The Downside of Google's Data Obsession
| He didn’t announce it via cake, but Doug Bowman quit his job as head of Google’s visual design team last week, citing the company’s “reliance on data” for design decisions as the main reason for his departure. Bowman writes on his blog that he’ll miss Google’s “incredibly smart and talented people” and the “occasional Read More »
Ladies' Day at the Beach
he Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas boasts the Moorea Club, which it advertises as offering a European-style beach, with entry limited to ages 21 and over.
It does not advertise that the price of day use is $50 for male customers and $10 for female customers. While examples of price discrimination are ubiquitous, this is one of the purest examples of demand-based price discrimination. The service the club offers is the same to men and women: a place in the sun, which is equally costly to the club, regardless of the patron’s gender. Read More »
Choosing the Name of the Year
| The proprietors of the Name of the Year contest “can’t imagine topping last year’s death struggle between Destiny Frankenstein and Spaceman Africa.” But these are hopeful times. They’ve collected and verified 64 of the weirdest names they could find. They’re now taking your votes for a winner. (HT: MJS) [%comments] Read More »
Not as Authentic as It Seems
I was recently reading a famous old economics paper called “The Fable of the Bees,” by Steven N.S. Cheung. In a footnote, Cheung writes one of the most wonderful sentences I’ve read in a long time: Facts, like jade, are not only costly to obtain but also difficult to authenticate. From what I can tell Read More »
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