Postmodernity Gone Mad: Football Imitates Football Imitation

Hoffenheim's Icelandic midfielder Gylfi Sigurdsson celebrated his opener with a bizarre "I've been shot and will go down holding my crotch"-routine. Asked about this disconcerting behaviour, the 21-year-old told reporters he had seen a digital version of himself doing just that in Fifa 2010 on the PlayStation. "I have no idea how they come up with it but decided to go with it now", he explained later.

Rafael Honigstein, "Kaiserslautern win 'semi-final' as Schalke have one eye on theirs"

Was heißt eigentlich "revealed preferences" auf Deutsch?

Manchmal heißt es von einem Mann, der allein lebt, er verabscheue die Geselligkeit. Das ist, als würde man von einem Mann, der nachts den Wald von Bondy meidet, behaupten, er gehe nicht gern spazieren.

Nicolas Chamfort

Beyond Parody

Q: What are the big, cutting-edge discrimination issues facing the EEOC?

A: [...]

Another case we filed is a nationwide challenge to criminal arrest and conviction screens. We challenged that as having a disparate impact against African-Americans and Latinos. That is still pending in Baltimore.

Another one was filed in Ohio and we're looking at the use of credit reports to screen out applicants. We allege it has a disparate impact against African-Americans.
Credit checks and criminal screens (were big) in the '70s and '80s and sort of disappeared but with the new economy, employers are adopting these types of employment screens. That is something that has generated a lot of interest at the EEOC.

Q: Why are more employers using credit scores and criminal convictions to weed out job applicants?

A: My speculation is that employers are in a position to generate much more interest in jobs and they're looking for shorthand ways to screen applicants. If we're able to establish disparate impact, then it's the employer's burden to demonstrate the hiring qualification is job-related.

(Employers) say it relates to honesty and performance. But that's where most of the litigation and discussion has centered - whether these screens can really be job-related and a business necessity.

P. David Lopez, general counsel for the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, interviewed by L.M. Sixel (via)

How to Think about Book Purchases (Adjust for Individual Budgets)

I find books to be one of the most puzzling categories in terms of how much attention people pay to their price. Think about it this way — if you were going to spend 10 hours with a book, do you really care if it costs $3 more? Shouldn’t you happily pay $0.30 more per hour of reading if the quality of the book was slightly higher or the experience was slightly better? Personally my more pressing problem is time, and if someone could assure me a better, even slightly better experience, I would pay a substantial amount more.

Dan Ariely, "The Rationality of One-Star Reviews"

Writing Is a Lot of Work

Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.

Gustave Flaubert (quoted here)

Voice Is Exclusive

In markets and other exit based procedures such as competitive federalism, rich and poor, articulate and inarticulate, can act on the basis of relatively easy comparisons between prices, qualities of goods and lifestyles across competing products and jurisdictions. Voice-based institutions, by contrast, give special privilege to those skilled in the use of articulate persuasion alone.

Mark Pennington, "Hayek versus Habermas" (via)