Tree Campus USA

The University of Michigan's Ann Arbor campus has been recognized by whomever does the recognizing of such things as a "Tree Campus USA" for the sixth year in a row.

In other news, yesterday the university sawed down several perfectly healthy trees outside of Lorch Hall, home of the economics department. Rumor has it that the trees were removed so that the ugly construction trailers that have been present outside our building for almost my entire career at Michigan, but which disappeared a few weeks ago, can be replaced by more spacious ugly construction trailers so as to facilitate the next round of construction at the busyness school next door.

Hat tip: Joel Slemrod.

Movie: The Grand Budapest Hotel

We saw Grand Budapest on Friday night at the State Theater. It is a complete delight: crazy, original, funny, at times sad, visually rich, and overall just an excellent way to spend a couple of hours. I completely concur with the glowing review by A.O. Scott in the NYT.

On cheating

The Atlantic reports on the reaction of some college teachers to a student who advertised on Craig's List for someone to help them cheat on a placement exam and possibly also an on-line course.

People do cheat, even at Michigan. Of the three places I have been, I liked Maryland's process for dealing with cheaters best. It involved (in part) students judging other students, and the students were typically much tougher on cheaters than administrators. Michigan's process works reasonably well too, but is a bit more lenient than I would like.

Western Ontario, at least when I was there, was neither as organized as Maryland and Michigan in how it handled cheaters nor as tough. I had a student at Western who plagiarized on their honors thesis (!). I wanted to toss him out of the program but in the end was only able to give him a low grade. He had the temerity to come back a few days later and ask for more points. That day was the closest I ever came to physically harming a student.

Assorted links

1. Jerusalem Gardens moving into Seva space. Yum.

2. Mocking Rob Ford at the Atlantic.

3. Urban ruins: Rochester subway (and be sure to click through to the old promotional video). They should make lemonade from lemons and do something like the Underground Tour in Seattle.

4. Remodeling Morgan and York. More yum.

5. Hanna Rosin on affairs.

Das minimum wage

Klaus Zimmerman writes about the minimum wage in Germany in the Wall Street Journal.

Globalization is cool.

Obama comes to Ann Arbor

Whatever you think about raising the minimum wage, it is hard to see how it is a good use of tax dollars for the president to travel to Ann Arbor, disrupt traffic, and draw students away from their classes (including one from mine) just so he can have a Reuben at Zingerman's and give a speech that could equally well been given on the white house lawn (or not at all, given that it has already been given several times before).

This looks more like an indulgence of presidential vanity than a serious use of either public funds or the president's time to me (and I would note, of course, that such trips are a bipartisan affront to the taxpayer as all recent presidents have done this sort of thing).

Great moments with Mr. Gelman

Funny, and sometimes pointed, quotes from Andrew Gelman.

I had a student write down a list of all of the crazy stuff I said in one semester of undergraduate econometrics and email it to me at the end of the semester. Pretty scary.

Hat tip: DVM