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Published on Leave a comment on In Praise of Stan Collender

I learned today that my friend and former co-blogger Stan Collender passed away on Friday. James Hagerty has a thoughtful obituary in The Wall Street Journal today.

It was very early on in my blogging that I discovered Stan's writing on the budget. There are many writers who are deficit hawks at heart and know about the budget in fairly general terms. Some of us can even write coherently for an audience on budget matters. Stan was a fellow traveler, but he brought so much more to the discussion -- an impressive command of the details, a keen sense of the political strategy underlying "Budget Battles," and a wit as sharp and quick as any you will find. He will be missed.

Published on Leave a comment on There and Back Again

Happy New Year!  After nearly four very interesting years group-blogging at Capital Gains and Games, I am back to the solo gig.  My archives from CGG and VoxBaby are linked above and are searchable along with this blog's archives on the sidebar.  So grab the feed and a cold drink -- at some point this year, somebody might make policy in Washington that merits our attention.

Published on Leave a comment on Moving to Capital Gains and Games

After several years of blogging on my own at Vox Baby, I am joining Stan Collender and Pete Davis over at the newly redesigned Capital Gains and Games blog. Stan and Pete are two of the sharpest people writing about fiscal policy and financial matters, and so you should expect triple the fun at half the price.

The new feed is http://www.capitalgainsandgames.com/rss.xml, so set your bookmarks and feed readers accordingly.

Vox Baby will remain intact, so there's no need to change any links.

See you over at Capital Gains and Games.

Published on Leave a comment on Let Me Not Rephrase That

From the preface to the second (1996) edition of The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins, with my highlighting:

Authors naturally hope that their books will have lasting rather than ephemeral impact. But any advocate, in addition to putting the timeless part of his case, must also respond to contemporary advocates of opposing, or apparently opposing, points of view. There is a risk that some of these arguments, however hotly they may rage today, will seem terribly dated in decades to come. The paradox has often been noted that the first edition of The Origin of Species makes a better case than the sixth. This is because Darwin felt obliged, in his later editions, to respond to contemporary criticisms of his first edition, criticisms which now seem so dated that the replies to them merely get in the way, and in places even mislead. Nevertheless, the temptation to ignore fashionable contemporary criticisms that one suspects of being nine days' wonders is a temptation that should not be indulged, for reasons of courtesy not just to the critics but to their otherwise confused readers. Though I have my own private ideas on which chapters of my book will eventually prove ephemeral for this reason, the reader--and time--must judge.

Sometimes, your first argument is your best argument, and rephrasing it in response to a confused question, comment, or critique only weakens it.

Published on Leave a comment on CBO Joins the Blogosphere

As if being a CBO Director weren't time consuming enough, Peter Orszag has joined the blogosphere:

What are you likely to read on this blog? First, you will learn more about CBO — the types of work we do, how we do it, and more about the outstanding analysts we have. For example, when we come out with a new report or important cost estimate, I may write a bit about the analytical substance and also introduce you to the key staff who took the lead in the analysis. Second, CBO’s research and cost estimates are often discussed extensively in the media and elsewhere — and not surprisingly, from time to time misunderstandings or misinterpretations arise about some analysis we have done. In those kinds of situations, I will use the blog to further explain our work and address possible or potential misunderstanding. Finally, when it seems appropriate, I will use the blog to link our work to relevant outside research from academic or other institutions that may shed additional light on the challenging issues the Congress is working to address.

CBO's website was already very helpful. This makes it even better. Bookmark it today.

Published on Leave a comment on TimesSelect, We Hardly Knew You

I remember the day I subscribed to TimesSelect. I couldn't critique the opinions I wanted to without forking over the money. And it was also my prophecy this spring that, "Eventually, we all blog for Google." The two have collided, and the former has died. Felix Salmon lays out the details.

I thought TimesSelect was a wonderful thing. It imposed a $50 per year tax on a readership whose opinions were almost certain to be opposite of mine. I'm going to miss it.

