Newmark's Door

A few fleas and a few rats . . .

. . . really changed the heck out of our world. A brief reminder: "How the Black Death Changed the World".

More on solar power

I'm no expert but solar energy via "parabolic trough collectors" seems about as environmentally friendly as a power source can be--windmills tend to kill birds and hydropower makes life difficult for some fish--and economically attractive, if not now, soon.

Thin is in

"Meet the laptop you'll use in 2015".

This to that

YouConvertIt: "Free Online Media File Conversion".

Mass transit

One opinion on the "5 Best Mass Transit Systems in the World".

Note to light-rail advocates: note the common feature? Cities with high population density.

Obama's veep

To be clear: I'm not convinced Obama has the nomination wrapped up; I think the odds are about 50-50. And if he does get the nomination, I think he will offer the vice-presidential nomination to Hillary and that she'll accept. I've written before that a convention final night with the two of them onstage together will be irresistable.

But my wife, the U.S. government teacher, says it won't happen. So, my conditional prediction is then that Obama will pick a woman.

My wife again disagrees and asks, "Who is there?"

Here, for my wife and for the record, are two strong possibilities: first, Marcy Kaptur of Ohio--she's virtually ideal for Obama (2007 ADA rating, 95%)--and second, Allyson Schwartz of Pennsylvania.

As my late father would have said: "Remember where you heard it first."

(Here's a list of potential nominees by a columnist for McClatchy Newspapers. He has Hillary, and Sebelius might make sense, but Biden, Clark, and Webb are non-starters.)

Your federal tax dollars at work

Our federal government, via the Dept. of Education--remember when the Republicans were going to abolish it?--has awarded grants to "121 school systems nationwide" which "typically range from $500,000 to $1 million and last three years".

For what? To help public school teachers--the vast majority of whom are "certified" --simply do the jobs they supposedly are amply qualified for and are being paid to do.

"[T]o design development courses for teachers that focus on how to use primary sources." [Italics, in disgust, added.]

More:

Prince William, the state's second-largest school system after Fairfax's, will use the money to establish summer programs in which local university professors will instruct about 100 teachers for one-week periods on topics such as the nation's westward expansion, the Industrial Revolution and 1920s literature. . . .

Last year, Fairfax teachers took field trips to such places as the Gettysburg National Military Park and the National Portrait Gallery, said Alice Reilly, Fairfax's social studies coordinator.

Educators say the grant program is part of a movement in the history field to refresh teachers' knowledge of U.S. history, especially elementary school educators who might not have been inside a history classroom since taking a college survey course.

The program aims to help teachers improve the use of primary sources in classrooms, getting students to think like historians so they do not rely on textbooks but craft their own conclusions.

Outrageous. It's almost enough to make me a Libertarian.

Having solved all the country's really serious problems . . .

. . . the U.S. Congress turns to the huuuuuge problem of "expensive" college textbooks. (I paraphrase the wonderful Fark.com.)

The proposed legislation would be sad if it weren't so funny. Here, according to the New York Times, is one provision:

First, publishers would be required tell faculty how much their choices for textbooks will really cost the students. This would seem incredibly easy given Amazon.com, but many college professors routinely complain that basic information about the cost of textbooks is not easily available to them.

We at the Door, as a public service, will help these "many" "routinely-complaining" college professors. If they'll e-mail the Door, we will inform them about textbook prices.  Free of charge.

Problem solved.

Here's another provision:

Finally, and probably most important, the bill would require schools to post the list of required and recommended books long before students need to buy them. That would allow them enough time to shop for the best deals — online or in used bookstores.

I'm sorry, but I can't believe this is anything remotely resembling a problem. At my (state) university, the vast majority of required texts are known to students at least a week before classes; in most cases, I'd bet, they are known earlier. I believe my university is typical.

But even if students found out only on their first day of classes, how much time is "enough"? For $79/year, Amazon will provide free two-day shipping and $4 overnight shipping. (And probably the lowest, or close to the lowest, prices.)

Another phony problem solved. (Note to the Congress: you're welcome to contact me about my consulting rates. I can solve Big Problems cheap.)

But wait, there's more . . .

