Kieran Healy’s Weblog Sociology and other distractions

Old Stalingrad — I mean, Old Nassau

Just to piggyback on Henry’s post about Orson Scott Card’s new novel, I was pleased to learn from the excerpt Scott Lemiuex posted that, like me, the hero spent his grad student years at Princeton.

Princeton University was just what Reuben expected it to be—hostile to everything he valued, smug and superior and utterly closed-minded. […]

Annals of Rationality vol MCMLXXVII

Via Jeremy Freese, a poster for a Mass General Hospital study. As Jeremy says,
Do you have not one, but two separate problems that are associated with making bad decisions? If so, why don’t you choose to have a 50% chance of forgoing treatment for both for three months, in exchange for $600?… Don’t worry: you […]

Goodbye, Uncle Miltie

Milton Friedman has died at the ripe old age of ninety four. Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution writes a brief appreciation from the point of view of a fan. As Harry said around here only the other day, everyone should read Capitalism and Freedom at least once.

A Correspondent with a Future in Management

I just got an email from a stranger with a flair for delegation:

Hello ,
I am a BSc student with the [X University] external program and a course that I am taking requires the reading of the book ” Sources of Social Power volume 1 by Michael Mann ” . Now while surfing i came […]

Keynes’ Amazon Bulldog

I came across The Cambridge Companion to Keynes in the bookshop yesterday and went to add it to my Amazon wishlist this morning. When I looked it up in the catalog I saw that it had a rating of only 2 stars and my first thought was: I bet that guy is responsible! And I […]

whoops

I think this is called a “market correction.” Looks like the last days of Long Term Capital Management.

I finally finished MacKenzie’s book, and now I promise to write something about it.