Newmark's Door

Fingertips, Parts I and II

Stevie Wonder, June 1962, live. What joy sounds like.

"The Only Thing That Can Stop This Asteroid Is Your Liberal Arts Degree"

From McSweeney's.

Sure, we’ve got dozens of astronauts, physicists, and demolitions experts. I’ll be damned if we didn’t try to train our best men for this mission. But just because they can fly a shuttle and understand higher-level astrophysics doesn’t mean they can execute a unique mission like this. Anyone can learn how to land a spacecraft on a rocky asteroid flying through space at twelve miles per second. I don’t need some pencilneck with four Ph.D’s, one-thousand hours of simulator time, and the ability to operate a robot crane in low-Earth orbit. I need someone with four years of broad-but-humanities-focused studies, three subsequent years in temp jobs, and the ability to reason across multiple areas of study. I need someone who can read The Bell Jar and make strong observations about its representations of mental health and the repression of women. Sure, you’ve never even flown a plane before, but with only ten days until the asteroid hits, there’s no one better to nuke an asteroid.

"22 Amazing Destinations You Can See With Google Street Views"

"Armchair traveling" is the type of traveling I like most. 

Good news

"31 Charts That Will Restore Your Faith In Humanity".

"5 Signs That We Haven’t Lost America Yet".

"The Six Most Important Things You'll Learn At Racing School"

"I'm an embarrassingly slow driver, but I was lucky enough to be offered the chance to take part in a two-day race driving class at the Performance Driving Center at Sonoma Raceway and, while it didn't turn me into Mario Andretti, I'd like to pass on some of what I learned to any other rank but hopeful amateurs."

"Daring architecture or giant monstrosities? Ridiculous buildings that are popping up all over China"

"Ridiculous" is a bit strong. Well, one is. (You'll know it when you see it.)

"Damage Control for Dummies"

"But even in post-scandal Washington, some things always stay the same. One of them is the inclination of many progressives to defend the president at all costs, no matter what the accusation. . . .

"Let’s take a look at six of these rationalizations that have been circulating on the left."

Attempts to answer two interesting questions

Both are NBER working papers.

"Sales Mechanisms in Online Markets: What Happened to Internet Auctions?"

Consumer auctions were very popular in the early days of internet commerce, but today online sellers mostly use posted prices. Data from eBay shows that compositional shifts in the items being sold, or the sellers offering these items, cannot account for this evolution. Instead, the returns to sellers using auctions have diminished. We develop a model to distinguish two hypotheses: a shift in buyer demand away from auctions, and general narrowing of seller margins that favors posted prices. Our estimates suggest that the former is more important. We also provide evidence on where auctions still are used, and on why some sellers may continue to use both auctions and posted prices.

"If Technology Has Arrived Everywhere, Why has Income Diverged?"

We study the lags with which new technologies are adopted across countries, and their long-run penetration rates once they are adopted. Using data from the last two centuries, we document two new facts: there has been convergence in adoption lags between rich and poor countries, while there has been divergence in penetration rates. Using a model of adoption and growth, we show that these changes in the pattern of technology diffusion account for 80% of the Great Income Divergence between rich and poor countries since 1820.

"That's Not Entrepreneurship"

Professor Munger makes the best use of Lloyd Bentsen's line that I've seen. 

Is the Motor City now . . . Mexico?

"Mexico Is Becoming The World's Best Place To Make Cars".

Mexico’s biggest advantage in building cars is cost. Land and labor in Mexico are abundant and cheap (even cheaper than in China). Plants run with “practically no limits“—Nissan’s current plant runs 20+ hours a day—and workers are not only exceptionally productive but alsoincreasingly more skilled.

Mexico is also a sweet spot for exporters, thanks to its prime geographical location at the midpoint of the Americas, and its lengthy border with the world’s biggest economy. “For Audi, the fact that Mexico is so close to the US is key,” Jacuzzi said. Just as importantly, Mexico has 44 free trade agreements with the EU, Japan, Israel, and many other countries—more than double the number held by the US.

"NYC Has A Revolutionary Plan To Cut The Rat Population"

Chemical sterilization of the girl rats. 

