[MSJ] - Day 18: Beach Boys

Adam, Emma and me on the way to the point

As promised yesterday, I started the day off with a trip to the gym with a couple friends to work off the Giordano's. I also spent some time working on the problem set with my group mates. One of the newer topics that is covered by the problem set is the idea of externalities, which are social costs and benefits. The example that was used in class was the idea of a facory. The factory weighs its costs and revenues when figuring out how much to produce, but the social cost that it doesn't factor in is how much it pollutes. Sometimes the government can implement policies to force companies to internalize these costs. One example is the cap and trade system for CO2 emissions in the US. The system allows companies to pollute to a certain extent, and companies that want to pollute more can buy 'CO2 tokens' from companies that don't reach their quotas. This forces companies to account for pollution in their profit calculations.

The large waves that prevented us from swimming

In the afternoon, I went on a house trip led by our RAs, Mercedes and Xav, with some other people from our house and Adam, who has become an honorary Rogers House member. I went to Target before we left to buy a frisbee, which ended up being a great move. We walked along 55th street to the point on Lake Michigan, which has a nice park and is close to a beach. Unfortunately, due to winds and strong rip currents, we couldn't swim, but we still had a lot of fun. We threw the frisbee around and enjoyed views of the coast.

I know I might have mentioned this in a previous post, but while walking back from the beach I realized that I should do more with friends of mine from middle school who I haven't seen in a while. We had a great time, and it's nice to be able to go to the beach and have it be warmer than 68°.

When I got back I finished the econ problem sets with my group, and now I am finishing this blog before going to bed earlier for class tomorrow.

Here are the pictures from yesterday shot on a camera Don would approve of:

A nice lady took a picture of all of us

The Bean!

I look like I'm floating