Assorted links

1. Abandoned military bases.

2. Facebook as censor. Could this sort of clueless bumbling be related to it not being cool anymore?

3. In case you need a planeload of cute in your life today.

4. FT lunch with Tim Geithner

5. Government is just another name for the things we do together.

#1 via instapundit. I think #2 is via MR. #3 from Jackie Smith.

Boku Buckeye

Why does the president of Ohio State make so much?

Hat tip: Dan Black

Movie: Dom Hemingway

Dom Hemingway is a great bit of British gangster fluff. It is sort of in the same genre as the Wolf of Wall Street but it is a lot more honest about its fun.

The NYT review is cleverly written but a bit more negative than I would have been.

Recommended.

Performance management and higher education

There are attempts afoot inside the beltway to bring the glories of performance management to the higher education world. Sarah Turner's short but very thoughtful piece should give advocates of such efforts many reasons to slow down and maybe (perish the thought) even read the literature on what has gone wrong with performance management in other contexts such as job training.

Gary Becker, RIP

Gary Becker passed away yesterday.

orgtheory.net has written a better post than I could

I started a dissertation under Becker before switching to Heckman when he returned to Chicago after two years at Yale in 1991. When I asked Becker for "permission" to switch he commented that he thought Heckman would be good for me (he was right) but added that he thought the topic I was working on with him was more interesting.

A very large loss for our intellectual world.

Addendum: the obituary from the University of Chicago, including remarks from Heckman and Kevin Murphy.

Hat tips: Bob Willis and Dan Black

Sir Richard

I do not know how this missed my attention earlier in the year, but UCL economist Richard Blundell, who has made important contributions in labor, public finance and econometrics, became Sir Richard Blundell earlier this year.

Glad to know the Queen is keeping up with the journals.

Electile dysfunction

A sad story regarding what happens to a republican with a sense of humor.

I thought the ad was pretty funny in a 15-year-old-boy sort of way.

Hat tip: Charles Brown