Detour

I try not to watch the Oscars and I put as little stock into them as possible for what some lame white men think about the movie scene.

I detect a definite lack of respect for ‘white men’ on Ben’s blog. Lucky for him he doesn’t lack respect for ‘black women’, ‘gay asians’, or ‘latino transgenders’ since he might be considered a slight bit prejudice in those cases. Lucky break Ben!

I was searching for furniture on the Costco web site when I stumbled on the following link near the top left.

appliances…books & dvds…caskets…WTF, Costco sells CASKETS! How quick is the delivery turn around? What would a Costco casket look like…damnit! Costco is getting me to click on the stupid link to answer the questions racing in my mind. ‘-CLICK-”

Wow, four varieties of caskets to choose from…the Ryan Casket looks respectful…three day turn around delivery time, and the funeral home has to accept delivery, thank god for government regulation! I mean the founding fathers were so clairvoyant when they wrote in the government’s role in casket deliveries into the US Constitution! This year I’m lighting an extra sparkler for the founding fathers on the 4th of July.

Aunt Judy appears to be on a path toward a final ride in a Costco style….what she doesn’t know wont hurt her.

In classic Kerry style (Crowe not John) she is learning what is appropriate to say in full of a room of impressionable students and what is not.

For whatever reason, that foul 4 letter word (shit) has been creeping up on me like a pair of size small Hanes Her Way. Unfortunately, that’s really an accurate description of how the conversation went…it’s almost as annoying as when teenage girls use ‘like’ as every other word.

I went to college…I read a lot…why is it that I can’t articulate a sentence without saying ’shit’ a dozen times?

Ok, I’ve decided. No ’shit’ for the weekend. We’ll start there.

By that I mean no use of the word ’shit.’ I may still take part in activities that use the word ’shit’ as a verb. Who could really limit their BM’s? Such an action would be cruel beyond imagination.

But the comments section is where the real conversation happens…

Can you still say fuck?
chris silvey

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yes, but I find that since I really only let that one slip on special occasions that it’s a non-issue. The S word has certainly become my word of choice….no more! Stop the insanity.
Kerry

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I have always thought that shit is more of a swear then fuck, but my wife disagrees. I would never want to see anyone do one, but could tolerate seeing a number of people doing the other, and PLEASE no convex combinations of the two…I beg of you!
Chris Silvey

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that’s classic….and a valuable teaching tool to begin discussing the concept of convex combinations with my mother.
Kerry

Yuck!

Florian Ploeckl (Econyalie ), a second year at Yale, has decided to stop blogging. He writes in his final blog entry…

Well, everything has to come to an end, and somehow I think that the end has come for this blog.

thanks

Florian

P.S.: No, you don’t have to worry, I am not going to follow the trend and withdraw from the graduate program

Good luck Florian! I hope I read some of your writing in the NY Times or Wall Street Journal sometime in the near future.

I got a note from a professor at Cornell who sold me on coming to the school a few days ago. It read…

I am spending my day going through Econ admissions folders for this year,
and that made me remember that I actually haven’t yet met you & some other
1st yr students I emailed with, so just wanted to write a quick email to
say hi and see how things have been going with your first semester.
Hope all is well!

err, I guess she hasn’t heard the news yet.

Ian (a married PhD first year at Cornell) responds to the bottom two quotes…

I feel like I have to comment on both of these. I just attended a presentation by one of my (married) fellow students here at Cornell who has some very good data on PhD programs in the humanities. He found that married men are more likely to finish (rather than quit) a PhD and to finish early. Unfortunately, his data doesn’t include experience in the job market, so maybe married students really do write crappier dissertations, as the poster suggests. And, of course, this is for students in the humanities, where the average completion rate is like 8 years, or something. The point is that there is reason to think that married students fare as well as their single counterparts. Of course, you have to be sure that your significant other is ready to suffer with you through the privations of graduate school life; something that is all the more difficult, I think, in Ithaca.

Which brings me to my second point, in response to Doug, who is worried about what to do between now and math camp. My advice would be not to get too freaked out about the work at this point. There’ll be time for that when you get there. I am only in my first year (at Cornell), so I haven’t seen a lot, and I don’t know what it’s like at the higher-ranked schools, but plenty of people make it through the first year of an econ PhD, even if they aren’t math gods. Being a math god helps, but the reality is that if you work hard, and stay happy, you can learn what you need to learn to do what you want to do. I think Chris’ experience is instructive, in that he left grad school for the reason I think most people do: unhappiness. Sure, some people fail out, but most people who quit do so because they decide they don’t like what they are doing. Studying dynamic programming or constrained optimization for the next six months isn’t going to make you like grad school more, so don’t do it. Spend the next six months enjoying life. If you want to do something related to economics, start reading the paper, watching TV, and talking to friends to find out what makes things tick. Write down every idea you have about economics, because once you start a program, you won’t have time to think about it. Then the next thing you know, you have to start writing papers, and if you don’t have a good idea, it’s going to be haaard.

Just got this note in my inbox and thought I would pass it on…

I occasionally drop by VoluntaryXchange. Saw that you bailed on your program.

I knew plenty of persons who were married in while working on a Ph.D. Generally, either the PhD or the marriage had to go. The exceptions, and there were a few, didn’t do either well. Nothing worse than a married PhD who thinks, “If only I’d spent more time on my dissertation….” for he rues both his marriage and his degree. Pick one or the other and stick with it. And don’t look back.

A good wife is better than a dissertation any day.

also Doug asks…

wow, for someone who has just applied to do a PhD (including at Cornell), it’s really disheartening to read about people quitting. Considering I’ve got six months before grad school starts, how would those who’ve attempted or done a PhD in econ recommend I spend the next six months? By studying math like a banshee, or travelling all over South America? (Or two months of travel and four months of study?) Is grad school so hard that I should start studying for the first semester finals the moment I get accepted?

The spammers of the world just keep finding ways to degrade my internet enjoyment. As with most bloggers, I enjoy checking my referral logs to see who is linking to my site. Lately when I check the log this is what I see

They do this in the hopes that I will click through to their site and give then money. The problem is, I would never give anyone money that did this to me…even if I was interested in online-poker, cialas/viagra, or weight loss scams. I see their web-bots scanning my site, they were leaving tons of comment spam, and now this…bastards!

I think it was the Guardian in the UK that released a desktop program that launched denial of service attacks on spammers. They pulled the program from availability quickly (a spammer probably threatened to sue them) , I wish I knew of some other program that does the same thing, I would download, promote, and use it enthusiastically.

To add insult to injury, as I am writing this post a telemarketing spammer called to try to get money from me…even though this number is on the do not call list (there is a loophole for ‘charity’ and ‘political’ solicitations) AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!! Leave me alone! If you have a quality product, service, or charity I will seek you out…if you have to use invasive methods to solicit me I will assume you are fraudulent and worthless and will never give you a dime…never!

Update: Govind is dealing with trackback attacks at the moment. Grrrrrrrr!!!!

With my new found free time I have been able to catch up on non-math/econ web-surfing. I love the site postsecret. People send postcards with their deepest darkest secrets. It’s better then looking in the medicine cabinet of your friends, I promise.

John Morrow, a first year at Wisconsin, is developing quite a nice site for the econ grad community. He has a large collection of solutions manual’s (including the ever elusive digital copies of Mas-Colell, Whinston, Green Microeconomics Solutions Manual - YEAH!). Go to his site and grow the economics PhD community to an international movement.

Good job John! I just wonder how long it will take for the publishers, authors, or prof’s to try and clamp down on the solutions trade. I hope I haven’t helped that process by announcing the availability.