Marginal Revolution

Countercyclical "asset" of the day -- burglary watch

With a lot more unemployed people, a lot more people are staying home, and they see more in their neighborhood," said Sgt. Thomas Lasater, who supervises the burglary unit of the police department in St. Louis County, Mo., where authorities recorded a whopping 35 percent drop in burglaries during the first six months of 2009.

The falling price of raw materials -- which had been producing copper and other thefts -- may be another reason for the change in trend.  Here is the story and I thank Daniel Lippman for the pointer.

Assorted links

1. Scott Sumner, standing on one (?) foot.  And here is a Sumner podcast with Russ Roberts.

2. The physics of free throw shooting.

3. A mathematician discusses string theory and many other matters.

4. Is older music crowding out newer music?

Unemployment Breakdown

The NYTimes has a nice interactive graphic on unemployment rates and changes over time by demographic characteristic.  I am in the category--white men ages 25-44 with a college degree-- with almost the very lowest unemployment rate (3.9%).  Just to compare, as pointed out in the comments, black males 15-24 without a high school degree have an unemployment rate of 48.5%.  Check it out.

Hat tip to FlowingData.

Measuring the movie critics

If you want to get a sense of the zeitgeist but can only read one review, you might prefer Rene Rodriguez, whose low standard deviation from the mean review score makes him very nearly a living critical average. If you are interested in an alternative perspective, Mick LaSalle's high standard deviation places him further from the critical pack than any of these peers. Reviews from both Michael Wilmington and Marc Savlov are so regularly and respectively positive and negative that they should perhaps be taken with a grain of salt.

The source article, which contains much more information, is here.  You'll find a visual representation of the critics's stances here.  Hat tip goes to Eric Barker.

If you're wondering, I don't have a "favorite movie critic."  I judge movies by the preview, the director, and by mentally aggregating the first five reviews I happen to read.  This works well for me.  If I had to go by a single source, by far it would be Variety magazine, which offers separate assessments of a movie's goodness and of its popularity with various demographics, a luxury which non-insider publications do not always have.  

China claim of the day

If China remains culturally closed, the Chinese Century will never come to pass. Instead, the United States--a country that has struggled with race and racism for centuries, and in the process has become more culturally open and resilient--will dominate this century as it did the last.

That's from Reihan Salaam, who discusses how far the problem of Asian racism is from being solved.

Berlin memories

I first visited Berlin in 1985, while traveling with Randall Kroszner.  We drove to West Berlin by car and we were terrified for the few hours we were underway in East Germany.  Randy did not drive over the speed limit once.  I was hardly a communist sympathizer but still I was unprepared for the day trip to East Berlin.  I saw soldiers goose-stepping down one of the main streets.  In the stores old ladies yelled and swung their brooms at me.  Many buildings still had bullet marks or bomb damage from World War II.  In a restaurant we ate a rubber Wiener Schnitzel and shared a table with an East German family; they did not have enough trust in their government to speak a word to us.  I was unable to spend my mandatory thirty-mark conversion on anything useful; I carried back some Stendahl and Goethe but didn't want the Lenin.  This was in the capital city in the showcase of the communist world.   

My biggest impression was simply that I had never seen evil before.

In the summer of 1990 I stayed in a dorm in East Berlin.  Everyone seemed normal.  Cute girls smiled.  Yet there were few signs of modern German life as a Westerner might understand it; it was as if I had stepped into an alternative science fiction universe.  The Vietnamese ran the street markets and Russian still mattered.  

In 1999 I heard an emotional performance of Fidelio there and most of the audience cried.

I like spending time in Berlin.  But I am never sure I like Berlin itself, West or East.  Berlin is Germany being imperial.  Berlin is Germany looking toward the east.  Today Berlin is Germany pretending it is normal, while not yet having a new identity.  Here is Kurt Tucholsky (in German) on Berlin.  Here is a silly quotation about Berlin:

“Berlin combines the culture of New York, the traffic system of Tokyo, the nature of Seattle, and the historical treasures of, well, Berlin.”

Here is the Berlin Sony Center.  Here is the Reichstag.  Here is the Jewish Museum.  Here is Knut, from the Berlin Zoo.