Farewell to Stickman's Corral

This will be my last post at Stickman's Corral.

I recently built a new website and all future blogging activity will be hosted here: grantmcdermott.github.io

The move has been a while coming. I'd been maintaining several different web portals -- this blog, a Google Sites page, a GitHub account, the odd WordPress account -- all of which ended up becoming redundant and confusing. The new website collapses all of these disparate strands into a single entity. I intend for it to serve as both my professional webpage and a repository for any future blog posts.

I have also migrated/copied all of the old posts from this blog (including comments) over to the new website. The full range of discussions will be preserved there even as I no longer maintain this blog.

Still, it does feel like the end of a (mini) era. Stickman's ended up showing much greater stamina than I ever envisaged when first hitting the "create" button back in 2010. The dearth of recent posts notwithstanding, it has basically served as a travelogue of my journey through grad school and beyond. Along the way I've learnt a lot, enjoyed many great discussions, fed the odd troll, emigrated several times, managed to earn a PhD (probably should have mentioned that on the blog), got a new job (ditto) and even started a family (ditto).

I want to thank everyone that has ever taken the time to read something that I have posted here, or has been compelled to leave a comment of their own. I hope that you will be encouraged to do the same at my new website and please let me know if anything looks out of place.

See ya around.
G.M.

Top posts on Stickman's Corral for 2013

As if you care!

I'll limit it to three because: a) Parsimony, b) Blogger is being recalcitrant b*tch at the moment and is not letting me see any more than that.

1) Econ blogosphere comment form. Way out in front -- with nearly 7,000 views thanks to links from FT Alpha, Barry Ritholtz and a bunch of people on Twitter -- was this spoof of the various personalities, trolls and anti-trolls that populate today's economic blogs. Some of the additional suggestions provided by commentators were golden.

2) Thinking of doing a PhD? My post advocating for postgraduate studies in Norway accumulated around a 1,000 views over the course of the year. It would appear that the idea of drawing a healthy salary whilst having access to great data and clean air could prove a viable alternative to crushing student debt (or miserly graduate stipends) and 80-hour work weeks. As an aside: A fairly large number of hits on this one where referrals from a single comment that I left under one of Noah Smith's blog posts. Thus is the way of the blogosphere layer cake.

3) Review - Extreme Environment (Ivo Vegter). It may not have reached the top spot, but my review of Ivo Vegter's anti-environmentalism screed was certainly the longest post of the year. Five thousand words for around 750 1,000 views may sound like a poor return to some, but it does occupy second place in the Google search rankings for Vegter's book behind only Amazon. Speaking of which: Rather irritatingly, my abridged review on Amazon has garnered more "unhelpful" votes than the other way around. I emphasise the "helpful" bit. This isn't about whether you agree with an author -- or reviewer for that matter -- but rather a question of whether a review enables you to obtain a better understanding of a book and it's relative merits. I guess in-depth, considered criticism is less helpful than gushing, one-line endorsements. (Or lazy dismissals for that matter.) Haters gonna hate. Derpers gonna derp.

If memory serves me correctly, I have a couple posts with 500-odd views here at Stickman's... while my most widely read articles of the year were almost certainly the series I did for the Energy Collective on natural gas. So, it's been a respectable year blogging-wise for yours truly. I might get around to listing my personal favourite posts of the year later during the week.

Happenings

Given the inadvertent success of my previous post, I've decided to take the philosophical route for this next one: My fifteen minutes of quasi-blogosphere fame are almost certainly up and so it's time to resume normal services!

With that in mind, here are some mundane reflections on the last two weeks or so:

1) I wrote what should be my final ever (ever ever) sit down exam at the end of May. The subject was philosophy of science and, despite some frustrations, I enjoyed spending time on something that is outside of my normal field of expertise. I have now effectively completed my coursework requirements for the PhD -- both compulsory and elective credits -- and should be able to concentrate on the research side of things. Basically, I've got two years to finish the remaining two chapters in my dissertation and thus, thankfully, in a pretty good position at the moment.

2) My final article on natural gas and the environment was published at The Energy Collective. Having taken on short- and long-term carbon emissions, followed by demands placed on freshwater resources, this one looked at whether fracking can cause earthquakes? (Short answer: Yes, but you'll hardly notice them.) The issues surrounding natural gas and fracking are obviously very contentious. Important research is ongoing and I certainly don't expect everyone to be fully swayed by my articles and arguments. However, having spent a lot of time researching these matters -- giving primacy to the peer-reviewed scientific literature in the process -- the following paragraph provides an accurate summary of my overall impressions: "The takeaway is consistent with the overarching theme of my series. Yes, there are environmental trade-offs to securing the benefits of fracking and natural gas at large. Placed into the right context, however, these are relatively benign and often much better than the immediate alternative. Economics teaches us that there is no such thing as a free lunch, but fracking looks like a pretty good deal to me."

