Month: December 2022

Mostly Awesome, Except When It Is Awesomer

I really do not know where to begin. Should I focus on authors or on topics or on interesting academic papers or ???

Let me begin on my thoughts first. I have been reading a bit on what leads to development and growth in a country. It has traditionally been studied by people studying development economics (or dev eco as it is popularly called in campuses). It seeks answer to one question:

What are the causes of growth? Sustainabale growth?

This topic has always been at the centre of economic research. There are numerous ways economists have analysed growth and its factors. I would discuss the different factors in my next blogs.

https://mostlyeconomics.wordpress.com/2007/04/20/finance-irrelevant-for-growth/

So began a blog that I think every single student of economics in India should subscribe to. For those of us who have been following Amol Agrawal’s blog, Mostly Economics, for a while, it’s easy to reflect on all of what he’s written over the years since 2007 and realize that he was as good as his word.

For the last fifteen years, Amol has indeed focussed on factors that have influenced growth. His very first post on his blog, which I have excerpted from above, was written all the way back in 2007, and touched upon a point that was clearly a sore one for him: the paucity of research on the role of finance in development. If you are looking for just one source that has diligently shared resources on this topic, you’re in luck, because that is exactly what Mostly Economics is all about.

This might sound like an exaggeration, but I really do mean this – if you want a treasure trove of material on research on this very broad (and very important!) topic, you could do a lot worse than trawl Amol’s blog for specific variations of this topic. This search, I maintain, will give you a better starting point than this one. Of course, you should narrow it further still by choosing a specific topic or a specific central bank, but – forgive me, I’ve always wanted to say this, and since I’ll almost certainly never write a textbook, this is my only platform to say so – I leave that as an exercise for the reader.

But I’m not joking when I say this – Amol’s blog is without question the single best repository when it comes to a very careful curation of content that is still plugging away at answering the question that he raised in his very first blogpost. And taken together, the sum of those blogposts is an invaluable resource to equip yourself with when you start to study macro/monetary/growth/development in India.

What explains the rather weird title of today’s post? It is a (rather horrible, admittedly) attempt at wordplay on his original title. But that does still beg the question – what explains the mostly in Mostly Economics?

Well, the blog is called mostly economics but as I mentioned at the start I am going to write on some topics that interest me. Cricket is one of them. No matter how the performance of the Indian Cricket team, I try and keep updated on the latest the sport has to offer.

https://mostlyeconomics.wordpress.com/2007/04/27/time-for-some-cricket/

Here’s the link to all the blog posts that Amol has written on cricket. How often do you read a blog in which you’ll meet a post on India’s Minsky moment in cricket? What is the intersection set of people who will love the reference from both perspectives? Or a post about Greece being bailed out by the… ICC? Or about the similarities between cricket and the subprime crisis? There’s ton more where this came from, and as someone who tries to figure out ways to make learning economics fun, exciting and is therefore always looking for “hooks”, Mostly Economics has been a rare ol’s treat.

The nature of sharing interesting links and information online has changed over time. Blogs have been replaced with Facebook updates, and those eventually gave way to tweets. And (I’m writing this on the 19th of December, at 10.30 pm, India time, so who knows what all has taken place by the time you read this) once Elon is done with Twitter, something else may come along. But the cantankerous old uncle in me cracks a rare ol’ smile at the sight of a carfeully curated, regularly updated blog that has been plugging away, year after year at a singular task – to help all of us understand the factors that influence growth in the world in which we live.

And so bad English or not, I’ll reiterate the sentiment – the blog is mostly awesome, save for when it is awesomer.

Amol, thank you!

Blogging Everyday

I try to blog everyday, and as some of my regular readers might know, I don’t always succeed.

Why do I try to blog everyday?

Many reasons, but here are the top three. First, it helps makes concepts clear in my mind. Second, it instils a sense of discipline. Call it rountine, and I might even accept that it has become an addiction, but in this case, I would say it is entirely worth it. And third, my blog has become my note-taking tool. Increasingly, I end up searching my own blogposts regarding concepts I’m sure I’ve come across before. If it was important to me, I am sure I must have written about it.

There are other advantages – I’ve gotten work as a consequence of writing here, I’ve made friends and I’ve met lots of very interesting people. To cut a long story short, there are many, many advantages and virtually no downsides. You don’t get to be as lazy as you’d like to be, it is true, but people tell me that’s a good thing. Who knows, they may well be right.

