Category: Web/Tech

1. The lost decade, from Michael Mandel.

2. Scott Sumner reviews Create Your Own Economy.

3. Distinctly rare and unique lobsters, recommended.

1. Glenn Gould on Sviatoslav Richter.

2. How recession and technology are reshaping the porn industry.

3. The tricks of burglars.

4. How to marry well, using probability.

5. When is it most dangerous to drive?

1. The world's healthiest 75-year-old man?

2. Tarantino's favorite movies since 1992.

3. When behavioral economics works too well.

4. Regulations hamper volunteer medical care.

5. Readers' Digest files for bankrputcy.

1. Gerald Dworkin on G.A. Cohen.

2. Possible furloughs for UC professors.

3. Critique of libertarianism, built around Monty Python quotations.

4. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and his predictions.

5. Richard Thaler on the public plan.

6. Sarah Lyall on the NHS.

Via Finoculous, the list is here.  Some of the odder terms were:

• "Webkinz" (#16)
• "Runescape" (#37)
• "Nigahiga" (#99)
• "Miniclip" (#18)
• "Poptropica" (#54)
• "Hoedown Throwdown" (#61)

"Runescape" of course I know (yet without understanding it) from reading MR spam; the rest were a mystery to me.  #1 was "YouTube."

1. Is psychology a prescriptive science?

2. Blogs should be krummier, via cheeptalk.wordpress.com.

3. Les Paul on YouTube and here; there is more.

4. Immigration and health care reform.

5. China blog post of the day.

6. Battlestar Galactica movie on the way.

1. Landsburg on Mankiw on cap-and-trade.

2. Cold climates erode moutain peaks; that's why the very tallest mountains are near the equator.

3. The particle zoo.

4. Brooklyn artists create their own currency.

5. An interesting theory of how some people read fast, and more here.

1. Markets in everything: The Twitter Opera, from Covent Garden.

2. IP norms and stand-up comedy, and a comment.

3. Book covers that were not meant to be.

4. The importance of the NYC subway.

5. Chris Masse sends me a long McKinsey study on the economics of prizes.

1. Does Sylt have the world's most expensive Haus?

2. Why Michael Foody likes Twitter.

3. Aesop was smart, so are crows.

4. Bank of Japan counts brothels to gauge economy.

5. Listen to Robert Reich (though I would change the framing a bit).

6. My new Bloggingheads.TV, on human neurodiversity and Create Your Own Economy, with Will Wilkinson (leave your comments on that site).

1. Greg Clark fears the machines.

2. Can the health care fight be won?

3. The cover for SuperFreakonomics.

4. Waffle House weirdness (via Craig Newmark). 

5. History of Times New Roman.

1. The artistry of the aggregator.

2. Podcast, me speaking with Colin Marshall, mostly about the new world of culture.

3. For new technology, is it the progression of the inevitable?

4. Trying to supply private unemployment insurance.

5. My response to Robert Lucas; broader collection of responses here.

1. More on David Wessel's book on the Fed.

2. In defense of Goldman Sachs.

3. Rose Wilder Lane and her mother.

4. Markets in everything: A poet/lawyer has
started a consulting group to help writers with their
applications/portfolios to creative writing MFA/PhD programs.  Here is one negative reaction, here is more on the dispute.

5. G.A. Cohen has passed away.

1. Heterogeneous benefits from medical interventions, a new paper by William Evans and Craig Garthwaite.

2. Why your spleen is important.

3.The culture that is Japan: ramen robots.

4. A countercyclical asset, right in the restaurant itself.

5. Brad Setser update.

Could digital books could produce [a] class of "pro readers" so insightful you pay to download their notes?

That's a tweet from Andrew Hazlett.

I enjoyed this article, here is an excerpt:

"If you have been writing to someone 'Best' this and 'Best' that, and
you get an e-mail that is a little colder, a little hostile, and they
sign 'Sincerely,' that does mean things aren't so good," Schwalbe says.
" 'Sincerely' is the one that says, 'There's a problem here.' "

And, one may well wonder, does "Cordially" ever mean anything other than "My hostility is only thinly veiled"?

And when, e-mail-wise, is it too early for "Love"? Does "Fondly"
ever belong in business? Is "Cheers" too mock-Brit? Too alcoholic?

Fondly,

Tyler