Pirate economics?

Normally, I can’t be motivated to read economics—no offense, economists, but I think the economics part of my brain got left behind on one of my many moves around the country, and it was locked in to one particular latitude and longitude anyway—but maybe adding a little swashbuckling and really bad puns in the title would help. Hilzoy has found some interesting examples, anyway. Here’s the abstract to one:

This paper investigates the internal governance institutions of violent criminal enterprise by examining the law, economics, and organization of pirates. To effectively
organize their banditry, pirates required mechanisms to prevent internal predation,
minimize crew conflict, and maximize piratical profit. I argue that pirates devised two
institutions for this purpose. First, I analyze the system of piratical checks and balances that crews used to constrain captain predation. Second, I examine how pirates
used democratic constitutions to minimize conflict and create piratical law and order.
Remarkably, pirates adopted both of these institutions before the United States or
England. Pirate governance created sufficient order and cooperation to make pirates
one of the most sophisticated and successful criminal organizations in history.

Maybe I should read that more carefully. If a group as anarchic as pirates could find a way to stably organize, maybe there are some hints for us atheists.

No, gang, boarding churches and looting them of their wealth probably isn’t a viable strategy to give us a unifying profit motive. We’re going to have to think about something more abstract. Although I do confess that a viking lifestyle does have some appeal…

In which I reflect upon my current environment

Chuck Colson has a list of the three greatest enemies of Christianity right now. They are:

  • Islam. It’s “evil incarnate.”

  • Atheism. It’s “virulent.”

  • Christian coffee shops??!?

OK, that last one is a little strange, but I had an epiphany. I’m sitting in a Christian-run coffee shop right now. It’s great for fairly good inexpensive coffee, it’s got an open wireless net, and some of the conversations around me are inspiring—I write some of my anti-religion screeds while the Bible Study Group meets at a table in front of me.

Gosh. Chuck Colson is right.

Father’s Day suggestions

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Yuck, I’m reminded that Father’s Day is coming up soon, and you are all obligated to find something cheesy to give to Dad (except me, I don’t have one anymore, so I’m exempt). Here’s a collection of manly suggestions, most of which don’t appeal at all to me, but hey, maybe your dad is different. Anyway, the only one that was mildly cool was the squidbrain tie (you can order here), which has a mere two flaws. 1) I don’t wear ties, and 2) why a vertebrate brain? What would be really nifty is a tie with a chain of ganglia down its length (it would even be in the right location, along the ventral body wall!) with the sub- and supra-esophageal ganglia at the knot and around the band, just like the real thing.

In other words, that tie is insufficiently nerdy for me.

I have standards.

Actually, if my kids are wondering what to get me, I’m settling for nothing less than The Chair.

My next office chair

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Now this is the pinnacle of office domination furnishings. Imagine, a student comes in to complain about his grade, and I push a button: my chair rises up to tower above the trembling supplicant, and stalks across the room bearing the professor, who in a booming voice declares, “You dare? You dare to question my decisions?“

It’s much more intimidating than the trap door to the spiky room in the basement or the discreet ceiling-mounted lasers I’m using now. We tyrant kings all know that spectacle is an important component of effective oppression.

Marketing genius?

Do you really have to be a marketing genius to sell sex? This crazy Scot in Australia has hit on a scheme to combine aphrodisiacs: he feeds oysters Viagra. It sounds silly—if you want an erection, take the Viagra directly, without the additional step of having it diluted, filtered, and processed by a mollusc—but he claims his business is booming.

Now I just have to convince investors that my plan to breed rhinoceroses raised on a diet of Viagra-fed oysters is the Next Big Thing…hey, getting them to breed won’t be any problem at all, will it?

(via Hillary Rettig)

What fresh horror is this?

Literacity has the beginnings of a discussion of the horror genre, one of my favorite subjects (although I’m a bit picky—I’m a classic horror fan, and consider most of the recent offerings, both on screen and on the page, to be atrocity exhibitions rather than true horror), and one thing mentioned there is a taxonomy of horror stories. He argues that all are rooted in the idea of loss of control, and subdivides that into loss of control of self, the environment, and place in society…which was actually rather handy, because of the next item I discovered.

Gothic Lolitas. That’s right, twee and scary. This is one fashion movement that hasn’t hit Morris, fortunately, but then, I think Morris is still trying to lumber out of the 1970s.

Anyway, naming the horror is the first step to facing it, and thanks to my earlier discovery I was quickly able to categorize it as clearly an example of “loss of control of place in society”, subcategory “visions that no one will believe”.