Boys vs. Girls on the 2010 SAT Test

If you haven't already seen it, here's another look at my December 2010 animation "Boys vs. Girls on the 2010 SAT Test," where I have a little fun trying to debunk "The Janet Hyde" at the University of Wisconsin, who claims there "There just aren't gender differences anymore in math performance. So parents and teachers need to revise their thoughts about this."  See some related CD posts here, here and here. And here are the results for the 2011 Math SAT Test - the mean score for high school boys was 531 compared to...

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Markets in Everything: ND Oil Patch Tours for $325

Grand Forks Herald -- "For people who drive through North Dakota’s oil country and wonder what the heck they’re looking at, a new tour will erase some of the mystery. The Bakken Field Tours, which launch in July, will give people a chance to take an 11-hour bus tour through the Oil Patch that features an explanation of oil and gas development. The night prior to the tour, participants will get a three-hour educational workshop that lays the groundwork for what they’ll see on the tour. The tours will cost $325, not including the price of a...

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U.S. Restaurants Show Expansion Again in May

The National Restaurant Association reported yesterday that:"The outlook for the restaurant industry remained positive for the months ahead, as the Restaurant Performance Index (RPI) remained above 100 in May. The RPI – a monthly composite index that tracks the health of and outlook for the U.S. restaurant industry – stood at 101.4 in May, down 0.2 percent from April’s level of 101.6 (red line in chart). Despite the decline, May represented the...

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The NBA and WNBA Get an A+ for "Racial Hiring Practices" Despite Significant Racial Disparities?

 The University of Central Florida praises the NBA for its "commitment to racial equality," despite this significant evidence of racial inequality: table.tableizer-table {border: 1px solid #CCC; font-family: Times New Roman, Times, serif; font-size: 16px;} .tableizer-table td {padding: 4px; margin: 3px; border: 1px solid #ccc;}.tableizer-table th {background-color: #104E8B; color: #FFF; font-weight: bold;} Share of U.S. Population, 2011Share...

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With Our Abundance of Natural Gas, Let's Export

The EIA reported today that U.S. natural gas production set new monthly record highs in April for gross withdrawals and marketed production, on a 12-month moving average basis (to smooth out monthly variations), see chart above. Thanks to fracking technology and the shale revolution, America now has such an abundance of natural gas, that it makes economic sense for producers to export gas overseas to Europe and Japan, where prices are typically...

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Where's the Outrage for Evil Ticketmaster?

"Ticket scalpers" have a tough time.  Everybody seems to despise them: musicians, music and sports fans, promoters, sports teams, and concert venues.  "Scalpers" are accused of "cheating" people (see sign above), and musicians like LCD Soundsytem call them really, really bad names like "pieces of f***ing shit," "scalping scumf***s and "shitbags."  Wow!  You would think they were talking about Osama bin Laden, Hitler, or Jerry...

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Walmart's Everyday Low Prices to Go Even Lower in Canada on 10K Items, Saving Shoppers Millions

Bloomberg News -- "Target hasn't opened a single store in Canada, and already Wal-Mart wants Canadians to know it's the price leader north of the border. Wal-Mart Canada will lower prices on 10,000 products in July. The company called the sale, which it says will save customers $50 million next month, the biggest in Wal-Mart's 18-year history in Canada.While Target's Canada debut is at least six months away, part of Wal-Mart's strategy is to...

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Cartoon of the Day

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More Signs of a Real Estate Recovery

More reports below on strong double-digit gains in home sales for May as high as 32% for Maine, and some increases in median home prices, including a 22% gain in Miami condo prices in May compared to last year.   1. Utah: May sales up 11.8% from May 2011; 12th month in a row that home sales have grown year-over-year. Realtors also say this is the strongest January-to-May sales period since 2007.2. Maine:  May sales up 32% from May 2011;...

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Foreign Workers Help Fill Jobs in ND Oil Patch

WILLISTON, N.D.--"With the nearby oil boom draining this city of many of its service workers, businesses here are relying on a cultural-exchange program for foreign college students to keep the local economy humming. More than 500 foreign students—from Thailand, Jamaica and about a dozen other countries—are staffing nearly every hotel, car wash and fast-food place in town, tending to the troops of roughnecks from the oilfields. "Without them, I don't know what we'd do," said Ward Koeser, mayor of this city of 16,000, citing long lines,...

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Energy Milestone: Natural Gas and Coal Had the Same Share of Electricity Generation in April

The Energy Information Administration reported this week that for the first time since it began keeping monthly records, "natural gas and coal had the same share of total net generation of electricity at 32% during April 2012 (see chart above)."This is one more reason that America's natural gas windfall represents "one of the most important developments for the economy in the last 60 years," as I reported earlier today.   In the process of creating...

