I was very impressed with President Obama tonight. His speech was the same-old same-old and didn’t provide  much of anything new for me. But the Q&A period was stellar.

There were a few weak points, mostly on the economy. When asked if he regretted saying that if the stimulus bill didn’t pass we would enter a recession from which we would never recover, he dodged the issue and said that he was only agreeing with all economists. My B.S. detector went off right then. He was NOT agreeing with all economists. When he said what he said last week, he was trying to scare Congress into passing something. He got called out on it and now he’s pretending he never said it. He did that quite frequently on the campaign trail – he’d say A, then say the opposite of A the next day, then when called on it say that he’s been consistent all along. Note: when Obama starts a sentence with “Let me be clear…” it means “Forget anything I may have said before, and please listen to what I’m saying right now.”

When asked by Jake Tapper of ABC News what metric we should look at to determine whether the stimulus plan is working (the stock market, unemployment rates, etc.), he gave a very vague answer at first. If I were him, I would probably have done the same. If he cites specific targets that we can look at to determine if he is successful, then we can determine by those same targets if he is unsuccessful. By keeping things vague, we’ll apparently never know if it worked or not. By saying that we’re plunging towards the abyss, apparently if the world doesn’t collapse, the stimulus plan can be deemed by all to be a success. Ultimately, he said his main focus was to save or create 3-4 million jobs, and that’s how we should measure the success of the plan. But how do you measure a job that was never lost? And at the end he just couldn’t resist himself, and brought up that whole “spending is stimulus” argument; it would have been nice to see a reporter ask him if all spending was equally stimulative, forcing him to admit that actually it isn’t.

In terms of delivery, my only fault is that he was too long on some of his answers. In over 45 minutes, he only took 13 questions, and spent about 10 minute on the first one. He needs to work on getting to the point quicker — after a while he can start to repeat himself.

Now the strong points. I was thoroughly impressed by his foreign policy answers. His response about Iran was perfect. He said that they have rights as a nation, but with rights come responsibilities. And he said that Iran needs to know that things are going to be different from us from now on, so they need to be prepared to do things differently also, so that we can come to some agreeable solution to the nuclear issue. I think that’s about as good as an answer can get. His knowledge of the problems in Afghanistan was great. And he acknowledged that Iraq is improving and we are close to finishing this war, something the media can’t seem to write a story about.

His answer on education was brilliant. He chastised Democrats who seem to think that the only answer is to throw more money at a problem, never asking for any accountability from teachers or their unions. Then he turned his focus on conservatives who say that money doesn’t seem to solve the problem so we should scrap public education altogether. Neither of those approaches is correct. He called for increased funding, improved educational infrastructure, increased teacher salaries, and increased accountability of both teachers and schools. How can you rationally argue against a plan like that? (I would just add that we should build schools where they are needed, not in districts that already have unused buildings, like Milwaukee, which was (is?) supposed to get funding in the stimulus bill.)

He needs to do press conferences like this more often. With Republicans and Democrats bickering back and forth in Washington, he comes in and cuts right to the heart of the issue with clarity and reason in a way that the public can understand. I don’t agree with a lot of his positions on issues, but I can at least see his perspective as reasonable the way he explains it. His conference tonight reminded me why so many believed in him enough to elect him. If he does it more often, Congressional leaders will have to start getting something done. If not, they’ll just look foolish compared to him, as if he’s the only adult in a room full of argumentative children.

All in all, I have to give him an A-. If his speech had been better, it would have been an A. If he had been a little more honest on the economy, it would have been an A. I was waffling between a B+ and an A-, but I’ll give him the A- because of his grasp of all the issues discussed. And it was definitely refreshing to listen to a President who seems to know what he is saying…

P.S. I told you I could be fair, Kevin.

That’s the new slogan for MTV’s Sunday night line-up. As a slogan, it’s worse than Must See TV in my opinion, but I watched two of the programs last night and I’ll watch them next week too.

