Patrick Hruby argues that NCAA basketball players should go on strike. The argument for paying college football players is weak. The argument for basketball is even weaker. If they want to get paid, and they’re really good, they have a multitude of options. Also, Title IX. You can’t may men’s basketball without also paying women’s.

According to a new study, cursing at work can help you make friends and reduce stress.

Matt Yglesias points out that if we had more dense cities, we’d have less dense elsewheres. This would allow for more things like grass-fed cattle ranching. Though true, it still doesn’t explain how you get the rest of the country to agree to more dense living.

Derek Thompson investigates how spending has changed over the years.

Why are city centers growing more quickly when wealth becomes more suburbanized?

A World Without People: pictures of abandoned places.

Due to a labor dispute an entire Arena Football team was fired during a pregame meal. Stranger still? The on-the-spot replacement team went on to win.

I really hope that makeshift publishing becomes a thing. If we’re going to keep paper books around, the inventory problem has to be dealt with.

China has begun construction of a megacity, planned to be four times the population of New York and twice the size of Jersey. A part of me thinks this is just awesome. Except that I fear it will be disasterous.

Five so-called health foods to avoid. I was happy to see Sun Chips get a waiver. There actually wasn’t anything on the list that I consume on the basis of it being healthy. I eat reduced-fat cheese and tons of high-fiber stuff. The latter helps. Not sure about the former, but the main reason I eat it is because it doesn’t taste as good and therefore I eat less of it.

Katherine Mangu-Ward on why all government anti-obesity efforts seem to fail.

Windows 8 is apparently confusing. I’ve just finally gotten used to Windows 7 to the point that I have no preference between Win7 and WinXP (though, dag nabbit, I want my versitile Quicklaunch Bar back!).

Aldous Huxley though his dystopian future was more credible than George Orwell’s dystopian future. I actually listened through 1984 a couple weeks back. I need to see if I can get Brave New World.

Matthew Yglesias defends the Sun Belt. Namely, its desire to expand. The oft-derided sprawl helps keep down the costs-of-living. This is not looked at nearly enough. Lowering the cost of living is almost as good as raising wages.

Most finders of lost smartphones are snoops. Wouldn’t you be?

California has an unbelievably good higher education system. Would that they made it more accessible, both in terms of grades and in terms of cost.

The North Dakota Fighting For The Sioux Name saga continues…

There’s a Mormon running for president… of Mali. (via Abel)

Alan Jacobs discusses the benefits of the traditional publishing route. David Ryan goes a step further and declares self-publishing dead.

Rep. Marsha Blackburn is right: TSA officials have no business wearing badges unless they have actually gone through actual law enforcement training. Security guards wear badges they didn’t earn quite that way, but it’s different when we’re talking about actual government officials. (And honestly, if your job is to observe-and-report, I don’t think you should get a shiny badge, either.)

The Great Scout Divide.

New Army guidelines are making it tougher for NCO’s to re-enlist. It wasn’t that long ago when we had to take measures to prevent them from leaving.

Piracy marches ever-forward. The Pirate Bay has found a way to host a searching mechanism and provide (a) some legal distance for themselves and (b) some anonymity for users. Meanwhile, the powers-that-be behind BitTorrent (who knew that such a thing would have PTB?) are changing formats for their videos, and their customers aren’t happy about it. Out of curiosity, I compared them side-to-side and determined that the new video is noticeably better even while being smaller. However, the new standard doesn’t play on my phone.

Via Web, an article about actors that are hired to call-in to radio shows and help create content.

A look at urbanization and the absence of middle class in China. Also, China is building a city to be four times the size of New York.

Nokia is releasing new Windows Phone and Symbian models. Symbian? Really? I didn’t know Symbian commanded any loyalty (says the WinMo loyalist). On the other hand, Symbian already has a video player that does what I want video players to do, and isn’t going away like WinMo (apparently). Hmmm.

I commented a couple times recently that the music industry has done everything it could to delivery products that reduce piracy, but they don’t seem to have worked. Well, maybe it did.

The Saudis are tiring of speed cameras. Really? This is where they draw the line?

Somoa apparently skipped December 30th of last year. If dates and time zones are fluid, what are the implications for time itself?

Via Dr. Phi, a vet was mistakenly declared AWOL and jailed. This was not cleared up as easily as one might hope.

Assessing the Real and Perceived Consequences of Shale Gas Development.

