Via Marginal Revolution, it appears that a bunch of people were aggressively arrested yesterday for dancing at the Jefferson memorial. The rest of the story obviously has yet to unfold, but from the initial reports and videos, this does not look good:
I like James Fallows because he teaches me interesting things about China, beer, flying, and politics. Things I probably wouldn’t learn otherwise. Today Jim* wrote a fascinating post about what we’ve learned about the Air France crash from the recent black box recovery, what new questions it raises, and why most people have no clue what “stalling” means in the context of flying. Here’s an excerpt about what it means when a plane “stalls”: 3) The plane “stalled,” but not in the way you think. The great impediment to accurate coverage of many airplane crashes involves the world “stall.” Its normal meaning, to 99 percent of the reading public, is that an engine has stopped or failed. Engines do sometimes fail on airplanes, and
Apparently round.
Let’s make dead people pay for Medicare. Kevin Drum via Tyler Cowen: So here’s an idea: why not reform Medicare by means testing it? Conservatives should love this idea. Here’s how it works. Basically, we leave Medicare alone. Oh, we can still go ahead with some of the obvious reforms. Comparative effectiveness research is a no-brainer for anyone who’s not part of the Republican leadership. …. Medicare stays roughly the same, but every time you receive medical care you also get a bill. You don’t have to pay it, though. It’s just there for accounting purposes. When you die, the bill gets paid out of your estate. If your estate is small or nonexistent, you’ve gotten lots of free medical care.
First off, I apologize for being a bit sparse with the posts lately. Things have been a little hectic, but I’m hoping to get back into writing more substantive entries (at least in my mind) beginning next week when I begin my road trip out west. Until then, here’s an interesting article from the Guardian about the history of MIT, and what makes it a “unique” place. I particularly enjoyed this classic photo: The caption reads: “MIT students at a physics class take measurements in 1957.” I like the color coordinated attire for the “measurement session.” Replace the physics tests (?) with some ad drawings, pens, a few stacks of paper, and a confident
I haven’t bothered to read up much on all of rapture discussions, but I’m going to take a leap and say we’re talking midnight Israeli time? So 5:00PM EST? I’ll be on a train. Here’s an amusing list of failed apocalypse predictions. I like how Pat Robertson and Issac Newton are on a list together. Via Barry Ritholtz: There is an Evangelist named Harold Camping, who claims the world will end tomorrow. He has violated the first rule of forecasting: You can give a price target ($0) or a date (tomorrow) but never both at once. Besides, the end of world forecast carries additional risks. People have been making Armageddon forecasts for, like, forever. So far, not one has paid off. And Elvis
Here are some clips from last week’s Sloan follies: Opening Dance: Alfred the Robot: Grading at Sloan, with a guest appearance from Simon Johnson: Action Learning: The European Story: The Koreans actually do this:
One of my classmates, Shreerang Chhatre, is doing some very impressive work researching methods to harvest fog in regions without reliable supplies of drinking water. From CNN: Let’s say you live in a really dry area and you don’t have much drinking water. Meanwhile, you wake up every morning to the sight of fog floating by. Instead of walking miles and miles to get water from a faraway river, what if you could just extract drinking water from those low-hanging clouds? That’s what a researcher at MIT is trying to make possible with new work to improve “fog harvesting,” the term for the process of getting water out of mist by using giant tarps made out of engineered materials. The art
Via James Fallows, Greatest Front Page Ever:
…in the shape of a footprint: Via The Big Picture.