Sullivan Reinstated
It’s not very surprising to see that President Sullivan was reinstated last Tuesday. The only question remaining seems to be whether Rector Helen Dragas will keep her job on the Board of Visitors. Her...
View ArticleThe Golden Age of Dynamic Pricing
Orbitz steers Mac users toward more expensive hotels. Safeway customizes the discounts they offer their online customers based on shopping histories. An Australian online retailer taxes customers...
View ArticlePositive Sum Status?
Here is Katja Grace on fragmented status. Maybe I feel good because I win at board games often, but you don’t feel bad if you don’t – you just quit playing board games and hang out with people who care...
View ArticleMcDonnell reappoints Dragas
Governor McDonnell reappointed Rector Dragas, much to my surprise. I am not sure why. Perhaps he simply wished to avoid scrutiny of his appointments, and the status quo, however disagreeable to many...
View ArticleKling on Open Minds
Arnold Kling writes: Suppose we look at writing on issues where people tend to hold strong opinions that fit with their ideology. Such writing can (a) attempt to open the minds of people on the...
View ArticleHarassing the Church of Scientology is not Free Entertainment
Amusing facts from In re Henson, 289 B.R. 741 (Bankr. N.D. Cal. 2003): Before the Court are two matters initiated by Religious Technology Center (“Creditor”), a creditor of H. Keith Henson (“Debtor”),...
View ArticleThink About a Different Society
In discussions about welfare and health care reform it’s common to hear progressives insist, “I want to live in the kind of society where the poor are taken care of.” Common variants include, “Don’t...
View ArticleDon’t Trust Your Instincts
I’ve advocated trusting instincts and suspecting advice before. Of course, there are times where you really shouldn’t trust your judgment, particularly when it comes to complicated statistical...
View ArticleSignalling Model and Online Education
Bryan Caplan discusses the prospects for online education under a signalling model of education: Perspective #3: Signaling model. Analysis: Brick-and-mortar colleges are primarily places where students...
View ArticleBernstein on Posner
David Bernstein comments on Richard Posner’s self-described ideological drift: I find Posner’s claim that he’s “become less conservative since the Republican Party started becoming goofy” strange, for...
View ArticleDaniel Kahneman on Experts
When should you trust an expert’s empirical predictions? Says Daniel Kahneman in Thinking Fast and Slow: When do judgments reflect true expertise? When do they display an illusion of validity? The...
View ArticleCaplan, Online Education, Signalling
Caplan defends hedging his prediction of online education’s dismal prospects: My recent post on online education specifies: When I talk about “online education,” I don’t just mean students at existing...
View ArticleThe Ethics of Winding Down a Ponzi Scheme
A while back one of my friends made the following argument on Facebook: It’s easy to call all poor/working poor people “irresponsible”, but let’s be frank. My grandmother is a small business owner. She...
View ArticleThe EU’s Peace Prize
The original historical justification for the EU was the belief that, in the absence of shared or even world government, conditions of scarcity would inevitably lead states into horrific resource wars....
View ArticleWhat’s Wrong With Betting?
The forecasting model of Nate Silver, perhaps the best known pollster of the 2012 election cycle, predicts an Obama victory, and conservatives have been predictably upset by this fact. For example: On...
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