I shouldn't make fun of BYU, my alma mater, but this sentence from a football press release presented a temptation beyond my ability to resist: "Mortensen, a 6-foot-4, 225-pound senior, graduated Cumma Sum Laude with a 4.0 grade-point average from BYU in 2003 and was attending graduate school."

I have no response to that.

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Seth Godin is ranting about Amazon's new "Plog" Service. The word "plog" is a contraction of "personal" and "blog." Seth calls this word awkward and boring. And redundant. As Seth notes, "all good blogs are 'personal.'"

What is Amazon hoping to accomplish here? They go to great lengths to explain the blog concept, which is pretty tedious, but here is the punchline: they want to publish new product release announcements, special occasion reminders, and order notifications on my plog. Did I read that right? Yes, I did.

This looks like an idea from an executive who discovered blogs last week and told his team to tap into this "new" phenomenon. The execution is very clumsy ... it is actually pretty hard to figure out where the plog is located. I found "Gordon's Store" and "New For You" and "Gordon's Gold Box" and "Friends and Favorites" and "This Page You Made," but never a page that said "Gordon's Plog." Nor did I find the link to such a page. When I searched Help for "plog," I found the page linked above explaining the concept, but no directions on how to find my plog. Makes me wonder if I ever saw my plog ...

Anyway, as an occasional Amazon customer, what is the value added in going to my blog? Do I really need a reminder of Valentine's Day? (This is the actual example used to pitch the value of reminders.) I like receiving new product recommendations, but I don't need a plog for that. As for order recommendations, I don't purchase books from Amazon that often that I need daily reminders of my order status. I normally like Amazon, but this idea is a loser.

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Tyler Cowen has been writing about economics as science -- or not -- and he points to this recent entry (entitled "Uh Oh") on Dave Tufte's blog, summarizing a forthcoming paper in the Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking:

In short, 1) economists publish papers with results that are not replicable, and 2) few make enough effort to notice. Economists - we have a big problem here. It looks like we fib to each other, and then wink at the liars. This is not the way to run a science.

Tufte also supports the finding of the paper with a few (shocking) personal anecdotes. This isn't news, exactly. Most economists I know are pretty open about the fact that their discipline lacks the rigor that we typically associate with the sciences. Nevertheless, Tyler Cowen must be right: "economics is surely a science. We produce empirical knowledge which is subject to process of testing, broadly interpreted, and feedback."

Closer to home, most law professors avoid the problems inherent in scientific inquiry by avoiding data. Though that is changing in some areas of law.

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Dave Tufte at Southern Utah University requires students in his undergraduate economics class to blog. This reminds me Christine Hurt's effort at Marquette Law School. The hoped-for pedagogical value of blogging inspired me to start Law & Entrepreneurship News, though that is purely voluntary. Ann Althouse and I have toyed with the idea of doing something with first-year students here at Wisconsin, but I haven't yet come to terms with the idea of forced blogging. Yes, we force our students to do all manner of assignments, but making their pain public...?

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French cycling fans are dancing. They have the yellow jersey, and after today's spectacular win by David Moncoutie, they can celebrate two stage wins in a row. This is also a nice boost for Cofidis, the team that lost David Millar when he admitted to having used EPO. This is the second Cofidis stage win in this year's Tour (the other being Stuart O'Grady's win).

From the beginning of the race, Lance has flagged Saturday as the crucial stage, so we may have one more day of posturing before we see real movement in the GC. With regard to the GC, Jan Ullrich sounds confident.

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Robbie Vorhaus of Vorhaus Communications, Inc. offers a personal account about the use of credit cards to build a business. A few tidbits:

* "Plastic debt isn’t just about money, though; it’s about entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy. When you’re young, as I was in the early 1990s, and absolutely convinced that you have something unique to offer, perhaps it pays to borrow on credit cards. That is because what you need at that age is blind faith."

* "These days, I consider plastic a tactical tool for laying the groundwork for business that I am reasonably certain I will secure. In other words, if I have a good reputation, a good management team, if my calls are getting returned, and I can see revenue five months hence, but I need that computer server today, I would be inclined to put the purchase on a credit card. If, on the other hand, I am using the card merely to cover expenses, I don’t see credit card debt as a good idea. If you’re floundering and using the card, you’ll find yourself floundering and in debt."

* "Entrepreneurs get caught on a treadmill with plastic. They keep hoping to get through just another month until the business turns. This line of thinking is inextricably linked to another myth: that the debt belongs to a credit card company and you can just take it and not repay. Nothing could be more wrong. When borrowing on plastic, you must always make at least the minimum payment and contact the credit card company if you cannot. That is because if you create a bad credit record for yourself, you won’t ever be able to lease equipment or be granted other forms of credit."