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U.S. Housing Market: The Evidence Continues to Mount That We're Past the Bottom

The Economist -- "In unsurprising but good news, Case-Shiller reported new home price data this week that showed a definitive upward move in markets across the country. From March to April, Case-Shiller's 10- and 20-city indexes rose 0.7%, seasonally adjusted. All but three of the tracked markets saw month-on-month increases. Half of tracked cities notched year-on-year price increases in April.Price rises have looked imminent for some time. Sales...

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Natural Gas Windfall is One of The Most Important Economic Developments in the Last 60 Years

On an energy-equivalent basis, natural gas remains 87% cheaper than oil, equivalent to a price of $14 per barrel. Martin Neil Baily, senior fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution, and Philip Verleger, president of PKVerleger and visiting fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, emphasize in their recent CNN article that America "hit the energy jackpot" with oil and shale gas, making it "one of the most important...

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Venture Capitalists: Doing More with Less

The destruction of farm jobs, and doing "more with less," since the 1700s has brought about economic prosperity. In the Freeman, economist Steve Horwitz responds to the Doonesbury cartoon below and comes to the defense of maligned venture capitalists like Bain, who generate huge benefits for society by "doing more with less":   "Innovation enabled us to create more food with less work (see chart above), freeing humans to create other valued...

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$29,409 Per Student Cost of D.C. Public Schools Puts Them In Elite Group, But Without the Results

Judging by the expenditures per student of almost $30,000 (Andrew Coulson at Cato crunches the numbers), the "pricy" District of Columbia public schools are among the most elite of all of the D.C.-area schools, see the chart above.  The $29,409 per-student educational price tag for D.C. schools is just slightly below two of the area's most prestigious private schools - Georgetown Prep ($29,625), founded in 1789 as the nation's oldest Jesuit...

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Cartoon of the Day

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Real Estate Recovery Watch

1. "Pending home sales bounced back in May, matching the highest level in the past two years, and are well above year-ago levels, according to the National Association of Realtors.  Both monthly and annual gains were seen in every region.The Pending Home Sales Index, a forward-looking indicator based on contract signings, rose 5.9 percent to 101.1 in May from 95.5 in April and is 13.3 percent above May 2011 when it was 89.2.  The data reflect contracts but not closings. The index also reached 101.1 in March, which is the highest...

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Markets In Everything: Bone Marrow, Finally

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economyMSNBC -- "Certain bone marrow donors could soon be compensated for their life-saving stem cells after federal officials declined to take the matter to the U.S. Supreme Court, allowing a lower court order to become law. At least one agency, MoreMarrowDonors.org, hopes to begin a pilot program offering up to $3,000 in scholarships, housing vouchers or charity donations -- but not cash -- in exchange for matching donations of marrow cells derived from blood. “This...

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N. Dakota Leads the Country in Q1 Income Growth

From the BEA today: "State personal income growth accelerated to 0.8% in the first quarter of 2012, from 0.4% percent in the fourth quarter of 2011. Personal income rose in 47 of the 50 states, fell in Kansas and Mississippi, and was unchanged in Oklahoma. The percent change across states ranged from 2.3% in North Dakota to -0.3% in Mississippi."MP: Once again, the energy-rich, economic miracle state of North Dakota led the country on a key economic measure, this time with the highest personal income growth in the January to March period...

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Markets in Everything: Digital Hitchhiking App

There's an interesting new ridesharing app available through Apple called SideCar, which connects drivers and passengers, kind of like a modern form of hitchhiking in the digital age:"SideCar is a community-based, real-time ridesharing marketplace. Our proprietary technology, deployed via a user-friendly mobile app, instantly connects people with extra space in their cars to those who need to get from one place to another. Spontaneous carpools. SideCar is an easy, safe, reliable, and completely donation-based way to get from here to there....

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Tuesday Night Links

1. Mobile phones are changing the world of retail – at a remarkable speed.  Mobile commerce represents a fundamental shift in consumer behavior and retailers must move quickly to exploit it. 2. Top 25 Biggest Product Flops of All Time (you can probably guess #1). 3. Oil companies are giving millions of dollars in charitable contributions to local communities in North Dakota.4. Tech Title IX?  Twitter, General Electric, Google, and eBay announce "Girls Who Code" initiative to address the gender imbalance in the IT industry. 5. North...