3) Not everyone was happy with the above article and I was involved in some amusing (not to mention ironic) Twitter spats. I'll summarise one of these for you:

@grant_mcdermott: "Does fracking case earthquakes? (link) Yes, but they're so small that you won't notice them."
@LoveCanal2020: "Whatevs! Shell sponsored that post. You're just a shill!"
@grant_mcdermott: "Ad hominem much? Actually, Shell have nothing to do with the content of my article. By all means though, don't address any facts."
@LoveCanal2020: "Meta-analysis Mumbo-jumbo! LOUD NOISES!"
@grant_mcdermott: "Yes. Science. As opposed to anecdotes, wild accusations and LIBERAL use of CAPITAL LETTERS."
@LoveCanal2020: "Criticize my creative use of capital letters, eh? Typical ad hominem!"
@grant_mcdermott: "Ad hominem?? I criticised your emotional outburst in lieu of actual facts."
@LoveCanal2020: "Still counts as ad hominem. #philosophy101"
@grant_mcdermott: "#philosophy101fail" 

etc

4) I'm spanning the genres for my latest song contributions to www.noondaytune.com: The Meters - "It Ain't No Use" and M83 (feat. Susanne Sundfør) - "Oblivion".

Econ blogosphere comment form

There is no cake-stagnation by Tyler Cowen 

Here. Paul Krugman writes about the virtues of black forest cake versus regular vanilla sponge. While I disagree with Paul on the merits of chocolate chip distribution, I found this to be an enjoyable piece.

Caveat emptor, but do read the whole thing.

PS - Humblane S. Arcadian has written a beguiling book on the bakery practices in pre-industrial Abkhazia. Self-recommending.

____

Comments

Scott Sumner: I thought we had all agreed that if you have not reached your cake eating target, then by definition you are not eating enough cake.

Aziz: In the future, all cakes will be produced using solar-powered 3-D printers.

Greg Ransom: Hayek believed that prices were important because they conveyed information. Note well, cake prices are prices in inter-temporal disequilibrium. Scott writes: "by definition you are not eating enough cake".

Noahpinion. Derpity derp derp. #kthxbye

Unlearning Econ: When you get down to it, Cake Libertarianism is just Cake Marxism without the good bits.

Brad DeLong: Niall Ferguson is the stupidest man alive. Yours, Brad DeLong.

Major Freedom: OMG. LOL. Krugman is such an idiot. He doesn't understand the... [several lengthy paragraphs later] ... human-action axiom.

Lord Keynes: Major Freedom is a risible liar. These figures from Davidson et al. show that Hayek failed in his account to justify a natural cake rising rate. C.f. The arguments of Sraffa (1932).

Major Freedom: LK, why do you hate freedom?

Blue Aurora: Dear Firstname Lastname, have you read Dr Michael Emmett Brady on optimal cake consumption? PS - Did you receive my email?

Bob Murphy: Whaaaat? This is a typical Krugman Kupkake Kontradiction. Look at this recipe from Martha Stewart (link). I'm not saying that the data say I'm right. I'm saying that the data say I'm not wrong in a way that says Krugman is not totally right.

Daniel Kuehn: I'm puzzled by the reference to Wicksillian cake recipes within a Kaleckian framework. This just seems an opportune moment for navel gazing by the Kaldorian's to me.

Steve Keen: What the neoclassical cake theory fails to acknowledge is that Hicks rejected his initial recipe formulation in later life. Minsky taught us that baking is de-baking. Also, I predicted the crisis.

Grant McDermott: It's such a pity to see people neglect the in situ evaluation of cakes. Just ask yourself whether "flour" is the same thing as "a flower"? The answer, I trust, is self-evident.

Milestones

Just clocked up our 30,000th pageview here at The Corral.

I feel that this a pretty respectable return for a (very) part-time hobby. It's certainly not something that I expected whilst penning that first post. 

Thanks to everyone who's visited, commented on, or linked to one of my posts. Apologies for the frequent lulls in blogging activity and severe lack of coherent subject matter!

Am I being unreasonable?

See the back-and-forth here.

