Hello from a motel in Little Rock, Arkansas, which turns out to have free ethernet. (The motel, not the city.) Today’s route ran from near Salem, SC, up I-85 to Spartanburg, SC where I picked up I-26 to Asheville, NC, where you hit I-40. The drive across the Smokies was beautiful, though there were some brutally heavy rainstorms. Then I drove across the whole of Tennessee, lengthways. The first city was Knoxville. I swear the smug looking guy in the fancy sportscar who cut me off around there looked familiar. The longer it went on, the flatter and less interesting Tennessee became, and the more I was forced to resort to strategies like singing in the car in order to keep myself awake. Well, to be honest maybe I didn’t need that much provocation. Here’s forty seconds’ worth of video from a day’s worth of driving. Tomorrow: On to Amarillo! I wonder if we have any readers in Amarillo.

Some threads of the ongoing discussion about the Efficient Markets Hypothesis have begun to address the contrast between markets and planning, with the state as the prospective planner. As is often the case in such discussions, the implicit contrast is between a Hayekian information-processing ideal and, say, North Korea. To break down this assumption a bit, it’s worth drawing a link to a related debate in the economics and sociology of organizations about the existence of the firm. A long time ago, Ronald Coase asked why, if markets are so great, are there so many firms? Below the fold is an old post of mine where I examine Brink Lindsey’s efforts to defend the virtues of free markets in the light of Coase’s ideas. It might be of interest as a sidelight to the EMH debate.

After a year of leave in Australia (well, someone has to act as a counterweight to all those Aussie backpackers), I just arrived back in the U.S. Three observations:

• It should not surprise you that making a c.1 year-old boy watch the in-flight TV system for six hours of a Sydney-to-Los Angeles flight would lead to emotional problems (viz, crying, screaming, kicking) for the following six hours. It seemed to surprise the parents of the c.1 year-old boy sitting next to us, however.

• A clear-eyed assessment of Los Angeles International Airport (e.g., by Martians) would conclude that it is a machine designed to produce unhappy, stressed-out people by means of multiple queues, unnecessary bottlenecks, pointless dumping of international transfer passengers out onto the sidewalk, and other more sophisticated methods.

• What the hell is Hooters doing with an airline? When I saw the jet trundle by on the runway I thought I was hallucinating.

After spending the next few days recovering from jetlag, I’m going to drive from South Carolina to Arizona, probably along I-40. (I have to do this, for various reasons.) Any advice? Apart from “Book a flight instead”, I mean.

New from MIT Press comes Causation and Counterfactuals, an anthology edited by John Collins, Ned Hall and L.A. Paul. At the Pacific APA meetings, the latter was recently identified, much to her disgust, as “Kieran Healy from Crooked Timber’s wife.” Causation and Counterfactuals presents the best recent work on the counterfactual analysis of causation, which helps us understand the metaphysical underpinnings of sentences like “If you don’t buy it you’ll be sorry,” “If I hadn’t blogged so much my own book would be finished by now,” and “If everyone on CT posted a shameless plug simultaneously, who’d be responsible?” The book is also perhaps the only place to read the full, gripping saga of Billy and Suzy, a tale of passion, overdetermination, war, double prevention and appalling violence.

Guest-blogging over at Volokh, Cathy Seipp tells us why we should learn French rather than Spanish:

Last year, when she took French at Pasadena Community College, we got the same reaction: “Why French? Why not Spanish? Isn’t that more useful around here?” Well, no. What’s useful in Los Angeles, just like everywhere else in the country, is English. I suppose if I were a contractor rounding up day laborers every morning, and wanted my daughter to learn the family business, Spanish would be invaluable. … I do speak enough Spanish to communicate with the cleaning lady … This is sort of useful, but not vital. Since 1066, educated English speakers have studied French. Even if we don’t speak it … it gives us a deeper understanding of our own language, and prevents embarrassing gaffes like “I just love that Why-vees Saint Laurent!” Which some trophy wife actually said to me at a fashion show once.

An example of the kind of embarrassing gaffe that the study of French seems powerless to prevent is left as an exercise to the reader.