Newmark's Door

Interesting analysis of a recent trend in British soccer and an answer to something I've wondered about: why isn't there more to man-to-man defense? (It turns out that it's getting that way.)

Another entry in the Door's ceaseless quest to bring you the answers to life's important questions. (I think I ran a link this same conclusion before. So two entries with the same conclusion: you have to trust the science!)

Live from 1967, Arthur Conley.

I don't know about "greatest move EVER" but it is pretty cool.

Dionne Warwick and The Spinners.

San Francisco is most expensive while Indianapolis is leas expensive.

Gary Taubes declares the case has not yet been made.

Be careful out there, people.

The humble toilet seems like the least likely setting for drama. Yet throughout history, it has claimed kings, toppled celebrities and served as the scene of untimely deaths ranging from the tragic to the downright bizarre. What is it about the smallest room that makes it, occasionally, the most dangerous?

The battle of Vella Gulf: Three Japanese ships sunk, 1500 Japanese deaths, with zero American casualties.

The one I found most interesting: "The Class of 2026". This piece offers an extended analogy of what the future of higher education will be to what Henry VIII and Gutenberg did to the British monasteries. With the important proviso that change to higher education will probably occur more slowly than many people forecast--it's what history suggests and is consistent with a view that entrenched special interests rarely give up quickly--I think this piece's forecasts have a good chance of coming true. I especially like the forecast that "Professors, in this model, become more like personal trainers. . . . This is more or less the Oxbridge tutorial model used at Oxford: the tutor doesn’t lecture the students, he suggests reading material for them, and then discusses it with them in depth in order to teach them how to deepen their own understanding on their own."

Related: "Will the university survive AI? Education is close to becoming a sham" and "Teachers Are Not OK".

A final note about "AI will change everything" predictions: I am old enough to remember when computers finally succeeded in beating the very best human chess players and lots of people predicted the Death of Chess. Who would play when a computer could always win? Well, I am not going to take the time to do a study of chess's relative popularity before and after, but I can say people are still playing chess, there is still a world's championship, and, interestingly, the game has changed somewhat, with more emphasis on "non-classical" chess games like blitz. One might call this clever, evolutionary adaptation rather than the forecast extinction.

"Fellow-to-faculty programs have seeded academia with activists."

I thought the story was too simple and apparently it is:

The reason, it seems, might have less to do with vegetables and more to do with poor record-keeping and benefits fraud.

Ouch: "The problem with Australians is not that so many of them are descended from convicts, but that so many of them are descended from prison officers."

"Why AI is still making things up".

"Why ChatGPT Creates Scientific Citations — That Don’t Exist".

A useful reminder about how quickly some latest-and-greatest technologies deflate.

The bubble inflated quickly, with share prices in British bicycle companies tripling in the space of months in 1896, even as the number of bicycle companies expanded more than five-fold.

But then a flood of low-cost American bikes invaded the market, and the mood soured. 

I can imagine it. I kinda think that as the old expression goes, "The sky is the limit".

"[W]hat Harvard consistently fails to teach is humility."

Usually a bad thing to do.

Another fine piece by Clifford Asness.

What explains the outpouring of protest against Israel and the concurrent hatred toward Jews from a virulent subset of kids, professors, and outsiders on elite college campuses? One answer, one key answer, isn’t to be found in the Mideast but rather in the human heart and how human beings explain the workings of the world to themselves. That answer is “capitalism” and those who hate it.

This conclusion is vigorously supported by Thomas Sowell.

This piece makes a very fine point: we might think of the murder rate as a proxy for crime and disorder, but over time, in the United States at least, it is a lousy such proxy.

Mr. Einhorn could buy me a thousand times over, but I think--hope--value investing will eventually come back.

More: "Greenlight's David Einhorn on Value Investing, Inflation" and "How Would David Einhorn Invest $100,000".

Mr. Zohran Kwami Mamdani, who is running for and could be the next mayor of New York City, ends a dopey tweet with "Taxation isn't theft. Capitalism is."

I'd say it's about par for the Left these days.

"Another common economic narrative that's out of date."

We've got problems in this country but at least we're not in as bad shape as the UK seems to be.

Amen: "Don't reduce incentives for medical R&D".

But I think her fighting spirit will see her through.

Funny.

Cover of AC/DC's "Thunderstruck" on banjo, accordion, anvil, and . . . wait for it . . . spoons.

Complete version.