How you know the Scripps National Spelling Bee has made the big time
Today's championship will be reported by the iconic Erin Andrews.
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May 2008
May 31, 2008
"Presidential romantics"
Other Americans--not me--expect way too much from our presidents.
The last presidential candidate to talk sense about the office was fictional. In an episode of NBC's "The West Wing," the Republican candidate, who was not the hero, was asked, "How many jobs will you create?" "None," he replied, adding: "Entrepreneurs create jobs. Business creates jobs. The president's job is to get out of the way."
You're so mean
Selected snarks from the LA Times review of what women were wearing at Cannes.
--Julianne Moore got rave reviews for her performance in "Blindness," the festival's opening film. But not for her Christian Lacroix couture gown with crazed feathered ravens perched on her shoulders.
--If only she'd worn clothes like this on "Lipstick Jungle," it might not have flopped so fast.
--Talk about an "X-Files" mystery. Why is Gillian Anderson wearing a wrinkled bedsheet to the "Blindness" opening night party?
--Director Steven Spielberg sticks close to his wife, Kate Capshaw, who wears an unfortunate blond Katie Holmes-like bob and a silvery blue satin gown. Sadly, Kate's film career was done in by "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom."
--Because I know you just can't get enough of Star Jones, here's the final shot of her at Cannes, wearing a blue floral print halter gown and pretending to be a celebrity.
May 30, 2008
"Seeking shoppers in Westwood Village"
I spent five years at UCLA so I was a bit sorry to read that Westwood fell on relatively hard times after I left.
But the article says there's prospects of a comeback.
End-of-the-week videos
The Bangles, live: "Hero Takes a Fall".
New Welsh sensation, Duffy, live: "Mercy".
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, live: "American Girl".
Sugarland: "All I Want to Do".
May 29, 2008
Universal Music goes crazy
"This saga is why Big 5 Music Label executives are among the most hated businessmen in America. Last June, Universal Music Group sued to have a video clip of a 13-month old toddler dancing to Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy” removed from YouTube. Universal argued that the author – the child’s mother, Stephanie Lenz – violated the copyright of the song, which plays in the background of the video.
"At first YouTube complied, but Lenz argued back, saying that the song was an obvious case of fair use. YouTube agreed and re-posted the song. This is when the story gets fun."
Universal should heed a gentleman quoted by the New York Times: "You subjugate these rebels [pirates] with the tools of free enterprise. Piracy is just another business model, and the pirates will lose and go away when you come up with a better model."
Adding science to literature
College English teacher argues vigorously that "Literary studies should become more like the sciences."
"I caught my first tube today . . . Sir"
A sequel to Point Break is in the works.
The article says Keanu may not return, but regardless, I'm probably in.
May 28, 2008
"Sell in May, buy back on St. Leger Day"
The MeFites consider stock market anomalies.
Three books to look forward to
Joshua D. Angrist and Jörn-Steffen Pischke, Mostly Harmless Econometrics: An Empiricist's Companion. (Ya gotta love "mostly harmless".)
In addition to econometric essentials, Mostly Harmless Econometrics covers important new extensions--regression-discontinuity designs and quantile regression--as well as how to get standard errors right. Joshua Angrist and Jörn-Steffen Pischke explain why fancier econometric techniques are typically unnecessary and even dangerous. The applied econometric methods emphasized in this book are easy to use and relevant for many areas of contemporary social science.
Richard B. McKenzie, A Defense of Rational Behavior in Economics.
Dora L. Costa and Matthew E. Kahn, Heroes and Cowards: The Social Face of War.
When are people willing to sacrifice for the common good? What are the benefits of friendship? How do communities deal with betrayal? And what are the costs and benefits of being in a diverse community? Using the life histories of more than forty thousand Civil War soldiers, Dora Costa and Matthew Kahn answer these questions and uncover the vivid stories, social influences, and crucial networks that influenced soldiers' lives both during and after the war.
The House of Representatives hard at work
The House passed a bill "allowing the Justice Department to sue OPEC members for limiting oil supplies".
Oh yeah, that'll work.
"The legislation also creates a Justice Department task force to aggressively investigate gasoline price gouging and energy market manipulation."
Which DOJ has been doing off and on for 35 years. But hey, if at first you don't succeed, try, try again. (But then quit; no use being a damn fool about it.)
(Link provided by Richard Warr.)
Better analysis of high gas prices is provided by John Lott:
Senator Obama sees part of the solution in a massive windfall tax on American oil companies. Putting aside the fact that having politicians blame oil companies is a bit hypocritical — U.S. oil companies have paid more than three times in taxes to the government than they have earned in profits over the last 25 years — higher taxes on profits will reduce production and increase prices. A higher tax on profits will mean fewer investments in producing oil and that in turn will mean less production in the future.
