Ben’s Blog

It’s very hard to get unbiased information on how we’re doing in Iraq. The Republicans and Democrats aren’t going to be honest about the situation, and most of the media are just as bad.

I was glad to see this post on the Freakonomics blog today. Levitt summarizes a logical analysis of “the surge” by an MIT economist. To summarize it even further, the surge is making a difference in some areas, but it doesn’t seem to be making a long term difference.

The author’s main evidence on that front is the price of Iraqi government-issued bonds. If the government collapses the bonds won’t get paid. At the moment, the financial markets aren’t giving the government much of a chance based on the price of the bonds. Of course, financial markets do occasionally get things wrong, but they’re right more often than not.

Levitt also makes some interesting observations about academia at the end of the post.

Last Wednesday night the elephants from the Ringling Brothers Circus walked from Queens to Madison Square Garden in Manhattan. Apparently the circus travels by train. Unfortunately, while the train can make it into Manhattan, it’s rather inconvenient for the elephants to get off at Penn Station. So the train stops in Queens, NYPD shuts down the traffic at midnight, and the elephants walk through the Queens Midtown Tunnel (under the East River). Once in Manhattan, they walk down 34th Street, right by Macy’s, to Madison Square Garden. Apparently they do this every year when the circus comes to town. Most years they are greeted by lots of little kids and animal rights protesters.

When Cassie and I went to New York City last summer our hotel was on 32nd Street between 5th Avenue and Broadway (map). We were a block from the Empire State Building, two blocks from Madison Square Garden and Penn Station, and right in the middle of Little Korea.

NPR did a story on this, which is how it originally came to my attention.

Earlier this week, just about every media outlet covered a report that says the US has a high death rate among newborns. That seemed fishy to me, but I accepted it as the truth and went on with my day. Today I ran up on this. Someone has spent quite a bit of time debunking the report. Essentially, it comes down to a difference in how countries report births. As far as I’m concerned, the statistics are basically useless until all countries report births the same way.