Up in the air

It is great, truly great. In fact IMDb and RottenTomatoes do not give it sufficient credit. I was told I would love it, by people who know me, but I didn't just love it: I adored it. One of my favourite scenes is also one of the most brilliant dialogues/pick-up strategies, on screen and beyond. It is a shame the movie did not win any Oscars, given the six (only!) nominations it received. "Superlative" is not doing enough justice to the acting performances of George Clooney, Vera Farmiga or Anna Kendrick, with the film also an example of perfect direction and screenplay by Jason Reitman & co. It belongs right there, in my top 5 all-time favourites.

To top it all, I've seen "Up in the air" just the proper way, up in the air-- during my Chicago-Amsterdam trip yesterday. And, obviously, I write this post from Schiphol's KLM lounge, soon to be up in the air again, this time to Shanghai. "Bingo. Asians."

Chinese (Couch) Potato

"Tudou.com" (="Potato", in Romanized Chinese) is one of the several Chinese "Youtubes", seemingly the largest one at present (possibly larger than YouTube itself in some dimensions). Tudou's stated goal is "to move couch potatoes from the TV screen to computer screens, a process very much under way in China". Here's their wiki entry. While this might be not very exciting yet, what might knock you out is the fact that you can watch on Tudou an amazing number of excellent (whole) movies, both recent and old, in very high definition media format (typically split in several parts). For instance, you can find entirely the top 5 movies (and probably most of the rest, as well) from my 25 favourite movies list (which needs an update). Thus, if you have the time (even if you are not per se a couch potato), go for it: they've got an impressive collection. You can search for the titles of the movies in English: don't be put off by the Chinese, should you not understand it :-). It might be of course just a matter of time before Tudou will also have to start removing some of its material because of copyrights infringement (I am not sure to what extent that is a problem already, but at least concerning recent movies such as Sweeney Todd, the likelihood of foul play is very high...), but the Chinese legislation in context appears to be more than lenient for the time being.

Econlinks for 03-08-'07

• markets in everything edition: The Economist presents the black market for corpse brides in China; the truly nasty problem is that it comes with some scary incentives, given the scarcity of bridal corpses...

• 1028 is the number of US economists that signed the recent petition against the (expected) Congress protectionist moves (link with the Dems general race-to-the-bottom economic policies that I was recently blogging about). The same number of US economists signed a very similar petition, against President Hoover's trade policies, just before The Great Depression- I guess you know then how succesful that petition was... Via Greg Mankiw.

• talking about incentives: why would one have sex with a prostitute? Well, here's something I would call a decent (pretty honest?) answer: "I visited a prostitute for one obvious, practical reason and another less so: I'm sick of lying to women. Being single and in my 30s, I find it increasingly difficult to justify the lies and manipulation involved in having a sexual relationship with women who I'm not in love with." Read more.

• It did take him 36 years, but the former QUEEN guitarist still handed in his PhD dissertation before me ... though his is in astronomy, piece of cake in other words :-). In any case, it remains to be established whether Brian May's comparative advantage lies in music or in scientific research...

Econlinks for 13-04-'07

• An interesting editorial in the NYTimes by Hal Varian, on the fashion industry and its laissez-faire attitude inasmuch copyrights are concerned. With conclusions valid for other industries as well... Link via Greg Mankiw's blog.
• On the future of books: a very informative article from The Economist, 22nd of March (subscription required). The introductory paragraphs read:

IN SECRET locations and using secret methods, human beings are scanning lots and lots of books for Google, the world's largest web-search company. That humans are involved is beyond doubt (fingers are visible in the corners of many pages on books.google.com) although this is uncharacteristic of Google, which has a fetish for purist technology.

Google will not divulge exact numbers, but Daniel Clancy, the project's lead engineer, gives enough guidance for an educated guess: Google's contract with one university library, Berkeley's, stipulates that it must digitise 3,000 books a day. The minimum for the other 12 universities involved may be lower, but the rate for participating publishers is higher. So a conservative estimate has Google digitising at least 10m books a year. The total number of titles in existence is estimated to be about 65m.

• Can private property rights co-exist with socialism? Gary Becker and Richard Posner show that de facto this has been (to a considerable extent) the case in countries like China for quite a while already (although even the 'socialism' was de facto something else...), while now private property has been legalized there de jure, as well. The English translation of this recent law (adopted on March 16 this year, will become effective October 1st) can be downloaded here (as PDF).
• online flirting auction: I'm curious how much of a proxy is "flirting" here :-). But anyways, economics at work...Got the link via Tyler Cowen at MR.

"Ant scam" worth 3 billion yuan...and a death sentence

I don't think anybody will start an 'ant business' in China any time soon. Not after this. Link via Tyler Cowen.

Does China have a problem with the gender imbalance? If so, how big of problem?

Economics at work! Compare this article from the BBC (echoing what I believe to be the 'general'- rather gloomy!- perspective on China's gender imbalance) and the viewpoints of economists Gary Becker and Richard Posner, who start from discussing whether there is any valid case for forbidding the 'sex selection' practice, but end up discussing a series of wider implications. While indeed in the short term (Just how short is short? Posner's favourite numbers seem to be 20-30 years...) China's "problem" could indeed be 'somewhat of a problem' (with the provision that- violence contained- all women should be better off...), I cannot but agree with the excellent analysis of Becker, complemented with further observations by Posner (I thought Posner's idea of using the societies that permit polygyny as a 'natural experiment' to provide some answers to the question of how much should China and other countries in similar situations worry about the gender imbalance, was an excellent one). I really think the market should be let to do its job; and, if anything, in terms of state intervention, polyandry should be allowed in these countries (if the problem turns into a PROBLEM, it would be practiced, more or less informally, anyhow). What's the problem with that? (Except for the fact that such a word probably equates blasphemy in such countries as China, where male domination and polygyny used to be the standard for ages: well, maybe it's high time for a change...)