A student empirical paper, with professor's comments.

Not terribly in-depth, but helpful.

(Link via my student Brian Ford.)

Buffett

Warren Buffett recently held another "Capitalists' Woodstock". It was interesting to read this 34-year-old piece in Forbes about him.

The further, sad decline of an institution

Online access to the Encyclopedia Britannica is now free to bloggers.

(The EB site supposedly gets 21 million page views per month; Wikipedia, 3.8 billion.)

(Newmark's Door, about 28,000.)

More Microsoft woes?

I've decided not to install SP3 on my home machine. My reason is simply that I'm quite happy with fully-updated SP2 and from what I understand, SP3 offers no significant--or even minor--advantages for my non-networked home machine.

But if I have any doubts, reading this will keep me from updating.

(I know it's only a handful of stories, and given the probably huge number of people who installed the update, it's no surprise at all that there are a few "horror stories". But still: given an approximately zero marginal benefit, any marginal cost at all dictates not installing.)

Oops, apparently more than a "handful". And still more.

Final note: if you've had the problem, or know somebody who has, the information on this blog seems to be helping people.

Phishing goes upscale

New York Times (4/16): "Larger Prey Are Targets of Phishing".

As Phil Esterhaus used to say on Hill Street Blues, "Hey, let's be careful out there."

Rex Hospital

Rex Hospital in Raleigh is only one of three hospitals in North Carolina to be recognized by HealthGrades.com for "Patient Safety" for 2006, 2007, and 2008. Rex is one of two hospitals in the state recognized for "Clinical Excellence" for all three years.

It doesn't surprise me. In my two stays there I was quite favorably impressed.

End-of-semester Friday video lollapalooza

And now for something different . . . .

Andy Garcia imitates Al Pacino.

Robin Williams pays tribute to Al Pacino.

Tracey Ullman pays tribute to Meryl Streep.

Nora Ephron--at the absolute top of her form--pays tribute to Meryl Streep.

Jim Carrey--ditto--pays tribute to Meryl Streep.

Singing "Superman" together, Willie Nelson and Snoop Dogg.

In a last performance before his tragically early death, Otis Redding, "Try a Little Tenderness".

An ad for Quendleton State U. "If we were a good university, we wouldn't have a commercial."

A nine-minute recounting of the Boston Celtics' 1969 NBA championship. The last few seconds--of Bill Russell absolutely speechless with joy--is not something you see much of these days.

Finally, one of the greatest commercials ever--and not only because of its subject--"Just me and Cindy, O.K.? I think you hear me knocking, Richard, and I think I'm coming in, and I got a box full of Eskimo Pies with me." Denis Leary appeals for "Cindy TV".

YAR (Yet Another Ranking)

Congratulations to my colleagues working in agricultural and natural resources economics at NC State, who have finished second in the most recent ranking of ag and resource econ departments.

(According to Professor Whitehead the methodology seems a little fishy--I agree--but, hey, better a number two ranking using a fishy methodology than a low ranking using a sound methodology, right?)

Once in a century

I saw the Laettner shot that beat Kentucky. I've seen Jerry West's 63-footer at the buzzer. I've seen the kid make a 10-footer from flat on his rear.

But this one takes the cake.

Link via Sports Illustrated.

A useful warning about group projects

Jacqueline Mackey Paisley Passey has returned to blogging, she is taking MBA courses, and she recently posted, "Assigned a group project? Check your classmates' work for plagiarism!"

An update is here: JMPP discovers that one of the members in her group has plagiarized Hoover's Handbook of World Business.

Maybe nice work if you can get it

Dale Webster is establishing a new metric for the phrase "endless summer": he's been surfing, every day, for the last 32 years.

Two ways to teach the principles course

David Friedman:

One view of economics is that it is the study of the economy. That suggests that if you are going to take one basic course, it should tell you things about the economy--how big it is, how it is measured, what "inflation rate" and "unemployment rate" and GNP and NNP and such mean. My impression is that most principles texts and courses are designed to do that.

