Send the Goons
The Quadratic Formula as an IRS Form.#
Bruce Schneier: Hacking the Papal Election#
What are the lessons here? First, open systems conducted within a known group make voting fraud much harder. Every step of the election process is observed by everyone, and everyone knows everyone, which makes it harder for someone to get away with anything. Second, small and simple elections are easier to secure. This kind of process works to elect a Pope or a club president, but quickly becomes unwieldy for a large-scale election. The only way manual systems work is through a pyramid-like scheme, with small groups reporting their manually obtained results up the chain to more central tabulating authorities.
Tyler Cowen discusses his beliefs based not on much evidence.#
2. High-quality American high school students study too much and have too many extracurricular activities. Yes, I am thinking zero-sum game. It would be better for most of them to go out and get jobs bagging groceries. They would learn more about the real world.
The Movie Blog on typecasting and how Hayden Christensen is actually pretty good.#
Dave Hyatt on bizarre comments in HTML.#
Tyler Cowen links to a story about how dogs communicate with humans.#
...dogs' barks have evolved into a relatively sophisticated way of communicating with humans. Adam Miklósi, an ethology professor, set out in a recent experiment to see if humans can interpret what dogs mean when they bark. He recruited 90 human volunteers and played them 21 recordings of barking Hungarian mudis, a herding breed.
The recordings captured dogs in seven situations, such as playing with other dogs, anticipating food, and encountering an intruder. The people showed strong agreement about the emotional meaning of the various barks, regardless of whether they owned a mudi or another breed of dog, or had never owned a dog. Owners and nonowners were also equally successful at deducing the situation that had elicited the barks, guessing correctly in a third of the situations, or about double the rate of chance.
Click through for more.
Andrew Moroz links to some lectures on the Middle East.#
Louis Armstrong - Oops... I Did It Again#
Alex Tabarrok on this NYT Magazine article.#
Bryan Caplan comments on taboos.#
Fredrik Segerfeldt on Che idolatry.#
Every time I see a picture of Che I ask myself: how would I look in a t-shirt picturing Augusto Pinochet?
Most people are shocked by the comparison. One man is dragged in front of courts in a wheel-chair, and his crimes are reported in the press over and over again, whereas the other one is the lover boy of, what it seems, much of an entire generation. Most recently he was portrayed in the blockbuster film Motorcycle Diaries.
Let us therefore look back at the legacy of the two men. Both Che and Pinochet are obviously murderers and in favour of dictatorship. But one helped installed a dictatorship that has led to poverty whereas the other one ran a dictatorship that brought wealth and stability to the country. In 1975, the Chilean GDP per capita, adjusted for purchasing power, was $1,321 (current international dollars). In 2003 it was $10,206. The average income of Chileans has thus been multiplied by almost eight in 28 years. Chile is now a stable democracy and the most prosperous country of South America. Cuba has gone in the opposite direction.
Joey deVilla writes about Filipino formal work.#
Econometrics joke at Marginal Revolution.#
Faré makes a simple observation.#
In the "public" sector, failing administrations demand more money to do more of the failing things they do. In the "private" sector, successful companies are proposed more money to do more of the successful things they do. Guess which system works better. Of course, if you've read my paper on economic reasoning, you know that the real distinction is not between "public" and "private" but between "based on coercive compulsion" and "based on voluntary cooperation".
Joey comments on property rights in responsibilities in the National Guard as an 'eternal pissing match.'#