“Households with incomes of $100,000 or more are twice as likely to coupon as those who earn less than $35,000. College-degree holders are also twice as likely to use coupons as those who did not graduate from high school. ”

China is outsourcing to Europe.

The Obama Administration gives its blessing to a partial Keystone pipeline. This strikes me as cutting the baby in half. Getting oil from Canada was a big part of the point of the whole exercise.

Animal rights group have a drone! Or, they had one, but it was shot down.

Maryland is contemplating requiring child support for adult college students.

The Five Leadership Mistakes of the Galactic Empire. I love articles like these.

Derek Thompson wonders what the recession is doing to Millenials. Truth be told, these were already trends. The recession isn’t helping, of course.

Gabriel Rossman talks IP and piracy, making what I believe is the oft-overlooked distinction between music and film.

Mobiputing has the 13 great video players for Android. This is why I am likely to end up with Android. Eventually, one of them will get it right. I was set to try all of them when I got home, but my Android phone appears to have died.

Australia is taking another look at the dingo baby case.

How RIM lost its foothold on the Smartphone. I have to admit, I really didn’t think they would sink this far, this fast. It’s even more surprising than Nokia.

The Death (and Life) of Marriage in America.

They found a purple squirrel in Pennsylvania. the last one they found was in the UK. They plan on releasing it. I’m not sure what else you would do with it, but when it comes to evading predators, I’d imagine it’s hard for a purple squirrel to blend.

Bakadesuyo: We hear a lot about how much we hate our commute. Interestingly enough, men are fine with it. Women are not.

Combating pills-for-perks. We’re getting stiffed. No vacations for us. On the other hand, we’ll never need to buy another pen as long as we live. We could probably avoid buying more coffee cups, too.

A look at fantasy maps.

How can you call a list of the 20 best comic book superhero movies of all time and fail to list the best Batman movie? Did he mean best live-action? He should have said so.

Bloomberg Businessweek argues that Daimler/Smart lost its way in the high-end micro-car market. I would argue that their mistake was that they didn’t go for that market. Their cars were inexpensive. That should be a plus, in my book. But the micro-car became a symbol of status, and that meant it couldn’t be cheap. Also, I’m pretty sure there were some distribution problems. At least in the US.

Controlling parents are more likely to have delinquent children.

Why conservatives love vigilantes and liberals love anti-heroes. {Comment with care.}

How Portland mastered the public toilet.

This story from the New Yorker about Mormons and the history of the presidency reminds me a bit of the opening to the late, lamented Cavemen series, for some reason. Not because I think Mormons are like Cavemen, but it’s hard to explain. Mormons have done a good job of getting into positions of influence, but have (to date) never achieved the presidency. The Cavemen intro shows Cavemen in the history books, but obviously never in the center of our history. So I guess that’s it.

The Spy who was undone by his email.

WPA posters from the 30’s and 40’s. A part of me thinks they’re creepy (maybe because I am presently reading 1984), and a part of me likens them to the ridiculous PSA’s and After School Specials from when I was younger, but a part of me likes the whole notion of promoting common culture. They’re also aesthetically pretty interesting.

A look at the systemic bias against men in King County family courts.

An oldie but goodie: Tech support is there to get you off the phone. Though they are harder to understand, I do find that Indian customer support is often more patient.

A look at the long-term unemployed. In short, they’re older, more educated, more likely to be black or Asian, and just about everywhere but the south.

America’s most over-priced cities.

Greed is good (and so are lust, envy, pride, anger, sloth and gluttony)

Iceland is so worried about inbreeding that they have a database.

The man who tried to stop the Challenger launch.

Photo of questionable appropriateness below the fold. (more…)

Megan McArdle looks at retail and the age of the Internet. It’s not a pretty sight.

Fecal transplants?

The World Map of Political Corruption. What’s up with Chile? I’ve certainly read it argued that Pinochet left an unusually good legacy, but… impressive.

Matt Yglesias looks at The Perils of Presidential Democracy. Only the US and Chile have maintained undisturbed constitutional continuity under our system, and Chile’s folded in the 70’s. One of the things that makes the US different is the fact that our parties lacked ideological coherency. But that’s not the case anymore. Are we in trouble? (Comment with care on this one, please. If you think the Republicans, or the Democrats, specifically, are trying to destroy us, all that tells me is that you are more aligned with one side than the other.)