Published on Leave a comment on Retroblogging Hawaii

The Voxfamily just returned from a week in Hawaii. I leave the blogging at home on family vacations, so I'll share some of the experience this week.

We spent the whole week on Oahu, which contains about 80 percent of the state's population. We stayed at the biggest resort in Waikiki, which was a wonderful place. Since we live in Hanover, we have no need to "get away from it all" on vacation. We actually like to be among people and on this trip deliberately tried to avoid an isolated feeling. Even so, I found each place we visited to be not quite unspoiled, but far less crowded than I expected for the first week of summer.

It seems like I am not alone in my assessment. This story from last week's USA Today reports that convention bookings at the new Hawaii Convention Center (shown below) are down.

According to the story:

Even paradise, it seems, can have a down year.

Only 16 out-of-state conventions are booked in 2008 for the $350 million Hawaii Convention Center, which was built by the state on the edge of Waikiki nine years ago to attract more business conferences.

The number is less than half the 35 conventions that are booked for 2007. In 2006, there were 37.

The culprits? The story continues:

Waikiki's hotel prices, second in the country only to New York City's, are a contributing factor, says Paul Brewbaker, Bank of Hawaii's chief economist.

Through May, the average room rate in Hawaii was more than $198 a night, according to consultants Hospitality Advisors, based in Hawaii.

The high prices seem to be having an impact on quantity:

Hawaiian tourism has been virtually flat the past several years. The state welcomed about 7.5 million visitors in both 2005 and 2006, according to the state Department of Business Economic Development & Tourism. This year, it forecasts 7.6 million visitors.

However, the University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization predicts that overall tourism numbers will actually drop by 0.2% this year.

Meanwhile, overall tourism to the United States has steadily grown since 2003. Last year, the USA received 51.1 million tourists, and officials expect a 3% increase this year. Kathryn Goldstein, spokeswoman for Meeting Professionals International, a Dallas-based trade group, said concerns over Hawaii as a convention location might depend on the issues facing a specific group.

So look for prices of trips to the Aloha State to fall over time.

Published on Leave a comment on Eventually, We All Blog for Google

Yesterday, the Rockefeller Center hosted a blogging panel, moderated by John Hinderaker of Powerline and comprised of Ann Althouse, Brendan Nyhan, Laura Clawson, Roger Simon, Joe Malchow, and Andrew Seal. It was a very productive discussion.

I came away with two main points. First, as noted particularly by Nyhan, Clawson, and Seal, there is very little that is inherent in blogging that makes it a superior form of commentary to traditional forms. We should think of them as complementary, and, as some of the other panelists pointed out, incremental to traditional media. The lower cost of blogging as compared to other media outlets means that the set of people who can contribute is much wider. There have been episodes where it has been a blogger, possibly in conjunction with blog readers, who has brought to light new information that would have otherwise been missed. Most of the time, this is not happening, and there is very little that is new in blogs. Good writers get bigger audiences, just like any other form of writing. But it is nice to have another mechanism that can occasionally make a critical difference.

Second, I began to think about what happens to blogs after the current events fade in importance. Well, then each post is just a webpage, and to a reasonable approximation, all webpages are eventually relevant only insofar as they attract the attention of search engines. I noted in one of my very first posts that I found Powerline about four years ago because I was searching for an explanation of a news story. In other words, I found them through Google. At some point, Google organizes everything in the blogosphere around what people years from now will find interesting and worth searching.

UPDATE: The D has a nice writeup of the event here.

Published on Leave a comment on Speaking of Google Searches (and Lack of Seriousness)

This post of mine is the first one listed, out of tens of million results, for

show me how to make a baby

Although I do think the VoxSon and VoxDaughter are exemplary, I wasn't aware that this was evident from my blogging. Nor was I previously aware of such a link between income inequality and fertility.

Published on Leave a comment on You Have a Face for Blogging

This is my new favorite blogging site: http://bloggingheads.tv. Take some of your favorite bloggers, remove their ability to edit their posts to make them sensible, and put them on a split screen in pairs. It's better than most cable news programs, but that's not saying much ...

Enjoy!