Generally, I try to be as civil as possible when it comes to internet debates. (Often is the time that I've rewritten a response simply to tone down the rhetoric and eliminate any implied derision.) Certainly, I think that it is a good thing to try and interpret your opponent's arguments in a generous light.

There are limits, though. Life's too short to spend it endlessly rebutting non sequiturs and side issues.

New writing gig - The Energy Collective

Some exciting news for yours truly is that I'll be writing a series of articles for the excellent energy and climate website, The Energy Collective, as part of their Future Energy Fellows initiative.

I will be focusing on particular sub-topic that has aroused a lot of interest recently; namely, the economic and environmental impacts of natural gas.

My first post concerns the role that the North American shale boom has played in bringing U.S. carbon emissions to a twenty-year low, and the question of whether these climate gains are undermined by increased coal exports to Europe. (Short answer: not really.) The article expands on some earlier musings that I have presented here at the Corral and at the Recon Hub. Here's the opening gambit, which I use to set up the problem:

U.S. Shale Gas Meets European Climate Policy

Economists are suckers for a good paradox. Few things are more intellectually appealing to the practicing economist than a result which runs counter to his or her immediate intuition. Indeed, some of the most enduring ideas in history of economic thought have surprising implications at the heart of their allure; from the paradox of thrift to Ricardo's law of comparative advantage. For their part, the specialized fields of energy and environmental economics are not immune to the charms of counter-intuitive theories either. This includes textbook favourites like the green paradox and the rebound effect.

Beyond the intellectual appeal, it is clearly sensible to be mindful of such factors when designing policy. However, our inherent affinity for paradoxes is also problematic in that it can cause people to overstate their role in real world situations. To illustrate using the aforementioned rebound effect, Nature recently published a comprehensive literature survey on the subject by Gillingham et al. (2013). The authors show that the rebound effect’s significance is much overplayed, being typically only in the region of 10% (with an upper bound of about 30%). Hardly a compelling objection to improved efficiency standards then.[...]

Click through to read more!

A note on the Vegter review

I've been pleasantly surprised by how popular my review of Ivo Vegter's "Extreme Environment" has proven. I initially thought that only a handful of people would care to read something of that length, but less than a week after it was first posted, and it has already garnered around 400 unique page views. (Small change for some, but a decent figure for a humble grad student blogging in relative obscurity.)

While the reception has generally been positive, several commentators appear puzzled by the fact that I still come out with a qualified endorsement after highlighting (what I perceive to be) a number of obvious problems in the book. Some quick responses:

1) As I pointed out in my review, despite being highly critical at times, there are parts of the book that I thought were very good. These sections could prove useful to informing public debate.

2) I wrote my review in stages. The first part (which generally covers the better, first half of the book) was written just before I flew back from holiday. The remainder came from notes that I made whilst reading on the plane, and just after I arrived back. I think this helped to keep the good and bad separated in my mind, as well as contributing -- I hope -- to a more evenhanded review.

3) Similarly, the problem with books of this type is that they tend to be very polarising. I don't think it does justice to the relevant issues if the whole of a book is judged by its weakest parts and summarily dismissed. 

4) Eirik K. asks whether I would be "so forgiving when reading an academic paper?" The short answer to this question, naturally, is no. I don't think this is a fair comparison, though. The margin for error is substantially tighter for journals and academic studies. Moreover, a scientific paper will typically have a fairly narrow focus, while a general interest book like EE covers a much broader spectrum. (To be sure, in the purely hypothetical case where I was asked by Ivo's editor to referee the book before publication, I would have asked for significant revisions. Chiefly to the chapter concerning climate change -- which in its current state would be better omitted altogether -- but in other areas as well.)

Back in business

Having said goodbye to family and friends after a wonderful holiday in South Africa, and then endured a 20-plus hour trip (two transit stops) back to Norway with minimal sleep, yesterday turned out to be a surprisingly good one for yours truly. First, I discovered that I had successfully passed the last of my mandatory PhD courses and, then, that my paper on electricity prices and water scarcity had been accepted for publication in Land Economics. And it turns out that I got a salary raise. Yeah, baby...

The paper (a slightly older version of which is available here) is my first proper publication and LE is a good level 2 scientific journal on the Norwegian ranking system, so I'm pretty chuffed. The revise and resubmit process itself has been both an enlightening and frustrating experience. Our two anonymous referees had a tendency to mix very insightful comments with some more pedantic and confusing ones. However, I imagine that is something every author feels and is most likely compounded by the time it takes to make even seemingly simple changes. There is no doubt that the paper has been much improved by the reviewers' input and I'm grateful for that.