The Last Psychiatrist drubs one of those irritating gender-neutral parents. The point that these people are expressing themselves to the social detriment of their children simply cannot be emphasized enough.

Made in America has real value… in China.

Farhad Manjoo argues that the proliferation of pajama-wearing in public is not a sign of our declining moral fiber. He’s wrong.

Bakadesuyo: Taller people are happier.

The Cult of Amazon Prime. I can’t remember which one of you recommended it to me, but thank you. It’s awesome.

In Kindergarten, the bullies do better than the bored.

New York Times editor went to war against pirates. It turns out, their obedience of copyright law is in question.

Mapping the body with 2,000 years of images.

The Washington Post has a good piece about the primary care physician shortage. Unlike many articles on the subject, this one hits it where it counts: residency shortages. In related news, my wife is likely leaving primary care.

Megan McArdle and others envision post-campus America. I am skeptical that this will really take hold (McArdle has her skepticisms, too), but the what-ifs are interesting and I think on-target. This may get a post of its own.

Predictions about the death of American hegemony may have been greatly exaggerated.

New York has a funny definition for moderate and middle-income housing. People who earn up to 165% of the median income are eligible. It all reminds me of the fundamental question of NYC: What if they built a great city and nobody could afford to actually live there. An economist would say that’s bunk, of course. But it brings up some interesting questions. Subsidized housing in a tight market can just jack prices up even higher.

Matthew Yglesias asks if reduced federal office demand could be good for DC. Is say so! Move the capital to Nebraska! On, absent that, there’s no reason not to move some of the administrative stuff out. I just sent my taxes to Fresno.

Free etextbooks! This could actually make things interesting…

Bakadesuyo: Smoking is a social habit. Loneliness kills.

Nagging is a marriage-killer.

A look at the Keystone Pipeline and wealth creation. Buy low and sell high is apparently easier when you can buy low.

A judge has ruled that Americans can be forced to decrypt their laptops. I actually had a HypoThursday post around a very similar question. I wasn’t even aware of this story.

For Samson: A gorgeous look at the Montana wilderness in snow.

John Tyler, US President from 1841 to 1845 and the first ever Vice President to ascend to the presidency (creating Constitutional chaos as nobody knew what powers he would have), has grandchildren that are still alive. I had to do a report on a president, drawn from a hat. I picked William Henry Harrison, our 30-day president (and Tyler’s predecessor). I kept getting told how lucky I was. Lucky?! How do you do a 10-minute presentation on a guy who was only in office for 30 days?!

A study finds that there is no obesity link to junk food in schools.

The history of US oil production. Texas’ oil production has surged by 40%, but offshore drilling has gone down 20%. We now drill more in Texas than the entire offshore of the United States. If he were a competent speaker and, well, not Rick Perry, Rick Perry could have made something of this in November.

Allegedly, Democrats are targeting various Republican Secretaries of State (chief election officials). They got the one in Indiana convicted, but something went wrong in Iowa when someone attempted identity theft to implicate the SoS in something untoward.

Between a roller-coaster and a hard place. A theme park gets a lot of bad publicity (and sued) for kicking a girl with no hands off the roller-coaster ride, but we should arguably be blaming litigiousness rather than mean theme park operators.

Air Marshalls gone wild!

It’s been a while now since studies have started suggesting that Project Self-Esteem was doing more harm than good by appraising kids on who they are instead of what they’ve done. It looks like people are finally starting to take note. I remember when my grades started to skyrocket in middle school. How did I feel? Terrified. I felt it was some sort of fluke that would be exposed to my own humiliation. Read the article to see how that relates.

Energy costs to suppliers declines 50% as shale assists energy growth. My energy costs have not decreased by 50%.

Note to Microsoft: OSes should get better and not worse over time. I have a dedicated NAS, so I don’t use Windows Server, but I have been annoyed at how anemic Vista/7’s photo slideshow screen saver is compared to XP. No, it’s not a big deal (there are freeware alternatives), but features should get better and not worse. On the other hand, every version of Windows Search was worse than the previous until Vista came along. Good show!

Does Facebook demonstrate that the Web is not as polarized as we think? No, but it does suggest that we are not as segregated as we think. I know this because of all of the arguments I see about how Obama and/or the Republicans are destroying our country (Note: this is not an invitation to talk about how Obama and/or the Republicans are destroying our country.)

