Hell In Pennsylvania

The Paris Review writes up Centralia, Pennsylvania (h/t the Dish):

Centralia, Pennsylvania, is a town that barely exists. It is a blip of a place, almost indistinguishable from the endless forest flanking state road 61 in the rambling northeast quarter of the state. There are no hulking ruins—not even a sign that alerts you when the town begins or ends. Though the population of Centralia peaked in the 1960s at more than two thousand people, now fewer than ten live here. After the nineties, road maps and atlases began leaving it off their indexes; the post office revoked its zip code in 2002. The reason is simple: Centralia has been on fire for almost fifty years.

Former Miss Iceland Reportedly Collects Bulger Reward

LA Times:

A former Icelandic beauty queen and actress collected the $2-million reward for turning in Boston mob boss James "Whitey" Bulger and his longtime girlfriend to the FBI, the Boston Globe reported in its Sunday editions.
Anna Bjornsdottir, who was named Miss Iceland in 1974, intermittently lived in the Santa Monica neighborhood where she would somtimes encounter Bulger's longtime girlfriend, 60-year-old Catherine Greig, as she fed an abandoned tiger-striped tabby. Bulger, who is accused of killing 19 people, would stand nearby.
"It was this bond, formed over the cat, that proved the downfall of one of America’s most wanted men, South Boston gangster James “Whitey” Bulger, after 16 years on the run," according to the Globe article.

Bjornsdottir had known the couple as Charlie and Carol Gasko. But last summer, while she was at home in Iceland, the Globe said Bjornsdottir saw a CNN report about the FBI's multi-city publicity campaign to track down Bulger, 82, and she called the FBI.
Bjornsdottir recognized them immediately as the Gaskos, her former neighbors -- and the cat's benefactors -- an ocean away on Third Street.

Interesting.  There is nothing dull about the Whitey Bulger case, that's for sure.

IMF Stress Tests A China Slowdown

At MacroBusiness, what to expect for Australia (h/t Yves Smith):

Scenario two is a more severe a one year slowdown in Chinese growth arising from a real estate bust:

…we assume a decline in investment drives a slowdown in China, possibly because of problems in the real estate market or some financial market disturbances.
11. Australia suffers a terms of trade shock. The size of the impact, however, depends significantly on the degree of policy flexibility elsewhere.

• With limited policy flexibility elsewhere, Australia’s terms of trade falls by about 10 percent in the first year, relative to baseline. The impact of the fall in global commodity prices on the terms of trade is partly offset by a fall in the price of commodity imports, including oil. With full policy flexibility in advanced countries, the fall in Australia’s terms of trade would be cut by two-thirds.
• Real GDP falls by about ¾ percent relative to baseline, because of lower demand from China and the negative impact of the Chinese shock on global demand. However, with policy flexibility in advanced countries the fall would be less than ¼ percent. The reduction in commodity prices amplifies the negative impact on nominal incomes, with nominal GDP falling by 2½ percent in the case of limited policy flexibility (1½ percent with full policy flexibility).
• Government revenue in Australia falls directly, through a decline in resource taxes and company income taxes, and indirectly
• through lower economic activity. We assume public expenditure is reduced gradually to balance the budget. As a result, transitory deficits add to public net debt which rises by about 3 percentage points of GDP over two years.

12. A depreciation of the Australian dollar helps buffer the shock, as do cuts in the policy interest rate. The exchange rate depreciation redirects exports to non-commodities and reduces imports. The contribution of net exports to GDP growth in real terms improves. However, the depreciation is not strong enough to fully offset the impact of lower commodity prices on the nominal trade balance, which worsens by about 1½ percent of GDP. Because about half of private earnings from commodities accrue to foreign shareholders, the drop in the current account balance is smaller than the decline in the trade balance.

The Dawn Of The American League

October 11, 1899:

 In a meeting in Chicago on October 11, 1899, the Western League renamed itself the American League.

