In team production at a plant in Kenya, an upstream worker supplies and distributes flowers to two downstream workers who assemble them into bunches.
The plant uses an essentially random rotation process to assign workers to positions, leading to three types of teams: (a) ethnically homogeneous teams, and teams in which (b) one or (c) both downstream workers belong to a tribe in rivalry with the upstream worker’s tribe.
I find strong evidence that upstream workers undersupply non-coethnic downstream workers (vertical discrimination) and shift flowers from non-coethnic to coethnic downstream workers (horizontal discrimination), at the cost of lower own pay and total output.
A period of ethnic conflict following Kenya’s 2007 election led to a sharp increase in discrimination. In response, the plant began paying the two downstream workers for their combined output (team pay). This led to a modest output reduction in (a) and (c) teams – as predicted by standard incentive models – but an increase in output in (b) teams, and overall. Workers’ behavior before conflict, during conflict, and under team pay is predicted by a model of taste-based discrimination.
Humans depress me yet again.
And a footnote to the academics who worry that field experiments are taking over the discipline, or the grad students who think they need to do an experiment (a hear this a lot, especially in political science): I think this paper is a great example how observational work (when well done) can be better, more interesting, and harder. And I think these papers get rewarded more.
Consensus forecasts for the global economy over the medium and long term predict the world’s economic gravity will substantially shift towards Asia and especially towards the Asian Giants, China and India. While such forecasts may pan out, there are substantial reasons that China and India may grow much less rapidly than is currently anticipated.
Most importantly, history teaches that abnormally rapid growth is rarely persistent, even though economic forecasts invariably extrapolate recent growth. Indeed, regression to the mean is the empirically most salient feature of economic growth.
…Furthermore, statistical analysis of growth reveals that in developing countries, episodes of rapid growth are frequently punctuated by discontinuous drop-offs in growth. Such discontinuities account for a large fraction of the variation in growth rates.
We suggest that salient characteristics of China—high levels of state control and corruption along with high measures of authoritarian rule—make a discontinuous decline in growth even more likely than general experience would suggest.
…our analysis suggests that forecasters and planners looking at China would do well to contemplate a much wider range of outcomes than are typically considered.
That is Lant Pritchett and Larry Summers in a new NBER paper. This appears to be an older ungated copy.
Without ever having actually analyzed any data, my hunch is that an awful lot of growth halts in authoritarian countries comes from badly managed transitions of power. Whether this is true, and what makes transitions more or less stable, is not something I’ve seen a lot of work on.
My second hunch is that institutionalized rather than personalized systems of rule are one reason for stable transitions. You could say the strength of the party over any one person in China is a reassuring sign. You even see the same in places like Ethiopia. There are not many African countries where the autocrat dies suddenly and the world barely notices because the country keeps chugging along.
Even so, I agree with the basic point: things could turn upside down in China and the world is not really prepared for what follows.
I would be grateful for pointers to any work on my political transitions hunches.
It's possible to bend language to your will, to invest extraordinary amounts of effort and care to make words do what you want them to do.
Our culture celebrates athletes that shape their bodies, and chieftains who build organizations. Lesser known, but more available, is the ability to work on our words until they succeed in transmitting our ideas and causing action.
Here's the thing: you may not have the resources or the physique or the connections that people who do other sorts of work have. But you do have precisely the same keyboard as everyone else. It's the most level playing field we've got.
The first step is to say it poorly. And then say it again and again and again until you're able to edit your words into something that works.
But mostly, you need to decide that it matters.[HT: Shawn]
Today’s Nobel prize winner in economics, Jean Tirole (working with Rochet) is a pioneer in one of the most important new areas in the economy and economics, the study of platform markets. Platform markets, also called two-sided markets, are markets where a firm brings together two or more sides both of whom benefit by the existence of the platform and both of whom may (or may not) be charged. A trivial but telling example is the singles bar that brings together men and (usually) women. Other examples are the Xbox, a platform for game players and game developers, credit cards a platform for buyers and firms that accept that card, newspapers a platform for readers and advertisers, and malls a platform for customers and stores to meet. An important example for the internet age is that Google is a platform of search users and advertisers.
An key difficulty in these markets is that the price charged to one side of the market influences the demand on the other side of the market. The price a newspaper charges to readers, for example, influences the number of readers but that in turn influences the price that the advertisers, the other side of the market, are willing to pay to advertise in the newspaper. It further often happens that one side of the market is harder to “get” than the other and so the profit-maximizing prices on the two sides of the market are very different. One side of the market may even be “subsidized.” The price that newspapers charge readers, for example, is often much less than the cost of the newspaper. Or, to give another example, Microsoft makes money by selling its Xbox at close to cost or even below cost and charging game developers a fee for the right to write games for the Xbox and a royalty rate on their sales. Google finds it optimal to give its services away for free and just charge one side, the advertisers, for being on the platform.
Antitrust and regulation of two-sided markets is challenging because the two sets of prices may look discriminatory or unfair even when they are welfare enhancing. In a mall, for example, it’s often the largest firm (the anchor) that gets the lowest price (sometimes even zero!). Does this represent an unfair advantage that a large firm has over smaller rivals or is it a rational consequence of the fact that the anchor store may bring the most customers to the other, smaller stores in the mall so that the total package is welfare maximizing? Is Microsoft engaging in predatory pricing if it prices the Xbox at or below cost? A singles bar may have “ladies are free night”. Sexist? or good economics? Platform markets mean that pricing at marginal cost can no longer be considered optimal in every market and pricing above marginal cost can no longer be considered as an indication of monopoly power. The analysis also impacts such issues as network neutrality. People worry, for example, that firms like Netflix may be the anchor stores of the internet and get better prices as a result. But the analysis of platform markets suggests that this isn’t necessarily welfare reducing. As these examples indicate is easy to go wrong regulation these markets and in fact Rochet and Tirole urge caution in regulating platform markets.
Rochet and Tirole provide one of earliest and most important analyses of pricing in these types of markets (see also here for an overview).
Interview with Robert Crease, historian of science, about Werner Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, formulated in 1926 while Heisenberg was visiting Niels Bohr in Copenhagen. The bewildering implications of the principle caught the public imagination. “Suddenly, quantum mechanics was not just another scientific theory – it showed that the quantum world works very differently from the everyday world”
Shorter men marry later, on average, but they tend to stay married longer, and to report greater happiness. Why? “Short men live in a world of taller men and know that any advantage seized is better kept. Desperation makes short men good husbands.” There is a broader moral here: “In every area of life, we underrate the merits of desperation, and persistently overrate the advantages of free choice”
In Tarragona, Spain, an amazing tower was erected, and quickly it fell apart into a cluster of body parts. The towers, known traditionally as "castells," have been built since the 18th century by Catalan acrobats. And as with any good tradition, there is, of course, an element of competition. On Sunday, teams adorned in unique, brightly colored attire, competed to create the highest and most complex human tower.