My wife and I were married for three years before I gave her my password. Kids today are dumb.

I am naturally attracted to the idea of employee-ownership. But it might be a bad idea.

Buffalo is paying its teachers to have plastic surgery. This is such an embarrassment that the teachers union itself is willing to drop it at the next round of negotiations. But they don’t want a new round of negotiations. In the current environment, that’s understandable.

Men want sons and women want daughters. I will have to read the whole report at some point, but society’s girl-preference would mean that either (a) women want daughters in larger numbers or (b) women are more insistent on their desire for daughters.

Cue the ominous music. Mitt Romney has sent millions to an organization believed by many to be anti-gay and with a spotty racial history. Namely, his church. It’s actually an interesting article (without the ominous music, for the most part). I wonder if this is how the Obama campaign might run against Romney’s Mormonism without being accused of religious bigotry. Assuming Romney wins the nomination, of course.

I’ve said it before and I will say it again: If you think that smoking should not inconvenience you, you are a prohibitionist. You logistically can’t allow smoking to be a legal and not allow people a place to actually smoke. Smokers will simply ignore the rules. Just as they do now, but in larger numbers. If they’re breaking the rules by smoking at home, they might as well break them by smoking in a place you are more likely to have to breathe it.

The record labels have been forced to pay $45M for claiming music that isn’t theirs.

Can we use data to improve education? Most assuredly, and this is one of the things that makes the Khan Academy give me so much hope. However, it only works if we accept the validity of metrics. A lot 0f people are bothered by the concept.

Nine famous movie villains who were right all along. Some of these I had actually already come to the defense of (Senator Bill Kelly). Others had never occurred to me (The Wicked Witch).

As most of you know, I have long been bearish on China. I don’t believe that they are going to maintain the edges that they have as they continue to industrialize and I am skeptical that they have been doing enough right to create a new edge. So you knew I would have to flag this article.

From NPR, a modern look at manners.

Shortly after we first met, my wife told me that my drinking habits made me a borderline alcoholic (it was an observation, not a condemnation). That, to me, suggests that the definition for alcoholic is absurdly broad. I thought of that when I read Confessions of a Binge Drinker.

A really odd look at Sweden’s confederate subculture. As in… Confederate Flag and KKK shirts. It would be insanely weird to be in Sweden and run across that.

The communion wafer industry. My church back home switched to actual bread for a while. I thought it was kind of cool. Anyway, the quote of the piece: “Advertising our altar bread is a positive thing for Cavanagh Company. We take a lot of pride in putting our family name on a product that will eventually become the body and blood of Jesus.”

A story of a disgraced weatherman, a con job, and the Russian mafia.

100 Incredible Views Out Of Airplane Windows. My favorites are London, Rio, Qatar, and the one from Hong Kong that looks like a screaming face (#75), though really almost all pictures of Hong Kong are cool.

Why do we have so many firemen?

A long while back, Abel wrote about and linked to a piece on stray dogs in Eastern Europe.

The SOPA protests represented a rivalry between northern and southern California, movies and technology. Good for them, because heaven help us if they start really working together. There was a movie some time back called Anti-Trust, with Tim Robbins as a Bill Gates figure. The moral of the story was that software-for-profit was wrong and that “information wants to be free.” Well… what about movies? Do they want to be free? If not, why not? It was best, in the context of this movie, not to ask that question.

Also, a look at modern media piracy and its actual effects. I have always found the claim that piracy enables crime syndicates to be odd. If anything, the opposite is true, because, as this points out, they can’t compete with free any more than the studios can. Less so, since a lot of people will feel better buying legit copies. If you’re going to go illegit, why pay for it?

Kodak has filed for bankrupcy. Its future is in doubt, but it does have some patent revenue streams. They also are looking at doubling down on printing. Which is a brilliant place to go as we move to a paperless society. Should we ever meet, valued commenters, buy me a drink and I will tell you about my professional dealings with Kodak. In addition to the whole film thing, they are one of the most toxic corporations I have ever seen (and I have seen some doozies).

Apple is looking at getting into the textbook business. But who is going to pay for it? This is beyond the scope of what we usually ask teachers to supply. Personally, I think this is something that Amazon should be doing. They’d be more price-conscious. Either way, though, I do wonder how they’re going to get around the Americans with Disabilities Act, which has fought Kindle readers for being insufficiently friendly to the blind. Tablets are only going to be moreso.

