Flattery

So I'm too immodest not to recount this episode. Our International econ professor had us working on replicating some results he recently published. His coauthor, a Harvard econ professor is teaching the same course to the Ph.D. students at Harvard's econ department; they assigned the same homework to both classes.

Talking on the phone recently, our prof told us, the Harvard prof had expressed concern that they'd made the assignment too difficult: her students were having real difficulty with it. He told her, "Oh, my students aren't having any trouble at all".

Ice Bowl

According to the weather people, today was the coldest day in 2 or 3 years in Rochester. With a high of 11 and a windchill of -11, what else could we do except play another game of tackle football? For the third week in a row, we've had our teeth frozen in place in our mouthguards and played a hard-hitting, easy-fumbling version of the game that has us spitting blood that freezes before it reaches the snow.

What better to do on a day like today? (OK, skiing a few miles would be nice, and skating would be awesome... maybe later, maybe next week).

Times Imitates Zak

The New York Times is apparently hard up for its own copy leading into Super Bowl weekend, so it resorted to stealing old material from Casey Zak's Mighty Blog. These liberals have no shame, even adding fake quotes and made-up detail to the story to make it longer (but no more interesting).

Casey, what happened to your original? I can't find it in on your blog.

Overpaid Underperformers

The stylized facts about American education:

1. Students do not receive an adequate education
2. Teachers do not receive adequate salaries

Most people would agree to these statements, especially relative to cities and high cost-of-living regions. But what if the only the first statement were true? Jay Greene and Marcus Winters argue in today's Opinion Journal that this is the case; and the numbers back them up.

Who, on average, is better paid--public school teachers or architects? How about teachers or economists? You might be surprised to learn that public school teachers are better paid than these and many other professionals. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, public school teachers earned $34.06 per hour in 2005, 36% more than the hourly wage of the average white-collar worker and 11% more than the average professional specialty or technical worker

But what about in the cities?

Metro Detroit leads the nation, paying its public school teachers, on average, $47.28 per hour. That's 61% more than the average white-collar worker in the Detroit area and 36% more than the average professional worker. In metro New York, public school teachers make $45.79 per hour, 20% more than the average professional worker in that area. And in Los Angeles teachers earn $44.03 per hour, 23% higher than other professionals in the area.

Those aren't cities known for their high student performance.

Public school teachers rank highly on my list of despised professions. Like bureaucrats, sugar planters and oilmen, these folks fleece the taxpayers by siphoning off a little of their booty to a hogpen of pliant lawmakers. Meanwhile, American children born into poor neighborhoods are trapped there as hostages of the American Federation of Teachers, whose bosses shed streams of crocodile tears at the fate of their own prisoners.

German Gray Giants

I can't do justice to this WaPo story, so I'll just have to quote it:

How, exactly, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea intends to parlay the small herd of German Flopsies into hunger relief for its 23 million citizens is unclear.

If I Were A Betting Man

I would not put any money down at Long Bets. You can't win anything, and - win or lose - you have to put your money down up front. If you win, your benefit is not money - it's pride... if you're still alive.

That said, I'm glad someone had the inspiration to create Long Bets. While it doesn't rise to the high stakes dignity of those it has imitated - who made real bets on the future of the world by trading long commodity futures - it provides a lasting record of accountable predictions and thinking about humanity's future.

Since it costs $50 just to make a prediction, the Long Bets website is not overloaded with predictions. And since only 50/50 odds are allowed, few of the predictions become bets. Many of the predictors and notables are influential people - CEO's, authors, publishers, innovators. Some of the predictions are fairly mundane:

By 2010, the use of dial-up modems will represent less than 5 percent of all Internet access (represented as a percentage of all households) in the United States. As part of this prediction, I expect that at that time, dial-up service will cost significantly more than the slowest alternative, which will be substantially faster than dial-up.

02006 - 02010 (4 years)

Glenn I. Fleishman

Some are wildly weird:

By the year 2150, over 50% of schools in the USA or Western Europe will require classes in defending against robot attacks.

02002 - 02150 (148 years)

Alex K. Rubin

And only a handful are already settled, though it seems Long Bets has some work to do on timely and clear adjudication:

The US men's soccer team will win the World Cup before the Red Sox win the World Series.

02002 - ? (? years)

$1,000 each

Mike Elliot v. Ted Danson

Biden Shoots Self In Foot... Again

Dick Cheney is not needed for this blunderbuss job: Joe Biden (D-Del) knows how to take a shotgun to his presidential chances all on his own. It's not Biden's first verbal gaffe, but it's probably the most egregious and least forgivable. According to Drudge, Biden talked about Barack Obama in an interview today:

'I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy...'

If Mr. Biden thought that any black leaders would be helping him reach their constituencies, he can pretty much forget it.

The full story is here. Biden rips into all the Democratic frontrunners in the kind of rant one might expect from a drunken town meeting member.