This year marked the 25th official Human Tower Competition and several photographers traveled to view the eccentric athletes in action. Associated Press photojournalist Emilio Morenatti explained, "The structure of the castells varies depending on their complexity. A castell is considered completely successful when it is loaded and unloaded without falling apart."
After years of working on program evaluation and related things, it is with great joy that I toss causation out the window and learn to data mine.
A few years ago, a foundation said to me, “hey, all that data you’re collecting to study property disputes and other violence in Liberia–could you use it to test early warning systems for riots and major crimes?” My reaction: “That sounds crazy. As if that’s possible.” Their response, “We will fund your survey if you try.” My reply: “Did I say crazy? I meant that sounds like a great idea.”
After six years of data collection, Rob Blair and Alex Hartman and I finally have a paper:
We use forecasting models and new data from 242 Liberian communities to show that it is to possible to predict outbreaks of local violence with high sensitivity and moderate accuracy, even with limited data.
We train our models to predict communal and criminal violence in 2010 using risk factors measured in 2008. We compare predictions to actual violence in 2012 and find that up to 88% of all violence is correctly predicted. True positives come at the cost of many false positives, giving overall accuracy between 33% and 50%.
From a policy perspective, states, international organizations, and peacekeepers could use such predictions to better prevent and respond to violence. The models also generate new stylized facts for theory to explain.
In this instance, the strongest predictors of more violence are social (mainly ethnic) cleavages, and minority group power-sharing.
This is not precisely “big data” in that it’s a small number of villages and three years of events. But it’s “big” in the sense of having lots and lots of detailed information about the villages themselves, which is rare. We think of this as a pilot, or proof of concept for the approach, and plan to test it next on much bigger data from other countries.
The most interesting finding, to me, was how power-sharing at the local level was associated with more violence. There’s actually a number of papers looking at national power-sharing right now that find the same thing. And yet the common political response to a crisis nowadays is to push for power-sharing. Worth investigating.
I would have liked to name this paper “I just ran 32 million regressions,” but besides other drawbacks, the more honest title would be “My RA just ran 32 million regressions,” which is slightly less compelling.
If you can work from home, where should home be? NomadList has combined data on internet speed, the cost of rental housing and food, local weather conditions including air quality and other factors to come up with an interesting list. Here’s the top ten.
The third edition of the textbook is on the way but maybe a sabbatical in Chiang Mai or Prague for the fourth edition. One advantage of Prague is that from there it’s easy to get to anywhere else in Europe, Chiang Mai is more restricted and the Philippines even more so. Either way, however, these would be good places to write about purchasing power parity, assuming it hasn’t kicked in by then.
Hopscotching the globe as Thailand’s prime minister, Yingluck Shinawatra repeatedly encountered a distressing problem: bad Thai food.
Too often, she found, the meals she sampled at Thai restaurants abroad were unworthy of the name, too bland to be called genuine Thai cooking. The problem bothered her enough to raise it at a cabinet meeting.
Her political party has since been thrown out of office, in a May military coup, but her initiative in culinary diplomacy lives on.
At a gala dinner at a ritzy Bangkok hotel on Tuesday the government will unveil its project to standardize the art of Thai food — with a robot.
Diplomats and dignitaries have been invited to witness the debut of a machine that its promoters say can scientifically evaluate Thai cuisine, telling the difference, for instance, between a properly prepared green curry with just the right mix of Thai basil, curry paste and fresh coconut cream, and a lame imitation.
Has there ever been a better committee name than this?:
The government-financed Thai Delicious Committee, which oversaw the development of the machine, describes it as “an intelligent robot that measures smell and taste in food ingredients through sensor technology in order to measure taste like a food critic.”
In a country of 67 million people, there are somewhere near the same number of strongly held opinions about Thai cooking. A heated debate here on the merits of a particular nam prik kapi, a spicy chili dip of fermented shrimp paste, lime juice and palm sugar, could easily go on for an hour without coming close to resolution.
The full story is here, excellent throughout, and for the pointer I thank Otis Reid.
France introduces regulations intended to raise standards of restaurant cooking by deterring the use of bought-in ingredients. It’s such a forlorn hope that it’s almost a parable for modern French misgovernment. You don’t improve a creative process by regulating the creators. Consider why Italian restaurant cooking has remained so much better: “I doubt that the credit for that should go to the Italian parliament”
The intention heuristic says that if the intentions of an act are selfless and well-meaning, then the act is good. If the intentions are self-interested, then it is not good.
In contrast, economics evaluates an act not by its intentions but by its consequences. Since “bad” intentions can lead to good consequences (“as if by an invisible hand”). It’s not surprising that economists often praise what others denounce. Here’s a case in point:
At a Sydney technology startup conference, Evan Thornley, an Australian multimillionaire and co-founder of online advertising company LookSmart (LOOK), gave a talk about why he likes to hire women. “The Australian labor market and world labor market just consistently and amazingly undervalues women in so many roles, particularly in our industry,” he said. When LookSmart went public on Nasdaq in 1999, he said, it was one of the few tech companies that had more women than men on its senior management team. “Call me opportunistic; I thought I could get better people with less competition because we were willing to understand the skills and capabilities that many of these woman had,” Thornley said.
…Thornley went on to say that by hiring women, he got better-qualified employees to whom he was able to give more responsibility. “And [they were] still often relatively cheap compared to what we would’ve had to pay someone less good of a different gender,” he concluded. To illustrate his point he showed a slide that said: “Women: Like Men, Only Cheaper.”
For his comments, Thornley’s was labelled a sexist and loudly denounced, especially so by furious women. Strange? Not according to the intention heuristic which judges self-interested actions as bad.
If we judge actions by consequences, however, Thornley should be encouraged, perhaps even praised. Accepting for the sake of argument the truth of the story, it’s Thornley who has overcome prejudice (his or his society’s), recognized the truth of equality and taken entrepreneurial action to do well while doing good. It’s Thornley who is broadcasting the fact of equality to the world and encouraging others to do likewise. Most importantly, the consequence of Thornley’s actions are to increase the demand for women executives thereby increasing their wages.
Women’s wages aren’t pushed down by employers who hire women but by employers who don’t hire women. So why does Thornley get the blame? Instead of denouncing Thornley, whose actions push up the wages of women he hires and the wages of the women he does not hire, why not ask, How can we encourage employers not to overlook talented women and minorities?