Speaking of Apple and iBooks, their EULA is really quite disturbing. I mean, more than most EULA’s.

Again… the problem with news organizations “fact-checking.” Facts, in order to become (useful) information, require context. Context is open to interpretation. Therefore, “ObamaCare is Socialism” and “Republicans voted to end Medicare” ended up as Lies of the Year. Neither were lies. Both were subjective subjective judgments that we either agree with or disagree with.

Norway authorities took away an Indian couple’s kids for “feeding them wrong.” What happens when the Nanny State meets Multiculturalism.

The St. Louis Rams are going to be playing some games in London. Costa Tsiokas thinks that this may be a prelude to relocating the team back to Los Angeles (hurting their ticket sales). I don’t know about that, but the article goes on to mention that there is a fan club for the New England Patriots out there (the Patriots have also played in the UK). Does anyone else get a kick out of the irony of Brits rooting for a team called the New England Patriots with a colonial captain on their helmet?

A French diet guru wants to grade people on their weight. Using BMI. Sigh.

A look at the 1% and what they majored in. I actually do find it quite surprising that nearly 1 in 20 history majors become 1%ers. Almost 1 in 10 economics majors is less surprising. One imagines that it’s still not a good idea to go to North By Northeast State U and major in history, though. One imagines that a history major that becomes a 1% was bound for there regardless of what they majored in. Still: surprising.

A look at the DEA and the Adderall Shortage.

South America deserves an aware for finding a use for mimes.

A little while ago I wrote about how, if you have cell phone conversations in public, you have a very diminished expectation of privacy:

I was at a tire place this morning. In the waiting room was a woman talking on the phone. She talked about all of the gossip going on around her (maybe the local) LDS church. She was actually quite witty and I cracked a smile at some of the things she said. This got a Look Of Death from her for listening in to her conversation.

Turns out that this made the news:

While on a train Thursday, Bob Salladay, a senior editor at California Watch and the Center for Investigative Reporting, realized he was sitting near Santa Ana City Council member Michele Martinez. He listened to her talk on the phone and then started tweeting what she said about her campaign. He also tweeted that he was “99 percent sure it was Michele Martinez.”

It turns out, it was. In an email statement, Martinez responded: “I don’t know what’s worse; someone secretly listening to a private conversation without consent or misrepresenting that conversation publicly. It’s disrespectful, dishonest and downright creepy.” Salladay tweeted in response: “There is nothing secret about an elected official talking loudly on a public train.”

Quite so. There are some questions about whether Salladay should have taken some extra steps to verify who was talking. But other than that, I think he’s in the clear. Doug Mataconis comments:

Of course, all of this raises the question of why Martinez (who has not denied that it was her on the train or that Salladay reported what she said accurately) would have a conversation like this is in public to begin with. We’ve all been in some public area where people talk on their cell phone far louder than they need to, forcing at least one side of their conversation upon us whether we want to hear it or not, and I’ve personally been surprised at the number of times you can hear people talking about things out loud that one would think they wouldn’t want anyone else to know about. Martinez’s outrage here would sound a little more sincere if it weren’t for the fact that she was dumb enough to talk about this on a train where anyone around her could here what she’s saying. The fact that one of those people happened to be a reporter is really just her bad luck.

Quite so. As I said in my post, there is no expectation of privacy if you are talking in a public area to where other people can hear you. It was Salladay’s good luck that it was a conversation that he wanted to hear, but more often than not it’s more along the lines of LDS gossip that I listened to.

Doug goes on:

What if the conversation that Salladay had overheard hadn’t had anything to do with the campaign, though? What if it was some kind of personal conversation that revealed, or appeared to reveal, something embarrassing of a personal nature? Would it have been appropriate, from a journalistic standpoint, for him to “live tweet” the conversation in that case? Admittedly, it becomes a more difficult question at that point, and it’s hard to make the case that the private life of a state representative is really all that newsworthy unless it involves something illegal. The fact that Martinez might have been having a fight with her husband, for example, doesn’t strike me as something the public needs to know. At the same time, thought, it’s a tough line to draw and it’s hardly an invasion of privacy if someone is speaking so loudly in public that everyone around them can hear clearly.

This, to me, is a broader question of journalistic ethics that is unrelated to how the information was obtained. If it’s not right to report it because a staffer says so, it’s not right to report it because you overheard it on a train. The same standard applies in both cases. I have no idea why overhearing something would be less valid than talking to a staffer who overheard something.

