Wednesday 25 March 2015

Shunbun no Hi: Solar Eclipse

This year's Shunbun no Hi post is four days late, for which I apologise.

This year the equinox coincided with a solar eclipse, though the UK only experienced a partial eclipse. The weather forecast said (correctly, as it turned out) that there would be a thick cloud cover over London, so Anasua and I took an early morning coach to Oxford, which had clearer skies.

Here are two photos: the first taken shortly after the eclipse began, and the second just a few minutes after the maximum point, when about 85% of the Sun was occulted by the Moon.


Monday 16 March 2015

Peanut Butter and Jelly

From Mankiw's Principles of Macroeconomics:


The bit about peanut butter and jelly may be true of the market as a whole, but personally I never use peanut butter and jelly together. I like peanut-butter-on-toast and jelly-on-toast, but I am immune to the appeal of a PB&J. If anything, I see peanut butter and jelly as weak substitutes.

This is not the first time that I've found a statement about spreads in an Economics textbook which runs counter to my own preferences.