Ironically, Democrats won the 2006 elections and took control of both the House and the Senate by promising they would reduce gas prices. Yet, with regular gas now selling above $3.67 a gallon, Americans can only longingly remember the average prices of about $2.20 a gallon that Democrats were complaining about in early November 2006. The Democrats’ bigger sin is that they seem to have no understanding of how markets work.
Better--as well as funny--analysis is also provided by Mark Steyn.
But, before we start suing distant sheikhs in exotic lands for violating the NOPEC act, why don't we start by suing Congress? After all, who "limits the production or distribution of oil" right here in the United States by declaring that there'll be no drilling in the Gulf of Florida or the Arctic National Mosquito Refuge? As Rep. Wasserman Schultz herself told Neil Cavuto on Fox News, "We can't drill our way out of this problem."
Well, maybe not. But maybe we could drill our way back to $3.25 a gallon. More to the point, if the House of Representatives has now declared it "illegal" for the government of Saudi Arabia to restrict oil production, why is it still legal for the government of the United States to restrict oil production? In fact, the government of the United States restricts pretty much every form of energy production other than the bizarre fetish du jour of federally mandated ethanol production.
Finally, for a bit of optimism, see the UK Telegraph's "Oil's Perfect Story May Blow Over".
Oh, great
The Falls Lake dam, near where I live, is rated "conditonally unsafe".
The Falls Lake dam itself is sound and can be made even safer, according to the engineers who run it. But if it ever ruptured because of a structural failure, extraordinarily high water or sabotage, the result would be cataclysmic. . . .
But the federal engineers who manage the lake now are warning of an unlikely but conceivable catastrophe: If the lake's earthen dam ever burst, a freshwater tsunami would swamp the Neuse River valley from North Raleigh to Kinston, blasting away bridges, obliterating riverside homes, inundating parts of Smithfield and Goldsboro, and possibly drowning dozens or hundreds of people -- perhaps with no warning.
Added to my to-do list: checking out the local digital flood map.
I, um, just have a lot of information in my head.
From the New York Times:
When older people can no longer remember names at a cocktail party, they tend to think that their brainpower is declining. But a growing number of studies suggest that this assumption is often wrong.
Instead, the research finds, the aging brain is simply taking in more data and trying to sift through a clutter of information, often to its long-term benefit.
May 27, 2008
Potential good news (to make up for yesterday's depressing stuff)
As the economy appears to falter and as more Americans fear that the country is on the wrong track, here's something to keep in mind: There is hope on the horizon.
History is filled with examples of how technology helped usher in new eras of prosperity. The rise of the Internet is a good case in point: Few people who experienced the economic recession of the early 1990s could have foreseen how the Web and related information technologies would improve their lives and unleash whole new industries within a few short years.
To help build the case for optimism, the MIT News Office asked a collection of MIT faculty and researchers for their thoughts on the potentially life-altering technologies that lie just around the corner. Here's a sample of what they said . . . .
Link via Instapundit.
Another Liberal misses--oh, she so misses--the 1970s
A columnist living in the People's Republic of Vermont writes:
OK, so America is getting greener and fitter in spite of itself. But can we be happy in a recession?
I can only say I have been.
I lived in New York in the 1970s, when the city was teetering near bankruptcy. The place was weedy, seedy, wild, raunchy, cheap, creative and, in many ways, far easier to live in than its current corporatized, manicured, hyper-policed incarnation. Back then, the landlord might have neglected to send up the heat now and then. But he wasn’t trying to force you out to make room for the next sports-stadium-cum-luxury-condominium mega-development.
Friends who grew up in Vermont or moved here in the 1960s or ’70s admit to similar feelings. Back then, good jobs in the state were few. Land was literally dirt-cheap; 25 years ago, my partner bought his house and 40 acres in Hardwick for $36,000. Vermont was poor. But a limited number of decent-paying jobs and low property values also kept communities stable. Generation after generation could buy homes and take up their fathers’ and mothers’ trades, plant a garden, volunteer at church, and drop the kids off after school at Grandma’s a few houses away. Nobody was renovating the farmhouse down the road, then demanding that the farmer next door clean up that smelly manure.
I don’t want to rewrite history all fuzzy and nostalgic.
As I've written before, you can't make stuff like this up.
Link courtesy of Art Wolff (who works in Vermont but who bears absolutely no responsiblity for the columnist's views).
Way less over the top, but still a little strange, is this LA Times writer's hurrah for a recession:
But for the moment, I can't help but feel that this recession -- or at least the evanescent moment before it kicks into high gear -- offers a kind of coziness you rarely feel in a booming economy.