How elite Asian students are cheating on US college applications. There is, apparently, a booming industry around this.

Ever since a childhood fixation with Atlantis, I’ve been fascinated with the concept of lost cities.

Would Americans be healthier if they spent more on food? I think Doug makes a really good point here that in some ways it’s the availability of food rather than cost. Even if natural food is better, and even if it weren’t more expensive, it would still be less convenient. In my more severe moments, I consider the war on salt to primarily be a war on convenient foods. Not as a byproduct, but as the point of the proposed ban. Meanwhile, the problem with blaming food deserts.

The court case that almost made it illegal to tape TV shows.

Bill Gates has saved six million lives since 2007. He’s spent $28 billion from his fortune. That makes a lot of money per life saved if all of it were going to live-saving. But I don’t think that’s the case. I would be interested in a breakdown of how much his life-saving efforts have cost per life saved.

Los Angeles is apparently the favorite destination for Europeans looking to move to the US.

The top 1% of mobile users account for 50% of the world’s wireless bandwidth. Meanwhile, 5% of Americans make up 50% of health care spending.

This puts a cramp on my designs of putting an NFL team in Riverside.

The inbreeding coefficient of superheroes. Meanwhile, superheroes in Salt Lake City! And lastly, the favorite superheroes of Republican politicians. Any of them who names Ted Kord has my vote. Okay, not really.

Another month, another article on the imminent demise of the laptop. Look, the desktop isn’t even dead yet. Beyond that, the notion that because laptop design has been perfected means it’s dead is a pretty dumb argument.

The case for saving ugly buildings. Go brutalism! More seriously, I ultimately take an “out with the old…” perspective, provided that it makes economic sense to replace a particular building. I just don’t trust what the tastemakers call cool or ugly.

When you define half of Americans as poor or low-income, it says more about the metrics used than the state of our nation.

Should Hollywood go back to using miniatures? I’m for anything that would hold costs down.

One of the interesting things that jumped out at me when I originally moved north was the number of people who left their cars running while they went inside. I even did it myself sometimes. In Milwaukee, it’s causing the predictable problems. Not of theft, but “unlawful usage.” Kids stealing a ride to school. Apparently it’s illegal to leave your car running. It reminds me of the town I was raised in where it was illegal to leave your bikes out because you were in effect giving escapees from the local juvenile hall a free ride.

In Illinois, you now need ID to buy drain cleaner.

Atlantic Cities makes the case for strong urban cores. I actually agree! The problem is when people think that the way to do this is to kneecap suburbs. Atlanta has apparently accomplished a downtown renewal despite its outward expansion. The fact that the urban cores were lost in the rust belt, and that the rust belt is struggling, and that the former is the cause of the latter, has a causation-correlation problem.

From the files of near self-parody, Conservapedia wants a bible without all that liberal stuff. I’ve heard some conservatives say that Conservapedia is parody, but I’ve seen little reason to believe that’s actually the case.

This is the stuff of jetpacks and flying cars, but more fun to think about.

Here are ten reasons that Windows Phone 7 is better than Android. Of course, the real question is whether or not it matters. WinPhone is trying to occupy that sweet spot between an extremely inflexible iPhone and the WinMo-like chaos of Android. When I have to make the move away from WinMo, I still don’t know if it will be to WinPhone or Android. Probably the latter, but if Microsoft can provide what I want, I will (somewhat begrudgingly) accept the closed environment.

Farhad Manjoo says that this year may be The Year of Microsoft. I’m skeptical of Windows Phone 7, but wish them all the best. I don’t have a strong opinion on Windows 8. It’s hard to see how it will be revolutionary, though. Maybe I’m just sour because they killed the idea of a real computer-tablet.

One thing that Microsoft never got right with Windows Mobile was getting users off the stylus. Oddly, Samsung wants to bring the stylus back. It feels a little like full circle. It actually makes sense, though. There are times to use your fingers and times a stylus is better. It just strikes me as “odd” from a marketing perspective. Styluses are just considered old hat, no matter how practical.

James Joyner provides a level-headed perspective to the urinating soldiers.

Vladimir Putin is a very bad egg, but he’s got “cool” down pat. Whale hunting with crossbows? It’s almost enough to make up for the plastic surgery.

