Who tweets about college football?

That the southern states dominate is not surprising. What is surprising is that Wisconsin and Ohio (or O-Lie-O as the local t-shirts in Ann Arbor have it these days) both end up in a higher category than Michigan.

Hat tip: ASAK

Assorted links

1. Managerial chaos at the (at least formerly) very cool Tabard Inn in DC. I stayed at the Tabard for my job talk at Maryland back in the day.

2. A strange story of missing identity from the Seattle Times. I like it that rich guys in Texas who are friends with their congressman can use the social security administration as a free private investigator.

3. The science of the slinky, in slow motion.

4. Photos of the renovation of the Chicago Theological Seminary as the new home of the economics department.

5. The pentametron. Cool.

Hat tip on #1 to Austin Kelly. Hat tip missing on #2. Hat tip on #3 to Dan Black. Hat tip on #5 to ASAK.

Economics and philosophy

I am reminded of Paul Heyne's emphasis on the point that moral energy is scarce like all other resources, with the implication that it is best to rely on incentives when possible, and to save the moral energy for contexts in which incentives perform poorly. One can think of "pure" communism / communitarianism as an attempt to rely entirely on moral energy for allocation. That moral energy is scarce is then why it fails.

Hat tip: Don Hacherl

Movie: Kings of Summer

We saw Kings of Summer at the Michigan Theater last night.

I quite liked this movie and so was puzzled by the NYT review, which seems to completely miss the point. Complaining about the realism of the local police in a vaguely magical realist coming of age story is a bit like complaining about all the noisy space explosions in Star Wars or Star Trek. Yeah, sure, but so what?

In any case, the movie is a light-hearted bit of fun that does a nice job of capturing the angst of the teen years, particularly the way that even minor parental quirks become magnified into the equivalent of the gulag. It is also very much a movie about teen boys, and stands out for not implicitly or explicitly making them look like idiots. Oh, and the (not unrelated to the gender theme) biblical allusions are cool.

Recommended.

Assorted links

1. No free speech for Urban Outfitters. One wishes that Urban Outfitters would fight back, but it is easy to see why they do not, given the lack of institutional limits on the bad behavior of state attorney generals.

2. Institute for Social Research timeline.

3. Anti-GMO and science.

4. Real estate agents misbehaving.

5. Yet another (!) new bookstore for Ann Arbor.

Hat tip on #1 to Scott Wood and on #4 to Charlie Brown.

The magic of STEM?

The Miami Herald offers a nice report on the dubious employment magic of STEM degrees.

The bits at the end are pretty funny. First the president of Florida International University (FIU) says that people should gets liberal arts degrees because it is impossible to predict what sorts of jobs they hold when they finish college. Then the chancellor of the University of Florida system says that the problem is exactly the reverse, that there is not enough central planning and micro-management of degree choices.

And, of course, shortages are all about prices and restrictions on entry, at least in all but the shortest run.

Tentative bottom line: the folks in Florida are making it up as they go along and really have no idea what their students should major in.

Transplants in DC

Reason provides a sad tale of misguided "certificate of need" regulation of the transplant market in DC.

Even if you think this sort of regulation is a good idea, the regulators at least should read the latest (and I would say the most compelling) research on the subject.