5 Myths about America’s Credit Card Debt — WaPo
“Books are, within reasonable limits, demand-inelastic” — TBM
Cost Dispute Halts Airlift of Injured Haiti Quake Victims — NYT
Amazon buys ebooks from publishers at $10-$14 wholesale, says Blodget — SAI
Treasury Removes Embarrassing Line From Mortgage Modification Report — Atlantic
Somali Pirates Plan to Send Treasures Taken from Rich Countries to Haiti — Racewire
iPad v. A Rock — TechCrunch
Brad Tuttle is even more defeatist than me when it comes to regulating credit cards — Time
1. Keynes-Hayek rap video with Chinese subtitles.
2. The essential Rachel Strohm recommends development books.
3. Gretchen Rubin's The Happiness Project hits #1.
4. Credible sources report that JHabermas is fake. Even more credible, note JH reports his email address is not available for the public.
5. Haitians are targeting aid to women.
6. The quest for university rankings favors the biosciences (and experimental economics?)
7. Educated women marry well these days.
8. Writing haiku, using the random movements of sheep.
From Marginal Revolution
1. The forthcoming bailout of Greece.
2. Via Chris F. Masse, thoughts on the iPad.
3. Leonardo da Vinci's resume: a study in personal marketing.
4. Virginia Postrel on the Chinese freshwater pearl industry.
5. Which country showed the most spending restraint during the financial meltdown?
6. Interview with the still-underrated Laura Miller.
7. Via Rachel Strohm, good advice for rebuilding Haiti.
From Marginal Revolution
The formerly-secret AIG Cusip numbers now owned by the government and run by Blackrock are revealed; world doesn’t end — Reuters, HuffPo
The 6 Most Statistically Full of Shit Professions — Cracked
Tim Geithner is so captured by the big banks that he thinks reasons to leave them are in fact reasons to stay — Baseline Scenario
Citigroup paid its employees $24.9 billion in 2009 — NYT
Some seriously hardcore geeking out with paywall modelling — Nieman Lab, Albert Sun
This is the title of a typical incendiary blog post — Faultline
European banks need €83bn — Buzzup
I thought Larry Lessig was moving on from his copyright fight? Evidently not: here’s another 6700 words — TNR
Felix Salmon blogs for Reuters
1. Should Bernanke be reappointed?, a symposium, including yours truly and others.
2. Markets in everything egads.
4. Via Leonardo Monasterio, stylized facts about cities.
5. Weight-loss cutlery edition.
6. Invasion of the European economists.
From Marginal Revolution
1. The economics of child soldiering.
2. The fake colors of Hubble photography.
3. Should you randomize your watch?
4. David Brooks on the populist addiction.
5. Map of the Great Recalculation.
6. Some recent work on money and happiness.
7. Carlos the Jackal, from a French prison, demands a legal say over his biopic.
From Marginal Revolution
1. Alan Rusbridger Hugh Cudlipp memorial speech. Paywalls are only a "hunch", we must consider other business models.
2. The top 10 government data visualisations and applications
3. Ethical considerations of contacting extraterrestrials: "I dislike seeing my children's destiny being gambled with by a couple of dozen arrogant people who cling to one image of the alien". (See also, the New Scientist's short history of ET communication attempts. Quite alarmed at idea of 'vaginal contractions' broadcast to the galaxy, but perhaps it will break the ice.)
4. I am delighted about this zoomable paper map of London. It's pretty and also slightly nerdy, I love it.
5. High School Musical: The College Years.
1. How lawyers should select jurors -- treat them like blind dates.
2. Happy and sad.
3. One proposal for The Grand Bargain.
4. 100 greatest science fiction and fantasy novels?
From Marginal Revolution
Does Mexico make more from illegal drugs than it does from oil? I’d love to see where these numbers are coming from — Reuters
Barney Frank: Let’s abolish Fannie and Freddie — Globe
Wyclef Jean Demanded a $100,000 Fee to Appear at a Fundraiser for His Own Hometown — Gawker
On the difficulty of trying to define prop trading — Kid Dynamite
Dave Winer’s email requesting he be removed from Twitter’s suggested user list — Scripting (Background here)
The Chinese population ages 20-24 will fall from 125 million in 2010 to just 68 million in 2020 — Caing
1. New talk of principal writedowns.
2. How do women bargain differently?
3. It's hard to aid Haiti without infrastructure.
4. The Institute for Unethical Studies.
5. Good account of Haiti, before and now.
6. Turing tests, in a Chicago theatre.
From Marginal Revolution
1. Where have you been all my life? #12. Highbrow false dust-jackets ("Perfect for the aspirational reader")
2. Rickets makes a comeback among the computer generation. (Also, interestingly: "Half of all adults in the UK have Vitamin D deficiency in the winter and spring, one in six having severe deficiency.")
