Today on Math and Musings Franklin and I discuss all things March: college basketball, Shamrock shakes, and Reese’s peanut butter cups.
For further information, well, check out today’s episode of Math and Musings.
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Those aghast at Wendy’s and its “proposed” “dynamic pricing” make the usual errors of economic dislogic far too pervasive in our society today. As usual. This one’s a layup, but allow me to offer a few words.
First off, I think every fast food restaurant–nay, every single person conducting any type of business–should adopt a dynamic or “surge” model of pricing immediately. Please start charging different prices at different times of the day, week, and year for heaven’s sake.
It’ll be easy, of course, because every single person and every single company already does it.
Ever wonder why it’s more expensive to go to Disney World during Spring Break than the middle of January?
Ever wonder why a snow shovel tends to cost more in December than in June? Or for that matter the guy who comes to plow your driveway? He’ll give you a great price from April to October.
(You’re getting the idea but I can’t resist a few more.)
Ever hear of Happy Hour? Pizza specials on Mondays and Tuesdays? Post-season clearance sales, anyone?
Here’s a little secret. It’s all in the name of making money. (Gasp.)
Happy Hour doesn’t exist because someone is trying to be nice. The bar owner wants to get you in early so that you’ll be there longer and end up paying more. Play it right and you’ll get a good deal, of course, but the barkeep’s aim is not for you to save money. (Adam Smith called this non-existent character the benevolent brewer.) The reason Domino’s gives you a deal on Mondays and Tuesdays likewise isn’t compassion; they want to pull you in on a day you’re probably not thinking of ordering pizza. (But maybe if the weekend price is too much for you, you can still enjoy pizza earlier in the week.)
Is Domino’s practicing “surge pricing” on Fridays and Saturdays?
Funny how people tend to concern themselves with the higher prices in these arrangements, rarely thinking of the benefits at the low end. The cheap seats, the cheap fares, various discounts if you’re willing to travel on a particular day or be flexible about your time or take an “obstructed view.”
Rule #1 is: customers have choices.
This is the operation of the market. A free market to coin a term.
Wait, no, that’s the term everyone has been using for years, never mind.
Everyone business is free to charge whatever price its owners want. And ever consumer is free to say no.
Let the record show there have been a few places that have tried to guard against “surge pricing” and the like. They’ve had czars and commissars regulating prices from distant capitals, ensuring a “fairness” throughout the land preventing anyone from getting, well, anything good or approaching good service. They called the waiting lines “queues” to fancy up what really just a hassle. Waiting in line just became a different way to pay.
The Soviet-style communism from what I understand worked really well. Until we found out what was actually going on behind the Iron Curtain and it all came crumbling down.
Given the choice between state-regulated bread and circuses and some freely fluctuating prices on cheeseburgers…
I can has cheezburger?
I said it six years ago and I’ll say it again: Somebody Feed Phil is the best show on “TV.”
Everything I said in that previous post is still true today, somehow even more so. And this time around I’ve got a son who dreams of the Phil Rosenthal lifestyle the way boys of the ’60s and ’70s looked at Hugh Hefner.
One troubling feature of the new season (that’s Season Seven which dropped this past Friday)… one of the episodes is from Washington, D.C.
My home!
Every one of those restaurants is now going to be crammed with tourists eschewing the monuments and going for the tempura and goat cheese instead.
I guess maybe it’ll be easier to get in the museums now.
Thanks, Phil.
As promised “in print” last week, today’s episode of Math and Musings will feature a full recap of my son’s and my recent trip to Philadelphia.
Stops included the Philadelphia Art Museum and its famous steps, the University of Pennsylvania, and, Philadelphia institution… Wawa.
For a cheesesteak.
Many times on this blog and elsewhere I have noted the great and universal truism of life: we all turn into our parents.
There’s no sense in fighting it. It’s going to happen. For the past decade I’ve resigned myself to the fact and tried to embrace the fact that, well, I’ve become my dad.
Today’s hot take?
Your parents become your grandparents.
This should be obvious, right? I mean, they literally are grandparents. But more than that there’s going to become your grandparents. The folks you remember from when you were a kid… you’ll see them again like 30 years later, proof that they’re doing the thing you’ll eventually do as well.
Nice to know you’ll see your grandparents again.
And your parents.
Every time you look in the mirror.
Of everything I’ve ever put in print, blogged about, said on TV, said on radio, said on YouTube, or sang about on stage, the question most asked of me within its first 72 hours has been…
What’s the Twinkie Latte really taste like?
I thought I was pretty clear about that on Friday’s show.
It tastes like a Twinkie.
February 13, 2024… it was a totally cheap-ass snow day, but that’s par for the course in the L.C.
Franklin and I discuss this and other matters on today’s episode of Math and Musings.
What’s weirder?
Seeing top-ranked Connecticut lose by 19 points to Creighton last night…
or realizing that this was a Big East conference game?
(Creighton University, btw, is in Omaha, Nebraska.)
This is one week after I witnessed Syracuse take down 10th-ranked North Carolina…
in ACC game played at something called the JWA Wireless Dome.
I’ve never been so deliriously happy to see my favored teams lose two games in a row as I was this weekend while visiting the City of Brotherly Love.
I was in Philadelphia with my son, among other things seeing the Penn Quakers in action on the basketball court and lacrosse field. We watched Penn fall to Georgetown in lacrosse (two highly-rated teams there) and then lose to Brown in basketball (two not highly-rated teams, but still fun to watch).
The draw wasn’t the teams; it was the venues.
Certainly a discussion on an upcoming episode of Math and Musings, two legendary buildings on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania are synonymous with college athletics themselves: Franklin Field, serving Saturday as the home of Penn’s lacrosse team, and the Palestra, home to Quaker basketball.
The latter is, well, pretty much what Naismith had in mind.
Seeing a game at the Palestra was a pilgrimage, as close to a religious experience as a non-theist can get.
Double bonus was getting to see a game at Franklin Field. That one’s actually older than the Palestra and almost older than basketball itself. The stadium was built in 1895 and is famously the host of the Penn Relays, the oldest and largest track and field competition in the U.S. (That one goes back to 1895 as well.) It was a little chilly sitting in the stands for Saturday’s game and I’m not the world’s biggest lacrosse fan, but somehow I turned into one and thought nothing of the cold in that magical arena.
Must’ve been the Brotherly Love.
Oh, I ran up the Rocky steps too. But that one’s actually on the other side of town.
One of my favorite holidays is Presidents’ Day. Or President’s Day or Presidents Day or Washington’s Birthday depending on where you’re from.
I’ve made fun of this grammar lesson many times before, but never with my son.
Until today on Math and Musings.
You’re welcome.