For those wanting to break the bonds of discrimination whether they be women, blacks or Dalits, lower wages and a competitive market aren’t the cost of discrimination but the cure. It’s the lower wages that give employers an incentive to overcome prejudice, seek out talent, and experiment with new ways of doing business. And it is the self-interested pursuit of profit that is the surest means to increase the wages of the unjustly ignored and overlooked.
"I didn't have any eggs, so I replaced them with a banana-chia-flaxseed pulse. It turned out terrible; this recipe is terrible."
"I don't have any of these ingredients at home. Could you rewrite this based on the food I do have in my house? I'm not going to tell you what food I have. You have to guess."
"I don't eat white flour, so I tried making it with raw almonds that I'd activated by chewing them with my mouth open to receive direct sunlight, and it turned out terrible. This recipe is terrible."
"Could you please give the metric weight measurements, and sometime in the next twenty minutes; I'm making this for a dinner party and my guests are already here."
These are barely exaggerated. I once saw a comment on a pesto recipe where the person substituted bay leaves for the basil and used other ingredients in the place of pine nuts and olive oil, then complained how bad it tasted and how terrible the recipe was. Oh, the literal humanity. (via nick)
No one understands meat's seductive hold on our palates better than America's premier butcher, Pat LaFrieda. In Meat: Everything You Need to Know, he passionately explains the best and most flavorful cuts to purchase (some of them surprisingly inexpensive or unknown) and shares delicious recipes and meticulous techniques, all with the knowledge that comes from a fourth generation butcher. If you have ever wondered what makes the meat in America's finest restaurants so delectable, LaFrieda -- the butcher to the country's greatest chefs -- has the answers, and the philosophy behind it.
Paired up with Tartine Bread, all we need now is some emulsifying genius to hit us with Mayonnaise cookbook and we'll be all set in sandwich-land.
It's TV Anniversary Week at The Wire, and we're taking a special look at the inordinately prestigious crop of shows celebrating milestone anniversaries this fall. Today, we're looking at UPN's Veronica Mars, which premiered Sept. 22, 2004.
She may have been a marshmallow, but Veronica Mars made just as many enemies in three seasons as she did solving cases. From Neptune High to Hearst College, Kristen Bell's spunky teen sleuth met the needy and the nefarious via a barrage of guest stars — many of who found fame post-Mars — and in trueThe Wirestyle, we've ranked 'em all.
But first! A definition: Guest stars include recurring ones (hello, Ken Marino as Vinnie Van Lowe!), but eliminates anyone who got bumped up to become a regular on the show. They may have seemed like guest stars, but main cast members including Julie Gonzalo (season 3's Parker), Kyle Gallner (Cassidy "Beaver" Casablancas), Michael Muhney (Sheriff Lamb) were disqualified.
As for methodology, we attributed grades for every guest star based on the following four criteria: character visibility, character memorability, impact in Veronica Mars lore, and post-Mars fame. The averages resulted in the following ranking, which we pared down to just 50 guest stars. (So yes, some are ranked higher because of star power, others made it because of their characters, while people like Amanda Noret —who played Madison Sinclair — just missed the cut.) Not happy with where your favorites landed? Just remember: Life's a bitch — at least until you die.
50. Jamie Chung
Character: Chung appeared for about 10 seconds as Jania (or as IMDb calls her, "Dancing Girl"), a partygoer Veronica encounters while investigating the rape crisis at Hearst. Jania's friend is passed out on the floor. That's about it for Chung's first acting gig post-Real World and pre-Sucker Punch, The Hangover Part III, and Once Upon a Time. Episode: Season 3, Episode 9: "Spit and Eggs"
49. Dan Castellaneta
Character: The voice of Homer Simpson plays Dr. Kinny, a professor at Hearst who makes his class participate in a variation of the Stanford Prison Experiment. It doesn't go so well, and at the end of the episode, Logan wreaks havoc by bursting through his classroom stark naked. D'oh! Episode: Season 3, Ep. 2: "My Big Fat Greek Rush Week"
48. Bonita Friedericy
Character: Friedericy spars with Veronica asEvelyn Bugby, a Neptune High Alumni Association member who visits the school to put together a display for a class reunion. Veronica's assigned to help her collect photos of the class of 1979, a small task compared to the ones Friedericy would assign Chuck on, well, Chuck, as the imposing Gen. Diane Beckman. Episode: Season 1, Ep. 7: "The Girl Next Door"
47. Rachelle Lefevre
Character: The future Twilight actress and Under the Dome dame first appeared on Veronica Mars as sympathetic sorority girl Marjorie, who gossips with Veronica and invites her in. She eventually becomes implicated in a marijuana scandal at the sorority, leaving Veronica feeling guilty for betraying her sisterly trust. Episode: Season 3, Ep. 2: "My Big Fat Greek Rush Week"
46. Zachery Ty Bryan
Character: The former Home Improvement star played Caz, a basketball player and 09er at Neptune High who ends up in Veronica's crosshairs when his ex-girlfriend Sabrina recruits her to help track down her stalker. May or may not have inspired the upcoming CBS show. Episodes: Season 1, Ep. 15: "Ruskie Business"; Season 1, Ep. 17: "Kanes and Abel's"
45. Monique Coleman
Character: Before heading to East High in High School Musical, Coleman played Gabrielle Pollard, a Neptune High student who befriended Yolanda, a kidnapped girl who used to be friends with Veronica and Lilly. Coleman delivers the guilt-tripping line of the episode, asking Veronica "Where were you?" when Yolanda began getting into trouble. Episode: Season 1, Ep. 13: "Lord of the Bling"
44. Kim Stolz
Character: The America's Next Top Model contestant (our favorite model from Cycle 5) landed a blink-and-you-miss-it part on the show as rental car agent Stacy, who has a domineering boss played by Joss Whedon (more on him later). She helps Veronica track a car. Episode: Season 2, Ep. 6: "Rat Saw God"
43. Kyla Pratt