There are two people I look up to when it comes to blogging every single day, come rain or shine. The name of one of them is likely to be familiar to many of you – Tyler Cowen, of course.

The other is Seth Godin.

I don’t know for how long now, but Seth has been blogging for easily more than fifteen years at least. And when I say he has been blogging for fifteen years, I mean that he has been blogging every single day for those fifteen years (and probably more). I could look up the exact number, but the point in this case ins’t the statistic itself, it is admiration for being able to keep at it for so long. It’s a habit I admire and envy, and it is a habit I aspire to. And like Jessica Hagy the other day, so also with this post. It is a tribute of sorts, and also a way to introduce some of you to bloggers who I read without fail.

Seth has over the years introduced me to authors, introduced me to concepts, taught me fun ways of thinking about stuff, made me rethink simple math, and above all – and I’ll never be able to thank him enough for this – introduced me to good bread (and do read other posts he has written in honor of Poilane). There’s so much more on his blog that trying to create a list is pointless – as with Jessica’s blog, so also with Seth’s, but even more so. Dip in, and see what catches your fancy.

Above all, though, Seth has taught me three things. He has taught me that everything that I do is marketing. Every single thing. Now, I can tell you that this means I’m not a very good marketer, but the good news is that I have one more reason to try and be better at everything I do. But he also has taught me that marketing isn’t a fad, a gimmick or a thing to be sneered at. On the contrary, it is an indispensable skill.

Two, he has taught me to show up every single day. In fact, the phrase “show up” and the word “ship” I will forever associate with Seth. If you are confused about why a marketer is talking about ships, note that we’re talking about the verb, not the noun – and I’ll reiterate my invitation to dip into his blog. I ship a blogpost daily on this blog – or try to, at any rate, purely because I admire his (and Tyler’s) tenacity and gumption. Read what he had to say about this back in 2013, when he wrote his 5000th (yup, not a typo) post:

My biggest surprise? That more people aren’t doing this. Not just every college professor (particularly those in the humanities and business), but everyone hoping to shape opinions or spread ideas. Entrepreneurs. Senior VPs. People who work in non-profits. Frustrated poets and unknown musicians… Don’t do it because it’s your job, do it because you can.
The selfishness of the industrial age (scarcity being the thing we built demand upon, and the short-term exchange of value being the measurement) has led many people to question the value of giving away content, daily, for a decade or more. And yet… I’ve never once met a successful blogger who questioned the personal value of what she did.

https://seths.blog/2013/06/the-5000th-post/

(And as an economist, that second paragraph is so much food for thought!)

And finally, he’s taught me to think daily. This is related to the second point, but this is important enough to be a point all on its own. You see, writing daily becomes a habit if you do it long enough. But even more importantly, you realize very quickly that writing something daily also means having to think daily. And you’d be surprised at how good we all are at going though the day without thinking. If you don’t know what I mean, I invite you to try and write daily.

Thank you for leading by example, Seth, and for showing up everyday.

Context Matters

A couple of days ago, I was able to catch snippets of the India Bangladesh Test match.

The venue where the match was being played had a pitch that tended to become slower and more docile over time, and there was also a rather interesting statistic about how West Indies had chased down a rather imposing target on the fifth day, which inlcuded a double century scored on the fifth day.

They then showed a statistic about how only five wickets, on average, had fallen on the fifth day in all test matches played at the venue thus far. That only reinforces the idea that the pitch becomes slower over time.

But then one of the commentators said something that I found fascinating. It should be noted, he said, that maybe there were only five wickets remaining in the fourth innings by the time the fifth day started! That is, the reason Day 5 records the fall of only five wickets may either be due to

a) The pitch becoming slower over time

b) The match having played out in a way that only five wickets were remaining by the time the fifth day started.

And the lesson for those of us who are students of statistics is that before jumping to conclusions given the data we’re looking at, ask about the context first. And it is surprising how often we forget to do this!

For years, I used to ask students in my statistics classes why this chart looks the way it does:

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=IN&q=cat

Why, I would ask them, do Indians tend to search for cats towards the end of the year? And I would get lots of interesting responses. Maybe Indians gift cats towards the end of the year, some would say. Maybe cats fall ill in India towards the end of the year? Maybe there’s a festival involving cats in some parts of the country?

