The Liberal Order

A Hilarious Parody of Special Interest Television News Reporting

Via Craig Newmark (the economist).

Canadians and the Olympics

ESPN's Rick Reilly slams the Canadians at the start of the Olympic games, and then slams them again with an apology.

One commenter questions Reilly about his perceptions of Canada with:

"Are you sure you weren't in Michigan?"

I agree; it's the people looking southward across Lakes Erie and Superior, and westward across Lakes Huron and St. Clair who should be ridiculing what they observe. I lived in Michigan - I know! Nice people, but what an inept political system that's left little but misery in its wake.

Life is Uncertain . . .

. . . but you may want to be a little more certain before you ask someone the most important question of both of your lives. How many times will something like this happen this weekend?

Happy Valentine's Day!!!

Rahm Emanuel and the R-Word

Shouldn't Rahm Emanuel be forced into ideological boot camp re-education camp sensitivity training for this? Why does he get off so easy?

Leno and Letterman In Super Bowl Ad

Here is the story behind one of the best (of the abysmally few) ads that aired during the Super Bowl.

Teaching In the Post-Modern Era

How Avatar Should Have Ended

The movie was a bit too hokey for me. Here was a more appropriate ending.

The Other Side of the Coin

When I teach about monopoly, I like to use an example first described to me by Walter Williams, which is marriage.

Marriage is a monopoly in that my wife and I have both forsworn allowing others to compete with us to supply the other with love services. (That is "love" services, not just sexual services.) I don't have to come home to see a line of men vying to provide my wife attention and gentleness and offer to take her to dinner and the ballet. Neither does she have to deal with a line of women vying to do the same for me (except the ballet part). Like any good monopoly then, you can expect to receive a lower quality product at a higher price.

Luke Froeb offers a more positive view of marriage, which is the post investment holdup. (I'll have to begin including this side of the coin in my lecture.)

When I got engaged, my fiance and I had to go through pre-marital counseling with a priest, and he asked us why we wanted to get married.

I said “Long-term relationships induce higher levels of relationship-specific investment.”

The priest looked as if he didn’t understand, so I said “you know, the kind of investments that differentiate a marriage from a series of meaningless spot-market transactions.”

On our first anniversary, my wife gave me a card declaring that “her relationship-specific investment was earning an abnormally high rate of return.”

NB: For my wonderful and beautiful wife: I do include this view of marriage in my lectures, just not in such eloquent and applicable terms.

Signaling In Retail Sales - Snuggie Edition

It's difficult to believe that products sold via infomercials generate much revenue whatsoever, but apparently it's a lucrative way to market a product. The fact that a product is sold via infomercial and not through a traditional retailer signals (at least to me) that no reputable retailer considers that product to provide its customers sufficient value per dollar to make it worth carrying. Why, even the Snuggie is apparently of poor quality.

Consumer Reports tests rhetoric versus reality for a number of infomercial products. The bottom line:

The secret lies in neuroscience. Infomercials are carefully scripted to pump up dopamine levels in your brain, says Martin Lindstrom, an advertising expert and author of "Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy," which details how ads affected 2,000 research subjects.

"Infomercials take viewers on a psychological roller-coaster ride," Lindstrom says. The fun starts with dramatizations of a problem you didn't know you had, followed by the incredible solution, then a series of ever more amazing product benefits, bonuses, and giveaways, all leading to the final thrilling plunge of an unbelievably low price. After the ride, Lindstrom says, "dopamine levels drop in 5 or 6 minutes. That's why infomercials ask you to buy in the next 3 minutes."

"The magic of TV and film editing and shooting can make anything look good," says Christian Holiday, CEO of Global Media Marketing, an infomercial producer in Santa Ana, Calif. According to Larry Nusbaum, managing director of Vertex Capital Management and CEO of Ronco, which Vertex bought in 2008, "About half of infomercial products deliver on their promise, 30 percent do what they say but are a bit expensive, and the rest are junk."

And I liked these two bits of advice:

Whatever their length—"short form" up to 2 minutes or "long form" up to 28.5 minutes—infomercials move at an excited pace. Slow things down with your DVR remote or by watching the Internet video version. An infomercial on YouTube promises that the Hercules Hook holds up to 150 pounds. But click back and pause and you'll see three 50-pound weights hanging from three separate hooks. Do the math: That indicates each hook has only a 50-pound capacity.

When a pitchman cites "a $40 value," then says he'll give you two for one, that means the value is only $20—and probably less.

A Creative Tribute to John Williams

HT: Greg