The other view—the one I favor—is that economics is an approach to understanding behavior. It can be used to understand inflation and unemployment but also to understand marriage and divorce, the arguments for strict liability vs negligence, interactions between parents and children or between teachers and students, why tariffs are passed and why armies run away. The applications to the economy have been worked out in somewhat more detail than most of the others, but they are not necessarily the most interesting or useful. Most students will at some point enter the long term contract called "marriage," so a way of understanding the world that helps them to understand marriage is useful. Most of them will never have to make any decision that depends on understanding how GNP is defined.

I'm with him: I think the second approach is much better. But read the rest of his post for a difficulty universities may face if they offer that version.

Arnold Kling with the bad fiscal news

From April 25 (but I figured bad news could wait a while):

Message to Republicans: if you cut spending on "worthy causes" to zero, you still would not balance the budget. You will have to raise personal income taxes.

Message to Democrats: if you increased personal income tax receipts by 25 percent (a ginormous tax increase), you still would not balance the budget. You will have to cut back on "worthy causes."

Message to the AARP: if Social Security and Medicare continue to be "untouchable," then y'all had better buy guns, because in twenty years there won't be any money left to pay for national defense, much less for any "worthy causes."

The only glimmer of hope I see is to remember that David Stockman once memorably predicted 200-billion-a-year deficits "as far as the eye can see". But he was quickly--albeit for a short time--proven wrong.

"A prophet is despised in his own country . . ."

Nicely done: "[Bill] Cosby Is the Real Prophet, Not Wright".

Ugh

Not encouraging: certain aspects of what we are pleased to call Higher Education will worsen if there's a buyers' market.

But with an acceptance letter in their pocket, students gain the upper hand. Now more than ever in this unpredictable admissions cycle, it's the colleges who must go courting.

"Doubts grow over ethanol"

My wife saw this article and said it would make a good test question for my students: "What happens to the price of corn when Congress passes a law mandating increased usage of it?"

I replied that it was too easy for my students. Too easy for introductory economics students, but too difficult for Congress.

Scott Faber, vice president for federal affairs at the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA), compared lawmakers to late-night revelers who are just beginning to understand the consequences of their actions.

“A lot of lawmakers are wondering who the hell they woke up with,” Faber said.

Image from one of the new buildings in Dubai

Supposedly, taken from the 140th story.

"A battle of Internet good and internet evil"

A laughing baby video--not the one I linked to, another one, viewed more than 45 million times--has received over 59,000 comments. An intrepid Slate writer reads them--so you don't have to--and summarizes them this way:

After reading a few thousand comments, they begin to fade into similar patterns: cute, cute, cute, evil, spam, I think the baby is ugly, How can you think that!, cute, cute, I want to have a baby, cute, baby is high, look at my videos, cute, just like my kid, cute, LOL, cute, cute, etc., etc. It's soon overly clear that the comments aren't a conversation or debate. Laughing Baby has become an Internet monument, and posting a remark is like tagging your name on the Statue of Liberty.

"10 Ways the Internet (as we know it) will die"

#8 is "The lawyers get involved."

Sports fan

You think you're a sports fan? You think you've seen sports fans?

You. Have. No. Idea.

More U.S. history that you knew turns out to be wrong

The indispensible Snopes.com reports that the story about there being no "J" street in D.C. because L'Enfant hated John Jay is wrong.

J. K. Rowling receives a can of whup-ass

Author Orson Scott Card ("Ender's Game") mercilessly lashes J. K. Rowling for her in-progress copyright suit. 

Not for the squeamish or easily offended.

"A message about life, every day"

Sports Illustrated has recently made available online one of the finest sports stories I've ever read, Gary Smith's profile of former Temple basketball coach John Cheney.

