finance.  And in a bout of rationality, a vermont businessowner bought a free-ride into a Dutch business school on eBay for $36,000.  Perhaps he’ll learn why Metcalf’s law. is a bit weaker than it was cracked up to be.

Latin American Universities

When The Times survey came out, Mexico’s UNAM university sent out ecstatic press releases to the media that resulted in headlines such as UNAM leads Latin American universities.

UNAM’s actual rank was 195 out of 200.  Nonetheless, there claims are true.  Read more on the survey and the struggles of Latin American Universities here.

Custom News

Consuming grandiose amounts of information is a hobby of mine.

Today: Google News.   If you enjoy reading the paper but don’t enjoy reading what is in the paper, Google has just solved that (minus the actual, physical paper.  Instead there will just be a large amount of photons shooting at your head).

You can now put the Sports section before the Enternainment section, or just get rid of the Entertainment section all together and add a customized section on Digital Photography instead.  Google explains here.

Schematic Food Planning

A blog entitled Cooking for Engineers takes recipe writing to a new level!

Dandy Map

Google has made navigation much like flying a super-fast and intelligent spaceship right at the location your screamin’ out!

Found a Perch

As I packed the final boxes and moved them into the truck, Dad and Zon bid me farewell and left for their walk.  Hah, I bet you thought I was the one leaving!

No, no, it seems i have overleft my welcome.  Now it is just assumed that I’ll be moving somewhere else again in the next month and trying to use it as leverage to get hugs and cookies.  What’s wrong with goodbye hugs!? 

It was probably in the inchoate stages of my travels that i began forming this delusion.  I assumed that no matter how far I was going that when I got to the kitchen I would be bombarded with love.  Furthermore, i assumed that upon arrival to my destination, no matter how precisely i packed my bags, there would always be a treat Mom managed to sneak into one of my boxes. (I wonder what the airlines would say about this…).

But it wasn’t the love that was missing, Dad and Zon both yelled ‘see ya dude’ over their shoulder as they took off.  And though there was no See’s Milk Chocolate with Marshmallow at the bottom of my guitar case, i found a gift card surreptitiously waiting in my wallet to treat me at Trader Joe’s.

All that I’m trying to say is that if you travel a lot, there comes a time when a trip to the airport gets treated like a night at the movies. 

My new perch is downtown Palo Alto.  I live in the cottage (garage) of a Shingle Style house with Carpenter Gothic interiors (i’ll work on figuring out what this means too) in Professorville (though I am only a lecturer).  Close enough to home that I don’t feel like i’ve left, close enough to work that I don’t feel like i’m there,  and close enough to Stanford that i can still feel like i’m climbing the ladders of academia.

Here’s Someone to Watch

Well, don’t say it wasn’t expected.  Hugo Chavez is heading forward with his plans of land reform in Venezuela.  Apparently, Chavez has promised to put an end to ‘idle’ latifundios.  That is, estates of 5000 hectares (12,350 acres) that aren’t being used efficiently.  You can take your guess at what efficiently may mean.  Especially when the land in question is 6.6 million acres of private holdings.

The claim is that there is too much land in the hands of too few people.  As the government hasn’t enforced property rights in the past, there should be low expectations to see a drastic change in the future.  In one case, where the government ignored demands to remove a few squatters from private land, the number of squatters grew to several hundreds, now equipped with housing settlements and yucca crops.

The wisdom behind these acts is best summed up by Chavez’s motives to "tax farms into productivity."  Unfortunately, such wisdom is having a hard time being implemented since the government doesn’t even have a registry of land ownership.  Hey, there’s a policy that might work for a start—respect of ownership!