okay I will post something on tennis

 I have attempted to simply give what happened down in Melbourne a miss. why did the government give out a visa in the first place is a great question.

HOWEVER Andrew Gelman gives us Kaiser Fung on some of the ramifications.

Fascinating as the late Mr Spock would say.

What have we learnt from the Ashes

 What lessons have we learned from the Ashes?

First of all we were lucky the poms batting was so bad. We have only two matchwinning bowlers Cummins and Hazelwood and one was injured. We can confidently say Starc has lost his ability to swing the ball and his pace rarely reached 145k. Starc rarely finishes any series well. Stamina?? If the poms has simply only played the cut and glance against him he would have taken few wickets.  Richardson and Boland were only competent bowlers at best allowed to flourish by bad batsmen.  Lyon rarely looked a matchwinner either.

Our batting was exposed by Wood's pace. All our 'great' batsmen were unnerved by his pace. Imagine if Archer or Stone were fit or they actually picked some fast bowlers who can bowl 150k.. The poms lack of any decent spinners meant  our batting looked better than it was. It still appears we have flat track bullies who either fai8l or have a lot of luck when the pitch assists bowlers.

We were assisted by inept english selection and strategy. did the poms pay no attention at all to India last summer?? It was also apparent Root is no captain. Why would you bowl Leach first after a break? 

Our big break was Greene becoming a useful fast medium bowler. Carey was also a break as a wikkie.

I tend to completely discount the Ashes and wait for the Pakistan  tour. 

We do have an aging team with no pace up front anymore. There is no pace replacement in the wings either.

Wouldn't it be ironic if the poms produced fast bouncy greentops for us in two years and only they had genuinely quick bowlers!!

the US economy

 the conversable economist examines the US economy for us.

Around the Traps 14/1/22

 It is time again for Around the Traps.

Aussie,Aussie,Aussie,Oy,Oy,Oy

• Flaviou Macou on supermarket-shortages-are-different-this-time-how-to-respond-and-avoid-panic
• renew economy on new-record-caps-stunning-year-of-australian-solar-milestones-sets-tone-for-2022, woodside-pitches-massive-solar-and-battery-plant-minuscule-dent-in-emissions
• John Quiggin on labors-proposed-10-billion-social-housing-fund-isnt-big-as-it-seems-but-it-could-work
• Ann Twomey on at-long-last-we-can-tear-open-the-queens-secret-letters-with-australias-governors-general
• Rachael Nolan et al on fire-management-in-australia-has-reached-a-crossroads-and-business-as-usual-wont-cut-it
• Richard Holden on the-3-problems-with-fines-for-not-reporting-positive-covid-tests
• Michelle Grattan on government-management-of-omicron-blighted-by-false-assumptions-bad-planning

Northern America

• John Murphy on biden-urges-america-to-see-the-truth-of-jan-6-and-understand-its-place-in-history
• Ian Millhiser on supreme-court-vaccine-mandate-osha-workplace-cms-medicare-medicaid-biden
• noahopinion on the-biden-boom, yes-worker-skills-matter, america-needs-more-basic-research
• the conversable economist on what-americans-like-about-their-health-care, us-pharmaceuticals-a-bifurcated-market
• Calculated Risk on cleveland-fed-median-cpi-increased-04
• Ed Yong on for-covid-with-covid-hospitals-are-mess-either-way
• Kaleigh Rogers  on the-big-lie-voting-laws
• the time of monsters on destroying-the-democratic-party-wont-defeat-trump
• Nicole Narea on texas-omicron-hospitalizations-covid-icu-testing-vaccine
• Amelia Thomason-Deveaux on the-supreme-courts-right-turn-goes-way-beyond-guns-and-abortion/

Europe

• Lena Harned on in-kazakhstan-russia-follows-a-playbook-it-developed-in-ukraine
• Mainly Macro on the-broadcast-media-knowledge-disconnect
• Fintan O'Toole on arum-arum-araaaaaagh
• Rebecca Mead on boris-johnsons-lockdown-partygate
• Chris Stafford on boris-johnsons-downing-street-party-apology-three-key-takeaways

