AFL Power Rankings: Round 12 2014

In a fairly predictable week of football, every team is pretty much rated the same as last week. Oh sure, a few teams switched spots on the rankings tables, but there are no major reassessments of where teams are at to highlight.

Rapid Reaction to the 2014 Annual Wage Review

Well, I picked it (pretty much)! Fair Work Commission has announced that minimum wages will increase by 3 per cent in July. (The announcement was made on Wednesday, meaning the ‘Rapid Reaction’ part of this post refers to the speed with which I am typing down my thoughts rather than the speed at which I have reacted to the decision – frankly, I only found out that the decision had been made because a friend told me at the bar last night.)

But the important thing is not whether I got the decision right – it is whether it is the ‘right’ decision. The increase does (just) cover the average increase in consumer prices, and is actually a little more than the low growth in average wages over the past year. The subdued labour market looks to be the main reason that the increase is 3 per cent rather than, say, 4 per cent, as there is not a lot else in the decision that indicates economic conditions are on the bleak side. Not going gangbusters to be sure, but not bleak either.

The Fair Work Commission noted that earnings inequality has increased over the past decade. What is left out is their own part in contributing to this trend, with the increases in minimum wages they awarded in 2012 and 2013 being well below average wage growth. But I have banged on about that here a lot already, so I will not do it any further. Let us see what they do next year on that one.

Other than that, I have nothing much to add. It was a predictable and uncontroversial decision, which is not necessarily a bad thing. With economic and labour market conditions forecast to be fairly similar over the next two years (but then again, when are they not?), we might see minimum wage increases with a 3 at the front for a couple of years yet. Not particularly exciting, but the goal of economic managers should be to make everything boring, so we shouldn’t complain too much.

The Finger Points Outwards - No. 82

CARTOONS/FILM/ART: Disney villains as babies.

ART: Asexuals tell their stories.

FILM: Dissecting the ending of X-Men: Days of Future Past (spoilers).

ECONOMICS: Debunking ‘nudge’ economics.

MUSIC: Jack White’s Meg White problem.

AFL Power Rankings: Round 11 2014

RISING UP

Quite a few games had an effect on the rankings, but there was one that mattered most – Sydney’s unexpected 110 point thrashing of Geelong. This moves the Swans up to second spot, after they had dropped as low as eighth earlier in the season. Sydney pick up a whopping nine-and-a-half ranking points this week, and have picked up 19 ranking points over the past five weeks.

FALLING DOWN

The Cats fall from third to seventh after their big loss. Still given their massive wins over the past seven years, one week’s good performance could see them again counted amongst the batch of contenders sitting below the Hawks.

ALSO OF NOTE
Melbourne is now the most improved team of 2014 – still considered pretty bad, but nowhere near the historical levels of badness they reached in 2013.

AFL Power Rankings: Round 10 2014

RISING UP

The Gold Coast Suns continue to improve their best ever ranking by the week, moving up to eleventh, and almost into positive territory in terms of ranking points. Apart from Melbourne, the Suns are the most improved team of the past five weeks (see the return of the Delta Past 5 column in the table below).

FALLING DOWN

It is a bit tough to spotlight a team here that actually won on the weekend, but Collingwood have taken an ever-so-slight step back in recent weeks, and were expected to beat the Eagles at home by more than they did.

ALSO OF NOTE

Almost halfway through the season and there has only been one change to the top eight-ranked teams – Port Adelaide replacing their co-tenants Adelaide.

Book Review: Think Like A Freak – Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

In the lead-up to their third book together, ‘Think Like A Freak’, authors Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dunber had been claiming that this book was more prescriptive than its predecessors, ‘Freakonomics’ and its souped-up sequel ‘Superfreakonomics’. That had me a little worried, as to me the weakest chapter of ‘Superfreakonomics’ was when Levitt and Dubner seemed to put aside their digging through the data and got almost polemical with their chapter on the relative ineffectiveness of the current approaches to combat global warming. Fortunately, ‘Think Like A Freak’ is not all that prescriptive, or at least the world-view it espouses was already implicit in their first books anyway. Or maybe I am just too much of the ‘Freakonomics’ type of view – honestly, I cannot think of a non-fiction book that has had more of an effect on my life and career  - that it did not seem all that revelatory to me. More likely, if you enjoyed the first two books you were probably a little on your way to thinking like a ‘freak’ anyway.

