I stood up Ira Glass because I am jealous of how big his frames are

4/23/09: Not being able to sleep is when I come up with my best ideas. Here are two from last night:
1. A Risk Calculator Ap for an iPhone. I have wanted to make an actual unit to be sold as a supplement to a risk game that simulates a dice rolling randomization for a risk scenario because that's the most annoying part of the game. So instead of rolling dice all night you just type in 15 armies vs. 18 armies on defense and it tells you the outcome. But there is no reason to have to make a physical unit if I can just learn how to make and iPhone app for it. I don't need to own an iPhone to want to do this, right? [Also, I think its funny that I actually do the lower case i and capital P thing. Its very not me to buy in to such marketing silliness, especially when I don't have any affiliation with the product. Good job Apple, you win.]

2. Non-economists might not like this one, but its actually pretty brilliant. People should have been able to predict the housing bubble using rental markets. Imagine a smart person trying to find a place to live in an inflated housing market. She doesn't want to buy a house because the easing of credit restrictions has led to artificially high prices [its like moving along a demand curve by adding lots of extra buyers, people that normally couldn't compete for such and such house] so her other option is renting. But rental prices are related to the value of the home, or more directly, what the market can bear. And in this environment, lots of renters waiting out the silly prices will drive even the rental market up. So she has to live in less house then she would normally. This is why people always complain about a lack of low-income housing during a housing boom. Because smart consumers are forced into living in houses that are actually too small for them. If the growth in housing was real growth in people's ability to pay for housing, then you wouldn't see this competition for rents at the bottom, there would be an even distribution of increase in housing price. Lots of growth at the bottom of the market is the best predictor of a bubble. This also applies to other industries. The years when Tiffany's starting selling down-scale items, it was also a predictor of a coming doom for diamond prices, and jewelry sales in general. Cars is another good example. When People are buying hybrids, and economy cars the car companies should scale down their operations for the next year because its a sign that sales aren't going to be good next year for all cars, not just big ones. Its really a shame that no one is making any money of all these brilliant ideas of mine.

More trader joe's today, and I felt really rad because the wind was blowing really really hard and I'm getting fast again but then I got there and there was a million middle aged NoLibs people there with bike helmets and I just felt very white. My new strategy is to buy food that is too "weird" for my brother to eat. You know, things like hummus, soy milk, oysters, sweet potatoes, any kind of grain that requires boiling water to eat, white asparagus, etc , etc. Hey, if it forces me to eat better, its not so bad.