I'll try to write up a short summary of it on the Recon Hub blog within the next few days ... And hopefully get some other stuff up here at The Corral as well, once I catch up with what's been happening in the blogosphere over the last few weeks.

Climate, economy and ladies

As a postscript to the previous entry, here's a quick story about a newspaper interview that I had last week. It was with one of the major broadsheets of the region and related to the launch of our new website.

The interview itself went pretty well, I thought. The journalist was mostly interested in discussing our aims, as well as how we perceive the public's general understanding of environmental issues from an economic perspective.

At one point, he asked the inevitable question of how I ended up in Scandinavia all the way from Cape Town. I told him that it was mostly down to my interests in these very issues. You'd be hard pressed to find a country that has a better track record of managing its natural resources than Norway. It didn't hurt that I was also lucky enough to receive some generous funding offers.[*]

However, I went on to tell him a joke that I had heard from another Southern Hemisphere expat upon arrival, which is that people like us usually find ourselves in Norway for one of two reasons: Oil or women. It was a throwaway line of course (and quite obviously a jape), and I didn't think much more of it...

I suppose it reflects my media naivete then that I was surprised[**] by the headline that ran above my interview the next day: "Climate, economy and ladies".
___
[*] E.g. For those of you thinking about doing a PhD -- but can't bear the thought of scraping by on a measly tuition stipend for four/five years -- consider this: Doing a PhD in Norway is treated as a job and you are paid accordingly. That is, your salary has to be somewhat comparable with what a Master's graduate could typically earn outside of academia. Accepted PhD candidates are thus awarded a "research scholarship" which currently amounts to around US$71,000 per annum...
[**] Mind you, probably not as surprised as my (non-Norwegian) girlfriend.

Review: Surviving Progress

Apologies for the lack of posting recently. Aside from research stuff, most of my "internet" time has been spent working on the RECONOMICS HUB.[*] We have now officially gone live and will hopefully see a consistent level of posting from the various contributors in the weeks and months to come. Please free to stop by and let us know what you think... or follow us on Twitter!

My latest contribution to the blog is a review of the film Surviving Progress (produced by Martin Scorsese). To summarize, the film is long on intent and activism, but often fails to make a convincing argument. A snippet:

In another segment, the film jumps from Ronald Wright’s idea of a “progress trap” — something which certainly has merit in of itself — to claim that modern technology is at complete odds with our primitive physiology. (Wright: “We are running 21st century software, our knowledge, on hardware that hasn't been upgraded for 50,000 years.”) The language is undeniably provocative but is it necessarily meaningful? After all, our knowledge and innovations didn't occur in a vacuum. It is certainly hard to believe that any technological development can persist without bringing at least some form of benefit to its progenitors. The very strong conclusions that the film draws don’t necessarily follow from the premises that it provides.

Surviving Progress relies on a number of interviews and some of these work better than others. I was particularly unimpressed by a clip involving "geneticist/activist" David Suzuki, who is unilaterally scathing about the economics profession. (He calls conventional economics "a form of brain damage").

So, according to Suzuki, “externalities” is a collective term that economists use to explain away pesky things like the ozone layer, topsoil and biodiversity. Hmmm… 

There’s no other way to put this, so I’ll simply come out and say that Suzuki has completely mangled the concept of economic externalities. I cannot think of a single economist who subscribes to anything approaching the definition that he gives. (I’d even be surprised if anyone that has followed an ECO101 class would define an externality in this way.) Suzuki could open any introductory economics textbook and discover that an “externality” is simply some spillover cost or benefit incurred by a third party, which is not accounted for in the market price.

___
[*] Resources. Energy. Climate. Economics

Starting a new blog...

A group of us at my university have decided to start a blog dedicated to tackling environmental issues from an economic perspective. Things are still very much in the development phase, but we've managed to get the basic structure up and have also decided on a cunning name: The REConomics Hub... as in Resource Energy Climate Economics. (Take that Freakonomics!)

The ultimate goal is to showcase the research that we are doing, as well as fill the gap in providing dedicated economic-based commentary on issues like climate change, energy use, resource depletion, etc, etc. I hope that some of the things I've written about here at Stickman's Corral will give you a flavour of things to come, though this will obviously be improved by the additional coverage and the possibility for divergent opinions.