First was Nitro Circus, a stunt show (produced in part by Johnny Knoxville and Jeff Tremaine, both of Jackass fame) with Travis Pastrana and some of his friends. If you don’t know who Travis Pastrana is, he’s a freestyle BMX-er who was the first to pull a double-backflip on a motorcycle, and a few other tricks as well. If I did half of the things that kid does in just the first episode of this show, my mom would have a heart attack. Jumping out of a plane with no parachute. Doing a backflip over a 75-foot span on a pink big wheel. The stunts are awesome and I don’t know how the people on the show aren’t all in the hospital as we speak. Not nearly as much crude humor or nudity as Jackass had, and the stunts are even more physically challenging and death-defying. It’s definitely an adrenaline rush. It has you wishing you were there so you could try it too, until someone rides a motorcycle 30 feet in the air and falls on his back — then you’re glad you’re just watching someone else do it.

Next up is Rob Dyrdek’s Fantasy Factory. I’ll admit it right now: I have a giant man-crush on Rob Dyrdek. I want to be his best friend so I can hang out with him. I’m pretty sure I’d trade in all my friends right now if it bought me a friendship with Rob. The guy is a multi-millionaire and for all intents and purposes his full-time job is having fun. For those of you who loved Rob and Big, you’ll love this one too. Christopher “Big Black” Boykins is gone now (I saw him serving as a bodyguard for a UFC athlete a few months back so apparently he really does do security). Meaty is still there. And there’s a new puppy named Beefy. I don’t even want to tell you what happened in the first episode because not knowing what’s going to happen is part of what makes the show so entertaining. You can’t watch the show and not wish you worked at the Fantasy Factory. I wonder if they need an economist…

I haven’t watched the other two programs but when I do, I’ll let you know.

Here’s my take on the octuplet mom. It’s actually not about her as much as it is about how a woman should decide how many embryos to have implanted. Now, I don’t know the science enough to know exactly how much the probability of having one viable embryo increases when the doctor implants, say, 3 embryos instead of 2. If I did, I could do some hard numbers and actually determine the optimal number of embryos given a family’s desire for a specific number of children and their financial resources. What I do know is that the reason people give for implanting a few extra embryos is this: IVF procedures are expensive, and they don’t want to have to pay that cost again if the woman does not become pregnant.

But is it really cost-effective to add more embryos instead of possibly having to do another IVF cycle? Time reports that the cost is approximately $12,000 per cycle. Meanwhile, the average cost of raising a child to the age of 18 is about $320,000. If you ideally want one child and end up with two because you added a few extra embryos, your quest to save $12,000 by not having to have the procedure again has just cost you 26 times more money. True, there are some discount factors here (since the $320,000 is paid out over the span of 18 years), but at a decent interest rate of 5%, you’d have to put over $110,000 in the bank today to get that $320,000. (I know this isn’t a perfect analysis, but since I don’t have the data on the probability of an embryo implanted being viable, it’s not worth going through it.) So while implanting another embryo may increase the odds of having the amount of children you want, if it increases the odds of having one extra child you may not be able to afford by more than 10%, it’s not a smart thing to do.

Here’s my brilliant market solution: IVF insurance. Couples undergoing IVF treatment pay for insurance so that in the event they get too many children, they get annual payments that go towards the cost of raising the child. Insurance companies could get the information to determine the odds of having X number of children when Y embryos are implanted. But given that these couples tend to throw in extra embryos because they don’t want to pay $12,000 in another few months, I’m not sure they’d be willing to pay for the insurance.

Without IVF insurance, here is this economist’s suggestion: determine how many children you want, then determine how many children you can afford — and don’t implant more embryos than children you can afford. If you’re saying, “Duh!” you’re not alone. It seems pretty common sense to me. But judging by the case of Nadya Suleman, apparently common sense is not as common as one might hope.

P.S.  The average number of embryos transferred per cycle in 2005 was 2.4, down from 3.9 ten years before. As our science gets better, we don’t have to put all those eggs in one basket.