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Monday, April 18, 2005
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YET ANOTHER UD SATIRE COMES BACK TO BITE HER IN THE ARSE This is getting scary. Here's the beginning of an opinion piece that just came out in the Times Online. Note italics: THE PLIGHT of Professor Martin Weitzman is an appropriate analogy for the general election. This academic holds the distinguished Ernest F. Monrad Chair in Economics at Harvard University. He is the author of such classic papers as A Unified Bayesian Theory of Equity Puzzles (and thank the Almighty for him, to think that Bayesian theory had been divided for years). He is also, nonetheless, in some trouble. This month, he was apparently caught in the act of appropriating, illegally, a truckload of horse manure which properly belonged to a local farmer. The owner concerned has insisted on pressing charges because, he says, the professor has been pilfering his property “for years”. The trial begins shortly. This has been the subject of considerable controversy in Massachusetts. Some students have demonstrated against Professor Weitzman, insisting that he publicly apologise for his supposed behaviour. They have been supported by an organisation called Manure Movers of America (I kid you not). The most mysterious element in this strange tale, however, is why the professor might have wanted a vast amount of fertiliser in the first place. Personally, I have long had my suspicions about where economists acquire the basic material for their arguments. UD supposes she should be flattered that Tim Hames thought she meant it when she talked about the Manure Movers of America and the outraged Harvard students. But at this point, given the increasing tendency of UD's readers here and abroad to misread her grossly obvious satires as God's truth, she's just spooked... Meanwhile - Tim, Tim, Tim. If you are reading this, I WAS KIDDING. |