Now, the site isn't "live" yet because we've still got a lot of things to sort out. However, we have written one or two test posts to give an idea of the format, etc... And I link to them here as a special treat to you with love from the Corral! Here is one written by my friend Patrick the compares solar PV to other energy sources. And here is one by yours truly[*] that looks at whether the concept of self-reporting in environmental economics has any relevance for drug cheats in sports. A snippet:

There are many parallels between the world of sport and environmental economics. In this case, you are dealing with “bad” behaviour that some regulatory authority is trying to eradicate (or at least discourage) through punishment. Compare the doping agency with, say, a fisheries ministry that wants to ensure that each boat sticks to its “quota”… You are effectively faced with the same problems of imperfect information and limited enforcement abilities. You don’t have the resources to check all the boats (or athletes) and, even if you did, there’s a chance that you wouldn’t find the illegal catch (or substances). 

To help overcome these issues, one concept that has become popular in the field of environmental regulation is self-reporting. To continue with our fisheries example, boats would have the option of reporting a catch in excess of their quota — provided they are subjected to a reduced fine as a reward for their honesty. The main idea here is that self-reporting allows the regulator to focus its scarce resources on agents (i.e. boats) that don’t self-report and thereby increase overall compliance rates within the industry…. And, indeed, this is what the literature suggests will actually happen.

If you have any comments or suggestions, please let me know.

___

[*] At this stage, I'm inclined to think that my identity is a very poorly guarded secret anyway. As such, you can follow me here on Twitter if you are so inclined...

Hibernation

You may have noticed that blogging activity around these parts has taken a marked turn for the worse lately. My life has turned into one soul-sapping assignment after another, with additional research commitments and course work... And I really need to start prepping for exams too.

I feel a bit like this to be honest:

"Head for the sides, damn you stupid slinky!"

In all likelihood then, I won't be posting any new material on the site until finals are done. My only hope is that the big Lebowksi kills me before the Germans can cut my dick off.

Hopefully, I'll emerge relatively unscathed and also be able to tell you more about some fairly cool developments happening this side.

Until then, adios and stay classy.

Casting further doubt on Bob's "Heartland" arguments

Bob Murphy's whole spin on the Heartland / Peter Gleick affair really bothered me. At first, I just dove straight into the responses without doing a lot of back research, or even retracing my own steps in coming across the leak. Having done that now, I can safely say that I feel even more confident of my main assertions. In other words, I hold that Bob's article framed the climate debate in very misleading terms, while he was glibly uncritical in his analysis of 'Team Skeptic'. I also continue to hold serious doubts over claims that Gleick wrote the false strategy memo.

However, I want to leave such matters aside today and follow up on (what I take to be) the central theme of Bob's post. In particular, the idea that the "alarmist" blogosphere betrayed a major misunderstanding of the skeptic position via its  fixation on the bogus strategy memo. Or, in Bob's words: "[I]t reveals that these people really have no idea how their opponents on the climate issue actually view the world. So when they dismiss skeptics as having no legitimate arguments, it should make outsiders take pause."

In rebutting this claim, I'm going to divide up this so-called "alarmist" blogosphere into three categories, based on their coverage of the Heartland saga. By doing so, I aim to show that: (1) A number of very prominent pro-AWG blogs and websites didn't cover the leak at all, (2) Others did, but paid little or no attention to the fraudulent strategy memo, and lastly (3) Of the bloggers that did cite the memo, the vast majority were very quick to acknowledge its compromised nature and remove the offending content from their websites. These and some additional facts should seriously cast doubt on the notion that climate skeptics are more reasonable and judicious than their opponents.

This post continues under the fold...

Housekeeping

Some of you may have noticed that I've changed the previous post -- on Invisible Children and James Inhofe -- around a bit since it was first published. I wrote it up in quite a rush and, looking over it today, realised that my motivations were perhaps a bit cryptic. Hopefully it reads a bit better now.

Revisiting and tweaking old posts on this blog is an occasional habit of mine. I've never tried to change the fundamental meaning of any posts, or cover my tracks if someone calls me out in the comments. Rather, it's usually that I read something and think "Who wrote this terrible mess? Do they even speak English?" So, blame OCD, but I inevitably tend to think that I can improve my writing after it's already out there for the world to see.

This is frustrating because I'm a terribly slow blogger as it is, and coursework leaves very little time for anything else. I don't know how other people doing graduate studies manage to keep up regular blogging activity with the workload. I suspect that the answer will reflect unfavourably on my mental faculties, so probably best not dwell on that issue...

Happy birthday to Stickman's Corral!

Well, a day late... but that can probably only be described as fitting.

