From: Hildegaard Beauregard [ljlife@yahoo.com]
Sent: Saturday, June 08, 2002 5:55 PM
Subject: Re: Absenteeism

> England rejoices after edging Argentina 
> The hand of God was nowhere to be found. Instead,
> David Beckham scored in
> the 44th minute from the penalty spot, and David
> Seaman and England
> blanked Argentina 1-0 for its first win over the
> South American side
> since 1966. The Center for Economic Research said
> employee absenteeism
> during the match would cost England $1 billion in
> lost output and
> productivity. 

I think the Center for Economic Research is being a
bit limited in their scope, if not just biased or
narrow-minded. I didn't read the whole article, so I
don't know, is this Center American or British? It
seems more difficult to understand why a British
organization would want to express the event this way.
An American organization would have the stupid
American prejudice against soccer, the interest in
characterizing it negatively. But in the U.K., why
even bother to be concerned with such a thing? To
ignore the unquantifiable value (good or bad) of such
an event, even methodologically or heuristically, by
making such an assessment is the obvious fallacy. But
even in terms of "economic" research (or, what is
always concealed by such terms, "interest"), what
about all the other factors, such as the money spent
on beer and food during that same time, and then all
the sales of products that will result, England
jerseys and T-shirts and scarfs and pennants and mugs
and doodads of all kinds? How will they measure all
the economic ripples, should they choose to even
consider them?

Senegal's head of government announced a national
holiday the day after Senegal beat France. He said
that children could not be expected to have their
minds on their studies. That's the practical aspect,
even if the government itself weren't also Senegalese
humans who shared in the enjoyment and elation of the
match.

To me it's absurd that something like that was even
reported along with the event, before you get to the
absurd exclusivity of the "research." (I'm not
precluding the cute or curiosity aspect of it, but
with it's very had to believe the people responsible
for the estimate aren't seriously concerned,
interested, with such calculations, "lost output and
productivity," indeed.)