As previously noted, back at the end of April 2008, when WordPress version 2.5.1 was the latest stable release, I reported a bug in the handling of nested q[uotation] elements by WordPress. The bug was scheduled to be fixed with version 2.7. Then, as the release of version 2.7 approached, the bug-fix was rescheduled for version 2.9. When I discovered this rescheduling, I wrote

And there seems no assurance that, about half-a-year from now, that target won’t be reset to version 3.1.

Well, that was actually more than 11 months ago, but two days ago, with version 2.9 in beta, the fix was rescheduled for Future Release, which is to say that it really isn't scheduled at all.

I don't really want to dive into the code to fix the error myself. For one thing, I've been thinking of writing an independent software package that would contain some of the same functionality as that of the package in which the bug resides, and I neither want to license the code of someone else nor face challenge as having perhaps cribbed said code. Further, I'd expect to have to invest significant effort to understand the code before I could properly patch it, and might have no use for the understanding after the patch.

[This entry is based upon a reply to a friend, who requested an explanation of comparative advantage.]

Imagine that you and someone whom you know need each to produce reports that will involve both pages of text and pages of diagrams. Imagine further that you can produce ten pages of text in a day or five pages of diagrams in a day, while this other person can produce five pages of text or three pages of diagrams.

You have an absolute advantage in the production of each good here. None-the-less, if you are able to trade (text for diagrams), both of you can gain.

For every page of diagrams that you produce, you have to forgo production of two pages of text. For every page of diagrams that the other person produces, he must forgo production of one and two-thirds pages of texts.

Slow as he may be at each task, he has a comparative advantage in the production of diagrams. Setting aside transaction costs, if someone will trade text for diagrams at a ratio of better than five-to-three, then he can profitably make diagrams to trade for text. You, meanwhile, have a comparative advantage in the production of text. Setting aside transaction costs, if someone will trade diagrams for text at a ratio of better than one-to-two, then you can profitably make text to trade for diagrams. So trading at something between 1 2/3 pages of text and 2 pages of text per page of diagrams should work for you both.

The only way that each of two parties could not have a comparative advantage in something would be if everyone had exactly the same production trade-off ratios. That's not bloody likely.[1]

We certainly don't require that one party be worse at both things for each party to have a comparative advantage in something. Here

each party has an absolute advantage in something, and a comparative advantage in that same thing. Such examples come freely to mind; and, because in such examples comparative advantage is in the same product as absolute advantage, such examples foster a confusion that absolute advantage determines where one should specialize or (worse) what one should produce. (The latter is worse because it mistakenly implies that one should never trade for something in which one has an absolute advantage.)

Comparative advantage underlies virtually all trade,[2] whether we're talking about two people or two firms or two nations. But it is in international trade that comparative advantage is most often discussed.

This attention is because lay-people are most likely to think that international trade or proper trade policy is instead somehow determined by absolute advantage. The fear that one country can somehow suck up everything through unregulated trade is almost always founded on a belief that absolute advantage (from cheap labor in the undeveloped world or from advanced technology in the developed world) determines who profits.

But explanations in terms of absolute advantage lack coherence. Returning to the original example of producing reports (where you have the absolute advantage in both products), there is no way for you to leave the other person worse-off through trade, unless he can be persuaded to trade at a ratio worse (inclusive of transaction costs) than he can produce for himself. Maybe he's dumb enough for that, but he could be dumb enough for that even if he had the absolute advantage in both.

[1] On the other hand, it is quite possible that the ratios could be close-enough that the costs of transaction (including transportation) could swamp-out the potential gains-from-trade.

[2] Off the top of my head, I doubt that there are actually any exceptions. For example, when one buys what may seem an over-priced product, as an act of pity or of charity, which product one could have produced for oneself, either the premium may be viewed as a purchase of something beyond the overt product, or the transaction may be decomposed into a trade coupled with a simple gift.

I received notice this morning from eBay:

We received a report about a message you sent to another eBay member through our Email Forwarding System. The message violates the Misuse of eBay Email Forwarding System policy. We want to let you know about the report and invite you to learn more about communication between sellers and buyers. To learn more about the Email Forwarding System guidelines, please go to:

http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/rfe-unwelcome-email-misuse.html

We're taking a neutral position regarding the report we received, but if we continue to receive similar reports, we'll have to investigate. Policy violations can result in a formal warning, a temporary suspension, or an indefinite suspension.

If you have concerns related to this matter, you can contact us by going to:

http://pages.ebay.com/help/contact_us/_base/index_selection.html

Well, I'd like to know about what message this complaint was levelled. But, naturally (this being eBay), there's no appropriate option at index_selection.html, and the best fitting options require that in one field I provide a relevant item number or user ID about whom I'm complaining. My own user ID is rejected from this field.

Over the years, eBay, like many other corporations, has modified its interface and protocols to make them dumber in ways that specifically increase the difficulty of confronting it with responsibility.

eBay was founded by Pierre Omidyar, whose user ID is pierre. So I entered that user ID in the field, and it was accepted. Doubtless that, if others do likewise, then the software will be tweaked to prevent it.