Of course, recent postings have taken a severe backseat, as you might have observed. To be completely honest, I'm not sure whether I'll ever be able to get back into (semi) regular blogging activity if my workload continues to be this heavy. Hopefully that isn't the case, though... I've been told by almost everyone that the first semester of PhD is the worst.

But, enough blagging. You didn't stop by to hear excuses for current blogging inactivity. You came to see a review of the year passed! (If you didn't; unlucky just go with it.) So, without further ado...

The top five posts over the last twelve months, in terms of unique page views, have been:
1) Why we need maths in economics (317 page views)
2) Movember* (266)
3) Meat and Veg(etarianism) (129)
4) Facts vs Beliefs (114)
5) Should pregnant women be banned from smoking? (110)
* Somewhat depressingly, (2) has virtually all been traffic directed from "movember" image web searches... And, almost certainly for the logo itself rather than my steamy latino pose.

The five most commented on posts are fairly similar:
1) Facts vs Beliefs (24 comments)
2) Should pregnant women be banned from smoking? (21 comments)
3) Meat and Veg(etarianism) (11 comments)
4) Mises's action "axiom" or false dichotomy? (8 comments)

5) And then a bunch with six comments...

If these staggering </sarcasm> numbers weren't enough for you, in terms of readership by country we have:
1) United States (1,871 page views)
2) South Africa (728)
3*) Norway (519... although we should really exclude this as they're mostly mine)
3) United Kingdom (470)
4) Canada (173)
5) Australia (145)

Thanks to everyone that has ever stopped by The Corral for a visit! 

My own favourite posts are bit harder to nail down, especially in the little time I have available here. Still, alongside some of those already mentioned, here are a couple that I probably did enjoy writing more than others:

• Basically, all those that I have listed in "The Zen of Stickman's Corral" box in the upper right-hand corner.
• Putting a Price on Nature and the Defining Sustainability posts
• South Africa and water pricing
• Leonard Cohen covers (more the sentiments expressed in the body of the test than the cover versions themselves)
• Free will in a world of Mad Men
• Hippie Baptists and Libertarian Bootleggers
• More on Norway, Liberty and Labels

The lessons that I have learned from blogging very closely parallel my general experiences in the blogosphere. And, on the whole, they are certainly positive. 

• It really is a great resource for testing and expanding upon ideas; both in the sense of how others respond, and making sure that you understand an idea well enough to write it down in plain language for all to see. (Not that I always managed this...)
• Blogging takes up a lot of time. For me anyway. That may simply be due to the fact that I am something of a stickler for facts and have an uncanny knack for stretching a story out. Being on the long side of winded is not my favourite personal trait, but at the same time I don't wish to let go of it completely! I'm hoping that keeping this blog has actually moved me towards some kind of middle ground.
• It's hard to attract a big, regular audience unless you focus on specific, narrow themes. Jumping between completely unrelated topics kills your readership. My feeling is that people mostly visit blogs because they expect certain themes to be consistently addressed (even though the applications can vary widely); not to hear someone's everyday ramblings on whatever interests them. Unfortunately, I tend towards the latter... but so be it! (Although, I certainly have written posts simply because I thought that it would interest one particular person who might have been reading.)

Something I also want to mention specifically is music. I was hoping to put together a downloadable playlist of all the songs that I've linked to over the course of the year... but who has the time? I hope that you'll settle for YouTube links:

• Arcade Fire - "Suburban War"
• Smokey Robinson - "The Tracks Of My Tears" (live 1965)
• Pavement - "Gold Soundz"
• Neil Young - "Cortez The Killer", followed by the Dave Matthews Band version live in Central Park (with Warren Hayes)
• Sam Cooke - "Bring It On Home To Me" and "You Send Me"
• Goldfish - "Get Busy Living"
• Kings of Leon - "Fans" (BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge)
• Madrugada - "Majesty" (Live at the Tralfamadore)
• Elliott Smith - "Junk Bond Trader"
• Muse - "Map of the Problematique" (live at Glastonbury)
• The National - "Terrible Love" (live on Pitchfork TV)
• The Gossip - "Careless Whisper" (Wham! cover)
• Gnarls Barkley - "Reckoner" (live Radiohead cover)
• Eddie Vedder - "My City of Ruins" (live Bruce Springsteen cover)
• Tegan and Sara - "Dancing in the Dark" (live studio Bruce Springsteen cover)
• Gaslight Anthem - "9 Crimes" (live Damien Rice cover)
• Gaslight Anthem - "I Do Not Hook Up" (Kelly Clarkson cover on BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge)
• The Subways - "Staring at the Sun" (TV on the Radio cover)
• TV on the Radio - "Mr Grieves" (a cappella Pixies cover)
• Frightened Rabbit - various tracks including "Keep Yourself Warm", "Poke", "Heads Roll Off", "Swim Until You Can't See Land", "Fast Blood", "The Wrestle, The Loneliness & The Scream", etc...
• The Lemonheads (feat. Liv Tyler) - "Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye" (Leonard Cohen cover)
• Judy Collins - "Suzanne" (Leonard Cohen cover... some controversy surrounding this one, as apparently it should have been Nina Simone's version)
• GAYNGS - "By Your Side" (Sade cover)
• Bon Iver - "I Can't Make You Love Me" (live on The Late Show with Jimmy Fallon)
• Angus Stone - "River" (Joni Mitchell cover)
• Eddie Vedder - "Trouble" (live Cat Stevens cover)
• We are Scientists - "Hoppipolla" (Sigur Rós cover)
• Birdy - "Shelter" (The xx cover)
• Red House Painters - "Have You Forgotten"
• Yeah Yeah Yeahs - "Diamond Sea" (Sonic Youth cover)
• Crash Test Dummies - "Androgynous" (The Replacements cover)
• Steve Earle - "My Back Pages" (Bob Dylan cover)