I must say that I would already be inclined to agree with a book that claimed the three hardest words in the language are ‘I don’t know’, and pushes ‘the upside of quitting’. I completely agree with the view that many people claim they know more than they do (probably including me, at least on occasion… ha!), and that it is hard for people to admit failure on a project. The chapter on why Van Halen singer David Lee Roth was like King Solomon was also a neat bit of story-telling, the chapter title harking back to the first book’s comparison of what schoolteachers and sumowrestlers have in common – a mystery with a surprising but logical conclusion. Other chapters, such as how to persuade people, were less compelling, although they also have their neat twists.

Overall, this was the least (and possibly last) of the three ‘Freakonomics’ books so far, but for me that is like saying it is the least of the three Christopher Nolan ‘Batman’ films – it is pretty hard to live up to the first two books’ subjects of corrupt sumo wrestlers, ambitious drug dealers, and the economics of being a prostitute. It's Levitt – it’s great – and thank the econ-gods we have the best blog going around to tide us over until the next instalment.

The Wooden Finger Five - May 2014

This year’s Eurovision Song Contest final was the best final in … well, possibly its entire history. There were nine or ten that were actually half-decent. And here were five of the best:

1.       Undo – Sanna Nielsen (Sweden)

 

Blonde-haired Sanna Nielsen certainly got the male hearts a-beating, and charmed the female hearts with her ballad that fell on just the right side of Celine Dion. Some debate ensued about whether she was singing ‘undo my sad’ or ‘undo myself’ in the chorus (it is the former). Throw in a post-second verse key change, and you have another Swedish/Scandinavian Eurovision classic.

 

 

2.       Calm After The Storm – The Common Linnets (Netherlands)

 

In my view, this was the best Eurovision track since perhaps the Norwegian violin song with twenty words, or at least since Lena’s ‘Satellite’. The two singers stood on the stage facing each other rather than the audience, and gave a beautiful account of what it felt like to be in the stages a few months after a tumultuous break-up; a subject that is relatively foreign to a contest that has essentially become ‘Let’s Get Loud’ in Slavic accents. They surely would have won if the Austrian singer had not kept her beard (see below), in any case I think this will be the most enduring song from this year’s contest. Their image was taken from Jack White and Reese Witherspoon playing June Carter, but the Common Linnets and the Dutch should be very proud of this track.

 

3.       Round And Round – Tinkara Kovac (Slovenia)

 

A friend of mine claimed ‘Slovenia was robbed’, and having listened to this track a few more times after the competition finished, I can see where he is coming from, though I still think the Netherlands and Sweden were better. The Jethro Tull flute at the beginning was somewhat superfluous, and meant that Tinkara Kovac had an annoying prop to hold for the remainder of the track. What made this track on the night was her throwing her head back as she belted out the words ‘what are we CHANG-ING?!’. Alas, those ever-ridiculous voters did not agree, and they voted her second-last (a fact I did not remember until I looked it up just then).

 

4.       Something Better – Softengine (Finland)

 

As indie as they come. If by indie you mean the piano of Keane, the ‘whoah-ohs’ out of Coldplay, and the suits out of Maximo Park. But I am a sucker for most things that sound kind like an anthem, that is by anthem if you mean something that reminds me of Springsteen (or at least the Killers’ imitation of Spingsteen), and not an anthem that reminds me of a clip of Ibiza.

 

5.       Rise Like A Phoenix – Conchita Wurtz (Austria)

Yes, I do not think it would have won if the Austrian singer had not kept her beard, but hey, it was still probably worthy of a top five or ten finish, and it is far from the worst winner the Eurovision Song Contest has had. The music was a bit James-Bondish (or maybe James Bond recast as a semi-pornographic flick – ‘RISE like a phoenix’), though you could also imagine it as the closing track of a 2010s version of ‘Priscilla Queen Of The Desert’. Actually, it brought to mind for me Antony And The Johnsons’ ‘I Am A Bird’ album, in terms of the image of a bird serving as a metaphor for being ‘re-born’ into another gender.  In any case, my aunt who is from Austrian heritage can barely believe that a bearded lady got them over the line. But from my recollection, Eurovision Song Contest competitors are two from two from trans-sexuals (Dana International winning for Israel). So maybe that is the key to Eurovision success after all.

The Finger Points Outwards - No. 81

STATISTICS: ‘Ugly ducklings’, and another lesson in how the human brain is bad at making statistical inferences.

AUSTRALIAN RULES FOOTBALL: Are AFL food prices all that unreasonable?

COMIC BOOKS: Free comics! Courtesy of the British Library’s Comics Unmasked Digital Anthology.