The clue lies in the fact that this spike in the search for “cat” towards the end of the year did not happen post 2010 or so. And the answer lies in the fact that the entrance exam for IIM’s changed around that time. But that’s the point, of course, that’s common to this exercise and the test match in Bangladesh. Data matters, sure, but the context of the data matters even more.

And finally, this example is perhaps the most famous of them all – but do read the rest of the article too. And always remember – the story behind the data is at least as important as the story that you will be able to tell by analyzing the data!

The Central Limit Theorem with StatQuest

I’ve been explaining what the Central Limit Theorem is (and why it matters) a fair few times these past few weeks, and this video is a good summary. But also, please take a look at the other videos on this channel as well!

Longreads’ Best of 2022

In Praise of Jessica Hagy

This is the latest post from Jessica Hagy, and I’m really hoping you’re asking “Who she?”, because that’s what today’s post is all about.

As we come to the end of the year, I want to spend some time thinking about what I learnt (and what I didn’t learn) this year, and utilize my regrets from this year to try and make the next one better. But I also want to try and spend some time reflecting on a rather niche topic. Blogs that I have enjoyed reading for many, many years – and those that I would like to share with you.

I may come across as being ever so slightly biased, given that you are reading this on my blog, but I do wish more people would blog. I’ve touched upon this topic many times in the past, and will no doubt talk about it in the future as well. But at the risk of sounding like a broken record, here goes: creating something on a daily basis becomes a superpower over time.

And especially relevant to today’s post is the choice of verb in the last part of that last sentence: creating. A blog need not be about writing everyday, and Jessica’s isn’t. But this, counterintuitively, is what makes it so very powerful.

Jessica draws ideas.

I cannot tell you how much I envy her ability to do this. I prefer to think in words (if that makes any sense). If somebody asks me to explain something, I much prefer to think and speak using words and sentences, and I think I am reasonably good at coming up with an analogy that helps people understand the point I am trying to make. Or given that I teach for a living, I hope that is the case!

But Jessica? She explains ideas by drawing ’em.

If you’re looking for an example, ask yourself how I might explain the concept of, say, complements and substitutes. I might write an explainer post, or I might ask you to think about one of my all-time favorite metaphors (created by Steve Jobs), or I might long and tedious ruminations on AI and human creativity.

Jessica? She believes in the adage that a picture is worth a thousand words:

https://thisisindexed.com/2022/12/diversify-or-cannibalize/

If you think of yourself and AI as having duplicate skills, there is going to be competition between you and the AI. But if you can think of yourself and AI as having complementary skills, you are likely to make a powerful team. I have said the exact same thing that she did (in the context of my example), but there is no question about the fact that she said it much more pithily, and therefore better.

How to express an idea so that it reasonates? How to express an idea so that its applicability becomes clear within a domain? How to express an idea so that people understand that it is applicable across domains? These are questions I think about literally all the time as a teacher, and as with everybody else in this profession, I don’t always get the right answer while teaching.

All the more reason to admire folks who do get the answers to these questions, and have been doing so for much more than a decade(!). Yup, that’s right – Jessica’s blog has been around for a very long time, and scrolling down her seemingly infinte blogposts with a cup of coffee for company (or, if you like, as a complement) is a wonderful way to spend an hour or ten. Llook out for her entry from the 5th of December 2022 if you plan to do this today, and elt me know if you liked it as much as I did.

Jessica has books out, including one that I’m especially looking forward to reading, called The Art of War Visualized. Another of her books is an extension of a lovely little series of sketches that she drew for Forbes, called How to be Interesting. You could, in fact, think of this post as an application of her second drawing/point in that series.

This is her info page, this is the About page from her blog, this is her Twitter account, and this is her Wikipedia entry. Finally, this is her Amazon author page.

If you have found out about her work through this post, I hope you consider subscribing to her work, and I hope you enjoy learning from it as much I have. And I hope you join in me in thanking her for making the world that little bit clearer, and therefore better.

Thank you!

Consoles, Competition and Comprehension

If you are studying microeconomics, whether in undergrad or postgrad courses, it can sometimes get a little too theoretical. Or that, at any rate, is how I used to feel about the more abstruse parts of advanced micro. And while memorizing the millionth derivation in order to regurgitate it in an examination, I would often wonder if there was any relevance of what I was attempting to study to the real world outside.

