Newmark's Door

Postcards from Planet Google. (NY Times, registration required.)

A surprisingly balanced article on Sen. Helms in New York magazine. (Including this great line from ex-Sen. Alan Simpson, "New Yorkers are a great and wonderful people, but if you stop and ask 'em if they've ever been to North Carolina, they'll stop and blink at you like a frog in a hailstorm."

The Internet Archive, aka the Wayback Machine, is a cool idea and nicely executed.

World's longest human tongue. With picture. (Not for the squeamish.)

Some months back a distinguished professor and former dean at Harvard released, "Evaluation and the Academy: Are We Doing the Right Thing? Grade Inflation and Letters of Recommendation.? I'm just now reading it and it's good.

The Irascible Professor smacks down Alfie Kohn's unreasonable thoughts on grade inflation. (The Door knew the now mega-famous Alfie Kohn in high school. Brush with greatness!)

More silliness from the Left. John Edwards proposes that the federal government assure every qualified student a free freshman year in college. He says it will cost only $3 billion. Gee, Senator, why stop with only one year, then? Four years would cost about $12 billion. Throw in $3 billion more to let the students relax a little and take a fifth year. Add another $6 billion and they could get two years of graduate school, enough for a solid Master's degree. That still totals only $21 billion, which is well less than half of the Department of Education's FY2003 budget request. What are we waiting for??

Some on the Left oppose the Administration's proposed air pollution rules. (NY Times, registration required.) It seems that many plants don't upgrade their pollution controls because if they do, they then must meet very stringent standards. So they just keep polluting at heavy rates. The Administration proposes to let such plants upgrade--make at least marginal improvements--without triggering the more stringent requirements. The Left pursues absolutes; conservatives would rather make the world a little better, rather than make it a lot worse through pursuing absolutes. This is the very heart of the conservative/liberal divide.

Fiat is in big trouble.

Transcript of a recent lecture at the American Enterprise Institute by Andrew Sullivan. His topic is Michael Oakeshott, on whom he wrote his Ph.D. thesis at Harvard.

Gregg Easterbrook in Wired snickers at physicists' attempts to come to grips with the anthropic principle.