Jim DeChamp

Here's what the LATimes reported about Jim DeChamp's forward flip attempt at the X Games:

DeChamp suffered a fractured vertebra when he bailed out in mid-flight and landed flat on his back at the bottom of the landing ramp, [Travis] Pastrana said. DeChamp lay still for a few minutes before walking off under his own power. What television viewers and those in attendance didn't see was DeChamp collapsing afterward in the athlete area.

"He said, 'Look, I've got to get up, I'm going to walk out of here,' " said Pastrana, who was by his side. "Then, he's like, 'cameras off?' I said, 'Yep,' and he just fell down and said, 'Take me to the hospital.' "

DeChamp would have completed the maneuver if he had stayed with the motorcycle, Pastrana said. However, DeChamp's inexperience at the X Games may have played a part in his indecisiveness.

"He just said it felt like everything was in slow motion, and it felt like he was in the air for eight seconds," Pastrana said. That made DeChamp feel like he was closer to the ground than he actually was, Pastrana said, and DeChamp was fearful of being crushed under the weight of his motorcycle.

"It's amazing, adrenaline slows everything down," Pastrana said.

Some thought DeChamp bailed out because he appeared to have overshot the landing ramp. In actuality, that was part of the plan, Pastrana said.

"If he landed at the bottom, he had a better chance of getting the rotation. He was perfect, but he thought he wasn't," Pastrana said.

Pastrana had the same sensation during his double back flip, only he had time between rotations to spot his landing. The front flip doesn't offer riders a sneak peak. "That second rotation was the longest second of my entire life," Pastrana said. "I can remember the crowd, I can remember everything."

Moto X Best Trick 2008: Video of medal winners

The gold medalist doesn't do a backflip, but takes his own body through a simultaneous barrel roll and backflip. I'm more enthused about the silver and bronze medal tricks. Unfortunately, the clip doesn't show these in slow mo which is necessary to get the full effect.

ESPN makes this video available for embed, but didn't make available the video of the failed front flip by Jim DeChamp. I found it on YouTube, though. This video is shot by someone who was at the event:
.

[Update: Initial reports last night were that DeChamp suffered compression fractures in a few vertebrae. He did walk away.]

The wacky world of economics

Just another example that proves my theory that any so-called "expert economist" one sees on tv or sees quoted in print is just spewing theories that have NOTHING to do with the reality of the American model. And the American model is that the stock market controls everything, while it should control nothing.

On the front page of the DMN news today is the following headline...

"Exxon sets record but sees stock fall"

So EM once again announces a record profit, earning $11.68 billion in the 2Q. However, EM's stock dropped 5% yesterday. Now what sense does that make? What "economic theory" does this fall into? And the reason the stock fell - because EM didn't earn what market analysts estimated. So the value of EM stock fell not because of what the company DID (break an earnings record), but because it didn't do (break the earnings record by more $$) what some analysts THOUGHT it should do. This makes no sense to me at all. The value of stock, or a company, should be based on how well do they do what they do, do they make smart business decisions, do they make money, etc. Not do they meet some forecast or ideal of analysts. The message here, in simplistic terms, is that it's not good enough to make more profit in a quarter than any company has ever made. So who or what is controlling the stock market - companies or analysts? And who should?

Later on in the article, there is another example of the power that the stock market has, which in my opinion is too much and is based not on reality, but on theories or perceptions or who knows what. Here are the closing 2 paragraphs of the front page article:

"Investors drove UP (emphasis mine) the share price of Houston-based Marathon Oil Corp., a smaller company that also tries to do it all, after it announced that it MIGHT (emphasis mine) split its exploration and production business and its refining and marketing business into two independent companies.

"You're dealing with a company that's much smaller in terms of market cap," said Mr. Harper. "But nonetheless, I think Marathon's SAYING (emphasis mine) the type of things investors want to hear in respect to maximizing shareholder value for the longer term."

So, Marathon's stock goes up based on them saying they might do something, while EM's goes down based upon something they actually did, which is make record profits. Guess if EM wants their stock price to go up, and therefore maximize shareholder value, it should just start saying things rather than actually doing something. Yea, that makes lots of sense.

MotoX Best Trick

is part of the X Games. It's on ESPN now. Looking forward to seeing where the riders have taken the sport to this year. Maybe a forward flip!

[Update: Make that "attempted" forward flip.]

[Update II: does it count if the bike lands upright on its wheels, though the rider landed a tad earlier in the dirt?]

Obama as Con Law Prof

In researching Obama's time as a constitutional law professor at the University of Chicago, the NYTimes collected some of his teaching materials. Here's his 1996 exam and his answer memo. If you find any errors in his answer memo, I'm sure the NYT reporter would be happy to hear about it.

"It's all downhill from here"

What does the phrase mean? Some folks use it to mean that everything hereafter will be easier, as in the hard part of climbing to the peak is past; now we can coast; everything is now better. Others use it to mean that nothing hereafter will be as great as it was at its peak; now everything will be worse.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bailout

Yep, the free market system at work. I loved the quote I saw on CNN today..."Freddie and Fannie, too key to fail." Why? I thought it was about keeping gov't out of things. Guess not....

So why aren't all the Conservatives screaming out about bailouts, free market system, etc.?
Why isn't Bush going to veto it? Politics. Politics trumps the free market system every time. Politics trumps everything every time.

The Dark Knight

It's a hoot. Ledger has not been oversold; he's amazing.

Re: LJ's Economics

LJ is dead right about the fact that those wages would rise and thus Americans would do those jobs without the wages being driven down by those who will work for less. I don’t feel any dissonance though about wanting to restrict illegal immigration and being a free-marketeer. The free market is also a market that depends on the rule of law. Not related to the economics of the issue but for me the issue is not about numbers but assimilation.