Not a bad collection, if I say so myself! (With a little help from the odd Poncey guest post and suggestions by others.)

And with that, I have some GMM estimation techniques that need looking at.

See you soon,

o-[-<

Service, interrupted

You may have noticed that blogging's been a bit slow around these parts, lately. Please accept my apologies, but it's a hard thing to rectify given my current circumstances.

Last week I began what was ambitiously labelled a "refresher" pre-course in Maths and Statistics. I feel a more accurate meme would have been "SHOCK AND AWE".

Of course, there's some stuff that I can recall through the hazy fog of undergraduate memories -- how could I forget an inequality named after Chevy Chase?? -- but much of it is entirely new.

You can call me Al?

I don't know whether it's a cause for optimism, but I take cold comfort in the fact that my new classmates all claim to be pretty much in the same boat. [Side note: I once heard a piece of musical folk wisdom to the effect of "Playing the Blues isn't about making yourself feel better... It's about making everyone else feel as bad as you."]

This coming week, I'll have to juggle the second half of this intensive Maths/Stats malarkey alongside the start of my core modules from the first semester: Microeconomics and Econometrics. In addition, I'll starting my TA duties for the Master's econometrics course. My only hope is that the Big Lebowski kills me before the Germans can cut my dick off. At the current rate then, I'm really just aiming to successfully make it through these first few weeks and pass the compulsory exam early next month.

Some more cheery academic news from the past couple days is the "completion" of paper that I have been working on with my supervisor. We've tweaked the theoretical model quite a bit and got the key findings down into a workable, 20-page format. At the moment, the paper is sitting with an external colleague of my supervisor for comments, but hopefully we get to submit it (with whatever changes are recommended) for journal publication early this week. Then, I suppose, the process of response and revision will begin in earnest! Still, nice to get it out the door in it's current form.

In sum: Busy times.

Hopefully I get round to some semi-regular blogging activity in a couple weeks. In the meantime, you folks stay classy.

Hiatus and Happenings

I've been receiving abuse from various quarters lately for the lack of posting on this site. My apologies, but I'd sworn of any real computer activity for a few weeks after completing my thesis. To be honest, I had been meaning to write some stuff here this week... there's certainly been a few things on the go that seemed worth talking about.

Unfortunately, it turns out that I am very lazy and preferred spending my time on the beach. There's also the not insignificant issue of my supervisor asking me to prepare a shortened version of my dissertation by yesterday. (We'll be submitting a joint paper, largely based on the work that I did for my thesis to some relevant journals; hopefully by the end of this week.) This has been taking up what little patience I have for my laptop screen over the last two days.

Amidst all that, I'm supposed to be packing up my room and all my stuff, as tomorrow the GF and I bid a fond farewell to Lisbon. (I travel pretty light as far as these things go, but even then it's rather disconcerting to see how much rubbish you manage to accumulate over a few months in a foreign city.) We'll be heading off to the UK for a few weeks next, visiting a variety of places... Starting off in west Wales where my aunt and uncle have a(n apparently beautiful) holiday spot, then up to the Lake District where the GF's family is and her brother is getting married, before heading back down to London to visit friends, and finally back to my aunt and uncle's house in Hampshire. Then it's up north again, where I'll be starting my PhD in mid-August!