Nod to Dane for the link.

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Richard Virenque took all of the suspense out of Stage 10 with one of the most impressive breakaway rides ever. On the longest stage of this year's Tour -- over six hours of riding -- Virenque made the peloton look positively sluggish. I have been watching the Tour closely for four years, and Virenque never makes an appearance without some mention of doping. Of course, he was at the heart of the huge 1998 Festina doping scandal, and that is an issue he will never shake.

Frankly, I do not know how anyone rides a bicycle up the mountains these guys are climbing. And Stage 10 had nine categorized climbs! Very impressive.

I am happy to see Thomas Voeckler still holding the yellow jersey. No big news about the GC. Lance seems to be in great shape. Virenque moved up into fourth place, but he will fade tomorrow after today's massive effort. Tyler lost a few seconds today, but he is still within striking distance of Lance, as are Jan and Levi and Ivan Basso. Mayo has not been impressive so far, and he probably needs to do something dramatic this weekend.

UPDATE: The voice of OLN's Tour commercials (not the goofy bearded guy who does the awful "Cyclism" spots, but the voice who announces tomorrow's stage) just pronounced Richard Virenque's last name VEER-ANKY. Where is Donald Trump when you need him?

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Jacob Levy resolves the mystery that has been occupying Will Baude and Phoebe Maltz: why doesn't Hyde Park have any decent shopping? As a University of Chicago alum, I hold this topic close to my heart, and the answer turns out to be the obvious one: zoning.

Chicago is, generally, zoned so as to make commercial development extremely difficult--and institutionally arranged so that an individual Alderman (one's local city councillor) exercises tremendous discretionary power over zoning waivers. Vulgar public choice theory is overrated by many libertarians; but the rent-seeking dynamic doesn't get much more vulgar than the Chicago zoning code. The system is not designed to allow commercial (or residential) supply to spring up to meet demand. It's designed to allow elected and unelected officials to control their neighborhoods, for political or economic gain. There's clearly market demand for more commerce in Hyde Park-- and for commerce closer to campus than 53rd Street or Lake Park Avenue. But commerce can't get in the door. The landmark off-campus bar, Jimmy's Woodlawn Tap, was closed for a year and a half when Jimmy died and left the place to his bartender, because it was now under new owenrship and had to re-apply for lots of licenses to continue doing what it had always done in exactly the same space. Bar Louie was delayed for who knows how long. Borders had to struggle for a good long while to get permission to open.

Levy goes on to tell a fascinating story of urban planning gone awry, including some details that I knew and many others that I didn't. Ultimately -- you knew it was coming -- the whole tale is intertwined with Chicago's sordid history of race management:

Neighborhoods that the city wanted to "protect" as white (or, in the case of Hyde Park/Kenwood, white and upper-class black) got surrounded with barriers (Interstate 90/94, the UIC campus, Washington Park) that made pedestrian traffic into them from surrounding neighborhoods as difficult as possible. Commercial barrenness and pedestrian inaccessibility were inescapable results, indeed were part of the point. When, inevitably, the strategy failed, Hyde Park was left as a pretty dysfunctional neighborhood.

That certainly jibes with my observations of Hyde Park. I loved my time at the law school, but Chicago is a city where history's girth is smothering.

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Neal's Yard Dairy started as a small dairy in a London courtyard. Today, they buy cheeses from all over the British Isles. Last week our local Whole Foods Market received of shipment of NYD's Isle of Mull Cheddar, and today I was able to purchase one of the last slices. This cheese is not from Cheddar, but from Scotland (thus, the Isle of Mull). It has just a touch of blue toward the edge of the cheese, which produces a tangy aftertaste. Awesome with crackers.

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Google news has been pretty sparse lately, but Nasdaq's victory over the NYSE is worth noting. (Thanks to Kaimi Wenger for being right on top of this.) Since Google did not explain its decision, there isn't much we can say about this particular offering, but I found this tidbit interesting: according to the NYSE, it has "won listings from 28 of the 30 IPOs this year that met criteria for both the exchange and Nasdaq." On the other hand, Nasdaq claims to have won 77 of 110 total IPOs this year.

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Just a few months ago, it was hard to buy a business magazine without reading something apocalyptic about outsourcing to India. In tomorrow's NYT, Saritha Rai reports that all of the furor had little or no effect on business for Indian companies, with Infosys reporting a 39.2% increase in quarterly profit. Still, the story contained this sobering tidbit:

Though the furor in the United States has died down some, the National Foundation for American Policy, a research group, says more than 100 bills are pending in 38 states to curb the use of offshore contractors by state and local governments, and legislation has been passed in 5 states and vetoed in 2.

