Michigan skit night: faculty staff skit

I attended a lot of skit nights at Chicago (and participated in too many of those) and have been to all but one since I got to Michigan, but this year was the first time I can ever recall the faculty (and staff, in this case) skit (really video) being the consensus choice for best in show.

Did I mention that Joel should be chair for life?

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Assorted links

1. Virginia Postrel on things that are free.

2. Time for Italy to give up on Amanda Knox.

3. How economists break up.

4. A thoughtful Economist update on climate science.

5. Another reason I am glad I went to a big state university.

Hat tip on #5 to Rudi Bachmann.

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Selection bias, anyone?

Just when you think that everyone in the universe understands selection bias, you read a column like this one on late marriage by Ross Douthat, which deserves some sort of award for cramming the most selection-bias infested descriptive statistics interpreted in a causal way into a single newspaper column.

Sigh.

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Universities respond to incentives: who knew?

From Inside Higher Education the story of Australian universities hiring people to help them do well in the local version of the U.S. News rankings.

There are, of course, similar people at US universities; their jobs are just better disguised.

The literature on performance management makes clear that if you give bureaucrats an objective function, no matter how misguided, they will optimize relative to it, and with great creativity and enthusiasm.

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The mystery of fascism

David Ramsey Steele on the roots of fascism and its links to left and right.

Steele is someone I got to know when I was a graduate student at Chicago as he was married (at the time) to another student in the program and both of them were part of the libertarian circle in Hyde Park. Sadly, I have not seen him in well over decade.

My favorite line:

As Marxists used to say, fascism "appeals to the basest instincts," implying that leftists were at a disadvantage because they could appeal only to noble instincts like envy of the rich.

Well worth a read if you are into ideological history.

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Robert Heinlein writes to Theodore Sturgeon

One great science fiction writer writing to another, and offering story ideas no less. Well worth reading.

Sturgeon is, of course, the originator of Sturgeon's Law, which locals will have heard me quote, probably more than once: "95 percent of everything is crap".

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Movie: Oz the Great and Powerful

I liked this one much better than the NYT did, I think because I was not comparing it to the books nor was I worrying overmuch about the politics.

It has fireworks, magic, charm, a nod or two to Thomas Edison, what I thought was quite lovely animation and one really bad pun.

Our five-year-old found it scary at a couple of points, but was glad to have seen it overall.

Recommended as a movie for kids.

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