If you, today, as a student of micro share this opinion, let me ask you this: are you interested in video games? Are you living in fond hope that a PS5 will land up in your living room? Or are you figuring out ways to get XBox Pass?

If the answer to any of these questions is yes, I’m guessing that you like playing video games. Do you know how the industry started? Do you know what the Gang of Four was all about? Do you know how different business models in the industry originated? How they evolved and why, and with what consequences? Had you heard about the Great Video Game Crash of 1983? I knew a little bit (but not a lot) about the answers to all of these questions, save for the last.

But the reason I bring this up is because Ben Thompson has an exellent essay out on the evolution of the gaming industry, with a lovely recap of all of what happened, and why. You’ll learn about vertical and horizontal integration, lock-ins, attempts to create monopolies, attempts at preserving monopoloies, about how business models had to change to account for changing strategies, changing technologies and changing aspirations on part of creators, consumers and corporations. It’s head-spinning stuff!

It begins with a description of the world’s first video game (OXO, 1952, in case you were wondering) and ends with how the FTC (perhaps) doth take things too far with the Activision acquisition by Microsoft. And in the interim, it touches upon names that will evoke nostalgia among folks of a certain vintage, and curiosity among folks of a more recent vintage.

If you are a student struggling with micro but happen to love video games, this essay might motivate you to read more about the evolution of the video game industry, and understand micro better in the process.

If you are a teacher struggling with helping students fall in love with micro, consider reading and using this essay.

And a meta lesson: a great way to learn about microeconomics is to pick your industry of choice, and ask how it has evolved over time, and why. The answers to these questions is a great way to become a better student of economics.

If you’re looking for suggestions in this regard: music, television, movies, gaming, publishing, hospitality and sports (football, cricket and tennis would be great examples). And if I may offer one piece of contrarian and possibly heretical advice – begin with the industry and work your way to the textbook, rather than the other way around.

Two Paths

Scenario A:

You are a student. You are currently an undergraduate student, majoring in field of study X. Having spent near enough three years studying courses in field of study X, you have now realized that this is not your calling in life.

You now wish to study abroad, but in a different field of study, say Y.

In order to get into a “good” university in field of study Y, you need to show that you have acquired some sort of expertise in that field of study. How does one show this? Can we show that you have worked in an organization that specializes in the applications of that field of study? Can we show that you have attended conferences related to that subject? Can we show that you have published papers, written blogs about that subject? Can we show that you have interned with a professor whose specialization is that field of study?

How do we build a resume that shows you to be passionate about that particular field of study?

Scenario B:

You are a student. You are currently an undergraduate student, majoring in field of study X. Having spent near enough three years studying courses in field of study X, you have now realized that this is not your calling in life.

You now wish learn more about something else – a different field of study, say Y.

You read some articles about that field of study online. While reading about these articles, you start to communicate with some of the leading practitioners in this field of study. Maybe you reach out to them via LinkedIn, maybe you meet them at a conference that you learnt about because of your research online. Maybe you write a series of blogs as you read these articles, and the magic of the internet means that some people reach out to you to talk about what you’ve written. Maybe you create Instagram Reels about your learning. Maybe you help somebody create a podcast about it. Maybe you start a YouTube channel about it. You spend three months, maybe six months, maybe a year learning more about field of study Y. You have some projects, some work experience, some collaborators, some followers associated with this new passion of yours.

Given all this, which university should you pick to learn more about this field?

Which approach is better?

Which approach are you more likely to advocate?

Which approach are you likely to pursue yourself?

What does karmanyevaadhikaraste mean?

Complements, Substitutes, AI and the Way Forward

One of the most popular blogposts on this blog is one that I wrote over five years ago: a simple explainer post about complements and substitutes.

It’s part of the arsenal of an economist, an understanding of the concept of substitutes and complements, and it is useful in many surprising and unexpected ways. But never has its use been as important as it is in understanding the importance, the threat and the advantages of AI. A video that I have often linked to in the past, and will probably link to many times again helps make this point clear:

When Steve Jobs says computers are like bicycles for the mind, he is saying that our mind becomes more powerful when we work with computers, rather than instead of them (substitutes) or infinitely worse, without them (almost all examinations conducted in higher education in India today).

