Watch 8 Year Olds Fight

This Semester at Penn, in the news

Senior arrested for breaking into girls dorms, stalking them, and stealing underwear and handbags.

Much loved sophomore Anne Ryan dies of meningitis.

Economics professor admits that he killed his wife with a chin up bar following an argument about whether their daughter would miss school for vacation.

Admissions director Lee Stetson
steps down after 29 years, leaves only a voicemail, no one knows why he left.

Penn Police shoot and kill a man at a strip club off campus (The man had shot the DJ, and refused to drop his gun).

Dozens of shots fired a block away from campus, one dead, one cop shot in the thigh.

A security escort walked a girl home and then exposed himself on her doorstep.

A student was raped in her off-campus apartment.

Our poor school. We need to stop the violence.

Teams are idiots

You can’t sign a player for ten years, and you can’t sign him for $275 million. At least you shouldn’t want to. Who can predict anything that is going to happen ten years in the future? Look at Barry Zito, Charlie Weis, deals made by the New York Mets, etc. – very long contract deals rarely work out.

No Free Lunches

The moral of Tim Harford’s article is, don’t try to do people a favor unless you want to get trampled. If you were wondering why Harvard has a $26 billion endowment and is increasing the cost of tuition every year by 6%, that article is a good place to look.

Problems with getting kids to do what you want

“Dr. Fryer said that after months of working with students, he has learned to listen to their opinions. At one point, he considered creating special shoes along the lines of Nike’s Air Jordans for students who did well. He mentioned the idea to a group of fourth-grade students.

“It took about three seconds,” he said, “for one of them to look at me and say, ‘Oh, you mean Air Nerds?’”

The idea – to create a limited-release product that you can only get if you have good grades, is okay, but anything that is only available to smart kids will act as a negative signal for those kids.

Unexpected baseball game interruption

Is it possible to have consistent views, support abortion, and oppose the death penalty?

I’ve been struggling with this recently.

Two links worth your time

Meghan McArdle discussing why school voucher programs are superior to government-run public schools, and Dan Shanoff discussing the ideal 128-school BCS playoff. Imagine, you could have Notre Dame vs. Boston College in the 1st round… Imagine too if teams get to split the revenue from games down the middle, it would help out the small schools that don’t get that much revenue from football. Also we wouldn’t get those crappy games where good football schools decide to schedule patsies for nonleague games because they want to stay unbeaten and in the hunt for a national title.

Shibboleth

A shibboleth is a word used to test and recognize foreigners by using a sound that would be difficult for some people to pronounce.

Apple Does Not Want you to Unlock your iPhone

Unlocking has the potential to cost them $130 million in revenue from AT&T. Unless of course it can also sign a deal with T-Mobile.

Don’t Pay for Shit You Can’t Afford

A key example is found here. This feels to me like it is a made up couple.

This all goes to show how greedy businesses are driving people bankrupt by charging outrageously high prices. $400 a month on Starbucks? The government needs to step in and help out victims like this poor family.

Iran

Read this article by Fareed Zakaria. Seymour Hersh predicted this back in April of 2006. We laughed then. 68% of Americans oppose a military attack against Iran.

You are crying wolf now, Mr. Bush. The Iraq war has cost $1,300 per American, and we have nothing to show for it.

Iraq

Words of Wisdom

“Nothing cures a broken heart like an ex with a stupid haircut.”

Please read

Freakonomics interview with Phillippe Legrain about immigration.