Character: The actress formerly known as Penny Proud played Georgia, an office aide who gets scammed out of $6000. Wallace enlists Veronica to help her recover her money, and she's notable for being one of Veronica's earliest successful cases at Neptune High. Episode: Season 1, Ep. 4: "The Wrath of Con"
42. Lucas Grabeel
Character: Before he taught Corbin Bleu how to dance while playing baseball in High School Musical 2 (they dance with bats n' all), Grabeel played Neptune High baseball player Kelly Kuzzio, who gets his car robbed. Fun fact: Grabeel also appeared on Season 1, but was credited as "Wanna Score Boy." (Thanks, IMDb!) Episode: Season 2, Ep. 14: "Versatile Toppings"
41. Kristin Cavallari
Character: Like Jamie Chung, Cavallari's first non-reality TV role took her to Neptune, where she played Kylie Marker, a lesbian cheerleader who uses blackmail to force her girlfriend to come out. Not cool, Kristin. That's some reality TV manipulativeness. Episode: Season 2, Ep. 14: "Versatile Toppings"
40. Paris Hilton
Character: Speaking of reality TV manipulativeness... Hilton's part on Mars practically mirrored her real life persona: The socialite popped up in the first season as Logan's cheating girlfriend of the week and snooty 09er (of course) who gets involved in credit card fraud. Naturally, Veronica has little patience for her. Episode: Season 1, Ep. 2: "Credit Where Credit's Due"
39. Anthony Anderson
Character: To be honest, Anderson's on this list mostly because he played a character named Percy "Bone" Hamilton whose daughter (the aforementioned Yolanda) refers to him as "the scariest man alive who's also launching a line of casual wear." Anthony Anderson, of all people?! Episode: Season 1, Ep. 13: "Lord of the Bling"
38. Jane Lynch
Character: Mrs. Donaldson was far more flexible compared to Lynch's Sue Sylvester on Glee, but she also screwed up the student body presidential election at Neptune. Veronica visits her to ask about appealing the results, and eventually finds out Donaldson's student aide (Madison Sinclair, of course) changed the instructions to help Duncan. Episode: Season 1, Ep. 6: "Return of the Kane"
37. Jonathan Bennett
Character: Mean Girls' Aaron Samuels made an impression in the two episodes he appeared in as Casey Gant. Casey was a stereotypical 09er until he ended up joining a cult, and he later turned into a reliable friend/source for Veronica. Four for you, Casey! Episode: Season 1, Ep. 9: "Drinking the Kool Aid"; Season 1, Ep. 21: "A Trip to the Dentist"
36. Armie Hammer
Character: Hammer played Hearst football player Kurt, who discovers his cherished playbook is missing and sends Veronica on another hunt to help recover it, or else he could lose his scholarship and get kicked off the team. Hammer's ranked here for his later star power and for being one of Veronica's more "classic" cases in season 3. Episode: Season 3, Ep. 3: "Wichita Linebacker"
35. Sam Huntington
Character: Huntington's Luke Haldeman was a typical 09er — as in a rich brat who kept a dark secret. His? Dealing drugs with Troy Vandegraff. In the show, he played second fiddle to Vandegraff & Co. In the film, he played a part in the core four 09ers. Episode: Season 1, Ep. 5: "You Think You Know Somebody"; Season 1, Ep. 21: "A Trip to the Dentist"
34. Geoff Pierson
Character: Pierson's appeared on practically everything — 24, The West Wing, Dexter, to name a few — so it's no surprise he got a relatively meaty guest star role on Mars. Here, he played Meg Manning's father Stewart, who was more than he seemed. And by more, we mean he was an abusive father who wielded a baseball bat against Veronica and Duncan in his home. Episodes: Season 2, Ep. 4: "Green Eyed Monster"; Season 2, Ep. 7: "Nobody Puts Baby in a Corner"
33. Rider Strong
Character: Shawn, how could you?! Strong played Rafe, a "prison guard" during a version of the Stanford Prison Experiment carried out at Hearst. He loves the part, removing mattresses and books, and setting specific times for the "prisoners" to go to the bathroom. Episode: Season 3, Ep. 2: "My Big Fat Greek Rush Week"
32. Dianna Agron
Character: Agron played a version of the character she usually plays: a popular rich girl with a twist. Here, she tries to frame Weevil by seducing him first. Which, of course, is Veronica's cue to step in and save her friend. Episodes: Season 3, Ep. 5: "President Evil"; Season 3, Ep. 15: "Papa's Cabin"; Season 3, Ep. 19: "Weevils Wobble But They Don't Go Down"
31. Kevin Smith
Character: Smith showed up briefly as the last man to have seen the driver of the bus that crashes in the season 2 premiere and kills several of Veronica's classmates. As Duane the convenience store clerk, he chats with a TV reporter and drinks a giant slushie while talking to Veronica. Episode: Season 2, Ep. 2: "Driver Ed"
30. Laura Bell Bundy
Character: The future Broadway star visited Mars Investigations as Julie, a worried woman who wants Veronica to trace her fiancee. Veronica takes the case into her own hands against Keith's wishes, and discovers the parallels between Julie's relationship problems and her own. Episode: Season 2, Ep. 4: "Green-Eyed Monster"
29. Theo Rossi
Character: Before he hung out with SAMCRO on Sons of Anarchy, Rossi played Norris Clayton, a Neptune High student who had a reputation for being a thug, but showed a sweet side around Veronica, his crush. (Aww.) Sadly, he gets framed for a crime, and Veronica works to uncover the true culprit. Oh, and he teaches Veronica how to use throwing stars. Episode: Season 1, Ep. 18: "Weapons of Class Destruction"
28. Ari Graynor
Character: Graynor shows up as Jessie Doyle, the daughter of the bus driver who drove off the cliff. She's understandably distraught, having been hounded by the media and and the town's locals, because everyone seeks to brand her father as a suicidal man ignorant of the consequences. Veronica, having gone through a similar family name crucifixion after Lilly's death, helps her out. Episode: Season 2, Ep. 2: "Driver Ed"
27. Aaron Paul
Character: You love Aaron Paul. We love Aaron Paul. Veronica Mars didn't love Aaron Paul — not that much, anyway. The show featured the future Jesse Pinkman in several short scenes as Eddie "The Worm" Laroche, a shady guy who may or may not be involved with the "E-String Stranger," a guitar-string-using serial killer. Episode: Season 1, Ep. 11: "Silence of the Lamb"