The members of the Western League from 1894 to 1900:

Detroit Tigers (only WL charter member in its original city)
Sioux City Cornhuskers → St. Paul Saints, 1895 → Chicago White Stockings, 1900   (renamed Chicago White Sox, 1903)
Milwaukee Brewers → St. Louis Browns, 1902 → Baltimore Orioles, 1954
Grand Rapids Rustlers → Cleveland Blues, 1900 (renamed Cleveland Broncos, 1902, Cleveland Naps, 1903, and Cleveland Indians, 1915)
Had transferred to St. Joseph, Missouri and Omaha, Nebraska in 1898 before returning to Michigan in 1899.
Kansas City Blues → Washington Senators, 1900 → Minnesota Twins, 1961
Toledo White Stockings → Columbus Buckeyes, 1896 → replaced by Buffalo, 1899
         Buffalo Bisons, 1899 → dropped for newly organized Boston Red Sox, 1901
Minneapolis Millers → dropped 1901
Indianapolis Indians → dropped 1901

Baltimore (moved to New York in 1903 and later became the Yankees), Philadelphia and Boston were added in 1901.

Brain Structure And Political Belief

At Discover Magazine, via Ritholtz:

Can neuroscience provide evidence for a liberal and conservative thinking style?
It may seem like a stretch to say that one could predict whether you lean left or right by looking at a brain scan—no questions asked, no opinions voiced—purely based on your neuroanatomy. However, this might not be too far from reality—at least insofar as predicting thinking style, which has been shown to be somewhat distinct based on party association.
Does brain structure determine your beliefs, or do your beliefs change your brain structure? What about those who switch parties at some point? How do they fit in to this model? We’ll be discussing all of this. It’s a complicated issue with lots of variables in play, so we’re going to take a pretty deep look into this topic from all angles, so we can draw the most accurate conclusions.

It is a pretty interesting discussion, mainly because the brain is so fascinating.  On a seperate brain story, I heard a great, apparently old Radiolab story on the connections of the brain to the body this weekend.  Check it out.

Harvest Update

We're making headway with harvest.  We're just under 50% done with soybeans, and 25% done with corn and the winter wheat is sown.  Yields picked up as we started running some of our best ground, but the corn is topping out around 160 bu/acre, and the beans have maxed so far around 45.  Another week and a half of the nice weather we've been getting, and we'll only be waiting on the very late stuff and the double crop beans.

Happy Columbus Day / Canadian Thanksgiving Day

Happy Columbus Day to our nation's bankers and Italian-Americans.  Happy Thanksgiving to our neighbors to the north.  Are there traditional CFL games on the Canadian version of the holiday? Oh, wait, here's the answer:

Similar to the United States, traditions such as parades and football can be a part of Canadian Thanksgiving. The Kitchener-Waterloo Oktoberfest parade is the most widely known Canadian Thanksgiving Day parade and is broadcast nationwide on CTV. The Canadian Football League holds a nationally televised doubleheader known as the "Thanksgiving Day Classic". It is one of two weeks in which the league plays on Monday afternoons, the other being the Labour Day Classic. Unlike the Labour Day games, the teams that play on the Thanksgiving Day Classic vary each year.

I guess that answers that.

The Milky Way

From the Big Picture:

I Smell A Bubble

Dayton Daily News:

Forget the gold rush. The most valuable material in the land right now might be the land itself.

While gold prices have retreated after surging to near-record highs, the value of farmland continues to climb at a brisk clip, driven by surging prices for agricultural commodities and a dearth of available property.

In Ohio, the price of farm real estate — which includes all land and buildings used for agriculture production — has shot up 7.5 percent from 2010 to an average of $4,300 per acre, the U.S. Department of Agriculture recently reported.

That was higher than the national average of $2,350 per acre, up 6.8 percent from last year, according to the report.

The boost in cropland prices alone was even greater, jumping 8.6 percent to $4,400 in year-over-year comparison.

It’s a trend that’s been gaining momentum for several years as U.S. farmers have planted more crops in 2007 and 2010 than any other year in the past 60 years, based on government data.

Why do I think it is a bubble?  All the talk about how it is a great deal:

Division III Roundup

#2 Mount Union walloped Marietta 62-0
#3 St. Thomas got by Augsburg 17-0
#8 Thomas More beat Grove City 37-7
#9 Bethel defeated St. John's 41-20
#14 Wittenberg lost to Huntingdon 38-20
Maine Maritime got by Westfield State in double overtime, 36-34
John Carroll defeated Wilmington, 44-7
and Defiance beat Mt. St. Joseph 23-13.

The rest of the scores are here.