Timely Snow

Kevin Drum has an interesting albeit superficial discussion of the costs of delivering higher education. Part of hit revolves around the concept called Baumol’s cost disease, that some things get cheaper as technology improves (e.g., effort required to look up the meaning of “Baumol’s cost disease”), and others don’t (e.g., discussing “Baumol’s cost disease” with [...]

One obstacle to doing something to help the auto industry is the claim that auto workers make $70 an hour. Megan McArdle tries to justify that claim here, in a rather unconvincing way. (See this posting by Felix Salmon for a clearer discussion of the issues).

The problem is, that this includes all the costs that [...]

This is very, very neat: Google Flu trends.

(Although I don’t know why they filled in Lake Michigan. Maybe they know something we don’t).

Now that the election is over, it seems like the perfect time to start a low-information diet. The term comes, as far as I know, from the book Tim Ferriss’ book, The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich

Ferriss himself comes off as a bit of a huckster and charlatan (e.g., [...]

Today, finally, is Election day. I decided to go early and get it over with, and got to my polling place about 6:45 prior to its opening at 7 a.m. There were already about 100 people in line. Once I got in, I was lucky to discover that they’d divided their registration book into surnames [...]

Ruth and I took the airport subway at one point on our trip. It’s literally “above it all” and provides a very different view of Beijing than I’ve seen before. It costs 25 kuai (about 3, I mean almost 4 dollars) but it’s an interesting trip. It goes from the Dongzhimen station to Sanyuanqiao and [...]

The parents of Ruth’s student who took us to the Wall are very interesting. Both got Ph.D.s in biology from UC Berkeley in the early 1990s, and the father then got an MBA from Yale before they both came back to China (she works as a biologist; he works as an investor). I walked with [...]

Catching up on some posts from my recent trip to Beijing. The family of one of Ruth’s students took us out to the Great Wall, going up a path starting from a village just beyond Mutianyu (慕田峪). Interesting but harder climb up (and particularly down) over very slick rocks instead of steps, but a very [...]

This map will be updated continuously once results start coming in tonight…