26. Ed Begley Jr.
Character: As Hearst College Dean Cyrus O'Dell, Begley Jr. grappled with Veronica constantly. Not his fault, obviously — Veronica tends to frustrate people in positions of authority. (Just ask Van Clemmons.) The two traded memorable barbs, but eventually Veronica helped O'Dell out with his own case. Plus, his offing on the show set Veronica on a clear arc for the latter half of season 3. Episodes: 6 in season 3
25. Ryan Eggold
Character: As the shy Charlie Stone, the future Blacklist actor played Logan's secret half-brother. Veronica and Logan initially track him down and attempt to establish a relationship, but when a fake Charlie (played by Matt Czuchry, but we'll get to him) shows up, Logan reveals the real Charlie's secret in public, ruining any chance of a happy half-family reunion. Episodes: Season 3, Ep. 4: "Charlie Don't Surf"
24. Daran Norris
Character: Sure, Norris appeared in a whopping 17 episodes as Neptune's public defender Cliff McCormack, but left a smaller impression than some guest stars. McCormack was likable enough — he was a friend to the Mars family, after all — but he never got deeply involved in any cases, often delivering information for Veronica or helping her out as a trusty pseudo-sidekick. We have to hand it to him, though: His banter with Veronica was always top-notch. Episodes: 17 through three seasons
23. Alona Tal
Character: We're placing Tal's Meg Manning in the middle of the pack for two reasons: 1) Tal has had a cleanly consistent post-Mars career, even if she hasn't found a breakout role and 2) we still feel terrible for Meg. As Duncan's girlfriend and a popular 09er, Meg was always nice to Veronica. Later, as Duncan's ex-girlfriend, she had to deal with a pregnancy and an abusive father. That's a lot for a high school student to handle — so much so that the writers ended up offing her. Poor Meg. Episodes: 5 in season 1, 5 in season 2
22. Aaron Ashmore
Character: The twin brother of Iceman guest starred as Troy Vandegraff, one of Veronica's most memorable allies turned complicated enemies-she-can't-help-helping. Troy seemed like a sweet guy for Veronica to date, and you probably rooted for him (unlike Keith), before Veronica discovered he was a steroid smuggling dolt who already had a girlfriend. The show brought him back when Veronica visited Hearst. Episodes: 5 in season 1
21. Lisa Rinna
Character: Is placing Lynn Echolls, Logan's mother, outside of the top 20 unfair? Maybe, but she did only appear for three episodes as the alcoholic Echolls matriarch who also took pills to dull the fact that her husband regularly beat her son. Her subsequent disappearance contributed more to the show — and to Logan's psyche — than her appearances ever did. Episodes: Season 1, Ep. 6: "Return of the Kane"; Season 1, Ep. 10: "An Echolls Family Christmas"; Season 1, Ep. 12: "Clash of the Tritons"
20. Melissa Leo
Character: This one's driven by star power alone, though Leo's character was memorable for being one of Veronica's toughest one-off cases in the first season. See, the Oscar winner's character, Julia Smith, was a trans woman who regularly visited her son, who only remembered her as his father. Her case also encourages Veronica to attempt to track down her own mother — one of the first Find the Missing Family Member story lines the show would pursue. Episode: Season 1, Ep. 3: "Meet John Smith"
19. Lucy Lawless
Character: Xena stopped by Neptune as FBI Agent Morris, tasked to help track down Duncan Kane. Sheriff Lamb tries to warn her and her partner about Veronica, but, as an ass-kicking federal agent, Morris brushes him off with a memorable zinger. "Sheriff, we have interrogated Al Qaeda members at Gitmo," she says in an admittedly questionable accent. "I think we can handle a teenage girl." Episode: Season 2, Ep. 11: "Donut Run"
18. Jessica Chastain
Character: The current star of every movie you'll be watching for the rest of the year got one of her earliest gigs on Mars as Veronica's neighbor Sarah Williams. Sarah goes missing, prompting Veronica to point fingers at her boyfriend and eventually uncovering a messier case than she expected. She's also memorable for being one of Veronica's few friends in early season 1, and one whose story makes Veronica question why she does what she does in the first place. Episode: Season 1, Ep. 7: "The Girl Next Door"
17. Joss Whedon
Character: The director of all your favorite cult hits and killer of all your favorite characters popped up on Mars as Douglas, the mean rental car agent who lorded over Kim Stolz's Stacy. Put simply, he was quite the jerk (notice the framed picture of himself in the background), and Veronica figured she'd have better luck working with Stacy instead. Episode: Season 1, Ep. 18: "Rat Saw God"
16. Alia Shawkat
Character: Shawkat's character was memorable for being the first crucial rape case Veronica investigated at Hearst, even before she arrived as a student. As Stacy, the future Maeby was date-raped at a party, and her case would be the first in a string of rape cases Veronica would investigate over two seasons. Episodes: Season 2, Ep. 16: "The Rapes of Graff" (Arrested Development fans: This also happened to be the episode in which Michael Cera guest starred. Fate!)
15. Steve Guttenberg
Character: Sure, Guttenberg's better known for his work pre-Mars, but the Police Academy star arrived in Neptune as one of Veronica's more menacing enemies (just check out the clip below): Woody Goodman, father of Gia and wealthy baseball team owner who appeared benevolent on the outside but twisted on the inside. Veronica discovered Goodman had sexually molested boys on Little League teams, placing her and Keith in danger. Episodes: 8 in season 2
14. Matt Czuchry
Character: Czuchry sure gets typecast: His scheming Vanity Fair reporter character Norman on Mars shared qualities with early Cary on The Good Wife. After tapping the real Charlie Stone's phone, Norman posed as Charlie, earning Logan's trust and duping him for a scoop. (Granted, he didn't run the story, but ruined any chance of Logan building a relationship with the real Charlie.) Episode: Season 3, Ep. 4: "Charlie Don't Surf"
13. Michael Cera
Character: Cera had a bit part in season 3 as peppy Hearst College orientation guide (and exposition dialogue deliverer) Dean, who partners with Veronica during an icebreaker because no one else would. (Aww.) He was memorable enough for producers to ask him back in the third season, but a scheduling conflict kept him from a repeat performance. Episode: Season 2, Ep. 16: "The Rapes of Graff"
12. Alyson Hannigan
Character: Hannigan played Logan's attention-seeking sister Trina, who often covered up her tortured soul (distant parents, abusive boyfriends, etc.) with a smile and a witty barb aimed at Logan. Trina's lack of empathy for Lynn's disappearance (she used her possibly dead stepmother's credit card, after all) caused Logan to break down after he and Veronica attempt to track Lynn down. Episodes: Season 1, Ep. 15: "Ruskie Business"; Season 1, Ep. 19: "Hot Dogs"; Season 2, Ep. 9: "My Mother, The Fiend"
11. Jonathan Taylor Thomas
Character: Jonathan Taylor Thomas certainly enjoyed his turn as the villainous Ben on Mars after all those years on Home Improvement. Ben was the definition of Neptune, as a corrupt ATF agent in the sheriff's department who tried to frame Norris Clayton for bomb threats at Neptune. Veronica and Logan's takedown of him and his plan — along with their subsequent makeout sesh — remains one of the most memorable cases handled by Mars Investigations. Episode: Season 1, Ep. 18: "Weapons of Class Destruction"
10. Adam Scott