He starts speaking to the players in that low, raspy voice—gravel in a drainage pipe—and builds to an ear-blistering, ass-smoking, remove-the-women, hide-the-children, Sunday-southern-preacher screech. His philosophy's the secretion of his life, fresh-squeezed, unstrained, pulp and seeds still in it. Everything dire: Get BACK on defense! Your house's on FIRE, your MAMA and SISTER are in there BURNIN', get BACK! Half of it hilarious, half cemetery serious, all raw as eggs dropping on the sidewalk. Might talk 10 minutes. Might talk an hour. Might talk four—ain't TIRED yet! Might talk Massachusetts' man defense. Might talk Mogadishu. Might talk Holocaust or haircuts—No nubs! No naps! No EMBRYO HEADS! Might jumble 'em all in a bag and spill 'em all out at once, somehow finding the thread, the connective truth, that turns everything into analogy and allegory. "A message about life, every day," says La Salle coach Speedy Morris. "How many coaches give their kids that?" And then John will catch wind of the comedy in his catechism and set sail for absurdity and beyond, face shining like heaven's firstborn, spindly legs strutting the deck, hands flying up for bolts of lightning, tee-heeing and haw-hawing at his own incandescence.

Pethokoukis 1, H. Clinton 0

Ms. Hillary: "This issue of energy and global warming has the promise of creating millions of new jobs in America. It can be a win-win, if we do it right."

James Pethokoukis: "Of course, many economists will recognize 'the green is good for growth' trap that Obama and Clinton have stumbled into. It's just a modern iteration of the famous "broken windows fallacy" where people mistake the shifting of wealth and resources for the creation of new wealth and resources."

"Politics won't allow for the truth"

P. J. O'Rourke, doing what he does, like nobody else does it: "Fairness, Idealism and Other Atrocities".

Thanks to Skip Sauer for the link.

Advice to kids

A New York Times columnist held a contest for parents: specify "What Kids Need to Know". Some of the advice I liked best:

Don't do dumb things.

Respect the nap.

Don't forget your parents.

Don't put peas up your nose. [Hard to beat that.]

If you need help, ask for help.

Be good. If you can't be good, be careful. If you can't be careful and are in trouble, call me.

"What could possibly go wrong?" (TM, Fark.com)

"Colleges Are Allowing Coed Dorm Rooms".

"Uh oh!"

The Angry Bear blog links to a NASA report that the Pacific Decadal Oscillation has "flipped to its cool phase", meaning that for the next decade or two the planet may cool.

Steven Goddard at the Register summarizes the conflicts between different temperature measurements and suggests there's something fishy about one. (Guess which one?)

Also see this review in the UK Telegraph.

Oh, how entertaining it will be to listen to certain folks if Global Warming goes bust. I can see the headline: "Global warming theory still right, experts say; it's just the facts that are wrong."

A perfect gem of an example of government at work

LA Weekly writer Jonathan Gold praises "entry-level capitalism"--Mexican food trucks.

The best thing I had to eat last week was a massive carnitas huarache, from the Gorditas Lupita’s truck on Eagle Rock Boulevard near Avenue 34. I ate it while leaning against a warehouse wall in Glassell Park, washed it down with a bottle of Mexican Coke and perfumed with the exhaust of a thousand diesel trucks. The second-best thing may have been a Puebla-style cemita overstuffed with fried beef milanesa, ripe avocado and shreds of the Pueblan string cheese called quesillo — that one I ate sitting on a plastic folding chair right on Indiana Street, where it runs into César Chávez at Five Points in East L.A.   

The third, who knows? A bean-smeared clayuda devoured while sitting curbside at the La Oaxaqueña truck on Lincoln at Rose in Venice? A tostada of fiercely hot aguachile, chopped marinated shrimp, eaten on a milk crate perched next to a Whittier Boulevard medical clinic? A spicy tongue taco eaten at El Pique, in the parking lot of a Highland Park car wash on York at Avenue 53? The carne asada taco at the El Chato truck on Olympic near La Brea, the tooth-staining red sauce at El Taquito Mexicana in Pasadena, the al pastor at El Taurino on Hoover at 11th near Macarthur Park? They all came from trucks; they all made me feel glad to be alive, glad to be in Los Angeles.

But there is trouble in paradise . . . 

Uncertain about freeware--look here

I have found the information in "The 46 Best-Ever Freeware Utilities" useful. And, as it says, it's undated updated frequently.

(Reminder to link from reader and blogger Michael Greenspan.)

"What Should You Focus On in a Clutch Moment?"

Ben Casnocha, young entrepreneur extraordinare, summarizes an article about how to perform when the pressure is on.

A lot of potential good reading

"Free Speculative Fiction Online".

