maya made via daisy chain.
i have 6 cereal boxes collected. and i'm sure we have an old dictionary lying around somewhere.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
#510: the placecards.
i was going to just cut out rectangles for my placecards. but all of a sudden, that seems boring. especially after i saw these.
maya made via daisy chain.
i have 6 cereal boxes collected. and i'm sure we have an old dictionary lying around somewhere.
maya made via daisy chain.
i have 6 cereal boxes collected. and i'm sure we have an old dictionary lying around somewhere.
#509: empty vase.
via seaglass vintage.
so. if i were to use something like this (maybe a bit bigger, or maybe several different height'd vases bunched together) as a centerpiece...as a guest, would you think it was weird if i didn't put any flowers in it?
(also, is my question grammatically correct? <-- update: fixed thanks to MissTre.)
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Judging Presidents
A reader asks a good question:
What you would not do is judge him by the outcome. Even the best physicians have patients die. And even witchdoctors can have patients recover. Randomness is a fact of life (and death). In the case of a medical doctor, the answer seems clear: Instead of looking at the outcome, you would judge him by the decisions he makes and treatments he prescribes. That is, you would examine whether he followed best practices for the circumstances he faced.
Similarly, randomness is a fact of economic life, and it would be a mistake to judge a president by the economic outcome during his administration. It is better to look at the decisions the president made, and to acknowledge that the outcome is a function of those decisions and many other factors not under his control. As an economist, I have views about what best practices are for economic policy, and I judge presidents by how closely they adhere to those principles.
Unfortunately, that evaluation process is not quite as simple and objective as the reader might have hoped for. But I don't think there is a better alternative.
Now some people may be tempted to read the above commentary and call it self-serving. After all, the economy looks pretty bad right now, so maybe I am trying to excuse President Bush and, indirectly, myself as one of his economic advisers.
Not so. If you want to judge presidents and their economic advisers by outcomes, that would be all to my benefit. I arrived in Washington to head the CEA in February 2003 and left in February 2005. (Harvard has a two-year rule for faculty leave). During that time, the economy grew at a healthy annualized rate of 3.6 percent, and the unemployment rate fell half a percentage point. As judged by outcomes, I look pretty good! But I will be the first to admit that this argument is deeply silly.
What are some useful and objective measures which we can use to judge the performance of President Obama and his new team? How would Greg Mankiw judge Obama four years from now?Consider a related question: How would you judge the competence of a doctor if you could observe him treating only a single patient?
What you would not do is judge him by the outcome. Even the best physicians have patients die. And even witchdoctors can have patients recover. Randomness is a fact of life (and death). In the case of a medical doctor, the answer seems clear: Instead of looking at the outcome, you would judge him by the decisions he makes and treatments he prescribes. That is, you would examine whether he followed best practices for the circumstances he faced.
Similarly, randomness is a fact of economic life, and it would be a mistake to judge a president by the economic outcome during his administration. It is better to look at the decisions the president made, and to acknowledge that the outcome is a function of those decisions and many other factors not under his control. As an economist, I have views about what best practices are for economic policy, and I judge presidents by how closely they adhere to those principles.
Unfortunately, that evaluation process is not quite as simple and objective as the reader might have hoped for. But I don't think there is a better alternative.
Now some people may be tempted to read the above commentary and call it self-serving. After all, the economy looks pretty bad right now, so maybe I am trying to excuse President Bush and, indirectly, myself as one of his economic advisers.
Not so. If you want to judge presidents and their economic advisers by outcomes, that would be all to my benefit. I arrived in Washington to head the CEA in February 2003 and left in February 2005. (Harvard has a two-year rule for faculty leave). During that time, the economy grew at a healthy annualized rate of 3.6 percent, and the unemployment rate fell half a percentage point. As judged by outcomes, I look pretty good! But I will be the first to admit that this argument is deeply silly.
Stein and Liebman to DC
The Crimson reports that the Obama administration has recruited Harvard economists Jeremy Stein and Jeff Liebman, both excellent choices.
englishdept: more pdx dream gear
{ antique ivory silk taffeta ruffle bolero }
ohhh. yes please. until etsy, i never knew i was such a secret girly-girl. (not-so-secret now! wedding blog, natch.)
englishdept is the etsy shop of elizabeth dye, owner/designer of real life brick-and-mortar store the english dept. in portland oregon. the bolero above is handmade and can be ordered in custom sizes, and her other few pieces on etsy are sublime.
was going to end there, but seriously: the one-of-a-kind ivory beaded cashmere bridal shrug below, fashioned from a vintage sweater, is an amazing winter piece.
go now, and compliment this woman!
more at englishdept.etsy.com
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