Festivus Cheer
Wolves (OK, wolf, singular) almost back in California. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-wolf-oregon-20111225,0,1431381.story TTW interviewed Tim DeChristopher. http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/6598
Posts
Earth: Fun while it lasted
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/17/science/earth/warming-arctic-permafrost-fuels-climate-change-worries.html Last week I presented research at the Naval Postgraduate school, went to a Brandi Carlile concert, saw a rough cut of a friend's movie about the Hiker Trash on the AT, and went for a great run on Mt. Diablo, which may have been my first real run with actual hills in it since July.
Me: I'd like to close my account
WF: I'm sorry to hear that. May I ask why? Me: Because large banks are evil. WF: May I ask what makes you think that large banks are evil? Me: Because I have a PhD in economics and you tanked the world economy. Not you specifically, but Angelo Mozilo and people like that. I already zeroed out the account so it should be pretty easy. WF: Your account has been closed. Thank you for calling.
Letters to Inmates
Anybody ever written letters to a federal inmate in the US? Did my letter to one bounce because it was coming from Kenya, or because it was greeting card size, not regular letter size?
Stuff
New post for close friends on the invite-only blog. Thoughts from econs/academics/people who have had a job are encouraged. My last day in Busia is a boring and rainy one. The highlight so far has been vegan white bean pancakes. It's hard to make progress on my personal research when it takes 45 minutes to run one 600,000 observation Poisson regression. I think the finding is going to be that when I look at US military deaths from 1990-2006, there are no interesting effects on recruitment, while they're there and strong if I only use 2001-2006, so maybe war-time deaths are especially important.
Garden Fail
My garden in Busia has been a big failure. Gigantic pumpkin, broccoli, and zucchini plants, but none of the fruiting part. (How are you supposed to describe that since these are all vegetables?) Too much rain? Too hot? Crappy soil plus bugs?