Martin Gordon's Blog

At the risk of driving more old people to South Florida, I'm going to link to a New York Times article by Marginal Revolutionist Tyler Cowen. The article is about all sorts of things economists have learned in the past year, and the one Professor Mankiw pointed out and I find I'm able to relate to the most (as someone who has gone the other way) is the part about people who live in warmer climates tend to have a higher life expectancy:

Extreme cold brings cardiovascular stress as human bodies struggle to adjust to the temperature; many of the deaths in these periods come through heart attacks. Heat waves tend to kill people who were already weakened and would have died soon anyway; cold periods bring additional people to the verge of death.

When retired people move to a warmer state, their life expectancy rises dramatically. In fact, 8 to 15 percent of the increase in American life expectancy over the last 30 years comes from people moving to warmer climates.

(He also mentions that more people die in cold periods than in homicides, although I think that may not be true here in Philadelphia. ;-))

Technorati Tags: economics, New York Times, life expectancy, health, climate, South Florida, Tyler Cowen

BarCamp Miami took place yesterday at the University of Miami. I didn't go since I'm in Philly, but the BarCamp Miami site has a good list (though without a doubt not exhaustive) of Miami bloggers.

I'm currently subscribed to a few Miami-related RSS feeds but I am not nearly getting the amount of local news from South Florida as I'd like. I avoid those cityname.com (such as miami.com) sites like the plague, mainly because you get a few story views before having to register (ugh!), and Yahoo provides a Miami Herald RSS feed that leaves something to be desired (I want full feeds and less on murders, car accidents, etc), so hopefully I can get a bit more from these local bloggers.

Technorati Tags: BarCamp, BarCamp Miami, barcampmiami, Miami, Florida, Miami Beach, RSS, Miami Herald, local news, newspaper, placeblogging

Speaking of price gouging, Metroblogging Miami came across a gas station in Miami Beach that is charging $3.55 and up for a gallon of gas. This gas station is located on 41st St and Royal Palm Ave, and I would drive past it every day to and from school (my sister still does).

I'm taking back what I was originally going to write about this (which was that it is a terrible thing). After considering my last post a bit more, I suppose that if people are willing to pay this much for gas, then the gas station is entitled to charge that amount (during a state of emergency, this is not the case). Without another gas station within a 20 blocks radius and the first/last one encountered when going from/to the airport to Miami Beach, this might just be a result of monopolistic competition (and taking advantage of poor, innocent tourists).

Technorati Tags: Miami Beach, Miami, Florida, Shell, gas station, price gouging, competition, monopoly, economics, gas, oil

Well how about that! A Gamestop in practically my backyard (well, some 20 miles from my backyard) is the first Gamestop in the country to set up their Wii Kiosk. It's too bad I won't be back in Miami until Thanksgiving, after the Wii comes out, or else I'd go check it out.

Now to convince myself that taking the Wii home for Thanksgiving is a good idea, despite the hassle TSA might give me ("Uh, sorry, sir, this is a, uh, banned substance. We're gonna have to confiscate it." Five minutes later: "Hey, Bob! I just scored a Wii! It'll go great with my collection of 50,000 lighters and 20,000 bottles of shampoo!"). Although it would be great to get some impressions from my family - who are far from being even casual gamers (well, except my mom, who loves FreeCell).

Technorati Tags: Wii, Nintendo, Miami, Florida, South Florida, GameStop, kiosk, TSA, security, games, video games

Posting from inside T.S. Ernesto. It's not quite as bad as the news was reporting (and as I expected), but we prepared everything just to be safe. I was here during Katrina which was stronger than Ernesto and we only lost power for less than 24 hours, but the Category 3 Wilma was the last one to hit Florida and that was in everyone's minds.

As expected, my 10am flight tomorrow was canceled but I managed to get onto a 1:40pm flight to get me in to Philadelphia at 4:20pm.

Technorati Tags: weather, tropical storm, hurricanes, Ernesto, Tropical Storm Ernesto, Miami, Florida, South Florida, Philadelphia

Holy crap! I didn't expect to see this one coming!

The Apple Store Lincoln Road is set to open this Friday at 6pm according to Macworld. This will be the 10th Apple Store in Florida and the 2nd within 15 minutes of my house. High school would have been a lot more bearable if there was an Apple Store 5 minutes away too.

There are DJs planned for opening night and the remainder of the weekend. 1,000 shirts will be given out and there is a contest for a $2299 prize package consisting of a 17" iMac, an iPod nano, a Canon digital camera, a Sony video camera and an HP printer.

ifoAppleStore has pictures of the unique facade (for an Apple Store, that is). Instead of changing it to match Apple's usual stylings, the original store front has been kept and an Apple logo has been added.

In contrast to the Apple Store Aventura, this store features The Studio, a relatively new Appl Store "attraction" that's a bit like a Genius Bar that is more creativity-oriented than troubleshooting-oriented. No mention of a theatre on the store's page, and I doubt there is one since, at least from the stores with Studios that I've seen, the Studio sits in the center-rear of the store, where the registers are in smaller stores and where the theatre is in larger stores.

This is so exciting and I don't even get to go. At least I'll have a chance to see it when I go home in mid-August. For now though, I've got to convince my sister to drive down there, brave the geeks and pick me up a shirt on opening night :)

Technorati Tags: Apple, Apple Store, Aventura, Lincoln Road, Miami Beach, Florida, South Beach, retail, opening, grand opening

Can you feel the Heat down in your soul?
I feel the Heat down in my soul.
Can you see the Heat? They're in control.
Can you feel it? I feel it.
Can you feel it? I feel it.
It's Miami Heat!
We can't be beat.
It's Miami Heat!

Congratulations to the Miami Heat on their first ever NBA championship. I sure wish I could be in Miami now more than ever…

Oh, and if anyone has any information on the song I quoted above, please please please get in contact with me. I'd love to get a copy of it one way or another.

Technorati Tags: Miami, Miami Heat, Heat, NBA, basketball, NBA Finals

In the wake of Wilma's destruction, Dave Barry answers some important questions regarding the status of utilities and other things in South Florida after the storm.

I'd like to add my own to his list:

How can people affected by the storm read this Q&A if they don't have electricity, let alone internet access?

Technorati Tags: Dave Barry, Q&A, FAQ, funny, comedy, Miami, Florida, Herald, newspaper, hurricane, wilma

Slashdot reports that Florida courts will hear arguments on the accuracy of breathalyzer results because the manufacturer of the devices refuses to release the source code to the devices.

Some judges have dismissed DUI cases because the defendant asked how the breathalyzer worked. The manufacturer was unwilling to release the source and the cases were dismissed.

The story contributer brings up an interesting point:

With software bugs being a fact of life, consumers and organizations could claim that they need to be able to verify an application's source code before they accept that their calculations are accurate. Think credit card transactions, speed detecting radar guns, electronic voting machines…

While I think that requiring open source for pretty much anything for these types of reasons is out of the question, there does need to be some balance between the right of the user to have solid software and the right of the manufacturer to protect their intellectual property. This balance exists for most products in competitive markets in the form of competition, but for monopolized markets (such as with breathalyzers), there does need to be some governmental or other third-party certification.

Much like a crime suspect could be required to submit to blood/DNA testing, products with suspected inaccuracies used to determine guilt should be required to submit to source code "testing." Since the source code will only be seen by the court, and the court has no economic motivation for using the source code outside of the bounds of the case at hand, the product's manufacturer should be able to rest assured that its source code is still protected.

Technorati Tags: DUI, source code, open source, florida, breathalyzer