When marginal cost falls to almost zero . . .
. . . business models have to change. Anybody's who's read Carl Shapiro and Hal Varian's Information Rules knows this, as does anybody who took NC State's ECG514, "The Economics of Information Goods".
But if you haven't had those opportunities, and would like to a way to quickly catch up--and also learn a little about the history of disposable razor blades--I recommend Chris Anderson's "Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business", (Wired magazine, three months ago; link courtesy of my older daughter.)
"It's the soul of true parenting . . .
. . . and it's very rewarding": encouraging kids to read.
True dat.
Theresa Fagan, mother of eight, lists some of her family's favorite books.
I'll add, for little kids, the all-time classic, Goodnight Moon, and for middle-schoolers, the magnificent, Pulitizer Prize-winning novel by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, The Yearling.
(In 7th grade I wrote Ms. Rawlings a fan letter, and she wrote me back. Eat your hearts out.)
Remember when the Democrats took control and promised "fiscal responsibilty"?
From CBS News, your tax dollars at work:
The salmon population is mysteriously dwindling in California and Oregon. . . .
Consider that the lost salmon catch amounts to $22 million dollars. Federal officials put the economic ripple effect including businesses like charter boats and ice houses at $82 million.
But taxpayers are being forced to shell out $174 million. That's on top of $60 million given out last year.
The salmon bail-out is so huge, it might not have survived debate in Congress. But it didn't have to, thanks to California's own Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi. She used her clout as Speaker of the House to insert the massive salmon relief into the Farm Bill as an earmark without a vote.
(The Door has much love for salmon and therefore for Pacific salmon fishermen, but thinks there almost certainly has to be a more cost-effective way to address the problem.)
May 26, 2008
Must read
If you read only one piece about global warming in the next ten years, it should be Freeman Dyson's "The Question of Global Warming".
Very imformative, calm, and reasonable.
And with a healthy respect for sound economics (which isn't always the case in such discussions).
Link via Instapundit.
Hillary refers to RFK's assassination and . . .
Iowahawk has--exclusively--what Hillary will soon tell Obama:
First, let me congratulate Senator Obama and his staff for running a tough campaign. He has been a worthy sparring partner, and one I would have once been happy to consider for my vice presidential undercard, had he not been a constant pain in my ass for the last six months. But even Senator Obama must know at this point that, even if he somehow pulls off a miracle by sweeping the remaining primaries and locking up all the contested superdelegates, he simply cannot escape the inevitable mysterious accident that will clear the Democratic nomination for Yours Truly.
Read the whole thing. Not for acutely sensitive Liberals, but funny for everyone else. (Link via Instapundit.)
UPDATE: note that Iowahawk posted this before Mrs. Clinton's recent comment about RFK. If an artist is really good, sometimes Life imitiates Art.
Watch out, SoCal
The USGS details what would happen if a 7.8 quake occurs on the San Andreas, near the Mexican border, just after morning rush hour.
More potential bad news
". . . as Ari Bar Yossef, retired lieutenant-colonel and administrator of the Knesset's Security Committee, writes in the army journal Ma'arachot, such cases of Islamist national suicide are not uncommon. He cites three such examples of Arab-Muslim regimes irrationally sacrificing their very existence, overriding their instinct of self-preservation, to fight the perceived enemy to the bitter end. . . .
(Better news in tomorrow's posts.)
Mugabe tries for the evil hall of fame
Something even more terrible is likely to happen soon in Zimbabwe.
As regional leaders dither, a new wave of systematic abductions and killings of top opposition activists suggests a regime that is unwilling to leave office, even if it loses the second round of voting, scheduled for the end of next month.
May 25, 2008
Faculty pay
A whole lot of information about what U.S. higher education faculty are paid: the AAUP's "2007-08 Report on the Economic Status of the Profession".
One item: from '06-'07 to '07-'08, the pay of "continuing" faculty rose by more than 5%.
"Why Are Academics So Weird?"
Assuming for the sake of argument that academics "are less happy in their jobs than other people", Todd Zywicki tries to explain why.
He concludes it is because ". . . we get those who are most status obsessed about status entering into the status-based economy."
He's close, but his argument about the "status-based economy" focuses on the zero-sum-game aspect of status (as opposed to the positive-sum-game aspect of the "money economy".)
A better formulation is that academia has, unlike the private sector, no easily measured, agreed-upon measure of success. (The private sector has, of course, return on investment.) For all of academia's rankings, article and citation counts, student evaluations of teachers, peer review, and public opinons, we don't have a bottom line.