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No Peak Oil in Sight: We've Got an Unprecedented Upsurge in Global Oil Production Underway

The global oil boom underway represents the most significant increase in any decade since the 1980s. In the tradition of resource economist Julian Simon, here are some of the conclusions and predictions from new research just published by Harvard Research Fellow Leonardo Maugeri, titled "Oil: The Next Revolution; The Unprecedented Upsurge of Oil Production Capacity""1. Contrary to what most people believe, oil is not in short supply and oil supply...

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Markets in Everything: Solar Coke Bottle Lights

Used plastic Coke bottles are now transforming the rural neighborhoods of Manila, Philippines. Homes there are often built so close to each other that they have no windows or natural light, but now affordable "solar Coke bottle lights" are being installed in roofs to provide an overhead "solar light bulb" inside the home. With electricity unaffordable or unavailable for many Philippine families, they used to have to work, do chores, and eat in near darkness.  Now there is light, thanks to human ingenuity and the recycling of used plastic...

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Some Positive Signs in Today's New Home Sales Report for a Significantly Improving Housing Market

One interesting data point from today's Census report on new home sales is the very low inventory level of homes for sale: there is currently only a 4.72 months' supply of new homes for sale at the current sales pace, which is calculated as the ratio of new houses for sale at the end of the month (145,000) to the number of homes sold in May (30,750 at a seasonally adjusted rate).  The inventory of new homes relative to demand hasn't been that...

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The Arithmetic of Shale Gas: Consumer Surplus from Technology of Shale Gas Exceed $100 Billion

It's been well-documented now that falling prices for natural gas (see chart above) and the resulting drop in utility rates have saved consumers billions of dollars (see CD posts here and here). A new study by researchers at Yale University, "The Arithmetic of Shale Gas," provides some additional evidence of the consumer benefits of shale gas using a cost-benefit approach (where consumers include residential, industrial, commercial and utilities)...

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Law Grads Face Brutal Job Market

From Monday's WSJ:"Members of the law-school class of 2011 had little better than a 50-50 shot of landing a job as a lawyer within nine months of receiving a degree, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of new data that provides the most detailed picture yet of the grim market for law jobs.Under pressure from disillusioned graduates and some professors, the American Bar Association for the first time released a tally of the previous year's...

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J2LYK There's a Texting/SMS Language Revolution

Back in 2009, a CD post featured Charles Platt, former senior writer for Wired Magazine, who got hired at an Arizona Wal-Mart and then blogged and wrote about his experience.  Today he sends along this provocative guest post for CD: Phone messaging and Facebook are being blamed for degrading the English language, but in reality, language evolves to satisfy the needs of people who employ it, and the result is enrichment with new terms that serve a useful purpose. After online media encouraged acronyms as substitutes for frequently used phrases...

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Amazing Illusions: Two of the Best Ever

It's been awhile since I've featured an illusion, the last one was the peacock illusion above, which I thought was one of the best ever.  Both birds are exactly the same color, but you'll never convince your mind of that, see it here without the background.   Here's a new one that might be even better, courtesy of Alex Tabbarok, where again you can't convince your mind that the two boxes are the same color. ...

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The Bad Grammar Epidemic

From the Wednesday WSJ: "Managers are fighting an epidemic of grammar gaffes in the workplace. Many of them attribute slipping skills to the informality of email, texting and Twitter where slang and shortcuts are common. Such looseness with language can create bad impressions with clients, ruin marketing materials and cause communications errors, many managers say.There's no easy fix. Some bosses and co-workers step in to correct mistakes, while others consult business-grammar guides for help. In a survey conducted earlier this year, about...

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Where Krugman Went Right: On Housing Policy

Since 1999, when economist Paul Krugman started writing for The New York Times, he has been drawing the criticism of free market-oriented economists (and recently the president of Estonia) for glaring deficiencies in economic analysis and for writing what amounts to “fiction” (economist and Estonian expert Steve Hanke’s word to describe Krugman’s trashing of Estonia’s recent robust economic growth and counter Keynesian fiscal reforms). The Krugman-Estonia...

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Larry Sabato Speaks Out on UVa Controversy

  "This has given us our worst two weeks of publicity since I've been associated with UVa and that was 42 years ago. So it's been a disaster, it's been a national public relations disaster."   ...

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The Coming Revolution in Information Technology

From my article in the Detroit News this week: We are on the cusp of a revolution in information technology that will be even larger than the one that's taken place over the past 40 years. Evidence of this transformation is emerging in what's known as direct-digital manufacturing, an innovation that could lead to the "desktop" printing of entire products from automobiles to washing machines.Some products developed from three-dimensional computerized manufacturing — such as patient-specific implants for hip joints or teeth, and lighter and...

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