Character: Scott's likability was used effectively during his stint on Mars. As Veronica's favorite teacher Chuck Rooks, he engaged his students better than anyone else at Neptune High. And by engaged, we mean he had an affair with a student, leading said student's best friend Carrie Bishop (Leighton Meester) to exact revenge. It's an episode in which Veronica's judgment gets clouded by her affection for Mr. Rooks, and has to reconcile his ugly secret with the personable history teacher she had admired. Episode: Season 1, Ep. 14: "Mars vs. Mars"
9. Paul Rudd
Character: Of course Paul Rudd is memorable. The actor played Desmond Fellows, a washed up singer of a popular '90s band called My Pretty Pony, who arrives at Hearst to perform a benefit concert. His backup vocal tapes go missing, so Piz (Chris Lowell) recruits Veronica for help, despite Fellows' sleazebag ways. Episode: Season 3, Ep. 17: "Debasement Tapes"
8. Jessy Schram
Character: Schram's Hannah is high on this ranking not because of star power (though her Bonnie Whiteside on Mad Men is fabulous), but because Hannah was a notable season 2 guest star who changed the course of Veronica and Logan's relationship. But she wasn't just the catalyst for this epic scene — she also stood her own as a character, and was memorable for Logan's betrayal of their relationship, so much so that fans put together elaborate videos dedicated to them (see below). Episode: Season 2, Ep. 13: "Ain't No Magic Mountain High Enough"; Season 2, Ep. 14: "Versatile Toppings"; Season 2, Ep. 15: "The Quick and the Wed"; Season 2, Ep. 16: "The Rapes of Graff"
7. Charisma Carpenter
Character: Kendall Casablancas is a toss up, to be honest — you either loved her conniving ways, or you hated her for destroying the lives of Dick, Beaver, and Logan. We love her. She never tried to cover up the fact that she was a gold-digging trophy wife to Dick and Beaver's real estate magnate father, and she was never all that into hiding her affair with Logan. Best of all, she made a hell of a morally gray villain and banter partner for Veronica. Episodes: 10 in season 2, 1 in season 3
6. Leighton Meester
Character: Why is Meester ranked higher than, say, Paul Rudd and Adam Scott, you ask? Because Carrie Bishop was integral to Veronica's character — and was arguably the most memorable guest 09er with the fewest appearances. As the gossip queen of Neptune High years before Gossip Girl changed the course of her career, Meester relished torturing Veronica for being different from the 09ers, though she later developed a shaky alliance with Veronica during the Chuck Rooks case and helped Veronica figure out who raped her at Shelly Pomroy's party. Episodes: Season 1, Ep. 14: "Mars vs. Mars"; Season 1, Ep. 21: "A Trip to the Dentist"
5. Ken Marino
Character: Vinnie Van Lowe was hilariously frustrating. There's nothing Vinnie wouldn't do to get the best deal out of his client (including dropping them, a move he dubbed "The Vinnie Classic") and to mess with Mars Investigations. Then again, he did help Duncan escape and has rescued Veronica from sticky situations. And Ken Marino? Perfect casting for the guy, as evidenced by the clip below. Episodes: 10 through three seasons
4. Harry Hamlin
Character: Hamlin played Aaron Echolls, Logan's father and the stealth Big Bad of season 1 who would return again and again as a thorn in Veronica's side. Aaron, an action film star, often appeared in public as a typical Hollywood actor and loving father. In private, he was abusive and — spoiler alert except why you would be reading this if you've never watched Veronica Mars is a mystery — Lilly Kane's murderer, making him the man who indirectly changed Veronica into a gumshoe. Episodes: 12 episodes through seasons 1 and 2
3. Krysten Ritter
Character: Gia Goodman was one of kind — she could confuse chlamydia for a flower, psychoanalyze Logan during party chit chat, and partake in the coverup of a murder that would haunt her post-Neptune. Nothing says 09er like Krysten Ritter's character; Ritter herself, meanwhile, has also shot to success following her turn on Mars, most notably as the titular B in Apartment 23. Episodes: 8 through seasons 2 and 3
2. Max Greenfield
Character: Before he became the womanizing Schmidt on New Girl, Greenfield played the honorable, lovable, and adorable Sheriff's Deputy Leo D'Amato, who both dates Veronica and helps her track down the necessary documents for her "hobby." He left enough of an impression for fans in season 1 that he ended up returning for a total of 11 episodes throughout the series (and a welcome appearance in the film), charming Veronica as the Nice Guy before Piz ever showed up. (And don't get us wrong, we love Piz. Leo just holds a special place in our hearts.) Episodes: 11 through three seasons
1. Amanda Seyfried
Character: Seyfried aced all categories as Veronica's best friend Lilly Kane, whose murder set the series in motion. She only appeared in flashbacks, home videos, and dream sequences — some sweet, some sad, some terrifying — but she always left an impression, both on Veronica's character and on audiences. Lilly's murder, though resolved by the end of the first season, left deep scars on every major character in the first two seasons — so much so that by season 3, when Lilly didn't appear, fans felt eerily abandoned. Episodes: 11 through seasons 1 and 2
Here are some things you can do with instant ramen aside from eating it as directed on the package, including making a grilled cheese sandwich, gnocchi (a la David Chang), and pizza.
Many political unions subsist on creative ambiguity. That is, if the right question were posed, and the citizenry forced to answer it definitely, political order might spin out of control.
Canada, Belgium, and indeed the entire European Union seem to be organized on this basis. It’s not quite that everyone thinks they are getting their way, but rather explicit concessions are not demanded for each loss of control embodied in the broader system. Certain rights are held in reserve, with the expectation that they probably will not be exercised, but they can nonetheless influence the final bargaining equilibrium.
Most international treaties rely on some degree of creative ambiguity, as do most central banks, with their semi-promises of bailouts but “not too much not too certain you know” as the default. You might like the mandated outcome (or not), but I doubt if it would improve political discourse in the United States to have an explicit thumbs up vs. thumbs down referendum on abortion.
Many partnerships and marriages rely on creative ambiguity too. Should the Beatles have forced Lennon and McCartney to specify who had the final say over each cut? That probably would have led to a split in 1968 and there would be no Abbey Road. Must parties to a marriage specify the entire division of chores and responsibilities in advance?
We find the same in many academic departments. Things can be going along just fine, but once the department has to write out an explicit plan for future growth and the allocation of slots across different fields or methods, all hell breaks loose.
Question posers and agenda setters have great power.
All praises of democracy must be embedded in a broader understanding that a) formal questions can be destructive, and b) we cannot be allowed to pose questions without limit, at least not questions which require explicit, publicly verifiable, and commonly observed answers.
Once a question is posed very explicitly, and in a manner which requires a clear answer, it is hard to take it off the table. There is thus an option value to holding these questions in reserve, which means that the expected return from the question has to be pretty high to justify changing the agenda in a hard-to-revoke manner.
I am thus not impressed by claims that a “yes” vote for Scottish independence would represent “the democratic will of the people.” It might just be a question which should not be asked in such a blatant form.
