By osmosis I've been learning a thing or two about economics. Buy low! Sell high! Monopolies are good (for the monopolist) but bad (for the rest of us). It only stands to reason. Nature abhors a vacuum, so I imagine the vacuum of economic thought in my brain and the mountain of new economically-oriented brain cells in Gen's brain as we sleep and possibly a few little things slip over. I have an image of little bits of economic theory dancing over to my little slice of the bed like we see on our computers when transferring data from one file to another.
One of the things I've learned is what "Beta Hat" signifies. This hat-thing (the chevron over the greek symbol beta, or any symbol really, it the chevron that matters) indicates an approximation or an estimate of something, like a guess. In Gen's classes they refer to it as "beta hat" or in spanish "beta sombrero." We immediately extrapolated this description to other languages: "beta chapeau" (francais), "beta kipa" (hebrew), and "beta thong" (only in Brazil and only if the chevron is at the lower end of the greek symbol).
But I've learned about more than fashionable greek symbols and headgear. I've learned about the Prisoner's Dilemma (always, always, always ask for a lawyer, before the other guy gets to one first), asymmetrical information (better to have it than not), and all kinds of stuff that of course I can't remember. Soon Gen will be sponsoring a new blog contest to solve one of her economic problems (one that she's already completed so she knows the answer). So get your Greek dictionaries out.
Meanwhile I'm going to go read an architecture magazine and look at the pretty pictures.
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