jwbblog: We want a shrubbery!

Monday, November 12, 2007

We want a shrubbery!

We just returned from a very nice weekend in Maryland. We spent some QT with my parental units and also headed out to Glenwood for a few hours with the Della Rattas. A nice time was, I think, had by all. (See the photo of Raphy, on the left, and some old guy.)

Thomas Wolfe said that you can't go home again, which is, of course, complete B.S. One thing I've noticed, on going home again, is that everything is smaller, except for the shrubbery. Think about it.

One of the eternal questions one encounters this time of year is whether to get a flu shot or not. (I typically get one if I can do so without much inconvenience.) Most of us, I would guess, would think of getting a flu shot in selfish terms (i.e., I'll get a flu shot to keep me from getting the flu), but Tyler Cowen suggests that it is actually an act of altruism:

I just had my flu shot. Please send your checks to my George Mason address. People who have the flu spread the virus so getting a flu shot not only reduces the probability that I will get the flu it reduces the probability that you will get the flu. In the language of economics the flu shot creates an external benefit, a benefit to other people not captured by the person who paid the costs of getting the shot. The external benefits of a flu shot can be quite large. Under some conditions each person who is vaccinated reduces the expected number of other people who get the flu by 1.5.

Norman Mailer, RIP. I've been thinking recently, given our obsession here will all things espionage, that I ought to re-read "Harlot's Ghost". (I say "re-read" because I read it shortly after it came out, but do not remember a thing about it.)