Is Japan’s failure, the “lost decade” a myth? Matthew Yglesias says it is not. If Nanani is still reading, I’d love to hear her perspective.

Hasbro is suing Asus for the latter naming their tablet the Transformer. This article says that they probably don’t have a case because nobody is going to confuse a toy with a tablet. But with Verizon paying George Lucas for the Droid name, it strikes me that there is precedent. The Transformer is actually supposed to be one of the best tablets on the market.

I could have sworn that I wrote on this before - and my apologies if I have - but I can’t find it.

Is lego evil or just highly problematic? I can’t speak to the sexism, but I find the product tie-in model to be agitating. This is kind of cool, though.

People remain in prison for a crime we are still trying to figure out if it’s possible.

Nine stubborn truths about the brain that just won’t die.

One gallon of gasoline can power an iPhone for 20 years.

A critical look at anti-Jitney laws.

Is dynamic parking pricing not working?

Are biased refs good business? It’s common in wrestling entertainment for some local hero to win the title belt for the hometown crowd only to lose it again in short order.

I think this MIT program is awesome. Not only online courses, but certificates!

Is the Toyota Camry getting knocked off its perch?

A case against the case against payday loans. More.

A self-publishing success story, marked for future inspiration.

What our taste in music says about us. Or “why I tended not to mention my appreciation of country music in my old online matchsite profiles.”

I was torn between whether I should buy this immediately or wait until I needed a nite-lite. But it sold out. They Might Be Giants needs to get on top of this and offer a genuine TMBG one.

Why conservatives and libertarians hate urbanists. Here is a potential area of common ground.

As far as the “distracted driver” phenomenon is a problem, portable electronics are only a small part of the problem. Also, the NTSB may be misleading the public.

How the characters from Lost make a peanut butter sandwich.

A look at dishonesty and intellectual dishonesty.

The shocking truth about office Christmas parties and infidelity.

So the iPod is apparently destroying ears. Ha! I don’t have an iPod! Wait… “and other audio devices”? Crap. Well, I only listen to the audio in my right ear. So I guess my left is good!

I mentioned in an old Linkluster post regarding an old court ruling that allowed a police department to discriminate against people that scored really well on their variant of an IQ test. This spawned a conversation between Kirk, Brandon, Phi, and myself.

“It’s not okay to discriminate against dumb people, so why is it okay to do it to those who are smart?” -Kirk

“We see here that they used it to discriminate against people who did very well, but they almost certainly use it against people who did poorly. So somehow or another, they have already justified the disparate impact of the test.” -Trumwill

Reading over another account of the case, I am relatively sure that we all actually missed what’s really going on here. I touched on it in my comment, but half-accidentally. I initially actually believed the departments claims of concerns over turnover due to boredom or that it was a sort of personality profiling. But the more I think about it, this is less likely something despite disparate impact, but rather it was done precisely because of disparate impact.

We all know the legal problems with IQ tests: they have a disparate impact on minorities. This can be overcome, but only with a justification process that can be expensive and arbitrary. So organizations don’t like to do it. However, if you can devise an IQ test that doesn’t discriminate against minorities, then you don’t really have a problem. Therefore, instead of accepting scores above a certain threshold, you accept scores within a particular target zone. That means excluding low IQs (more likely to be Hispanic or black) and high IQs (more likely to be white or Asian). That, to me, makes a lot more sense than the personality profiling (with is self-deprecating in the extreme) or a disdain for high IQs (police departments are more frequently asking for more education rather than less). From a police departments perspective, eliminating a few high-IQ people from consideration is worth the cost of being able to eliminate those at the low end of the spectrum. From a utilitarian standpoint, that actually makes sense to me.

What would make things really interesting is if a bunch of Asian-Americans sued.

—-

This post is going to be treading on dangerous terrain. It’s unavoidable. All I ask is that we avoid derogatory remarks and derogatory references to stereotypes. Let’s assume the following for the sake of this post:

(1) An IQ test, or a test that can be directly tagged to IQ, will have a disparate impact on Non-Asian Minorities.

(2) The reason for #1, be it genetics, education disparities, cultural disparities, or what-have-you, are not particularly relevant to the discussion.

(3) Because of (1), cities are loathe to employ such tests because of the hurdles required to justify the disparate impact. But sometimes they do it anyway because regardless of #2, they see a benefit in excluding people below a certain threshold on such tests.