"Study: Schools And Colleges Are Teaching The Wrong Type Of Math"

I absolutely agree. For some students, replace trig and calculus with statistics, personal finance, and enhanced numeracy. (See, for example, "Innumeracy and Risk Perception in Health Decision-making," in Wikipedia.)

"The Sexiest, Smartest Colleges In The Country"

Brown seems to be the winner.

(I'll use this as an excuse to note that one of my formers colleagues told me about a popular cheer at Brown: "What's the color of shit? Brown, brown, brown!")

 

"Choco Pies offer North Koreans a taste of the other side"

Send Rodman back over with a couple of C-130's worth of MoonPies, and, apparently, the Norks would be putty in our hands.

The Law of Unintended Consequences strikes one more time

Megan McArdle: "How the IRS Wrecked Your Pension".

The bureaucrats always win

Professor Karlson brings us the story of what happened to a University of Illinois chancellor who resigned following a scandal. 

(I would amend the professor's suggestion a little. If scandal-ridden administrators must be returned to the university to "teach," then let them teach three sections a semester of Freshman Comp. That would be a deterrent.)

Work economics teachers need to do more of

Almost every week there is some new awful risk the media warn us of, awful because the sellers are "unregulated". Two examples;

"Wild, unregulated hacker currency bitcoin getting close to mainstream". (I'll admit "wild" is a nice touch.)

"Think Those Chemicals Have Been Tested?"

Unlike pharmaceuticals or pesticides, industrial chemicals do not have to be tested before they are put on the market. Under the law regulating chemicals, producers are only rarely required to provide the federal government with the information necessary to assess safety.

An answer--which needs to be taught more, and more forcefully--is nicely expressed in a column by George Mason economist Donald J. Boudreaux: "Competitive regulation".

The demand for government regulation springs from the lack of understanding that markets are amazingly proficient at regulating themselves through the competitive process. This process involves firms' competition for customers, workers, financing and suppliers.

See also Steven Greenhut's "Free Markets Are More Important Than Safety Regulations".

Interesting column on technological forecasting

By Sir Martin Rees:

Scientific forecasters have a dismal record. One of my predecessors as Astronomer Royal said, as late as the Fifties, that space travel was “utter bilge”. Few in the mid-20th century envisaged the transformative impact of the silicon chip or the double helix. The iPhone would have seemed magical even 20 years ago. So, looking even a century ahead, we must keep our minds open, or at least ajar, to what may now seem science fiction. Some proponents of the “singularity” – the takeover of humanity by intelligent machines – claim this transition could happen within 50 years. . . .

It is remarkable that our brains, which have changed little since our ancestors roamed the African savannah, have allowed us to understand the counterintuitive worlds of the quantum and the cosmos. But some of these insights may have to await post-human intelligence. There may be phenomena, crucial to our long-term destiny, that we are not aware of, any more than a monkey comprehends the nature of stars and galaxies.

"The Minimum Wage Delusion, And The Death Of Common Sense"

Nice, short, non-technical summary of some of the important evidence.

"Here's Why So Many Wealthy Athletes Wind Up Broke"

A big one is that they tend to avoid paper assets--certificates of deposit, index funds, bonds--in favor of tangible ones. 

What is the purpose of a university?

I hadn't heard this before.

Clark Kerr, first chancellor of UC Berkeley, once said that the ideal university provided "sex for the students, sports for the alumni, and parking for the faculty." 

If you have a strong stomach, I recommend Heather McDonald's look at rent-seeking par excellence at the Univ. of California: "Multiculti U."

"The 22 Most Beautifully Secluded Places In The World"

Nice places to visit, maybe, but I wouldn't want to live there. 

Looking for 28 hours at the Dubai skyline

Conveniently, and beautifully, compressed into less than two minutes.

"Every Noise at Once"

"This is an algorithmically-generated non-analytical map of the musical genre-space."

So if you need to know the difference between "atmospheric black metal" and "viking metal" or between "southern hip hop" and "dirty south rap" this may be the place for you. 

Either a sign of the apocalypse or another (small) reason why capitalism is wonderful

You choose.

Poutine-flavored soda.

Best six year-old drummer I've seen

Kid's got rhythm to spare.

(Link via Michael Greenspan.)

But the 2-year-old singing Pearl Jam is in a whole different category.