And if you want to think about your career in this brave new world of ours, you really should be thinking about working with computers. Not against, or without. As it turns out, this is surprisingly hard to do for most of us. I invite you to walk into a higher education institute of your choice and listen to professors talk about how many students are copying during examinations. Nobody seems to ask why it is right and appropriate to check how good students are at doing work without computers. Why is this a skill that we’re building for folks who will be working in the 21st century?

And if you are learning how to work “effectively” without a computer – and again, that is what we train you for when we make you write three hour pen-and-paper examinations in higher education – you are destroying your ability to earn more in the future.

I’m being quite serious.

The key questions will be: Are you good at working with intelligent machines or not? Are your skills a complement to the skills of the computer, or is the computer doing better without you? Worst of all, are you competing against the computer?

Cowen, Tyler. Average is over: Powering America beyond the age of the great stagnation. Penguin, 2013.

A lot of people are scared about job losses as a consequence of the rapid development of AI, and with good reason. AI can today do quite a few jobs better than humans can, and more than its current capabilities, what keeps a lot of us up at night is the rate of improvement. Not only is AI very good already, but it is noticeably better than it was last year. And for the pessimists among us, the scarier part is that not only will AI be even better next year, but the rate of improvement will also improve. That is, the improvement in AI’s abilities will not only be more in 2023 compared to 2022, but the difference between 2023 and 2022 will be higher than was the difference in 2022 compared to 2021. And that will be true(er) for 2025, and for 2026 and, well, there’s no telling where we’re headed.

But this is exactly why studying economics helps! Because both Steve Jobs and Tyler Cowen are, in effect, saying the same thing: so long as you plan your career by using computers/AI as a complement, you’re going to be just fine. If you think of your job as being substitutable – or if your job is, or will be, substitutable by a computer – well then, yes, you do have problems.

An underappreciated point is the inherent dynamism of this problem. While your job may not yet be a substitute for AI, that is no reason to assume that it will not be substitutable forever:


For example: is Coursera for Campus a complement to my teaching or a substitute for it? There are many factors that will decide the answer to this question, including quality, price and convenience among others, and complementarity today may well end up being substitutability tomorrow. If this isn’t clear, think about it this way: cars and drivers were complementary goods for decades, but today, is a self-driving car a complement or a substitute where a driver is concerned?

https://atomic-temporary-112243906.wpcomstaging.com/2022/04/18/supply-and-demand-complements-and-substitutes-and-dalle-e-2/

But even so, I find myself being more optimistic about AI, and how it can make us more productive. I haven’t come across a better explainer than the one that Ethan Mollick wrote about in a lovely post called Four Paths to the Revelation:

I think the world is divided into two types of people: those obsessed with what creative AI means for their work & future and those who haven’t really tried creative AI yet. To be clear, a lot of people in the second category have technically tried AI systems and thought they were amusing, but not useful. It is easy to be decieved, because we naturally tend try out AI in a way that highlights their weaknesses, not their strengths.
My goal in this post is to give you four experiments you can do, in less than 10 minutes each, with the free ChatGPT, in order to understand why you should care about it.

https://oneusefulthing.substack.com/p/four-paths-to-the-revelation

All four examples in this post are fantastic, but the third one is particularly relevant here. Ethan Mollick walks us through how AI can:

  1. Give you ideas about what kind of business you might be able to set up given your skills
  2. Refines a particular idea that you would like to explore in greater detail
  3. Gives you next steps in terms of actualyl taking that idea forward
  4. And even writes out a letter that you might want to send out to potential business collaboarators

His earlier posts on his blog also help you understand how he himself is using ChatGPT3 in his daily workflow. He is a professor, and he helps you understand what a “mechanical” professor might be able to do

To demonstrate why I think this is the case, I wanted to see how much of my work an AI could do right now. And I think the results will surprise you. While not nearly as good as a human professor at any task (please note, school administrators), and with some clear weaknesses, it can do a shocking amount right now. But, rather than be scared of AI, we should think about how these systems provide us an opportunity to help extend our own capabilities

https://oneusefulthing.substack.com/p/the-mechanical-professor (emphasis added)

Note the same idea being used here – it really is all about compementarity and substitutability.

