Why They Write

One of the great things to come out of the writer’s strike… “Why we write”

Freedom to Watch

What does an X rating mean? It can’t be shown in public theaters?

A number of movies critical of government and the Arroyo adminstration have been coming out. The MTRCB has laid an X rating on them.

MTRCB says it’s one-sided and black propaganda (is there any other color?). One the one hand, I think people need to make decisions about things as they see fit. In this light, I don’t think political censorship can ever be justified. On the other hand, a small part of me is saying that films like this take advantage of people’s ignorance.

I just beat up that small part of me. The MTRCB out not be involved in political censorship at all (other kinds of censorship, i’m still mulling over).

Damages most nominated TV Drama at the Golden Globes!

And hurray for Rose for her Best Supporting Actress Nomination! (see here )

Above is one of the few times when she is actually smiling on the show.

A Theory of Revolts

I once made up a theory that revolts need to happen in the colder months of the year to allow people to come out and support it.  Here is a Newsbreak article telling a similar story, although they add that it can’t be before Christmas too, which i selfishly consider a refinement to my own theory. 

Journalists in the Line of Fire II

As a continuation of my earlier question, here is an added wrinkle…

Trillianes (from the Power point) said:

• They were, at the time, preparing to get out of the Pen because they were worried about the safety of the civilians that included former Vice President Tito Guingona and Bishop Emeritus Julio Labayen and the members of the media who were covering the incident.
• It was as if the authorities wanted to smoke them out of the upper part of the hotel and make easy targets of them as they were surrendering.
• the presence of the media prevented blood from being shed in the whole affair.
• The companions of the Senator including the civilian demonstrators were one in disavowing that they were the source of the gunshots that were heard shortly before the main door of the Pen was smashed by an armored personnel carrier. The shots had all come, they said, from the police agents outside the hotel.
• They said that the shots were fired to make it appear that there was an armed uprising going on in the Pen when in fact there was none.
• To show that they had not meant to use any coercive force or to compel the authorities to negotiate with them, the Senator said that they could have held Police General Jeary Barias hostage when the latter came over to talk with them. But they did not.
• His cause – even the recent Peninsula Hotel incident – was not an armed uprising or a rebellion. They wanted, he said, to simply air their grievance against their prolonged detention and pendency of the criminal charges against them in the Makati court and several disciplinary charges against them in various court martials…
• Like Sen. Trillanes, all they [The other people involved] wanted to do was to articulate their grievances against the government by joining “a protest march”.

For me, its raised a few more questions:

Where is the Love?

This article from Time wants to explain the disappearance of the love story. There are demand side issues (We’re sick of love stories!) and supply side innovation issues (I can’t make original love stories anymore!). It concludes with a comment on the structure of the industry. Titanic, the most successful movie in movie history, was a slow starter and needed time to earn its billion dollar take. Because of competition, supply side costs, its more important than ever for films to make alot of money on its first weekend. This means you have to attract people who watch movies on their opening weekend — young men.

Competition Among Public Schools III

Hoxby uses the number of streams in a metro area, because it determines the number of natural school district boundaries. When these boundaries were first drawn, travel time was the main consideration. Travelling over streams significantly affect travel time, so a place with more streams would have more districts.

As the first stage regression, she regresses C over Streams(in educational market m) as a function of Y and Z [both at the market level].

Lets discuss the Results.

Competition Among Public Schools II

The main empirical challenge is to have a good measure of choice, and to discuss whether it is endogenous (i.e. Cov(Choice, error) /=0)

Let me discuss endogeneity.

Competition Among Public Schools

For my Cross Section Econometrics exam, we have to answer questions on Caroline Hoxby’s “Does Competition Among Public Schools Benefit Students and Taxpayers”

What follows is a summary of this paper about theory and estimation issues. Another post will analyse the results.

Journalists in the Line of Fire

This article made me think about the responsibilities of media and law enforcement in moments of crises. For media, crises literally equals opportunity for advancement. More access means more exciting coverage, means higher ratings. Its also a race; if one outfit i covering, then probably lots of others are too.

But crises are problems for law enforcement, and their job is to effectively quell it. Media and law enforcement have conflicting interests, so it is (probably) efficient to let the law deal with it and have rules governing behavior during crises that respects the interests of both parties.

In other words: I’m sympathetic to the media covering the Manila Penn event, but i also think there comes a point when the military says you should evacuate, you really should evacuate; if only to help them do their job. I wonder what the law says, the article is especially vague on this…