'Academic
doping' set to rise (HT: Freakonomics)
Prior Lounge coverage of sports doping and cheating here
and here.
An open letter to the Nobel prize committee: create Nobel
prizes for the Global Environment and Public Health, and expand the prize for
physiology or medicine to recognize contributions from across the life
sciences. (New
Scientist, via Tyler
Cowen)
The 2016
Olympics to be held in Rio, following closely on the heels of the 2014 FIFA
World Cup, also in Brazil. Chicago
lost out, with the
prediction markets way off on this one. Rio had the largest financial bid, plus a
"distribution" of the Games advantage, because the games had never
been to South America. I only got
to go to the Olympics once: the Atlanta games in 1996. It’s definitely on my list of things to
do again if I get the chance.
A B-
for the U.S Constitution, due to sloppy penmanship, bad spelling,
inconsistent capitalization, ambiguous text, and a price that makes a “$640
toilet seat for the Pentagon seem like a bargain.”
Hard
times for Harvard lawyers. (The Harvard Crimson, via Al
Roth)
Funny healthcare
videos from Gordon, and a funny
summer vacation chart from Usha over at The Glom.
What with all the ACORN ruckus and an upcoming symposium at which I’ll
discuss the costs of societal and legal pretense surrounding the existence of
many “taboo markets” (one section of the paper originated with a blog post here
at the Lounge over the summer, by the way– See
Me, Feel Me, Touch Me, Tax Me), I seem to be noticing a fair number of
posts about taxation and sex work these days. Omar Ha-Redeye has a post up at
slaw.ca on Prostitution
and Tax Expenses, and Slate has one on How Do Prostitutes Pay Their
Taxes? Surrogacy and taxation
seems to be a growth industry as well, with recent papers by Bridget
Crawford and Morgan
L. Holcomb.
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Prototype Measures Gross National Happiness . . . Yep, Mondays suck for everybody.
And these peaks at
holidays are highly inconsistent with my own personal experience, not that this
matters. . .