BlogSat

This is a really interesting talk from Johanna Blakely, on how the lack of copyrights in fashion has helped the industry prosper. She does a great job comparing the dynamics of copyrights to those in other industries.

I was never confident enough to take one of Cochrane 's classes in business school, but I really enjoyed this rebuttal of Paul Krugman 's article Krugman's article Cochrane's rebuttal Perhaps its because I've been indoctrinated at Chicago and can't be saved, but I'm amazed at the fuzziness of Krugman's article, and the tone is disappointing as well. Other stuff around this topic: This Economist debate In less serious personal news, I'm now fighting addictions to these three casual games: Mafia Wars Feeding Frenzy and of course, Zuma

Greenspan on the Daily Show: the portion on monetary policy (in the beginning) was like a flashback to Macro .Loved it! I really like Jon Stewart and his detached, look-I'm-poking-fun-at-authority-because-I'm-kinda-smart-and-curious brand of humor. But he seemed to doubt the free market there for a little bit...tsk, tsk. :) Ooo..favorite Stewart/Carell/Colbert moment from the last Emmys (enjoy it while it lasts on YouTube): While I'm embedding videos anyway, here are two more; new Pepsi commercials in India. I love it when movie stars are willing to acknowledge they're old. Also, at this point I'm comfortable saying with some confidence that the average Indian TV advertisement is better than the average US TV advert....if you get em.:) Hmm...someone seems to be taking down advertisements from Youtube too. Seriously, who wouldn't want their ads to be distributed more?

I learnt something cool about the way the economics of Internet Radio work today. Too bad the entire industry had to get into danger ( BusinessWeek link) for me to get a chance to read about it. I picked it up at GigaOM , and then BlogMaverick (the one remaining concern I have about the Dallas Mavericks :)). So here's the super-distilled version without the actual numbers: The entity that sets the royalty rates for streaming songs is the Copyright Royalty Board (which represents those much loved people: the RIAA ). It upped the royalty rate from $0.0008 per performance to $0.0011 per performance this year, rising all the way to $0.0019 in 2010. The upshot is, given listening patterns and current subscription rates, (or rates available for ads served) there is just no way most streaming Internet radio sites are going to be able to stay in business. This obviously hurts the smaller stations the most, especially since they lost the option of paying as a percentage of revenue (and ...

I don't do very well with posting comments to blog posts. My tendency tends to be to take time and passively process what I've read. I also feel like any argument that I'd need to make on a blog would need me to sit back and think for a while to check if there are any loopholes in my logic. Sitting back and thinking (with occasional bouts of day-dreaming), and the immediate, quick responses needed to write a reasonable comment don't really go together, so I surprised myself by actually writing in the comments section on Prof. Levitt's post on tenure . He proposes doing away with the practice, and I think that goes too far. Here's my principle arguments against it .

I loved this post on salary discussions over at FreeExchage (and yes I agree with my Macro Professor, the Economist is the best business/econ magazine that there is). The dynamic once you're in school changes a little bit: at least for me. I'm kinda touchy talking about money, not because I care, but because I think most others do. So basically, if you ask me how much I make, and I know you reasonably well, I'll tell you. However, unless I had a good reason to, I'd never ask you....it'd feel weird. Yeah, I know I have issues. Kinda touched on that money part in this chibus article .