AI can already create a syllabus and refine it; it can create an assignment and refine it; it can create a rubric for this assignment; it can create lecture notes; and it can write a rap song about a business management concept to make the content more interesting for students. I loathe the time spent in creating documentation around education (every single teacher does) and it would take me a long time to come up with even a halfway possible rap song about substitutes and complements.

That last statement is no longer true: it took me twenty seconds.

Here are examples from outside the field of academia:

The question to ask isn’t “how long before I’m replaced?. The question to ask is “what can I do with the time that AI has saved me?”. And the answer to that question should show that you are thinking deeply about how you can use (and continue to use!) AI as a useful complement.

If you don’t think about this, then yes, I do think that you and your job are in trouble. Get thinking!

My kind of exam

Irwin Collier’s excellent, excellent blog had a post recently that I wish I could assign as homework to everybody studying economics today (myself included).

The post is about the semester end examination for a course called “Methods of Economic Investigation”. Said exmaination for said course took place exactly one hundred and twenty years ago (yup, not a typo). While the blog post contains a couple of other very interesting points, I want to focus on just the examination:

https://www.irwincollier.com/harvard-final-exam-for-graduate-economics-course-on-methods-carver-1902/

If you are a student of economics, no matter your level of specialization, no matter your major, and no matter your love for datasets, I’d strongly urge you to try and write a response to any one of these questions. Feel free to take your pick of the lot, feel free to take your time, and we’re civilized folks around here – of course you can make use of the internet while you write your essay. Take a month to write a single answer, if you like, and more, if you prefer. Speak to your professors, your batchmates, your mentors about your topic, read widely about the topic based on these conversations, and keep polishing your essay as you go along.

Better still, there is no need to submit it anywhere, nor is there a need to put it up for review. Treat it as a way to get better at the study of economics.

Best of all, ask yourself what other questions you can add to this list to make your study of economics even richer. A particularly fun way to get started might be to ask GPT3 to answer one of these questions, and treat its response as a starting point for your own essay. Maybe critique the AI’s suggestion? Or maybe build upon it? Reject it out of hand, perhaps, and explain why?

Here’s its response to the fourth question, for example:

An economic law is a general principle that describes the behavior of economic agents, such as individuals and firms, in response to certain economic conditions. Economic laws are similar to scientific laws in that they are based on empirical evidence and describe a regular pattern of behavior that is observed in the real world. However, unlike scientific laws, which are typically based on physical phenomena, economic laws are based on the behavior of human beings.
One of the key characteristics of an economic law is that it is universal. This means that it applies to all economic agents, regardless of their individual characteristics or circumstances. For example, the law of supply and demand is a universal economic law that applies to all markets. This law states that, all other things being equal, the price of a good or service will rise when demand for it increases and will fall when demand decreases. This is a regular pattern of behavior that is observed in all markets and is not influenced by the individual characteristics of buyers and sellers.
Another characteristic of an economic law is that it is based on economic principles. These principles are general theories or ideas that are used to explain economic behavior. For example, the principle of utility is the idea that people derive satisfaction or pleasure from the consumption of goods and services. This principle is used to explain why people make certain choices in the marketplace, such as why they are willing to pay more for a luxury item than a basic necessity.
In conclusion, an economic law is a universal principle that describes the behavior of economic agents in response to certain economic conditions. It is based on empirical evidence and economic principles, and is used to explain regular patterns of behavior in the economy.

https://chat.openai.com/chat (My very first AI citation, yay!)

Here are five questions you might want to think about after having read this “essay”:

  1. Is there a possibility that the behavior of economic agents can violate these general principles? If yes, under what circumstances, and why? If not, why not?
  2. How does your answer impact the first sentence in the second paragraph? What does it say about the world we live in, and what does it say about the assumptions we need to make about such economic laws?
  3. Is the law of demand truly universal? Can you think of exceptions? Are these exceptions fully explained within the domain of economics, or do we need to expand our field of study and enquiry? (Hint: if the only answer that pops into your head is “Giffen goods!”you need to read more widely outside of economics)
  4. If we have empirical evidence that a law is violated under certain conditions, does that mean the law is invalid? Should we update our beliefes about the power of the law, or should we ask about how realistic and practically replicable are the conditions under which the law was recorded as being violated?
  5. What is missing from this essay? What would you choose to include to make the essay better?

Have fun writing these answers out, and I do hope you will consider writing ’em!