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So I have just installed Office 2007 and was exploring the new Word. It is quite different but one option intrigued me and that was the ‘blog post’ option. I am trying it now. If this works, then it worked. Otherwise …

Keith Martin does an heroic job trying to resolve the conflicts between the two Star Wars trilogies [HT: Marginal Revolution]. A few problems:

1. If they were hiding Luke why did he keep the name Luke Skywalker?

2. Jedi don’t get scared (that is a path to the Dark Side) so imputing that on Obi-Wan seems implausible.

3. Wasn’t Bail Organa alive on the Yavin moon?

Are these names from Star Wars or are they Web 2.0 start-ups? Click here to test yourself. [HT: PhotoMat] I got 35 (judge as you see fit).

I love the eTag system in Melbourne and now being rolled out throughout the country. No queuing to pay tolls. No worrying about having change. Just go and listen to the beeps fly.

Amy Finkelstein (MIT) has examined whether the move to electronic toll collection has raised toll rates. The hypothesis is that when you don’t have to work to pay you don’t pay as much attention to how much you pay. Not suprisingly, it is easier to get away with raising tolls. She finds that in the US, when electronic tolling comes in rates are 20 to 40 percent higher than they otherwise would have been. You might think that is a price worth paying for the ease of use. But apparently so do other drivers with toll increases have a lower deterrance effect on actual driving.

In Australia, the tolls are regulated. So you might think that we are OK. But think again. Being able to increase tolls without cost is something a government can utilise as much as any private company. So if we can’t be vigilant at the tolls we will have to be more vigilant at the polls.

A couple of new posts on Game Theorist this weekend taking a look at punishments and also the socially destructive effects of video games.

My post on iPhone margins from a week or so ago has been nicely formatted, edited and put up on Aplia.

The news today that Telstra is bringing in a constitutional challenge against the ACCC’s regulation of its copper network (the usual prices are too low, etc.), reminded me of an earlier post here on Telstra’s views about such regulation.

Here is a link to that post which itself draws from Telstra’s submissions to the NZ Commerce Commission for access to Telecom NZ’s network. Seems they don’t mind low prices there and, indeed, produce consultant reports on how that promotes efficient investment. Those reports should make interesting reading at the High Court.

President Bush highlighted the founder of Baby Einstein in his 2007 State of the Union address. Read more

In Slate, Paul Collins discovers that there is lots of music that you can’t buy on the US iTunes Music Store. Of course, the rest of the world has known about this for sometime. And when it comes to movies and television, the US is the place. Indeed, check out the awkward Apple TV ads in Australia. (Look you can play music videos, yippie!) Compare it to the US version. By the way, Apple TV in Australia costs US$356 compared with the US price of US$299. It costs more, it does less, it’s that simple.

Of course, all other things being equal, it is hardly in Apple’s baseline interest to restrict media availability in any part of the world. But it may be in the interests of copyright owners. On the latest iTunes index, Japanese iTunes songs are the most expensive in the world (76% more expensive than the US). Me thinks that is a plausible reason why Japanese copyright owners don’t want to sell on the US store. So if Apple is to blame, it is for their ‘one price’ policy in the US. Read more

Well maybe three if you include Linux but for the moment, let’s think about two — Mac OS X and Windows. Thanks to a company called Parallels, Macs can now run Windows applications seamlessly and the underlying operating system is becoming invisible to the user. (Here is an article on this.) What does all of this mean? Read more

A couple of recent posts over at Game Theorist. One on Tim Harford’s ideas about toilet training and incentives (bottom line: he is a whimp). Another on Birthday parties gone wild.

Well after blogging about this a week ago and creating much interest on this blog (17 comments including why is an economics blog talking about this), we finally saw Comet McNaught tonight. At about 9:20pm it appeared in the South-West Melbourne sky. It was visible to the naked eye. We also got out the ol’ Celestron and could see it in great detail.

Basically, it looked much like this picture [HT; Moneytimes] from earlier in the week, although the tail was longer and started to stretch across the sky. It was much much better than the smuge that was Halley’s Comet in 1986 (and you didn’t have to get up at 4am for this one either).

If you are reading this right now, you can go outside and see it. Otherwise, I am sure a clear night tomorrow will continue the view.

Just over a month ago, the world’s oldest person died, ceding the title to a man for the first time in some time. Here was my post on that.

The new world’s oldest woman, Julie Bertrand, was only a few weeks younger and statistically (as men die before women) looked a shoe in for the top position. Sadly, news today that it wasn’t to be. Wikipedia are again on the ball and have changed their rankings. There is now almost a year’s distance between the oldest (Emilliano Mercado del Toro) and the second oldest (Emma Tillman).

The puzzle for me is why I am compelled to blog on this!

Some analysts have got out there and calculated the margin Apple will likely make on the iPhone. For instance, the 4GB version retailing at $499 (I’ll use US$) will likely cost $245.83 to make. (Here is a break-down just in case you are interested). The margin is about 50 percent. The analysts concluded that Apple would drop its retail price further in the face of competition. Closer inspection suggests that this conclusion is wrong. Read more

The Australian telecommunications industry journal, Exchange, published an opinion piece by John de Ridder in December critiquing my broadband report for CEDA. de Ridder argued that if you get access prices right then there is no need for a particular focus on local solutions. He argued that my proposal was not a ‘magic bullet’ solution. Ultimately, I don’t disagree with much that de Ridder says but I felt the need to respond anyhow. My response is out today in January’s Exchange and it is reprinted over the fold. Read more

CommSec today launched an iPod Index which compares the price of iPod nanos around the world to determine whether exchange rates are over or under-valued. It is, of course, based on the Big Mac Index but it is a poor substitute for the iTunes Index (both music and games) developed on this blog. Read more

In a new study, economists Matthew Rablen and Andrew Oswald find that winning a Nobel prize adds between 1 and 2 years extra longevity. (Here is the paper). Now the vast majority of Nobel prize winners are still alive so they looked at Nobel prize winners in Physics and Chemistry between 1901 and 1950. Read more

While we drool over the iPhone, a simple innovation appears …

The party plate

Of course, this isn’t too bad either …

The Star Trek home theatre (for less than U$15K)

Well, if this could work for weight loss, it is going to be an even bigger hit. Shame they are still sold out of Wiis.

My post earlier today had an off-hand comment about GreenPower that upset some folks in the comments. I mistook gas-powered generators as part of the mix which they clearly are not. Anyhow, I have a clear hypothesis about what is concerning me and having read some more details on greenpower.gov.au, I remain worried. So let me proceed in steps and I am sure concerned commentators will correct me if I am wrong. Read more

Thanks to the Chronicle on Higher Education [HT: Division of Labor] a great list of student excuses. Here are some: Read more

Chicago GSB’s Dean, Ed Snyder, says that students are not customers and nor should they be. So many business schools — probably MBS too — has had to justify larger fees but also increasing competition by telling students that they were customers rather than students. This has been a real problem: Read more

Ariel Rubinstein decides to consider Steve Levitt as a rational self-interested economic agent (indeed, all economists and economics) to see what that implies about their behaviour (click here). The result is a new book proposal for Freak-Freakonomics published in The Economists’ Voice. Here is the proposal for Chapter 2: Read more

Nothing like a couple of hours without electricity during a heatwave to remind you of our reliance on it. In Melbourne yesterday, the major interconnector between NSW and Victoria went down because of bushfires. This took out 2000MW of potential power imported from NSW just as demand soared above 9000MW in Victoria. Here is the graph from NEMMCO. Read more

Glyn Davis and Joshua Frydenberg like what they see in California and think Australia is placed to do the same: Read more

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