File under Interesting

Very interesting.

Friedman on Singapore

Here is one of the rare intelligent commentaries about what Asian Tiger countries do better than the U.S. that maybe we could learn something from. It's not exactly clear if or how we could emulate some of the things Friedman details (e.g. $1 million bureaucrats), but the thesis is crisp and well stated.

Quote of the Day: Tyler Cowen edition

Tyler Cowen of Marginal Revolution has a new ebook. I want to read it after reading several good reviews, the best of which is this, which includes two Quote of the Day's:

“My nomination for the most significant economic event of the past decade: The failure of the Human Genome Project to thus far deliver medically significant results.” (Quoting Michael Mandel)

Ironically, I've lost a lot of faith in medical technology since coming to MIT. It feeds into the next one:

Today, health care and education are bloat industries. What if we turned them into wild-west growth industries?

Education is ripe for a technology-based productivity boom. It's also ripe for a human-capital based quality boom. But there is so much red tape, institutional inertia, and ideology that education is going nowhere fast. Health care does have some low-hanging fruit to pick. I acknowledge that both of those sentences probably don't convey anything meaningful and require examples, but it's 2 A.M. so that blog post will wait for another day.

Tiger Mom

A few weeks ago a Chinese lady published a book about how much of a domineering parent she is. An expert posted on the Internet caught fire because of America's insecurity about the rise of China (see the State of the Union speech).

I think this New Yorker article is one of the best looks at the whole story--including the meta-story, the story behind the story--and a good example of how to write that kind of piece. My only criticism is that the commentary on the content is a bit light: are Chinese students really better prepared for the future?

I'd also comment that what I found most interesting about the hysteria is how people who parents like Chua, who agree with Chua on a lot of things, vilified her. Lots of people, most people, at MIT have parents like her. To get into MIT you need a lot of luck, a lot of raw intelligence, or parents who beat you into doing things to please admissions officers. As far as I can see, only 10% got in on intelligence and maybe 20% on luck, so the vast majority is here because of overbearing parents.

But maybe this explains it: They want to pretend their parents aren't like Chua. That side of their parents really is crazy. And in retrospect (I've heard people emote this) people feel really stupid for getting so stressed out in high school about music, GPAs, and college admissions.

Fastest Induction into the National Film Registry

The National Film Registry finally added The Empire Strikes Back to its collection last month, making it only the third sequel to be inducted. (No surprise, The Godfather Part II is one. Bride of Frankenstein is the other.)

To mark the delay in inducting Empire I've listed below the fastest films to be inducted:

Film	Release	Induction	Wait
Raging Bull	1980	1990	10
Do the Right Thing	1989	1999	10
Goodfellas	1990	2000	10
Blade Runner	1982	1993	11
Beauty and the Beast	1991	2002	11
Star Wars*	1977	1989	12
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial	1982	1994	12

* - The inaugural class was inducted in 1989, so Star Wars is a bit of a special case, having achieved the minimum wait possible.

Europe Scares Me

In Sweden, having consensual sex is considered rape.

I hope only sounds retarded because of some quirk of translation. But I doubt it.

From the NYTimes Magazine story on Julian Assange:

Two Swedish women filed police complaints claiming that Assange insisted on having sex without a condom; Sweden’s strict laws on nonconsensual sex categorize such behavior as rape

Good column

This is a good column and a better story.