3. If money was no object: luxury treehouses. Swiss Family Robinson-style; spherical tree-dens, straight out of Where the Wild Things Are; ten-storey treehouse; spiral staircases one and two; around an invisible tree.
4. American football fans can look forward to 11 minutes of action and three seconds of cheerleaders each game.
5. HP to enter the 3D printer market. Watch the video, it's pretty exciting.
6. Gift ideas for nerds #33: new parents. Prenatal music system; Nom nom nom bib; 'Why Cry' analyser; 'loading...' maternity shirt; Sci-fi baby names book.
The Brownian-motion-and-greater-fools theory of the old GM’s share price — TED
Any number of ways to get around a paywall — Slate
Helmet laws save lives — and also reduce the number of cyclists — NBER
Brad Miller points out that the bank tax is basically what we should have been doing to Frannie all along — HuffPo
Roubini warns of “a disorderly rush to the exit” if inflation appears in the US —Project Syndicate
More solid reporting on the iffy finances of Wyclef Jean’s Yele Haiti charity from John Cook — Gawker
Too much of a good thing? Making the most of your disaster donations — Aid Watchers
A long and interesting story on David Proctor, a banker who can’t leave Qatar — Euromoney
Felix Salmon blogs for Reuters
1. Paul Collier: Haiti needs sweatshops, a UN report.
2. Haitians and Hasidim share a town, Spring Valley, NY.
3. New paper on how music works on us (by the way, I'm not convinced).
5. Japanese publishers collude against Kindle.
7. What works in dating profile photos, a very interesting post.
From Marginal Revolution
1. Owls near you. Monkeys near you. Otters near you. The list goes on.
2. Crayola's Law: number of colours doubles every 28 years. (And aren't they beautiful. Reminds me of this)
3. Fingernail modification: pinking shears-style, fingernail removal, fingernail etching, nail art competition.
4. Rubik's Cube lesson plan. And a how to: solve a Rubik's Cub in under a minute.
5. Selection of electrical plug concepts: rambler socket, folding plugs, thin plug, secret wall socket pocket.
6. Boots hit by homeopathy 'overdose' protest.
7. Make your own David Cameron poster. And some inspiration (I like: "We can't go on like this, I don't think we should see each other any more")
Have you ever wondered what happens when you put lightly-sparkling box wine in the microwave? — YouTube
The iVictrola — YouTube
Elizabeth Warren asks us to call and email the Senate Banking Committee to save the CFPA — New Deal 2.0
Offline book “lending” costs U.S. publishers nearly $1 trillion — Hellman
The old GM, like AIG, is trading at puzzling levels — FT
Why a NYT paywall is a bad idea — Buzzmachine
NY financiers to reap $64 bln in bonuses in 2010 — Reuters
How do I know Citi’s results are bad? The headline leads with a non-GAAP metric I’ve never heard of, “managed revenues” — Citi
I don’t think this slideshow is the Bloomberg Way — BusinessWeek
Felix Salmon blogs for Reuters
3. How Haitians share food, norms and customs as taught to children.
4. Can you build a nation without a government?
5. Jeff Sachs grasps the magnitude of the problem in Haiti.
6. Eight ways to rebuild Haiti.
From Marginal Revolution
What would Jamie Dimon do if accosted by a midget? — Time
“Back when we would do like, you know, The Hundred Hottest Hotties, no men would watch that.” — Jezebel
Does Larry Summers return Paul Volcker’s calls? — WSJ
Kwak piles on to Gladwell — Baseline Scenario
Smalera delves further into the mystery of AIG stock — Big Money
Pimco’s assets under management now exceed $1 trillion — ReutersAnnotated photos of the FCIC’s CEO hearing — Cityfile
1. How to guarantee your luggage won't be lost (pack a pistol).
2. Interview with James Heckman on the crisis.
3. A successful auto-appendectomy, in the Antarctic.
4. Haiti: "too small to fail"?
6. Avatar and Soviet science fiction.
From Marginal Revolution
1. VVVVV: New indie video game from the creator of Don't Look Back with only arrow keys and a gravity toggle. Remarkably compelling for such an interface - and you can rack up thousands of lives per run its so difficult.
2. "2010: Living in the Future" - an annotated look back at this delightful 1972 children's book. ("The clothes may look odd, but they are sensible. The jumpsuits and shoes are made in thousands of colors, from a material so light you can hardly feel it." Nevertheless, the Skype style lecturing is spot on) H/t Boing Boing
3.Gift ideas for nerds #32: iPhone apps. Dice Bag (ideal for Dungeons and Dragons players), Genetic Decoder, Scientific calculator, Stargazer's map, Mobile Trader for the serious financier, Light Saber, Text to Binary coder.
4. Relative price of liquids: HP printer ink twice relative price of human blood, several orders of magnitude times that of crude oil.
5. Coal formed during Earth's worst extinction event brings death, disease to present.
