Market Power

2013-05-03T09:17:15-05:00

"He doesn't have much presence, not much of a leader," said another league executive, who spent a great deal of time studying Smith before the draft. "I don't think he's a bad person, but that's not enough to be a quarterback in this league."

Two sources indicated that when Smith went on some visits to teams, rather than interact with coaches and front-office people, he would spend much of his time on his cell phone. Instead of being engaged with team officials, he would be texting friends or reading Twitter or a number of other distracting activities.

"All these other players who were in there were talking to the coaches, trying to get to know people and he was over there by himself," one of the sources said. "That's not what you want out of your quarterback."

Perhaps Geno needs one of these (via John Palmer).

2013-04-23T08:53:05-05:00

Jane Austen: game theorist (via Mark Stratton).

Modern game theory is generally dated to 1944, with the publication of von Neumann’s“Theory of Games and Economic Behavior,” which imagined human interactions as a series of moves and countermoves aimed at maximizing “payoff.” Since then the discipline has thrived, often dominating political science, economics and biology departments with densely mathematical analyses of phenomena as diverse as nuclear brinkmanship, the fate of protest movements, stock trading and predator behavior.

But a century and a half earlier, Mr. Chwe argues, Austen was very deliberately trying to lay philosophical groundwork for a new theory of strategic action, sometimes charting territory that today’s theoreticians have themselves failed to reach.

First among her as yet unequaled concepts is “cluelessness,” which in Mr. Chwe’s analysis isn’t just tween-friendly slang but an analytic concept worthy of consideration alongside game-theoretic chestnuts like “zero-sum,” “risk dominance” and “prisoner’s dilemma.”

Most game theory, he noted, treats players as equally “rational” parties sitting across a chessboard. But many situations, Mr. Chwe points out, involve parties with unequal levels of strategic thinking. Sometimes a party may simply lack ability. But sometimes a powerful party faced with a weaker one may not realize it even needs to think strategically.

2013-04-22T13:14:58-05:00

Ugh. More snow is forecast for Mankato, Mn. From the Chanhassen NWS forecast discussion issued at 12:38 PM CDT.

THE SHORT-TERM GUIDANCE CONTINUES TO
PAINT A 1-2 COUNTY- WIDE SWATH OF 8-12 INCHES SNOWFALL JUST ON THE
NORTH SIDE OF THE RAIN/SNOW LINE. MODEL CONSENSUS PUTS THE
MESOSCALE HEAVY SNOW BAND ALONG A LINE FROM MANKATO...THROUGH THE
TWIN CITIES METRO...AND UP THROUGH RICE LAKE WI. THE 12Z SOUNDING
HERE AT MPX THIS MORNING HAD AT LEAST THE WEST METRO COLD ENOUGH
FOR SNOW RIGHT AT THE ONSET OF PRECIP AND THAT`S WHAT WE ARE
SEEING IN SOUTHWEST MN. FORECAST SOUNDINGS ONLY COOL WITH TIME
TODAY...SO ABOVE THE SURFACE WE ARE GOOD TO GO FOR HEAVY SNOW
ALONG THE LINE MENTIONED ABOVE. THE CAVEAT IS THE NEAR SURFACE
LAYER DUE TO DAYTIME HEATING. WE ARE NOW NEAR 40 OR IN THE LOWER
40S...SO THE SNOWFLAKES MAY TURN TO RAINDROPS 500-1000 FT ABOVE
THE GROUND. SO...WE COULD STILL SEE A 2-3 HOUR WINDOW OF RAIN/SNOW
BEFORE THE CHANGE OVER HAPPENS...AND WE QUICKLY FIND OURSELVES WITH
1-2" PER HOUR RATES. THE SNOW GRADIENT WILL BE EXTREMELY TIGHT.
PERHAPS A 7-8" INCH SNOW GRADIENT OVER THE SPAN OF A SINGLE
COUNTY. WE WILL UNDOUBTEDLY MISS IN SOME AREA WITH THIS KIND OF
GRADIENT. THE TIGHTEST GRADIENT SHOULD BE ALONG THE RAIN/SNOW
LINE...BUT TOTALS SHOULD ALSO QUICKLY FALL TO THE NORTHWEST. SO
EVEN PORTIONS OF THE WESTERN TWIN CITIES METRO AND CERTAINLY ST.
CLOUD WILL SEE LESSER TOTALS.

2013-04-20T13:39:55-05:00

What happens when you wring out a washcloth in space? Check out the video. HT Doug Mataconis.

2013-04-20T11:47:55-05:00

Amazon's Gold Box Deal of the Day (only today): Select documentaries by Ken Burns, including 61.5% off of his Baseball documentary.

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2013-04-19T16:08:02-05:00

RIP Storm Thorgerson. "The best album designer in the world."

2013-04-19T13:49:50-05:00

Working nights can be extremely productive for some.

So let's take a few moments to celebrate the night owls, of whom there are certainly plenty of illustrious examples in my Daily Rituals book. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec did his best creative work at night, sketching at cabarets or setting up his easel in brothels. The German poet-historian-philosopher Friedrich Schiller almost exclusively worked at night; the same was true for Samuel Johnson, Gustave Flaubert, Marcel Proust, and George Sand, who produced a minimum of 20 manuscript pages nearly every night of her adult life. It was not unusual for Sand to slip out of a sleeping lover’s bed to begin a new novel in the middle of the night. In the mornings, she claimed, she often couldn’t remember what she had written during these late-night writing sessions.

The author is Mason Currey (link via Glenn Reynolds).

Some do their best work at night. Others do better in the morning. I've found that as I've gotten older, I've gone from being a night person to a morning person. I teach my classes first thing in the morning on my teaching days and I prefer to do my service and research work in the mornings as well. But in my college and grad school days, I worked better at night. My dissertation, for instance, was written mostly at night.

Plants Love Sabbath, Hate Cliff Richards

2013-04-19T11:54:43-05:00

According to the Daily Mail, Chris Beardshaw, the award-winning U.K. gardener who is perhaps best known for his work on the BBC's long-running television series "Gardeners' World", claims that exposing a greenhouse full of plants to a constant diet of BLACK SABBATH worked wonders in creating larger flowers in a horticultural experiment. Blasting the music of Sir Cliff Richard, on the other hand, proved a total disaster and killed every plant.

Story here. Well, Sabbath wrote Sweet Leaf. Besides, they totally rock \m/. How could the plants not love Sabbath?