Which leads even the most balanced and secure academics to at least occasionally wonder if what they're doing is useful, and right.
May 24, 2008
Three more--yet, still--links about Microsoft Vista
I keep promising not to post more on Vista, but I keep finding interesting articles. Here's three more. Now I should be done.
Another report that a lot of companies are less than enthusiastic about upgrading to Vista.
"Coders Tell Why They're Avoiding Vista". (This link courtesy of Michael Greenspan.)
A Washington Post columnist concedes that upgrading an XP install to Vista is not advisable,
There's a lot to be said for keeping XP on an existing machine instead of upgrading to Vista; things are much cheaper and simpler that way. People running specialized software packages often have other reasons to stick with XP.
but he argues that people unhappy with Vista should not try to save XP:
If you're unhappy about Vista, don't get sucked in by the misguided nostalgia for XP. Root for the success of non-Windows computers. Or buy one yourself. Nothing attracts a company's attention like taking your business elsewhere.
May 23, 2008
"Everything I know about women . . ."
. . . he learned from his two-year-old niece.
May 22, 2008
Better with age
For young people who may be unhappy with their looks: things can get better with age (and, presumably, money).
Case in point: Jennifer Aniston's high school prom pictures.
Oops
"Moody's awarded incorrect AAA ratings to billions of dollars worth of a complex debt product - constant proportion debt obligations - due to a bug in its computer models, the Financial Times reported."
My father used to say, "To err is human, but to really screw things up, you need a computer."
Cables
I wouldn't know, but his article claims "Gadgetry's Golden Rule" is "Buy the cheap cables".
May 21, 2008
Honestly, I hadn't thought of this
"Secret to a happy marriage: be annoying".
Like betting a 10-1 shot at the track
Meet another victim of the housing bust.
Shawn Forgaard, a 37-year-old software company project manager, bought one home for his family to live in and nine more as investments. He stands to lose all the investment houses in the mortgage meltdown but says he has come away wiser from the experience. . . .
Forgaard bought a house in Santa Cruz, about 60 miles (100 km) south of San Francisco, in 2000. Four years later, using $800,000 in stock options, he began snapping up investment properties, putting 10 percent to 40 percent down on negative amortization loans -- in which payments do not cover the interest so that a borrower's balance grows over time.
Do-it-yourself
47-year-old guy builds his own supercar.
2009 Acura TSX
Dan Neil says it is worth the money, but he doesn't love it.
It's an excellent car and well worth the money. But when it comes to charisma, compared to the likes of the Mercedes-Benz C300, the Audi A4, the BMW 328i, the Acura surrenders like Lee at Appomattox.
May 20, 2008
Alice Walker and Charles Schultz
The great Charles Schultz had one of his characters say, "I love mankind; it's people I can't stand."
Charles Schultz, meet Alice Walker.
Reasonable government action
Conservatives are often accused of disliking almost any government program--except for perhaps a very few things like police and national defense. I, myself, was recently and improperly so accused.
So for the record, here's an example of what sounds like to me a reasonable government effort: Boston's "Foreclosure Intervention Team".
Pethokoukis TKOs Frank
James Pethokoukis smacks down a recent op-ed by Thomas (What's the Matter with Kansas?) Frank.
The nostalgia of certain Liberals for the 70s seems, at first, quite puzzling. Wasn't it a time of rampant sexism and racism? Didn't the decade include a horrific, immoral, lost war, Tricky Dick, terrible stagflation, and . . . disco?
Yes, but I attribute the nostalgia to two things:
1. The Liberal worldview was regnant.
2. Liberals were 30 years younger. As we Baby Boomers age many of us will become increasingly cranky and upset with the present, and I predict the Liberals will be the crankiest and most upset of us all.
Save for November
A concise, imformative explanation of the "Bradley effect".
Weird science
"Four More Spacecraft Show Bizarre Speed Changes".
Mysteriously, four spacecraft that flew past the Earth have each displayed unexpected anomalies in their motions.
These newfound enigmas join the so-called "Pioneer anomaly" as hints that unexplained forces may appear to act on spacecraft.
But an answer may be coming: "Scientists reconstruct the Pioneer spacecraft anomaly".
May 19, 2008
How to have a little fun with a Congressperson . . .
. . . who supports a "windfall" profits tax on oil companies. Ask 'em if they support a windfall profits tax on corn and soybean farmers, and if not, why not.
In the last two years (as of 5/15), crude oil on the Nymex has increased just about 75%, while corn and soybeans have each almost doubled. (Corn, which for many years sold for approximately $2/bushel, has recent been as high as $6/bushel.)
