Newmark's Door

The Onion, doing its thing: "Professor Pressured To Sleep With Student For Good Course Evaluation".

Qunu looks promising. "Qunu is a next-generation expertise matching service. We use instant-messaging to connect--in real time--people who have software or tech-related questions with experts who are passionate and willing to help." (Link via Lynne Kiesling at Knowledge Problem.)

O.K., it's official: Iran now holds the major-nation record for most consecutive days of boasting or threatening or both.

Free draft of a book, Investors and Markets: Portfolio Choices, Asset Prices, and Investment Advice, by Nobel Laureate economist William F. Sharpe. (Link via Mahalanobis.)

"Funny Air Traffic Controller Quotes". Example:

Allegedly, a Pan Am 727 flight waiting for start clearance in Munich overheard the following: Lufthansa (in German): "Ground, what is our start clearance time?" Ground (in English): "If you want an answer you must speak in English." Lufthansa (in English): "I am a German, flying a German airplane, in Germany. Why must I speak English?" Unknown voice from another plane (in a beautiful British accent): "Because you lost the bloody war."

(Link via Reddit.)

Three links that may be useful if you're having trouble with Windows XP.

"XP's No-Reformat, Nondestructive Rebuild Option".

"How to Reinstall Windows XP Easily".

"The PC Boot Process--Windows XP".

Wikipedia's interesting account of the New Coke episode.

Mark Steyn reviews a book, Before the Dawn, that argues that primitive peoples weren't as peaceful as some have led us to believe:

Lawrence Keeley calculates that 87 per cent of primitive societies were at war more than once per year, and some 65 per cent of them were fighting continuously. "Had the same casualty rate been suffered by the population of the twentieth century," writes Wade, "its war deaths would have totaled two billion people." Two billion! In other words, we're the aberration: after 50,000 years of continuous human slaughter, you, me, Bush, Cheney, Blair, Harper, Rummy, Condi, we're the nancy-boy peacenik crowd. "The common impression that primitive peoples, by comparison, were peaceful and their occasional fighting of no serious consequence is incorrect. Warfare between pre-state societies was incessant, merciless, and conducted with the general purpose, often achieved, of annihilating the opponent."

This article--thanks to Craig at UIC for the link--summarizes Larry Kotlikoff's recently published paper, "Is the United States Bankrupt?" Several places on the Web, including Drudge, repeated the scary headline.

But I think that the more interesting part of the paper is Kotlikoff's three policy proposals. One is to replace Social Security with personalized accounts, albeit accounts mandatorily invested in a global index fund. Another is to replace Medicare and Medicaid with individualized, government-funded vouchers. And the third is to replace federal income, FICA, and estate taxes with a 33% retail sales tax plus rebate.

In my opinion, they are all worth seriously investigating and debating.

Every so often this blog tries to help the Kids. Here are three links to potentially useful information about job interviews:

"How to Answer the Toughest Interview Questions".

"Preparing for a Software Engineering Interview".

"Interview Tips From an Experienced Recruiter".