Quite a few years ago, at the suggestion of a barber, I switched to getting buzz-cut hair-cuts. Some years after that, I spotted an Oster Teq clipper at Target, for something less than the price of three hair-cuts. I've been cutting my own hair ever since.

Results have usually been satisfactory, with one exception where a guide-comb fell-off the clipper as I was using it, and I was compelled to buzz down to stubble to achieve uniformity.

In early August, that clipper started making a dreadful noise. I've looked at the mechanism (one of a basic magnetic motor), but don't see anything plainly amiss. I might be able to have the clipper professionally repaired, but I'd expect the cost, including shipping, to be about that of just buying new clippers of the same sort. So I planned to go back to Target and buy another pair. Before I did so, the Woman of Interest suggested that I price clippers on-line.

In the Amazon Marketplace, I found an offer for the Oster Turbo 111 clipper, one of a sort that would be used by a professional barber, at a really great price. However, the seller instead sent just a single blade, not the clipper. Subsequently, that seller claimed that Amazon had screwed-up what was supposed to be a listing for just that blade (at what would not have been even a good price), and Amazon simply refused to claim much at all. No one took responsibility, though my money was eventually refunded and the seller had provided a pre-paid return-shipment label for the blade.

In any case, I now had it in my head to get a clipper of higher quality than that which I'd been using. (Meanwhile, Target no longer carried Oster clippers of any sort.) I decided to get an Oster Classic 76 clipper which is a work-horse clipper popular amongst barbers.

There were a couple of vendors on eBay who offered what seemed to be good prices, but when I looked at some of the negative feedback for each, I decided that I was not sufficiently confident to buy from either. The next best price that I found was at Brighton Beauty Supply (especially as Brighton Beauty Supply offered free shipping on orders over $49.95). Brighton Beauty Supply was not particularly quick to get my order shipped (and neglected to send the promised free gift of ½ fl. oz. of shampoo with an order over $100), but the clipper arrived yester-day.

Probably mostly because of a superior blade, the clipper cut through my hair far more smoothly than had the previous clipper. It's a little more difficult to fit the Universal guide-comb on it than onto the previous clipper, but it's not really a problem.

The instructions for the Oster Classic 76 clipper say that it will work best after it has been broken-in, which they say should take about four-to-six weeks. The problem here is that those would be four-to-six weeks of regular barbering. That would be something like four hundred hair-cuts.

Don't eat anything that could have loved you.

This image is closer to what I was trying to capture with the photograph in my previous entry.

This video

has drawn a lot of attention on the Web. Here's an example of how the story is being covered by journalists:

But here's what I found when I poked-around:

So here's how I read that video: Tripta Kaushal loved her son, as most mothers do. She lost him earlier this year, and it has been hard to cope. But she's trying to get on with her life, because, well, what else can she do? Part of trying to cope is exercise, so she's going to the gym. She's in the lot, trying to park her car. But even this is harder than it use to be, and she messes it up, terribly, unbelievably terribly. She literally drives onto a couple of cars. Not knowing what to do then, she backs off them. Then she sits in her vehicle, and starts crying. Because it's all too much. Not as bad as losing her Shayam, but another awful thing on top of losing him. And she knows that it's her fault, but she can't deal with it. So she drives away.

I'm not saying that what she did is anything but awful. She ruined people's cars, inflicting significant economic damage and damage that is less tangible but may none-the-less have been worse for the victims. She is responsible for this damage. But this is a video of a person who was and is held-together with the emotional equivalent of twine.

[Up-Date (2011:01/04): The YouTube account associated with the link to the video which I original used has been deleted, and with it the video. So I have linked to a different copy of the video.]

[Up-Date (2016:08/19): I notice that, once again, the video to which I linked was removed. So I have linked to yet a different copy.]

[Up-Date (2021:01/14): I have cloned the video to BitChute, so that Alphabet (Google) cannot use its IFRAME to track my visitors.]

As an economist, I am especially pleased and amused by the expression make oneself scarce.

Although scarce can mean no more than rare, its principal meaning is of being in insufficient quantity to exhaust desirable use, and it is in this sense that economists employ the term. Actually, something can be quite rare without our having any use for it, and something can be fairly abundant and yet be less than we could use.

A rational decision maker values a potential increase or decrease in the supply of something in terms of what use would be gained or lost. If a resource is not scarce, then it has no further use, and an increase would be valueless. And any decrease that didn't result in scarcity would also be valueless.

Thus, when someone is told Make yourself scarce!, the implication is that, at present levels, there is no further use for him or her; indeed, the suggestion is that there's just too much of him or her as it is. He or she is being told to reduce his or her presence until it has some g_dd_mn'd value.

It used to be fashionable in some quarters to claim that scarcity as economists understood it were a myth and that we lived in a post-scarcity economy. The essential claim there would be that we couldn't use any more of anything were it to become available. I regard that claim as offensively stupid. Not quite as dreadful were claims that we could soon have a post-scarcity economy. But the implication there would be that humans would be insufficiently clever to think of a further use for anything.

The people who made such assertions should have made themselves scarce.