This story comes as I am writing a report on my India experience for CIBER. At that time of that visit, anti-outsourcing sentiment was peaking in the U.S. Our group visited a GE call center in Delhi, and I was very impressed by the professionalism of the employees. In addition, the importance of this sort of activity for the development of an Indian middle class was obvious. Moreover, the broadening of the Indian middle class would lead to a more stable democracy and a more fruitful trading partner for the U.S. This seems like a big win for both sides, and not just in the long run.

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First of all, what do we call this decade? I was born in the Sixties, grew up in the Seventies, was in college in the Eighties, and began my academic career in the Nineties. My daughter will graduate from high school in the ... O's? The zeroes? The nils? The ciphers? The aughts?

I am not sure, but I am pretty sure that ten or fifteen years from now, when VH1 does a special on this decade, one of the objects of their derision will be pink tennis shoes. The shoes pictured here are Chuck Taylor's Converse High Tops. Yesterday's Wisconsin State Journal included a story about these shoes:

Christy Kaether, a manager at East Towne's Foot Locker store, says Chuck Taylors All-Stars in pink, paired with either white or black, have been especially popular. The sneakers were originally made to fit up to a women's size 10, but can now be ordered up to a size 11. And Kaether says she has seen many young men trying to squeeze into the shoes.... Steven Reese, an employee at Jack's Shoes on State Street, says men often try on pink Chuck Taylors for the novelty aspect, then realize they like the look.

Well, remembering some of the things that I wore in the late 1970s, I probably don't have much of a basis for objection. But these things seem destined for mockery.

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Thanks for playing, Thor. It was great to see you in green again, Stuart. Eric, you were great once, but it's over. Robbie McEwen is the king of sprints. If you saw the end of Stage 9 today, you know what I am talking about.

"Heartbreaking" would not overstate the result of Stage 9 from the perspective of Filippo Simeoni and Inigo Landaluze, who spent most of the day on a breakaway, only to be caught within sight of the finish line. And once they were caught, the sprinters took flight. McEwen looked jet-propelled as he whirled around the pack and into position.

TDF has the story on Simeoni's feud with Lance. In brief, Simeoni says that Lance defamed him by calling him a liar in connection with doping accusations. On a happier note, George Hincapie is engaged to one of the podium women. With all that kissing that goes on up there, it's a wonder this doesn't happen more often.

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Larry King interviewed Ken Lay tonight. (See here for a report of the interview.) I have taken a quick spin through the indictment, which (at least with respect to Lay's role in the alleged conspiracy) focuses on the time after Lay re-assumed the CEO position from Jeff Skilling. Boiled down, the indictment says something like this: Ken Lay was the CEO of Enron as it was imploding, and he knew better than to act like it wasn't. Lay's defense is pretty simple: I didn't know better because Andy Fastow lied to me.

I must admit that the indictment is much less impressive than I would have thought it would be, given the amount of time spent preparing this case. I was very surprised at how rarely Lay is mentioned, compared with the main culprits, Jeff Skilling and Richard Causey, Enron's chief accountant. The most famous Enron deceptions -- the off-balance sheet transactions involving special-purpose entities -- are attributed to Skilling, Causey, and Fastow, not to Lay. After viewing the television clips, I have the feeling that the federal prosecutors are attempting to wage a PR war that goes well beyond the indictment. The case against Lay looks like a difficult case for the prosecutors, with very complex facts and evidence that will blow the jury away.

Still, I cannot help but feel like Allan Sloan:

Lay and his lawyer, Michael Ramsey, have repeatedly portrayed Lay as a victim. But if Lay were as clueless as he claims, he should turn over his entire net worth -- which he estimated last week at $20 million after legal expenses and fines -- to Enron's employees, creditors and shareholders. That's because Lay knocked down tons of money -- a five-year total of at least $325 million in salary, bonuses, stock-option gains and stock sales to the company -- for a job he couldn't have been doing properly if he really had no idea what was going on.

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For several months, I have been thinking about doing away with comments on this site, but I enjoy the comments feature, and I learn from my readers. The problem has been spam, especially porn spam. The newly installed MT 3.0 software addresses that problem by allowing me to moderate comments. The downside of this feature is that comments don't appear immediately after they are posted. So be patient with me.

P.S. I am still trying to figure out the "registered comments" feature. I have enabled this feature and inserted my TypeKey token in my weblog configuration. Now what?

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