Street view

If you haven't tried Google Maps's "Street View" yet, it's worth a minute of your time. Here's my local paper's review.

(Unfortunately, it's not available for the whole country yet. But it is for at least lots of Wake County.)

Redo you

"Create a new look and share it with friends (or just keep it to yourself)": Taaz.

35 words about the heart of the problem of American K-12 education

A New York Times article describes the "radical" experiment in progress in the post-Katrina New Orleans public schools. It includes one teacher's concise summary of the difficulty the schools face:

“Most of the kids come from broken homes,” he said. “Their parents are dead, in jail or on drugs. You can tell the kids from two-parent homes. They’re getting straight A’s, and they are respectful.”

Beware of efficient government

Mike Munger--now, officially, a candidate for North Carolina governor!--asks "Can An Omnipotent Government Make a Rock Bigger Then It Can Lift?" (Cato Unbound, 2/15/08.)

The danger to limited government, the threat to the Montesquieuan system of checks and balances, comes from an unexpected source. “Good government” types, people who want to improve the “efficiency” of government, are termites eating away at the walls that protect us from tyranny. . . . The last thing you want is an efficient government. Our only choices are a truly weak, but efficient, limited government, or else a powerful government prevented by strong ties from using most of its powers, most of the time.

Be glad we have Ben Bernanke . . .

The governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, opines that finance jobs shouldn't be so remunerative.

Lots of luck with that, Mr. King.

Link via my colleague, Richard Warr.

Recovering a hard drive

When you absolutely, positively have to recover data from a wrecked hard drive, you can try DriverSavers. This is a brief look at them. (Their price varies with the size of the job and the deadline. Minimum price: $1000.)

Nuclear power

Long but very worth-reading article on Three Mile Island and nuclear power in GQ. The heart of the piece:

At Three Mile Island, according to a 1980 inquiry by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the maximum level of radiation that anybody within a fifty-mile radius could have received from the accident was about 100 millirems—the equivalent of moving to Colorado for a year, or into a brick house for two. According to another study, by the Pennsylvania Departments of Health and Environmental Resources, among 721 locals tested, not a single one showed radiation exposure above normal. A similar study by the state’s Department of Agriculture found no significant trace of radiation in the local fish, water, or dairy products, which tend to register minute impurities. And a study released in 2000 by the Graduate School of Public Health at the University of Pittsburgh found that, twenty-one years after the accident, there was still no evidence of “any measurable impact” on public health.

Given the extreme scale of the meltdown at TMI—including an explosion of hydrogen, the liquefaction of radioactive uranium, and the release of a plume of radioactive gas into the air outside—it is reasonable to conclude that the lesson of Three Mile Island is not merely a matter of what went wrong at the plant but also an example of what went right. For so many people and so many systems to fail so spectacularly all at once, without any measurable effect on public health, may be the last, best proof that a system is working. . . .

When a meltdown like Three Mile Island scares us blind, creating an apocalyptic mythology about what happened there, we pay for our superstitions with sulfur fumes, global warming, and acid rain—our suicide pact with coal.

And when we fail to consider each of these issues with reason instead of fear, when we fail to make the tough comparison between nuclear power, with its potential for disaster, and coal plants, with their guarantee of it, this isn’t a reflection that we have no choices but that we refuse to make them.

It may be, more than anything else, an example of democracy working and failing at the same time.

Casino tales

"Casino insider tells (almost) all about security".

Even if you are cheating, and they know you're cheating, they might leave you alone if you're not that good at cheating. Take card counting: While counting cards in one's head is not illegal, a good card-counter in blackjack gains a statistical advantage over the house, and if the casino decides the counter is making too much money, he or she will be escorted off the premises.

But card counters have to be really good: One mistake an hour could swing the advantage back to the house. And casinos don't mind that. "If you're not perfect at card counting, you can still lose money," Jonas said. "They'll watch you count cards and if you make any mistake they'll just let you play."   

"Cool Websites and Tools (edition #120)"

Charts, logos, and more.

"Why Generation Y Is Broke"

Improve the world: teach a young person the fundamentals of personal finance.

(Link via Instapundit.)