China recently moved to ban certain transactions involving online currency sold for real world goods. Gold farming is somewhat more well known in the U.S. This traditional Chinese activity, whereby young Chinese slave away in dank, smoky internet cafes nourished only by occasional injections of Ramen Noodles is done in order to obtain digital specie to sell to lazy gamers for real world cash. Here’s going exchange rates for major digital currencies.

Though widely criticized, the issues are somewhat complex. Gold farming does provide employment, to people that would (likely) not be going to school. This is also interesting – sort of corporate social responsibility, a la goldfarming: Sea Turtles 911, a non-profit in Hainan rescues sea turtles, funded primarily by: a gold farm that caters to foreign customers.

Now you can ebay all the WoW gold you want, guilt free.

While in your host country (with food poisoning) it’s important to find comforting holiday activities – like this bit of genius (‘The Eye of Argon‘). Apparently there’s a game – you take turns reading it out loud. When the person reading laughs aloud, they pass it one to the next person. You won’t get very far:

The weather beaten trail wound ahead into the dust racked climes of the baren land which dominates large portions of the Norgolian empire. Age worn hoof prints smothered by the sifting sands of time shone dully against the dust splattered crust of earth. The tireless sun cast its parching rays of incandescense from overhead, half way through its daily revolution. Small rodents scampered about, occupying themselves in the daily accomplishments of their dismal lives.

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There are basically a few pre-set conversation patterns I employ when interacting with locals of various age groups – knowing how to control a conversation allows one to easily fool locals into thinking that you’re a hyperfluent genius. For example, young Chinese men enjoy talking about video games (I’d wager that something like 70% of college students are wholly employed as Gold Farmers). While these conversations provide an opportunity to reminisce about the glory days, they also reinforce my oath never to dabble in goal-directed-behavior-usurping digital crack. Then at dinner one night a Chinese friend indicated that he had been playing ‘DotA’ until 5am, when asked why he looked so strung out. Upon hearing the sacred phrase (‘Doh-tuh‘) a Swede came running over (from quite a distance) and revealed that he also was addicted. I thereupon broke into a fit of childish glee.

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Partisan nonsense aside, Krugman’s Nobel Prize has been attributed to his important contributions to trade. GALACTIC trade. See the amazing “economics of interstellar trade.” Here’s the abstract:

This paper extends interplanetary trade theory to an interstellar setting. It is chiefly concerned with the following question: how should interest charges on goods in transit by computed when the goods travel at close to the speed of light? This is a problem because the time taken in transit will appear less to an observer traveling with the goods than to a stationary observer. A solution is derived from economic theory, and two useless but true theorems are proved.

Marc Reinganum also has a good piece that disproves the possibility of time travel, given the existence of positive interest rates. If time travel were in fact possible, he posits, all interest rates would fall to near zero as profit opportunities were snatched up by rapacious time-traveling hedge fund managers.

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“Well, you see, at the time we thought that by employing sophisticated non-linear-fractal portfolio theory and securitizing debt we could reduce institutional risk while simultaneously maximizing available liquidity, thus allowing for more efficient allocation of resources and capital.”

我们错了。
wǒ men cuò le

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