Conceptually, what's the difference between the oil companies' "windfall" and those of the corn and soybean farmers?
It might be possible to find an unusual Congressperson who would reply that there's no difference. But given the incredible--still--hold farmers seems to have over the U. S. Congress, I doubt it. (Link is to a post by Jim Lindgren, from whom I'm stealing the idea of a windfall profits tax on farmers.)
How to have fun with somebody who advocates higher taxes . . .
. . . ask 'em if they support Massachusetts legislator Paul Kujawski's proposal to tax university endowments over $1 billion. Wouldn't that tax be "equitable"? Wouldn't the money be able to fund many worthwhile programs?
Funny how the very Liberal Boston Globe doesn't think so.
Another phase of life
Having recently become one, I found this article on adult orphans very interesting.
"Bad driving: it's not just for old people"
You're thinking, ''They can't get any worse!'' I used to think that, but lately I'm not so sure. For example, the other night I was driving on the Palmetto Expressway. (I know, I know.) Normally, on the Palmetto, traffic moves at an average speed of 53 miles per hour, calculated as follows:
• 49 percent of the drivers are going 80 miles per hour.
• 49 percent of the drivers are going 30 miles per hour.
• 2 percent of the drivers are, for a variety of reasons, backing up.
Link via Michael Greenspan.
You Wreck Me
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, live in Gainesville, "You Wreck Me".
It sounds like how being 17 felt.
Medications: trust but verify
"Five Doctors Stumped: Explanation for Woman's Fast-Growing Tremor Turns Out to Be Elementary".
"Commonly Used Medications Associated With Impaired Physical Function In Older Adults". (Update: link fixed now. Thanks, Jim!)
May 18, 2008
Sodom and Gomorrah . . .
. . . turns out to be true, think researchers.
A clay tablet that has baffled scientists for 150 years has been identified as a witness’s account of the asteroid suspected of being behind the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
May 17, 2008
They get the Chuckster
If you haven't seen it yet, here's Charles Barkley being well and truly pranked.
May 16, 2008
CP3
If you haven't seen Chris Paul play recently, you're missing a treat.
A fine paragraph
". . . Certainly it's true that conservatism's founding era is over, and that the Soviet Union's collapse and socialism's profound discrediting count as its triumphs. But socialism is a perennial heresy, sure to reassert itself in one statist form or another when the free economy, in its typical oscillations, produces too many billionaires or too many unemployed workers or both. So the defense of the market economy is by no means exhausted."
--Charles R. Kesler, "Buckley's Legacy," Claremont Review of Books, Spring 2008. (There's no link to this particular piece yet, but the issue is here.)
May 15, 2008
SugarSync
I haven't tried this, but it sounds useful: "Synching Just Became a Cinch".
"Revenge of the Nerds"
Gene Weingarten's take on the infamous Atlantic article about the dating troubles of "attractive, interesting, accomplished single women in their 30s".
Also see Mr. Weingarten's letter to Bronx High School of Science about why he won't be attending his 40th reunion.
REASON 1: The ordinal number "40th." Other than a reunion of, say, the delivery room staff from one's birth, a 40th reunion of anything can only deliver an unwelcome awareness of one's decrepitude and the impendency of death. Even the word "fortieth" is awful. Look at it and try not to think of dentures.
REASON 2: If my goal was to feel like a complete failure, it would be cheaper and easier to go to a bad neighborhood, consume a half-gallon of fortified wine from a bottle in a bag and pass out in the gutter. When I went there, Bronx Science was the most intellectually exclusive, snobbiest public high school in the country. Actual true fact: If it were a country, Bronx Science would rank 23rd in the world in the number of Nobel laureates it has produced, tied with Spain. I have not kept track of the achievements of my particular class, but I have no doubt that you have among you brain surgeons, rocket scientists, stars of stage and screen, fi nanciers, tycoons, moguls, magnates and the king of Sweden.
Read the whole thing.
30 years
30 years ago I did a smart thing.
Happy 30th wedding anniversary, Betsy.
Craig
(Thanks to the other Craig Newmark for saving, scanning, and posting the announcement.)
May 14, 2008
Two on schools
A frustrated, (sort of) endorsement of charter schools by someone working on the front lines.
A few laughs, but the list is flawed
Nerve Magazine presents "The 50 Greatest Comedy Sketches of All Time".
No Church Lady? No Hans and Franz? No "It is better to look good than to feel good, and you, you look maaahvelous!"
Maybe they were trying to avoid just an SNL greatest hits list.
May 13, 2008
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.
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.
May 12, 2008
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 . . .
Continue reading "Having solved all the country's really serious problems . . ." »
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.
May 11, 2008
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 pr