Before all that, however, we'll be attending this bad boy: Optimus Alive. It seemed a good idea to book tickets to a music festival on the day before our departure at the time, and I'm not going to let pressing logistics get in the way of that feeling now! We've only got day passes (today, July 7), but there are some bands that I'm looking forward to seeing. You can see the line-up here. My plan of attack is something along the lines of: Crocodiles (17h00); Jimmy Eat World (18h30); Bombay Bicycle Club (20h05); Primal Scream (21h15); Iggy and the Stooges (22h45); ending off with the big one, Foo Fighters (00h05).

What do you reckon? Am I optimising here (har har), or could I do better?

[For the record, I'm mostly interested in Primal Scream (reliving the 90s -- yeah!) and Foo Fighters. The rest I'm prepared to juggle around a bit.]

UPDATE: A very good night out. I left a remark on Twitter saying something to the effect of: "Bombay Bicycle Club vying hard to take over from Jimmy Eat World's title as most awkward looking band. Both good live acts though." Felt bad about this a few hours later though, as J.E.W. were on the same flight as us the next morning and seemed pretty cool dudes. (And I'll always have a soft spot for The Sweetness.) In fact, I was sandwiched between them and Primal Scream. Lead singer Bobby Gillespie appeared to be holding up remarkably well after being arguably the most stoned human in all of greater Lisbon only the night before -- no small feat, I can assure you. He and the rest of PS still put in a solid performance, though. (They are effectively touring on a live re-visitation of Screamadelica; surely one of the great albums of the 90s.) In other news, Iggy Pop must donate his body to science. He remains equal measures totally compelling and awful as a performing artist: He still flaunts a six-pack at around 65 years of age, and still can't hold a tune to save his life. Not much changed since the 1970s then... And, last but not least, Dave Grohl possess an incredible set of lungs. He screamed and growled his way through a near three-hour set, along with the rest of the Foo's. I was knackered just being in the crowd, so I can only wonder how they felt. I'm as much an armchair fan as anything else, but -- having now seen them live -- the Foo Fighters deserve their place as the headline act for the festival circuit this season... Say nothing of being, arguably, the biggest rock band in the world right now.

Cover Thursdays - Poncey Special edition

I'm in a world of thesis pain at the moment. My hand-in is just around the corner and I'm frantically making some revisions based on the last set of my supervisor's comments, fine tuning the writing, etc, etc. Boo hoo, I know.

Fear not, however, as I have secured the guest blogging services of regular music pundit, Poncey Malherber. Here he is and please direct all praise/criticism his way. (I'm too busy even to "edit vociferously"!)...

===

Stickman is using his 'thesis' as an excuse and informs me that he won't be writing a Cover Thursdays post for the second week running. I find both the situation and the excuse quite unacceptable.

I also note that he's had time for plenty of what I like to call his Ecos malarky which, according to stickmansdad, might be breaking ground in the fight against insomnia. But I'll put that down to market forces.

There's no better platform for blog bashing than here, but let's put that aside for this sneaky little Joni Mitchell cover which should be enough to start some sort of musical debate.

I only found it this morning so won't be able to comment on it's longevity. The original, however, is an all time classic. And coming from a guy who doesn't enjoy female vocalists as a rule -- is quite some endorsement.

I'll tell you what I'm blathering about, man.

Poncey Malherber

===
PS - Stickman rudely contacted me and told me that Thursday covers require TWO cover versions. No thank yous. No 'awesomes'. Just a 'send another one or else' type of vibe.

Two can play that game. Here's my second cover:




Seeing as this is my guest post I'll say that I reckon Eddie Vedder is one of the greatest voices and talents in musical history, but is well below average in the song writing department. Stickman disagrees (and will probably edit vociferously), but there it's out there.

Watch how he kills this Cat Stevens cover. EINA!

PM

The back burner

That special time of the year has arrived, when I'll be foregoing the pleasures of summer and reaping the rewards of procrastination. Yup, it's exam time for monsieur Stickman. Not only exams, but I have the added joy of finishing some final reports and -- the big one -- typing up my thesis. (I'll be presenting a paper on it at an econometrics conference in southern Denmark in two weeks, which is probably going to be even wilder than it sounds. /sarcasm)

So, if you don't hear from me all that regularly over the next week or three, you know why. Even as I write this little post, I'm missing out on the Eurovision Song Contest finale.

I know, tragic.[*]

[*] How this steaming pile of tripe manages to captivate an entire continent is beyond me. Clearly, it must be some kind of sophisticated test to sniff out foreigners.