Asia

• David Brewster on indian-ocean-step
• noahopinion on six-books-on-china
• Brad De Long on trying-to-grasp-the-reality-of-china-today
• Shaun Cameron on whoever-controls-spice-controls-universe
• Chayanika Saxena and Roshni Kapur on geopolitics-aiding-taliban-s-afghanistan

Wonk

• Sarah Schiffling and Nikoalaos Kanellos on supply-chains-in-2022-shortages-will-continue-but-for-some-sellers-the-problem-will-be-too-much-stock
• Tim Harford on the-life-saving-magic-of-playing-games
• Uneasy Money on the-rises-and-falls-of-keynesianism-and-monetarism
• stumbling and mumbling on against-work, how-to-commit-fraud
• Stephen Grenville on history-lessons-great-crash
• Shannon Zimmerman on peace-and-security-not-the-same-thing
• Nick Gruen on ideas-hacks-representation-by-sampling-and-political-theory

General

• Aram Goudsouzian on sidney-poitier-hollywoods-first-black-leading-man-reflected-the-civil-rights-movement-on-screen

Climate

• Peter Sinclair on new-analysis-clean-energy-grid-with-no-blackouts
• Jim Green on in-2022-nuclear-powers-future-is-grimmer-than-ever
• Skeptical Science on the 1.5 degrees goal
• Eric Lonergan on the-wrong-chapter-of-the-textbook

Andrew Gelman ( mainly stats)

• my-new-article-failure-and-success-in-political-polling-and-election-forecasting-and-the-tangled-yet-uninteresting-story-of-how-it-came-to-be
  
• object-of-the-class-jacques-cousteau
  
• the-real-problem-of-that-nudge-meta-analysis-is-not-that-it-include-12-papers-by-noted-fraudsters-its-the-gigo-of-it-all
  
• suspense-in-music-suspense-in-stories-how-do-they-differ
  
• a-new-kind-of-spam
  
• this-is-a-great-graph-plotting-yt-vs-yt-tracing-over-time-with-a-dot-for-each-year
  
• the-hitchhikers-guide-to-responsible-machine-learning-and-statistical-analysis-illustrated
  
• chatbots-still-dumb-after-all-these-years
  
• Kaiser Fung on why-fda-says-stick-to-the-test, common-misreading-of-data-with-time-lags ,changing-metrics-when-you-dislike-the-results

Econometrics

• nuttin

Dianne Coyle ( quirky + book reviews)

• muddle-muddle-toil-trouble
  
• Tyler Cowen on wgat-ive-been-reading

Vox Wonk

• unemployment-risk-channel-business-cycle-fluctuations
  
• language-subsidies-improve-knowledge-transfers-multinationals
  
• bitcoin-challenge
  
• what-facebook-can-tell-us-about-preference-differences-between-women-and-men
  
• discrimination-sexual-minorities-emerging-markets
  
• technology-transfer-and-early-industrial-development
  
• using-compensating-efficiencies-assess-eu-merger-policy
  
• pulse-biometric-measure-wellbeing
  
• zero-lower-bound-inflation-expectations
  
• services-firms-small-can-be-beautiful
  
• quantifying-full-impact-country-specific-policies-trade-flows
  
• how-global-risk-perceptions-affect-economic-growth
  
• potential-capital-working-home-and-economic-resilience
  
• trying-account-decline-labour-share
  

Nuclear energy's future is not bright

 Jim Green writes on this for renew economy.

I have always found nuclear advocates strange. It takes 15 years to build a nuclear reactor. It would then need a price on carbon of  $50-60 to compete with coal fired power. It cam never be competitive with renewables.

history lessons from the great crash

 Stephen Grenville ( former deputy governor of the RBA) writes an interesting article for the Lowy Institute on history-lessons-great-crash

David Glasner on Keynesian and monetarist ecobomics

 A typical thoughtful piece from David Glasner on the-rises-and-falls-of-keynesianism-and-monetarism