Posts from ‘November, 2008’

I make no money from blogging, hardly anyone reads my blog and if I ever run/hold a significant public position my blog will probably hurt my job chances. So why blog? I can think of three main reasons. 1) Focus my thoughts – Ideas come through writing and articulating my thoughts can help me give [...]

"He refused to go to college classes and focused his relentless will on bending the Worcester Polytechnic Institute to his purposes. "I said, ‘I’m paying my tuition to have the entire faculty as business consultants. I recognize that is not consistent with your model, which is, You know better than I and I have to [...]

On the topic of good questions to ask other people. I would say that I have awesome ideas and never follow through on them. An old teacher compared me to a Tesla coil, fizzing and sparking in twenty different directions but not very far in any of them.

Michigan won the game on the defensive end. They got behind early mixing man-to-man and zone so in the second half they went exclusively with a 1-3-1 zone. Interestingly when the ball got below the level of the top of the key their zone looked much more like a 2-3 with the baseline player as [...]

I’m convinced that the Big Three need to go into bankruptcy just so they can rid themselves of the unions… If I were Ford I wouldn’t want to keep my plants in Detroit either. The money quote: Ford sources said it is the sort of plant the company wants in the United States, were it [...]

"Though Steve has studied subjects as diverse as quantum physics, classical philosophy, Latin, Greek, electrical engineering, communications theory, and the history of exploration, he has no college diploma, and this makes him feel somewhat inadequate and defensive. "The blessing part of high intelligence is that it seems that you’re equipped with a telescope and a [...]

For a good summary of the arguments for and against bailing out the auto industry, see Becker and Posner. It’s rare to see them disagree; usually they take the same side of an argument. I am against bailing out the auto companies. Bankruptcy should mean that you’ve run out of money and you should try [...]

How can you identify good teachers before you hire them? Could you or I design a written exam that would weed out the good teachers from the bad, or does the test medium make that task impossible? How different would schools look if you designed curriculum to make students smarter, not more knowledgeable? Especially if [...]

“I do feel bad about that trophy I threw in the Mississippi, because you don’t want to pollute an important, historic waterway,” he said. “But I don’t want any of those trophies. I appreciate the gesture, but a coaching award distracts from the essence of a coach’s job, which is to educate the students. You [...]

Fascinating Michael Lewis article about three guys who shorted every financial firm involved in the subprime crisis going back to 2004. Hat tip to EconLog. Dennis Litsky, founder of the Met Schools, talks about his vision for school.Three days a week are in the classroom and two at internships in the community. The school has [...]