EconTech

Bore-Gush, revisited
Recently I worried that the news media would do again what they did in 2000, and somehow latch on to the storyline that a very conservative Republican and a progressive Democrat were really practically the same on the issues. And lo and behold, it’s starting (via dday).
As a numbers guy, I’m particularly upset that [...]

I’ve long thought that licensed ‘purchased’ materials is an asinine business plan that some day some hero will come through and shatter. Much of our cultural history has been created through sharing and reshaping. Now that the technology has come along to do it, companies and governments are attempting to create technological and legal barriers [...]

Andrew Gelman seems to be writing a lot about these kinds of things lately. But that’s ok:
Is a 65-hour story better than a 3-hour story?
Jane Dark writes here about movies taking only 100 minutes whereas, on TV, “The Wire is about 65 hours long, divided graciously into five location-based chapters. Movies are now the short [...]

Charm Beats Accuracy
Freakonomics:
A seven-month study of weather forecasting at Kansas City television stations was conducted over 220 days … One [station manager] said, “There’s not an evaluation of accuracy in hiring meteorologists. Presentation takes precedence over accuracy.” And when discussing accuracy (or the lack thereof) of a seven-day forecast, another station manager stated, “All viewers [...]

Warning: Totally irrelevant to the usual subjects of this space.
Objects of the class “Whoopi Goldberg”
I’m talking about actors who are undeniably talented but are almost always in bad movies, or at least movies that aren’t worthy of their talent. Sure, Whoopi was in The Color Purple, but that’s it. Other examples: Martin Short. Michael Keaton [...]

Ed Burns and David Simon are writing a mini series for HBO “Generation Kill” about the first wave of the invasion of the 2003 Iraq War (trailer here). They were, of course, the writers for that other show you may have heard about, “The Wire.” Lots of other good stuff is in there. Ziggy Sobotka [...]

and Colbert got his Peabody. Now he’ll never shut up. Thank the Gods. From The Monkey Cage:
Annals of Improbable Research

Forthcoming from James Fowler in PS: Political Science and Politics
Stephen Colbert, the host of Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report, claims that politicians who appear on his show will become more popular and are more likely to [...]

Obviously, I am no Hollywood exec (though even if I were, there wouldn’t be a whole lot of evidence that I know how to pick winners and losers). However, I just do not see how such a show could be created and be interesting. It is like a show about academia. You could put it [...]

Hopefully transitivity fails here!
So, apparently this guy, Guy Kawasaki came up with YABRI (Yet Another Blog Reading Interface): Alltop. It is pretty cool, I suppose. An interesting idea, though I doubt that I would use the interface much. It is a very mousy interface, and I’m very keyboard oriented (probably why I hate web-apps [...]

First of all, sorry for the downtime, if you were trying to get to the site. Moved the server, didn’t go as well as expected. Hopefully now it will be better. There is a good chance of another period of downtime within the week, depending on how my apartment mates react to the cable running [...]

Well, maybe. I just saw this article over at the BBC saying that 2025 candidates were required to secure the Democratic nomination. Thinking that maybe, just maybe, the BBC is more reliable than most American news sources, I went over to the DNC’s website, and I see this image (Original Screenshot of DNC Website). Cropped [...]

READ! (who would’ve thought) Tyler Cowen points us to a book:
Cop in the Hood

Motivated primarily by a desire for court overtime pay, police officers want arrests on their own terms, ideally without victims, complaints, or unnecessary paperwork. Young officers make more arrests than veteran officers. These officers believe that making arrests is police [...]

Dani Rodrik asks if he should start reading The Economist again? The answer to this question largely depends on whether you have access to a publication that gives a decent overview of world news. If you do, don’t bother. If not, it is a great weekly. YouNotSneaky has some advice on how to read The [...]

Well, besides putting Season 1 to the top of your NetFlix queue. You will probably call me crazy for suggesting this, and it does depend on why you like”The Wire.” If you like it because of the raw violence and that it is a crime drama, then this suggestion will apply to you less than [...]

What Do Real Thugs Think of The Wire? Part Nine

I should have seen it coming. But I didn’t.
The Thugs informed me that they were not interested in watching the last 2 episodes of season 5 of The Wire. I’ve been pleading with them to reconsider.
“We’ve seen this s–t already,” Shine told me. “This is fun [...]