This article, by the way, argues quite well that the current independence referendum is not really democratic at all. Who gets to vote, and who not, is quite arbitrary. Maybe they first should have held a referendum on that?
In one set of these experiments, called the dictator game, women were found to be more generous than men. Players were given $10 and allowed but not required to hand out some of it to a hidden and anonymous partner. Women, on average, gave away $1.61 of the $10, whereas men gave away only 82 cents.
In another test, called the ultimatum game, one player received $10 and then decided how much of it to offer to a partner. (Let’s say the first player suggests, “$8 for me, $2 for you.” If the respondent accepts the offer, that’s what each gets. If the respondent is offended by the unequal division or dislikes it for any other reason, he or she may refuse, and then no one gets anything.)
The depressing news was this: Both men and women made lower offers, on average, when the responder was female. Male proposers offered an average of $4.73 to male respondents, but only $4.43 to women. More painful yet was the behavior of female proposers, who, on average, offered $5.13 to men but only $4.31 to women. It seems that women were seen as softies who were willing to settle for less — and the discrimination was worse coming from the women themselves.
I am nonetheless optimistic about longer-term trends, and here is one specific example I give:
As a former chess player, I am struck by the growing achievements of women in this great game — one in which men were once said to have an overwhelming intrinsic advantage. (Among the unproven contentions was that men were better at pattern recognition.) Although women were never barred from touching the chess pieces, strong female players were few in number.
These days, many more women play very well, and the gap between the top men and women in the game is narrowing. The main driver of the change appears to be that more and more women are playing chess, creating a cycle of positive reinforcement that encourages ever more women to excel. We’ve seen a similar dynamic in the workplace, as more women have made great strides in the areas of law, medicine and academia. And this process may spread to other sectors of the economy as well, such as technology industries.
In Welsh poetry, dyfalu is the piling on of comparisons, definition through conceit. The word also means “to guess” in Welsh, and many poems of dyfalu have an element of guesswork, a fanciful and riddling dimension. “The art of dyfalu, meaning “to describe” or “to deride,” rests in the intricate development of a series of images and extended metaphors which either celebrate or castigate a person, animal, or object,” the encyclopedia of Celtic Culture explains. Dafydd ap Gwilym’s poems to the mist and the wind are classic fourteenth-century examples.
That is from Edward Hirsch, A Poet’s Glossary, which I am quite enjoying. There is interesting material on every page and it is written with passion. A hendiatris is a “figure of speech in which three words are employed to express an idea, as in Thomas Jefferson’s tripartite motto for the Declaration of Independence: “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”” When there are only two words so employed, it is of course a hendiadys.
Confucianism didn't really get into full swing in Korea until its second wave—called neo-Confucianism—in the fourteen century AD.
The rulers adopted neo-Confucianism partly as an excuse to overthrow the old aristocracy (with whom they were fed up). Under this new system, anyone could become an aristocrat. All they had to do was pass an excruciating civil service exam, called the kwako.
In other words, the Korean political system was a meritocratic aristocracy—what an incredible oxymoron. A man from all but the very lowest classes had the right to sit for the kwako (originally instituted in the tenth century). Not only was it really hard, but it was also administered only once every three years. In a given exam year, only a hundred or so people would pass, out of thousands of applicants.
If you passed it, you were instantly given the title of yangban—you became an aristocrat. Not only that, but your whole family line was upgraded in the process. There's a catch, though. A big one. Your male heirs have to pass the kwako exam as well. If your descendents failed the exam three generations in a row, you and your family were stripped of the yangban title and went back to being nobodies. Does this not sound like something out of Grimms' fairy tales?
Ever since then, Korean students have been studying as if their lives, their family lives, and the future lives of their entire bloodline depended on it.
“We allow people to make huge profits doing any number of things that will hurt the poor, but we want to crucify anyone who wants to make money helping them.” These are the words of Dan Pallotta, an entrepreneur who, until the early 2000s, ran a company that organized charity fundraisers. In 2002, the company netted $81 million for charity—a figure equivalent to about half the annual giving of The Rockefeller Foundation. But it was based on a for-profit model, and it compensated as such, with Pallotta himself earning about $400,000 per year. When word of his salary got out, he came under intense criticism. “Shame on Pallotta,” concluded one critic.
But why? “Want to make a million selling violent video games to kids? Go for it,” Pallotta is quoted as saying in a 2008 New York Times column by Nicholas Kristof. “Want to make a million helping cure kids of cancer? You’re labeled a parasite.”
The problem is, people have a “general bias against the very notion of seeking personal gains from charity,” according to a recent paper in Psychological Science, authored by George Newman and Daylian Cain, both of Yale SOM. “People [evaluate] charitable actions that were ‘tainted’ by personal benefits as worse (less moral, ethical, etc.) than equivalent self-interested behaviors that produced no charitable benefit.” The authors labeled this the tainted-altruism effect. ...
The authors found a way to mitigate this effect. They assumed that tainted altruism is a product of what, and how, information is presented. When people consider charitable efforts that realize personal benefit, the two ends appear to be in contrast; people consider the same behavior as it might occur in the absence of self-interest and ultimately conclude that the person (or organization) did not behave as altruistically as he or she could have. However, when someone is only selfish, then that is the only behavior present. People do not spontaneously consider whether the person could have been more altruistic.
Newman and Cain thus ran experiments in which they provided different frames around the charitable giving. Their experiment on Gap (RED) presented four conditions: in the control condition, participants were simply given information about the Gap. In the altruism condition, participants read about the Gap and the (RED) campaign, through which 50 percent of profits were donated to charity. In the tainted-altruism condition, participants read about the Gap (RED) campaign, its donations, and the fact that the other 50 percent of sales profited the company. Finally, in what they called the counterfactual condition, after reading that Gap (RED) raised money for charity and earned a profit, participants were reminded that the Gap did not have to donate to charity.
The simple addition of this counterfactual was enough to reverse the results: whereas people would have typically judged charity paired with self-interest more negatively than no charity at all, by mentioning that Gap could have simply kept all the money, this perspective disappeared. As the authors put it, “presenting the counterfactual information…significantly increased ratings of morality.”
A plan used to be simple: you would agree to meet someone at a certain time and place and then you would meet them there and then. Now, a plan is subject to all sorts of revisions because "cellphones make people flaky as #%@*".
A Plan: Once heralded as a firm commitment to an event in the future, a plan is now largely considered to be a string of noncommittal text messages leading up to a series of potential, though unlikely, events.
A Cellphone: Your primary device for making plans. More specifically, the medium with which most plans are conceived and later altered. It's imperative that you keep your cellphone on your person at all times, as you can expect all plans to dissolve into an amorphous cloud upon conception.
