Morning updates [updated]

The Royal Canadian Mint still doesn't know what happened to $15 million in gold. Having exhausted plausible theories, like bad accounting, some now turn to more implausible heist accounts: folks dissolving gold in acid and thereby sneaking it past the metal detectors. The Mint assures us that their detectors can detect this kind of dissolved gold. But they still don't know what happened to the gold. I guess I'm not cut out for heists; last thing I'd think to do with gold is dissolve it in acid.

On folate in bread: the bootleggers and baptists story is seeming less plausible to me than that the reg is just part of some boilerplate treaty agreement on food regs, treaty language imported from elsewhere, and that nobody thought too hard about that bread is exceedingly unlikely to be traded across wide oceans. How hard would it be to strike out a line or two from a bigger treaty where there is no real trade issue though?
Update Some stories suggest the issue is flour, which would make more sense. Flour can travel by ship.

Assorted updates

• I'd previously noted the sad case of Janet Moses, drowned by her family in a ritual exorcism. The jury verdicts are now in: one uncle and four aunts found guilty of manslaughter; three others acquitted. All acquitted for the similar (but not fatal) treatment accorded to a 14 year old girl in the same incident. The TV news reports howls of outrage from the public galleries; the audience seems to have thought all should have been acquitted. We'll see what the Court deems appropriate for sentence.


• Another update on ticket scalping, from Slate:

  But even economists who think that tickets are badly mispriced can have problems with ticket scalping. In his Offsetting Behavior blog, economist Eric Crampton discusses another theory of scalping in a post that's probably the only essay in which you'll see an economist turn to an analysis by Trent Reznor of the Nine Inch Nails. Crampton argues that one of the reasons that scalping persists might be because venue operators find shady ways to share in the profits at the expense of fans and performers. Crampton notes that Reznor gives one very good piece of evidence that there's something shady going on here: Ticket sellers could end scalping tomorrow by just printing names on the tickets.

  Surely other economists have turned to Reznor before. No?


• I'd previously argued against two Canterbury philosophers in defense of sweatshops; here's a nice argument from a U San Diego philosopher in favour of sweatshops.

  Abstract:
  This paper argues that a sweatshop worker's choice to accept the conditions of his or her employment is morally significant, both as an exercise of autonomy and as an expression of preference. This fact establishes a moral claim against interference in the conditions of sweatshop labor by third parties such as governments or consumer boycott groups. It should also lead us to doubt those who call for MNEs to voluntarily improve working conditions, at least when their arguments are based on the claim that workers have a moral right to such improvement. These conclusions are defended against three objections: 1) that sweatshop workers' consent to the conditions of their labor is not fully voluntary, 2) that sweatshops' offer of additional labor options is part of an overall package that actually harms workers, 3) that even if sweatshop labor benefits workers, it is nevertheless wrongfully exploitative.