the ladybug and the lion

Harper's Weekly Highlight.

Michigan and Wisconsin argued over which state was shaped more like a mitten. "We understand their mitten envy," said a spokesman from Travel Michigan. "It's not our fault," said a Wisconsinite from Neenah, "that their thumb is smaller."

—Harper's Weekly.

The SEC.

It is not that they failed to uncover my fraud, it is the fact that for their entire existence they have spent their time and resources on the petty problems of small firms and refuse to deal with the obvious problems and outright violations of the large investment banks who had free reign to cause the eventual destruction of the financial markets. This mentality is still in evidence today.

—Bernie Madoff

Full story at the NYT.

Quotes I Like.

We have moved to the PhD standard from the gold standard.

—James Grant

Quotes I Like.

True nobility isn't about being better than anyone else; it's about being better than you used to be.

—Portia De Rossi

Scrabble's Bobby Fischer.

If Scrabble was searching for a Bobby Fischer, Nigel Richards might qualify. Like Fischer, Nigel’s knowledge of the game, in this case word knowledge, is so complete as to put competitors at a usually insurmountable disadvantage. And like Fischer—though of course without the hatred, reclusiveness, and perversity that characterized Fischer’s life—Nigel the person is an enigma, Scrabble’s mystery man, arriving seemingly from nowhere, revealing little, asking nothing in return.

Nigel has a rock climber’s thin and sinewy body, with sandy brown hair combed straight forward in bangs and a long bushy beard that make him look like an Amish elder. He wears oversized aviator glasses, jeans and T-shirts, and mid-calf brown boots, and always carries a stuffed rucksack. During the tournament, he rents a bicycle and takes a forty-minute ride every morning before the start of play—and play starts at eight o’clock. I never see him join a friendly game or otherwise socialize with fellow players.

More compelling than his mountain-man appearance is his demeanor. Nigel is the first Scrabble player I’ve met who truly doesn’t seem bothered by the outcome of a game, who is interested only in the process, the intellectual challenge posed by the seven letters on a rack. He wears a blank expression that seldom changes. He rarely reacts to what people say to (or about) him, yet his silence isn’t rude or hostile, either. He betrays no emotion when he plays. Arms parallel to the edge of the board, left hand folded over right, Nigel stares unblinkingly at the tiles before making his play: still life with Scrabble player.

From an excerpt of the uncut version of Word Freak.

Harper's Weekly Highlight.

Following multiple accusations of marital infidelity, Herman Cain dropped out of the G.O.P. presidential race, saying his reputation was under attack by a conspiracy of "elites" and political reporters. Cain closed his withdrawal speech by quoting at length the theme song from "Pokemon: The First Movie": "Life can be a challenge. Life can seem impossible. It's never easy when there's so much on the line. But you and I can make a difference. There's a mission just for you and me."

—Harper's Weekly.

Efficiency.

Every time you write a Captcha—you know, these things—you're helping to digitize books. The Ted talk by Luis von Ahn is here. It made me incredibly happy. 

He also launched a website, Duolingo, where people can sign up to learn a language by translating the web:

Taxing The One Percent.

When businesspeople take credit for creating jobs, it is like squirrels taking credit for creating evolution. In fact, it’s the other way around.

It is unquestionably true that without entrepreneurs and investors, you can’t have a dynamic and growing capitalist economy. But it’s equally true that without consumers, you can’t have entrepreneurs and investors. And the more we have happy customers with lots of disposable income, the better our businesses will do.

That’s why our current policies are so upside down. When the American middle class defends a tax system in which the lion’s share of benefits accrues to the richest, all in the name of job creation, all that happens is that the rich get richer.

—Nick Hannuer at Bloomberg.

Econometrics.

I was in high school at the time of the oil price crisis of the 1970s and I asked my mom, “What causes inflation?” She didn’t know. I think it was from then on that I started wondering about money and inflation and what caused it – how the Fed was involved et cetera. When I got to college I took economics and started answering those questions. Then when I got to graduate school I learned theories about why it happened, and I got interested in how you test those theories. How do you know if this theory is right or that theory is right? How can we figure it out? That’s where econometrics comes in. Time-series econometrics was a set of tools I could use to answer that longstanding question I had about how the Federal Reserve impacts the economy, how it creates inflation and so on.

Full interview with Mark Thoma at FiveBooks.

Harper's Weekly Highlight.

The Vatican's chief exorcist warned Catholics about the dangers of yoga. "You think you are doing it for stretching," said Father Gabriele Amorth, "but it leads to Hinduism."

—Harper's Weekly.