I have experienced this recently and am convinced this is partially a generational thing. If you spent any part of your 20s without a cellphone, the sort of thing described in the video happens a lot less. But this practice is also contagious, as most social behavior is...if you witness friends doing it, over time it becomes more acceptable to do it yourself.
Surgeon and New Yorker writer Atul Gawande has a new book about death coming out in October called Being Mortal.
Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming birth, injury, and infectious disease from harrowing to manageable. But in the inevitable condition of aging and death, the goals of medicine seem too frequently to run counter to the interest of the human spirit. Nursing homes, preoccupied with safety, pin patients into railed beds and wheelchairs. Hospitals isolate the dying, checking for vital signs long after the goals of cure have become moot. Doctors, committed to extending life, continue to carry out devastating procedures that in the end extend suffering.
Gawande, a practicing surgeon, addresses his profession's ultimate limitation, arguing that quality of life is the desired goal for patients and families. Gawande offers examples of freer, more socially fulfilling models for assisting the infirm and dependent elderly, and he explores the varieties of hospice care to demonstrate that a person's last weeks or months may be rich and dignified.
This piece Gawande wrote for the New Yorker in 2010 was probably the genesis of the book. I maintain a very short list of topics I'd like to write books about and death is one of them. Not from a macabre Vincent Price / Tim Burton perspective...more like this stuff. Dying is something that everyone has to deal with many times during the course of their life and few seem to have a handle on how to deal with it. That's fascinating. Can't wait to read Gawande's book.
Politeness pays off over time. It’s not difficult to master, there are plenty of books to teach you the basics, and it makes life more productive. You learn how to make conversation, usually by showing sympathy; and how to deal with difficult situations, usually by exercising restraint. “A whole class of problems goes away from my life because I see people as having around them a two or three foot invisible buffer”
It had been intuitively obvious since Adam Smith that, in an economic system, everything depends on everything else, and thought possible, since Leon Walras, to calculate and measure such a system – in other words, to produce a blueprint to test against the world. But proving that such a coherence is possible in the first place in a world of many competing individuals was the necessary first step to describing it in detail. ...
For thirty years the official story of general equilibrium went like this: Kenneth Arrow and Gerard Debreu, working independently at first, then joining forces, proved that Adam Smith was right, and the rest is history. ...
It was some time in the 1970s that [economist and historian of economic thought Roy] Weintraub first became aware that [Lionel] McKenzie, by then of the University of Rochester, had in the early 1950s proved the same result as had Arrow and Debreu, and slightly earlier at that, but somehow had failed to share in the enormous credit assigned or their famous result. ...
Debreu arrived from Paris in 1950, deeply trained in Bourbakist mathematics and somewhat insulated from the emphasis on planning methods that dominated Cowles at the time. He and Arrow began working on the equilibrium proof separately; when learning of each other’s work, they threw their lots in together and presented their results at the 1952 meetings of the Econometric Society, in Chicago – a day after McKenzie had talked about his work. Their paper, “Existence of an Equilibrium for a Competitive Economy,” appeared in Econometrica eighteen months later, more general than that of McKenzie, but three months after his. ...
Not long after, McKenzie would begin one of the greatest second acts in twentieth-century economics. Unable to get a job at a top-five university (Princeton at least awarded him his Ph.D. on the basis of his journal articles), he signed on at the University of Rochester in 1957 on the strength of a promise that he could build a department. ... And so McKenzie did. ... From modest beginnings, Rochester went on to become one of the most successful training grounds for young economists in the world...
[Weintraub] noticed that the principals had been somewhat reluctant to discuss the details surrounding their respective proofs. He badgered them, gradually learned that Debreu had attended McKenzie’s session and hadn’t told Arrow about it. ...
Further details had emerged, including an astonishing fact: the anonymous referee, who bottled UP McKenzie’s submission to Econometrica for a critical time, while Arrow and Debreu tidied up their proof, was none other than Debreu himself; and Debreu hadn’t disclosed his conflict of interest to the editor, Robert Solow. Debreu’s conduct was thus revealed as having been dishonorable. --David Warsh, Economic Principals, on a reminder to act honorably when refereeing papers "anonymously"
Models of reference-dependent preferences propose that individuals evaluate outcomes as gains or losses relative to a neutral reference point. We test for reference dependence in a large dataset of marathon finishing times (n = 9,524,071). Models of reference-dependent preferences such as prospect theory predict bunching of finishing times at reference points. We provide visual and statistical evidence that round numbers (e.g., a four-hour marathon) serve as reference points in this environment and as a result produce significant bunching of performance at these round numbers. Bunching is driven by planning and adjustments in effort provision near the finish line and cannot be explained by explicit rewards (e.g., qualifying for the Boston Marathon), peer effects, or institutional features (e.g., pacesetters). We calibrate a simple model of prospect theory as well as other models of reference dependence and show that the basic qualitative shape of the empirical distribution of finishing times is consistent with parameters that have previously been estimated in the laboratory.
The bidding has started for a particularly unusual piece of tech memorabilia: an Apple business card from former specialist Sam Sung. The man who shares the name with Apple's main competitor worked at the tech giant as a specialist in a Vancouver store.
Though he has since left Apple, Sam Sung discovered he had one single business card left when it fell out of a book. Over a year ago, his business card went viral, but he could not comment too much on the media craze because of Apple's employee policies. Now that he is no longer with the company, Sung is free to do as he wishes with his last remaining card. He's decided to auction it off for a great cause.
Sung is including his old uniform and official Apple store lanyard with the business card. Everything has been framed, and as an added bonus, Sam Sung autographed the glass. Bidding starts at just 99 cents.
The proceeds will go to the Children's Wish foundation, a not-for-profit organization that grants wishes to children suffering from illness. Sung will post a picture of the foundation's director, Jennifer Peterson, holding the check when the auction ends.
Though Sung is parting with his last remaining business card, he has no hard feelings for the tech company. He explained, "I had a great time working for Apple and would recommend it to anyone. I hope my old business card will go to another fellow Apple enthusiast with a sense of humour and the desire to help raise some money for a good cause."
Legendary designer Paul Rand's Thoughts on Design is back in print for the first time since the 1970s. The new version, which will be out on Aug 19, is available for preorder and comes with a foreword by Michael Bierut.
One of the seminal texts of graphic design, Paul Rand's Thoughts on Design is now available for the first time since the 1970s. Writing at the height of his career, Rand articulated in his slender volume the pioneering vision that all design should seamlessly integrate form and function. This facsimile edition preserves Rand's original 1947 essay with the adjustments he made to its text and imagery for a revised printing in 1970, and adds only an informative and inspiring new foreword by design luminary Michael Bierut. As relevant today as it was when first published, this classic treatise is an indispensable addition to the library of every designer.
