Mini fun

A very cute Mini ad that may explain either or both of how the brits got the empire and how they lost it.

Hat tip: Jackie Smith

Tedford out at Cal

Okay, this is slightly old news, but I remain surprised the Cal dumped head football coach Jeff Tedford. There have been a lot of injuries the past couple of years, as well as some turnover (partly due to Washington) at the lower levels of the coaching hierarchy. More broadly, what makes them think they will find another coach this good? Cal is not a great football place. I would have given him another year. It wasn't that long ago that Washington was trying to lure him away to replace Tyrone Willingham.

In possibly unrelated news, Cal has an ugly new logo that appears to show it disappearing.

Hat tip on the logo bit to Sue Dynarski on FB

Certainly is simpler than trying to reason with them

Kentucky bans atheism, dares sinners to mock it.

Just kidding about the daring part.

This is a pretty sad business. Seems to me that if you can only get people to adopt your religion (whether it be some flavor of Christianity, or of Islam, or of communism or whatever) by threatening them with violence, then your religion deserves nothing but disdain.

Comic on creativity

Much of this (very funny) comic also applies to writing economics papers.

Hat tip: Jess Goldberg

P.J. O'Rourke on books

From the New York Review of Books, some very good bits from P.J. O'Rourke. 

My favorite bit:

What are your reading habits? Paper or electronic? Do you take notes? Do you snack while you read?

Behold the book with its brilliant, nonlinear search engine called flipping-through-the-pages. A Kindle returns us to the inconvenience of the scroll except with batteries and electronic glitches. It’s as handy as bringing Homer along to recite the “Iliad” while playing a lyre. I dog-ear all my books, underline passages and scribble “Huh?” and “How true!” in the margins. The only fit snack while reading is the olive in a martini.

I agree that Parliament of Whores is the best of P.J's books, though Holidays in Hell and Republican Party Reptile are not far behind. The collection of writings about cars was fun too.

BBC and the broken windows fallacy

Oh dear, oh dear .... really, is there no one at the BBC who knows better?

Wikipedia - you really don't have to look far! - page on the broken windows fallacy.

Bonus from watching the video: a short interview with Rocco the new car dealer.

Economics moment of zen #7

"For reasons that neuroscience may one day illuminate, the combination of good judgment and technical wizardry that [candidate] possesses is remarkably rare."

From a job market letter of recommendation (and thus necessarily anonymous).