Newmark's Door

A problem, honestly, I didn't know we had: the "Bob Famine"

We need a emergency federal investigation into this: "The Bob Famine: Athletes Aren't Named 'Bob' Anymore And There's Nothing We Can Do About It".

"Solving the Federal Land Problem"

Excellent idea.

"FCC adopts new rules against 'robocalls'"

Boy, I sure hope this works. And they ought to include the calls of politicians and political parties, too. (But I won't hold my breath.)

"Tough talk"

"Pay cut, hectic schedule can make broadcasting career a challenging transition for ex-players, coaches."

Hey, I'd be willing to try it. And I'll work cheap. 

 

"How Do You Explain Gene Weingarten?"

Interesting profile of the Washington Post's great columnist.

"Paul Ryan for President"

Maybe not President, but certainly at least a Cabinet post.

"Nextdoor"

Looks cool, but there isn't one for my neighborhood.

"Chipotle Is Apple"

Viva competitive free markets!

In many ways, the Chipotle burrito is very similar to the iPhone. Founder Steve Ells invented a way to maintain the basic speed and experience of the standard fast-food experience and make the quality of the food a little better.*The better food costs a bit more money, but consumers turn out to be happy to pay a premium for a superior product. A similar insight is behind privately held Five Guys, a burger-oriented fast-food concept that’s also grown rapidly over the past several years. At the other end of the health spectrum there’s Chop’t, the assembly-line salad chain that’s taken New York and D.C. by storm but hasn’t yet gone national. All three chains are, in their different ways, raising the bar for food quality in a quick-service setting.

"What I learned interviewing with Google"

I expect we'll see more and more reports like this:

4. Coding Chops > Comp Sci degree

"University Website"

Exactly! Heh.

"Forget America, Immigrants With A Dream Are Moving To Chile"

Horace Greeley, updated: Go South, young person.

"The Real Reasons the Rich Are Moving Cash to the Caymans"

Sad but probably true.

"Avoiding Muni Defaults Set The Stage For An Infrastructure Crisis"

I don't know if the author is right, but it doesn't sound good.

Instapundit nails it again

"Yeah, you don’t want people to question the whole redistribution scheme, so you displace alternative approaches then call anyone who uses it a hypocrite if they complain. It’s political genius, until you run out of other people’s money."

"How to Solve the Teacher Pay Puzzle"

Makes the good point that there all different kinds of teachers with all different kinds of duties and all different kinds of effects, so they should be paid differently.

But misses making the point that probably the best way to do this is by decentralization and school choice.

"Clearlake No. 2 in state for risky stroke surgery"

Informing yourself about the risks of medical procedures tends to be cost-effective.

(Also see "What if the Doctor is Wrong?")

"The Republic of India is home to the most uplifting as well as the most depressing aspects of the democratic experience"

Real hope and change. But also some enormous problems.

"HyFi routers may finally solve your Internet woes"

Combines Ethernet, powerline, and WiFi.

"Ricky Rubio Serves Up the Alley-Oop"

"Ricky Rubio . . . ridiculous!"

Sometimes, crazy people are useful

"Michael Jordan, Steve Jobs, and other socially beneficial psychopaths".

Jeremy Lin tells you how to get accepted by Harvard

Listen up, high schoolers: Jeremy Lin--scorchingly hot New York Knick--explains. 

"The Sinatra of Social Science"

In praise of James Q. Wilson:

. . . to be a political commentator in James Q. Wilson’s era is to know how Mel Torme must have felt being a singer in Frank Sinatra’s era. We’re all competing for the silver medal; Wilson has won the gold. We’re going to hear tonight and celebrate the contributions to the intellectual world from our gold medal winner.

High school policy debate stinks

The content is atrocious. The form is worse.

Wired has posted a three-minute video that makes the point eloquently.

It astonishes me that this continues.

Great, just great

Don't get sick: "A Look At How Health Reform Is Driving Doctors Out Of Business".

Also: "Battle Over California Medicaid Reimbursement Is a Preview of Our Future".

New slogan: Hope and change--don't get sick and don't get old.

"How Cancer Drugs Make Cancer Worse and Kill Patients"

Apparently just one study, but this doesn't sound good.

You'd think that a tumor shrinking would be considered good news for anyone suffering from cancer. But maybe not. Scientists have found that a type of cancer treatment aimed at shrinking tumors can actually make them spread more efficiently and kill patients quicker. . . . 

In plainer terms, big tumors are less likely to spread, which is pretty disturbing. I've had several family members who died at the hands of cancer shortly after the "good news" that doctors had "shrunk the tumor!" Was that tumor shrinkage actually what killed them?

One more way it pays to be smart

"IQ and Stock Market Participation" by Mark Grinblatt, et al.

An individual’s IQ stanine, measured early in adult life, is monotonically related to his stock market participation decision later in life. The high correlation between IQ and participation, which exists even among the 10% most affluent individuals, controls for wealth, income, and other demographic and occupational information. Supplemental data from siblings is used with both an instrumental variables approach and paired difference regressions to show that our results apply to both females and males, and that omitted familial and non-familial variables cannot account for our findings.