Detour

I always reward thoughtful comments with a link. Welcome Undergraduate Economist…everyone add him to your RSS feed reader.

Update: Alex wants to know if my theory that Jacqueline Mackie Paisley Passey has an ethernet cord stuck to her head is true. Is it Jackie?

I was recently looking at real estate websites and kept coming across pictures that look like they were taken in a fishbowl. I guess this is done in an attempt to make a space look bigger. Who believes this stuff? Only an idiot would look at the picture of this kitchen and think it was large.

Are the real estate agents so stupid that they think this crap works…or is it the marginal consuming public that has only three functioning brain cells?

Update: More on why Real Estate agents, as a group, are idiots here, here, and here.

At the sports club I am a member of The showers come fully stocked with shampoo, conditioner, body wash, shaving cream, etc. This got me thinking about a possible dilemma for the club. How do they stock a shower for blacks without being accused of racism? Black people can use typical shampoo, but it is not optimal and it is recommended that they use shampoo designed especially for their hair. If Clubsports stocks a shower or two with ethnic shampoo and shaving cream and label it…the accusations of ’separate but equal’ would be immediate and would be impossible to fully deny. Bad idea.

The current situation leaves them open to problems as well. They are stocking hair care products for their white, asian, and hispanic members…but not their black members…this seems unfair as well.

Question….what is the optimal strategy for the club…ignore the problem…or try to address it and risk being accused of segregation, or worse! Is their a third way? The club is motivated to serve all of their guests equally and exceptionally. There is not a full time concierge in the locker room to dole out shampoo on an individual basis, and as with all companies they want to stay as far away from the racist or discrimination label as is humanly possible.

Update: The word normal was changed to read typical to avoid any appearance of a negative connotation in the post. Typical is used here to mean the average shampoo that the average american consumer purchases…which is shampoo marketed toward the caucasian, and like haired other races, market.

It seems that two posts about solutions manuals that I wrote last year have spawned quite the comment trail of comments. Every week another person posts a plea for someone to altruistically give them a hard earned copy of a solutions manual. I don’t believe in altruism, and the few people that I have contacted about their comments have reinforced my belief. No one has sent a copy of a solutions manual for free.

A resourceful person can eventually get their hands on any solutions manual for free. Google hunts will eventually get you a complete copy (many professors lazily put a chapter online and forget to remove them for months).

So if I am correct that altruism does not exist and lets assume people are not willing to sell a solutions manual for fear of the devil suing the pants off there poor asses, then what incentive can people offer to get people with Mas-Colell, Romer, Simon-Blume, Casella Berger and Barro Sala y Martin solutions manuals from those like me who have them but will not give them up easily?