Michael Giberson Michael Finney observes that Girl Scout cookies sell at different prices in different locations, and he asks (tongue in cheek), is it “Girl Scout cookie price gouging?” No, actually it is more like “zone pricing“ price discrimination – setting the price to a level that the local market will bear. (EDITED, see comments …
Michael Giberson David Wagman, chief editor of Power Engineering magazine, toured the Electric Reliability Council of Texas’ primary control center in Taylor, Texas as part of a group attending the Renewable Energy World Conference in Austin. If you wonder what ERCOT’s control center is like: Inside the control room, the most striking feature is the …
Michael Giberson The Wall Street Journal reports on research analyzing quarterly reports (nearly 1/2 a million of them from over a 27-year period) which discovered strong circumstantial evidence that companies tweak their results to improve reported earnings. The evidence? The number 4 occurs less frequently than chance would dictate in the tenths of a cent …
How to Fake Sincerity in Reporting Quarterly Results Read More »
Michael Giberson It’s the anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, which means it is Darwin Day! Darwin Day is a recently instituted celebration intended to commemorate the anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwinon February 12, 1809. The day is used to highlight Darwin’s contribution to science and to promote science in general. Some may believe that Darwin Day …
Happy 201st for Charles Darwin (and Abe Lincoln) Read More »
Michael Giberson I’ll be away from my desk for a couple of days, so posting may be light. (Unless I can figure out the WordPress ap on my phone, in which case maybe I’ll live blog parts of the renewable energy conference I’ll be attending in Austin.)
Michael Giberson I noticed when posting the previous item that one of the subject tags in the Knowledge Problem system was “smart gird.” Not “grid”, but “gird.” A simple enough substitution of the “i” and “r”, and, apparently, pretty common online. Google yields a plethora of “smart gird” results (although it first redirected me to …
Lynne Kiesling I’ve been staying away from the computer for most of the past two weeks — our vacation and then the relaxing holidays at home have been more about reading and knitting and spending time with the KP Spouse. But I have spent the past several hours tweaking the KP design on the dimensions …
Lynne Kiesling I love the little bite-sized podcasts from Quick and Dirty Tips, and one of my favorites is Modern Manners Guy. My favorite thus far is his “get out of the way” podcast with its set of examples of being more attentive, thoughtful, and considerate with respect to your physical presence; one of my …
Michael Giberson Bryan Caplan, in How Wise is Repugnance?, questions Leon Kass’s argument that “repugnance is the emotional expression of deep wisdom.” (From Kass’s essay, “The Wisdom of Repugnance.”) Kass runs through a list of things that he thinks the reader will accept as obviously repugnant (incest, bestiality, mutilating corpses, cannibalism, and so on) and …
Lynne Kiesling I’ve added an AddThis “share this blog” button to the right sidebar, which allows you to link to KP from just about every imaginable form of social media. We hope you will!
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