Tyler Cowen is not afraid to ask the hard questions.

How much would the world differ if Harvard reserved a fifth of its entering class for those individuals who showed the most talent for fraud?  I don’t mean that question in a cynical light, it is one genuine way of trying to think about how education adds value to labor market outcomes.

Google has their own way of doing things.

We rely on the Lake Wobegon Strategy, which says only hire candidates who are above the mean of your current employees.

Another hiring strategy we use is no hiring manager. Whenever you give project managers responsibility for hiring for their own projects they’ll take the best candidate in the pool, even if that candidate is sub-standard for the company, because every manager wants some help for their project rather than no help. That’s why we do all hiring at the company level, not the project level. First we decide which candidates are above the hiring threshold, and then we decide what projects they can best contribute to.

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In a recent report in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers from the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit of the University of Cambridge and the Coma Science Group at the University Hospital of Leige describe their use of fMRI technology to scan the brains of patients diagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state. Surprisingly, they found that a small proportion of the patients could understand and respond to a series of questions even though they showed no outward signs of consciousness. This finding is sure to rewrite the textbook on defining and diagnosing disorders of consciousness.

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Sounds like a win-win.

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If you’re a computer programmer you might have found yourself describing a particular problem you are having to a colleague. Many times you’ll never even finish the explanation, or get any feedback before you uncover the solution to your problem. I’ve found that a colleague is not even necessary: you can talk to anything as long as your verbalize your problem.

I’m sure we’ve all had similar experiences.

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Not long ago, a team of researchers watched a 1-year-old boy take justice into his own hands. The boy had just seen a puppet show in which one puppet played with a ball while interacting with two other puppets. The center puppet would slide the ball to the puppet on the right, who would pass it back. And the center puppet would slide the ball to the puppet on the left . . . who would run away with it. Then the two puppets on the ends were brought down from the stage and set before the toddler. Each was placed next to a pile of treats. At this point, the toddler was asked to take a treat away from one puppet. Like most children in this situation, the boy took it from the pile of the “naughty” one. But this punishment wasn’t enough — he then leaned over and smacked the puppet in the head.

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Is that portrait not the very image of a smug, supercilious jerk?

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I blame ADD, but that’s me.

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Do you know someone who needs hours alone every day? Who loves quiet conversations about feelings or ideas, and can give a dynamite presentation to a big audience, but seems awkward in groups and maladroit at small talk? Who has to be dragged to parties and then needs the rest of the day to recuperate? Who growls or scowls or grunts or winces when accosted with pleasantries by people who are just trying to be nice?

I don’t, but my friends do.

If so, do you tell this person he is “too serious,” or ask if he is okay? Regard him as aloof, arrogant, rude? Redouble your efforts to draw him out?

Or perhaps just leave him the hell alone? (Nah, can’t have that.)

“It is very difficult for an extrovert to understand an introvert,” write the education experts Jill D. Burruss and Lisa Kaenzig.

That’s because extroverts are a bunch of clueless assholes. Just sayin’.

David Friedman is always worth reading.

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Reesa Brown is the Significant Other of Stevn Brust, and is recovering from cancer surgery.

Steven Brust is one of my Recommended Writers (see sidebar on the right), and one of the best living writers of the English language.

Take whatever action you think is appropriate.

Megan McArdle cuts through the fog.

Meyerson identifies a lot of the procedural barriers that I frequently talk about–the bidding and environmental safeguards that make federal projects very slow to get off the ground.  But perhaps unsurprisingly, he doesn’t really explore a huge barrier to a WPA-type jobs program:  public sector unions.  They are not going to let you hire a bunch of cheap workers and run crews without civil service protections.

Just as generals famously prepare to fight the last war, governments prepare to handle the last crisis.

That anyone using the phrase “And I’m, like,….” is to be summarily executed.

It would make the world a better place. Really, it would.

The Wall Street Journal hits a sore spot.

Steve Sailer reviews the big guy.

Herself and I saw the movie last night and had a great time. Just sayin’.

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And rich people, who early adopters tend to be.

Dymphna at Gates of Vienna attempts a response.

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He’s everywhere! He’s everywhere! (Oh, sorry, that’s Chicken Man….)

Charlie Stross has some interesting thoughts.

Apple are trying desperately to force the growth of a new ecosystem — one that rivals the 26-year-old Macintosh environment — to maturity in five years flat. That’s the time scale in which they expect the cloud computing revolution to flatten the existing PC industry. Unless they can turn themselves into an entirely different kind of corporation by 2015 Apple is doomed to the same irrelevance as the rest of the PC industry — interchangable suppliers of commodity equipment assembled on a shoestring budget with negligable profit.

Mark Freeberg has a pretty good list.

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Steve Sailer is on a roll.

David Brooks’s latest NYT column, “The Limits of Policy,” continues his pattern of picking up on my ideas, but expressing them gingerly enough to keep his job. There is a lot of good stuff in here, but enough Crimestop, too, so he doesn’t get Stephanie Graced.

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Really, that’s about all you did for us — gave us a lecture hall, gave us an arrogant bastard to listen to, and gave us a room full of computers we could use sometimes, and you gave us a degree that employers look at and say “This guy knows how to write reports. Amusing.” And I will be paying for this privilege until I am 51 years old.

Whenever I get a ‘give us money’ message from one of the three institutions from which I hold a degree, I always write ‘BITE ME’ on it in large black maker and send it back in the convenient reply envelope. That quiets things down for about six months.

