Newmark's Door

From what I've heard and read the creativity of DIs is vastly underestimated. 

They missed Bonefish Grill, but otherwise it's a pretty good list. 

The Flirtations, "Nothing But a Heartache". (Link via Metafilter.)

Beautiful, yes, but tell me where did all this stuff come from?

Yes. Next question.

Simply not to be missed. In the private sector, failing organizations often either 1) fire a lot of people or 2) go our of business altogether. So what does the federal government do?

But the inability to make this kind of radical change does hamper would-be government reformers. So does the way that our government now functions after decade upon decade of prior reform: which is to say, it prioritizes processes, which can be measured, over outcomes, which often can’t be; rules over discretion; and rights over trade-offs.

Related: "VA Health Care: The Problems with Government Agencies," "Why we should privatize the VA," and the very discouraging "Krauthammer: Chances of Democrats Learning Lesson from VA Scandal Are 'Zero'".

I don't know if he's right about Tressel, but this piece is as nasty as I can remember reading in Sports Illustrated. 

From Bob Lefsetz, claims about the music business:

1. Only blockbusters count and make serious dough. Either you’re a superstar or you’re starving. Yes, the Internet allows old folks and some young ‘uns to troll on on a subsistence budget doing house concerts and maybe playing theatres, which have now all been relabeled “clubs,” but the dream of paying your dues and breaking through is just a dream.

Fanne Foxe, Elizabeth Ray, Donna Rice, Paula Jones, Rielle Hunter, and others. Good times, good times. 

Some possible causes.

But I'd add: doing research on health and nutrition is difficult and expensive, so a lot of it is not done well, and that's made worse by the incentive to announce "newsworthy" results.