The economics of curling

I had many requests to blog this topic, and it is a sport in the Winter Olympics...

Google often forces you to ponder the multiple meanings of words:

It is a profile bust showing rather handsome features, full forehead, prominent eyeballs, well curved eyebrows, slightly aquiline nose, and firm mouth and chin, and it is inscribed, "Adam Smith in his 64th year, 1787. Tassie F." In this medallion Smith wears a wig, but Tassie executed another, Mr. J. M. Gray tells us, in what he called "the antique manner," without the wig, and with neck and breast bare. "This work," says Mr. Gray, "has the advantage of showing the rounded form of the head, covered with rather curling [emphasis added] hair and curving upwards from the brow to a point above the large ear, which is hidden in the other version."

The text is from John Rae, biographer of Adam Smith.  Here is the link.  Here are details on the medallion.  Here is a post on whether the sport of curling is a province of the rich.  It seems not to be.  This does not surprise me.  It is not income that holds me back.  Here are facts about curling, sometimes called "chess on ice."  Curling is the provincial sport of Sasketchewan.  Here is Slate.com on how curling explains the world.

Here is a Canadian study on the strongly positive economic impact of curling.  The study confuses gross and net benefits, regional and national benefits, and nominal expenditures with real resource production, as such economic impact studies usually do.  Commit them to the flames.