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First, the meritocracy is based on an overly narrow definition of talent. Our system rewards those who can amass technical knowledge. But this skill is only marginally related to the skill of being sensitive to context. It is not related at all to skills like empathy. Over the past years, we’ve seen very smart people make mistakes because they didn’t understand the context in which they were operating.

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A society is formed by the voluntary bonding of individuals into overlapping, ever-changing groups whose members strive to serve each others’ emotional and material needs. Government — regardless of its rhetoric — is an outside force that cannot possibly replicate societal bonding, or even foster it. At best, government can help preserve society — as it does when it deters aggression from abroad or administers justice. But in the main, government corrodes society by destroying bonds between individuals and dictating the terms of social and economic intercourse — as it does through countless laws, regulations, and programs, from Social Security to farm subsidies, from corporate welfare to the hapless “war” on drugs, from the minimum wage to affirmative action. On balance, the greatest threat to society is government itself.

And that is libertarianism in a nutshell.

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When reading science fiction, I refuse to accept as credible any alien species that isn’t at least as strange as the Japanese.

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Here is what really happened: there was a bubble in housing prices. The bubble was mostly the result of government policy–loose money, combined with pressure on banks to make bad loans to unqualified home buyers. It all worked for a while because Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac, under the leadership of Congressman Barney Frank and others, created a secondary market for shaky mortgages. Goldman Sachs participated in this market, downstream, along with many other players. But the whole thing wasn’t an accident or a conspiracy, it was government policy. The home price bubble could have only one possible result. All bubbles burst–there is nothing else they can do–and the bursting of a bubble is always painful. The whole disaster that began in 2008 was the inevitable result of government policy, which is why Senators are so anxious to pass the buck to Goldman Sachs.

I’m not a particular fan of either Goldman Sachs or Congress, but today’s hearing confirms that, given a choice, I’d rather have Goldman Sachs regulating Congress than Congress regulating Goldman Sachs. Goldman’s employees are much smarter, considerably more honest, and far more likely to have my interests at heart.

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New York Magazine has a long profile of Sarah Palin up right now. Its focus is more publicity, personality and celebrity, than politics. The profile reduces my probability that Palin will make a serious run (as opposed to a pro forma one) for the highest office in 2012. It also leaves me impressed by how quickly and efficiently she’s leveraged her celebrity and gone from moderately upper middle class** in income (and in serious debt due to legal bills after the 2008 campaign) to wealthy. Some Republicans are apparently worried about her becoming the “face of the party,” something that crops up now and then in the media, but it doesn’t seem like they really have to worry that much unless the party has no real substance and is rooted only in style and the need to get elected. As for Sarah Palin, whatever you think of her politics or personality, she’s offering a concrete product distributed through the private sector. The article mentions that her book was a major reason that Random House generated a profit last year! Whatever criticisms one might lodge, she’s not getting rich by being a rent-seeker, as so many of our public and private sector elites have become. In fact the article points to a whole industry of liberal critique which has emerged around her, so she’s not even capturing all the wealth that she’s responsible for (spillover effects).

Doing well by doing good.

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Stephen Brust, despite being a Benighted Socialist, is one of the best writers of the English language alive today. (Read any of his Vlad Taltos books and you’ll agree. Better yet, read the brilliant fanfic Firefly episode he wrote.)

His Significant Other just had a radical mastectomy and they’re fund-raising to pay for it. Follow the link to participate.

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Lots of commentators, including yours truly, have pointed out the ways in which modern environmentalism is like a religion. For last week’s Earth Day festivities, economist Paul Rubin had a provocative piece in the Wall Street Journal detailing the ways in which environmentalism confers group identity on it adherents. In this way, it functions more like ancient tribal religions than like universal religions such as Christianity that transcend the tribe.

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Slow news day.

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Police said the man and two accomplices had been armed with a knife and a firearm when they approached pupils outside the secondary school in Umbumbulu, near Durban in the country’s KwaZulu-Natal province.

It is claimed the trio tried to rob the youngsters of their mobile phones and money but fled when the students began pelting them with stones.

Sometimes the old ways are best.

Gates of Vienna takes a fairly deep look into the way the Crust thinks.

It is not a pretty sight.

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A fascinating look at where you would be if you had bought a piece of the action rather than a mere product.

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This is the girl Prince William ought to marry.

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Well, that’s what it looks like.

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Faster, please.

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We report, you decide.

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Ronald Wayne’s 10% share in Apple would be worth £13.6bn

And if you believe that one, he’ll tell you another one.

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And a bad one.

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This is Jeff’s ‘lecture’ at Tedx NYED. Jeff is the first person I’ve ever encountered who sees, as I do, modern schools as ‘factory schools’, and has a lot of exciting ideas about how to fix that. His most exciting idea is a modern school designed like Oxford University: Get the best lectures in a subject from online repositories like MIT (and have a quasi-market system to determine which is best), and then provide students with tutors to guide their intellectual journey. We have a tremendous number of tools available for people to find stuff out and practice useful skills, with more being developed every day. Let’s get to work.

An Informative Chart.

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How else are we going to keep Medicare solvent?

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A perhaps not unbiased perspective.

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The Oregon Supreme Court ruled that a state worker who used pot to relieve pain and nausea could be fired for drug use even though he had had a state-issued medical marijuana card.

This strikes me as a very odd decision. The employee wouldn’t be fired for using a prescription drug, properly prescribed, for a medical condition, even though using it without a prescription would be illegal.  He effectively had permission from his employer, the state, to use marijuana for a medical condition. I can see where he would be liable to arrest under Federal drug laws, but not how he can be liable to termination.

An informative cartoon.