So it was Gangster Squad or a romantic comedy. Probably we should have gone with the romantic comedy but Gangster Squad is visually beautiful in both the sets and the costumes.A dyspeptic but quite entertaining A.O. Scott calls it a "costume party run amok." It is not quite as bad as he makes out, but the cast never quite gels as an ensemble and the writing is ... well ... not as pretty as the sets.Not really recommend...
Thursday, January 24, 2013
Thursday, January 17, 2013
1. UM papyrii on your iphone.2. Markets in everything: pet euthanasia with house calls. Dr. Tomlinson was a co-worker of mine at Farrell's Ice Cream Parlour restaurant in Southcenter mall back in the day.3. Megan McArdle on libertarian men.4. The secrets of flight attendants.5. Glenn Beck's utopian community.6. Detroit News takes the high road with a piece on "sugar babbies" at universities in Michigan that reads more or less like an advertisement.Hat tip on #1 to Charlie Brown. #3 and #5 via instapund...
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
Some conservatives took offense at labor economist Erica Groshen's choice of summer camp (!!!) for her kids.The general rule applies here, as they should know: economists of any team > pretty much anyone else who might get appointed to a government position.Really, the folks at Americans for Limited Government should have something more serious to do with their time and their donors' money. There are plenty of genuinely wretched appointments, and plenty of bits of government that could use limiting, in every administration. This isn't...
From today's University of Michigan Record Update:The Sweetland Center for Writing's Dissertation Writing Institute, now in its 10th year, is helping to boost doctoral program completion rates of graduate students. Compared with national rates of 50-60 percent, institute students complete at a rate of 88 percent.To interpret this causally requires that students who select into the program are a random sample of all doctoral students, as is required for the causal interpretation the university gives to this difference in completion rates. That...
Monday, January 14, 2013
The NYT has a nice puff piece on the computer science department at the University of Washington, from which I received one of my two undergraduate degrees.Some things have changed a lot since then, like the building, the department ranking, and being in the engineering school rather than arts and sciences, but some things remain, like there being "too few" slots. Hank Levy and Ed Lazowska, mentioned in the article, were both around in my undergraduate days, and I took a very enjoyable class from Ed on operating systems. It was probably the...
Sunday, January 13, 2013
An astounding tale from Philadelphia that reads like something out of the 1930s.The only weak point occurs when the author attributes, as many do, things like the 40 hour work week to unions rather than to economic development. That leisure is a normal good (i.e. people buy more of it, implicitly in this case via fewer hours, as their incomes rise) is really the only explanation required.Via instapun...
Some folks have made a letter that offers up some truly radical, and surprisingly constructive, suggestions about gun policy: collect better data and use it to increase our knowledge of the various emprical parameters that would go into a serious social benefit-cost analysis of different policies.Also implicit in the letter, which I think is a good idea, is holding off on any policy changes until we have better evidence. This has the further beneficial effect of allowing the media frenzy to pass. We adopted very badly designed policies, e.g....
Saturday, January 12, 2013
Is there anything more embarrassing for all concerned than the personal statements that students write, and faculty read, as part of graduate admissions?I have often thought that a most entertaining addition to skit night would consist of reading selected excerpts from the personal statements of our graduate students currently on the job market. [I suspect that this violates some sort of federal law and/or university regulation - oh well.]On the other hand, the over-selling in personal statements is probably good practice for writing grant...
Thursday, January 10, 2013
I was sad to learn yesterday that Nobel laureate economist James Buchanan, co-founder with Gordon Tullock of the "public choice" sub-field of economics, has passed on.Reading Buchanan and Tullock's book The Calculus of Consent in my undergraduate days had a big effect on my thinking about constitutions, what one might call the mechanism design of government. It remains well worth reading today. I also enjoyed Buchanan's memoir Better than Plowing.Back in my Maryland days, I drove down to Virginia and gave a seminar at George Mason. The seminar...
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
1. Organic food causes autism (or, the dangers of univariate regression, yet again)2. Ann Arbor predictions for 2013. 3. The Ark - the famous folk music venue in Ann Arbor - has bought its building. I think this is great news. Hopefully we get to the Ark more often in the coming year.4. An excellent product warning label.5. Trying and failing to join the "mile high club". #4 via the Agitator and #5 via instapun...
Wednesday, January 2, 2013
A minor scandal in Long Island, as reported in the NYT: Key paragraph: Neither colleges nor high schools are ever alerted that cheating was suspected. Tom Ewing, an Educational Testing Service spokesman, said that confidentiality laws meant to protect minors prevented his company from disclosing that information. Of 2.25 million SATs taken every year, about 1,000 scores are withdrawn for misbehavior, 99 percent of which are for copying, he said.1,000 out of 2.25 million is a pretty low rate, but it sounds like the 1000 is people who misbehave during...
Tuesday, January 1, 2013
The NYT frowns without saying much, while Rolling Stone gushes. I am somewhere in between. Tom Cruise plays only one character, but he plays it well. I enjoyed this rendition better than, e.g. the latest Mission Impossible movie. This one is also interesting for how the politics of guns are handled, something I was suprised to see the NYT not mention.Recommended if you like the character Tom Cruise pla...
The Atlantic considers Bronzeville, the neighborhood northwest of Hyde Park in Chicago. The neighborhood is relatively unique in being an example of minority gentrification.I would add a couple of thoughts. First, I do not recall hearing the area actually called Bronzeville until after the gentrification got going. When I was a grad student at Chicago, it was just the bad neighborhood you drove through on the way from Hyde Park to Midway airport. Second, I don't think that lessons from Chicago, with its long and acrimonious racial history, necessarily...
No leadership from our "leaders", just a can kicked forward and some envy candy for the mindless part of the left. If anyone in DC is aware that there is actually a literature on public finance, there is no real evidence of it in this deal.Pathetic, but not unexpected, and not a very auspicious start to 2013.Bonus: some smart words from Greg Mankiw and a fine bashing of the NYT from John Cochra...
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