Newmark's Door

"Solve one of these 5 problems and your name will never be forgotten." The list is headed by the Riemann Hypothesis.

Yeah, I'd go with jealousy.

Vivek Wadhwa:

There is no doubt that education gave the Indians an advantage. But this does not explain why the boards of companies such as Microsoft, Google, IBM, and Twitter would choose foreign-born technologists over equally qualified Americans. The answer may lie in cultural values, upbringing, and struggles. 

I agree: it's best to ignore the advice of politically motivated economics Nobel prize winners.

C'mon now, Democrats and Republicans, Liberals and Conservatives: can't we agree to get rid of the cookie police??

Funny. And as I learned when I taught writing, accurate at least for graduate students. (As someone with a lot of experience teaching writing told me when I started, "It takes a whole lot of formal education to write as badly as they usually do.")

Karol Markowicz sadly says good-bye to her once beloved New York.

Abigail Shirer gave a brave and beautiful talk:

The question I get most often—the thing that most interviewers want to know, even when they’re pretending to care about more high-minded things—is:  What’s it like to be so hated?  I can only assume that’s what some of you rubberneckers want to know as well:  What’s it like to be on a GLAAD black list? What’s it like to have top ACLU lawyers come out in favor of banning your book? What’s it like to have prestigious institutions disavow you as an alum? What’s it like to lose the favor of the fancy people who once claimed you as their own?

A brutally clear depiction of a city in ruins.

It is the simmering resentment that comes from knowing that you can work hard, play by the rules, and still be crushed by forces beyond your control. It is the inversion of right and wrong, where criminals are treated with sympathy and victims are portrayed as villains, where sidewalks stretching for blocks are simply ceded to rows of homeless tents.

Ed Driscoll at Instapundit writes, "Portland morphed into Detroit so slowly, I hardly even noticed."

Makes the case that we would have rather quickly developed all of Big Al's massive achievements without him. Convincing up until general relativity. When you read about what it took him to come up with that, I think it would have been many decades--if ever--before anyone else would have gotten it.

As usual, give the points and bet on Big Al.