One thing to keep in mind is that those like me are conservatives first and that the Republican Party is just the lesser of two evils when it comes to picking a party. I abhorred the whole Schiavo deal, both the “husband’s” and Republican’s behaviors. Her folks had every right to contest but the congress had no business meddling.

Real conservatives loathe judicial activism no matter the issue. It is the job of the legislature to make laws, not judges appointed for life.

As for company bailouts (and subsidies of any kind), real conservatives loathe those, too.

Mammoth Springs

Elk Dot

My sister coined the term Grizzly Dot for those bears that are so far away they appear nothing more than dots to the naked eye. This is my Elk Dot. If you click on the image you can verify that it actually is an elk.

A Yellowstone Bison

I'm pretty sure the Park Rangers had him tethered so close to the road.

Tetons

Quake Lake

This is Quake Lake, created in 1959 or thereabouts, by an earthquake. In Montana in the SW corner:


On the lake above Quake Lake one finds Scooter's future:

A week in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming

Call me Troutslayer. Ok, maybe I'm just Troutbotherer but my brother and brother-in-law are both slayers.

The view from my bro-in-law's cabin:



Update: I should point out that we were all catch and release.

The Seduction of Water

Yuck. This was a book club pick. It illustrates how hard it must be to write a good novel. Goodman seems to have what you would think you'd need: a cast of characters that aren't 2-dimensional (though maybe not quite 3D), a well-described setting or two, a complicated plot spanning decades, personal/family mystery, geopolitical intrigue and artsy literary technique (using fairy tales as metaphor). She puts a sentence together adequately, though not artfully. And yet it adds up to zilch, blech, ugh.

Happy Birthday

Happy 7th Birthday to B.

Re: LJ's comments on open borders

This is in response to LJ's comment about open borders that I'll quote here because there's so much good stuff in it that it should be a post:

love johnson said...
IMHO, there isn't anything more boring or a total beating than trying to read a book about economics. They are always too complicated and while the theories always sound great, the practical applications never seem to work out.

That being said, please explain how opening the borders would make the labor market operate more "freely"? My understanding is that illegal immigrants drive down wages, so wouldn't MORE cheap labor, whether legal or illegal, drive wages down more? One always hears the arguement that these workers are doing jobs that we Americans won't. I've never agreed with that - it's that Americans won't do them because the pay is too low to sustain an average standard of living that we are accustomed to, not the specific job itself.

What I do find interesting about your question about Republican philosophy and free markets is how fluid their philosophy seems to be. Killing prisoners is fine, abortions are not. Let the free market / capitalism dictate what happens, but if cerain business's or industries fail, then it's OK to bale them out. They hate "judicial activism", but only when the case goes against their beliefs (recall the Schiavo case). They claim they want to keep the government out of our lives ("small government"), but want the government to intrude into the sex lives of Americans, to increase the profile of religion (but only Christianity) in public schools and public buildings.

I realise that I'm WAY in over my head with any economic discusion. That's why I'd rather let someone else read the book and explain it to me! :)

Scooter will correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that government regulation by definition is an unwelcome restraint on the operation of a free market economy. In the case of labor, our immigration policy limits the number of people who can come to the U.S. and work, and therefore it's a constraint on the available supply of labor, and therefore, as LJ says, it keep wages higher than they would otherwise be (and results in a higher cost to manufacture goods). Free marketeers think that's a bad thing, I believe, which is why you'd expect them to object to restrictions on immigration. I believe (without having read the book and relying on what little I gleaned from the Colbert Report interview) that Jason Riley makes the case that if you're all about the free market, then you should also want unrestricted immigration.

Don't you just hate it when your xenophobia cuts into your profits?

Hear, hear, about the schizophrenia in Republican philosophy in recent decades. But, I grant, our side can be inconsistent too as I'm sure Michael or Scooter will point out.

Chaotic worldwide economic conditions

I just had a fascinating conversation with a client who has goods manufactured in China. One of the reasons that goods are manufactured more cheaply in China (and many other countries) is because the government subsidizes production (not merely that labor is cheaper, although I suppose it's all intertwined). Now, with oil prices skyrocketing, the governments can't afford to subsidize industry at the same level, so the cost of manufacturing is skyrocketing. For his products, the price is up 30-40% over the past 6-8 months. (His products are plastic so include oil as a raw material; of course, oil also affects transportation costs of raw materials and finished goods.) He describes that industry in China is unsophisticated about cost accounting and cost control, because it is relatively uninterested in profit and has little ability to control costs due to government's unilateral choices about funding. The management skills that would be required to manage for the rapidly escalating fuel costs just don't exist there, so the Chinese manufacturers can't say what price they'll sell for until about the time they ship, so orders have to be placed without knowing the cost or with little notice. (Manufacturing contracts, where a price is specified for future sales, are essentially unenforceable, so there's no protection against this kind of price fluctuation.) The result for my client is completely unpredictable cost of the goods he sells. The cost increases have been so rapid that he is having a difficult time committing to the price that he will sell at. He has to tell customers that they must place an order for October now, but he won't be able to tell them how much it will cost until September, for example.

Open borders and free markets

On Colbert tonight is Jason L. Riley, member of the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board and a conservative, who has written a book (Let Them In - The Case for Open Borders) on a topic Michael and I have explored. Riley's book argues for opening the borders to immigrants so that the labor market operates more freely. If the Republican Party were really a party that champions free markets, wouldn't their immigration policy be in line with Riley's open-border philosophy? If not, why not?