Paul Haahr

"John McCain: You could say, Look, is this guy, Laden, really the bad guy that's depicted?" (via TPM) - Paul Haahr via Bookmarklet

"Who would have thought there would have been a deli this good in Tucson? I had the pastrami, which was perfect, but my wife had the corned beef, and that was at least as good. Great deli-style…" - Paul Haahr

I have Nudge, which is not bad, but once you get the core idea (people are busy, so make the default choices good and don't confuse them with too many choices) there isn't that much else. You are free to borrow it :) - Sanjeev Singh

I always think of the old BSD unix fortune: "The California lottery is a tax on the stupid." - Paul Haahr

Captures my ambivalence and uncertainty very well. - Paul Haahr

'When it comes to politics, there is a mad love of mediocrity in this country. "They think they're better than you!" is the refrain that (highly competent and cynical) Republican strategists have set loose among the crowd, and the crowd has grown drunk on it once again. "Sarah Palin is an ordinary person!" Yes, all too ordinary.' - j1m

"Governor Palin, are you ready at this moment to perform surgery on this child's brain?" / "Of course, Charlie. I have several boys of my own, and I'm an avid hunter." - j1m

"A Swiss man has become the first person to fly solo across the English Channel using a single jet-propelled wing." - Paul Haahr via Bookmarklet

"The Great Schlep aims to have Jewish grandchildren visit their grandparents in Florida, educate them about Obama, and therefore swing the crucial Florida vote in his favor." - Paul Haahr via Bookmarklet

"The tide has started to turn against the bailout plan surprisingly quickly. Is this just because the market recovered on Thursday and Friday and things seem slightly less scary now than they did a couple of days ago? Is it because this plan is flawed at its core? I'm not sure. But by the time Monday rolls around, I suspect there's going to be at least a strong minority consensus that we should all have a little more information before we get steamrollered into approving this thing." - Paul Haahr via Bookmarklet

I'm with Duncan Black -- "it because it gives Paulson a blank check with no oversight." Which doesn't make any sense. - j1m

srsly. semiannual reviews to Congress? hello, how about weekly reports to the GAO? - ⓞnor

"Take a picture of yourself right now. Don’t change your clothes, don’t fix your hair… Just take the picture. Post the picture with no editing. Post these instructions with your picture." - Paul Haahr

"So let me see if I have this straight: the latte-sipping elitists who only care about their wealthy friends populating leftist coastal enclaves in California and New York are going to stick it to...their wealthy friends in California and New York in order to benefit the vast majority of hard working, average Americans." - Paul Haahr via Bookmarklet

"It wasn’t until 1968 that Fannie was privatized. ... The main reason for the change was surprisingly mundane: accounting. ... Making Fannie Mae private moved its liabilities off the government’s books, even if, as the recent crisis made clear, the U.S. was still responsible for those debts. It was a bit like what Enron did thirty years later, when it used “special-purpose entities” to move liabilities off its balance sheet." - Paul Haahr via Bookmarklet

"What a surprise to see this huge chocolatier pop up in a former furniture store in Hayes Valley. It's a beautiful space and the chocolates are amazing little gems. We had dessert here after dinner…" - Paul Haahr

"Domo is a good neighborhood sushi place. It's very small and the selection of fish is not wide ranging. Ask what's good and order it, because it will be good. The chef steered us to excellent…" - Paul Haahr

"Well yeah, there's also fire, wood, air, and water; but I don't know why they don't count those." - Paul Haahr via Bookmarklet

"How enormous, immense, huge, etc. is it? Well, it’s going to accommodate more than one million people." - Paul Haahr via Bookmarklet

For odd reasons, I'm on this panel on Thursday evening. Still figuring out what there is to say. - Paul Haahr via Bookmarklet

Maybe the conceptual pros and cons of the "social search" idea? - Mike Yang

"A United Nations agency is quietly drafting technical standards, proposed by the Chinese government, to define methods of tracing the original source of Internet communications and potentially curbing the ability of users to remain anonymous." - Paul Haahr via Bookmarklet

Quoting Colonel Peter Mansoor: “[General Petraeus] wasn’t trying to sell anything. He was very adamant about telling it like it is: ‘Don’t put lipstick on the pig.’ ” - Paul Haahr via Bookmarklet

Really enjoyed this article. The surge is a real problem for democrats who like to think of themselves as "the reality based community". They either have to admit they were wrong or make the awkward argument that things in Iraq aren't so good as they seem. - Dan Vanderkam

"I mean, is this the RNC or a scene out Spinal Tap or Waiting for Guffman?" - Paul Haahr via Bookmarklet

"Rather than retiring and leaving the company at once, participants [in the phased-retirement program] gradually give up their day-to-day responsibilities, while replacing some of their free time with activities like mentoring and teaching master classes to their successors. In addition, they get more time out of the office doing whatever they want—be it planning for life in retirement or doing charity work. The phased retiree continues to receive a portion of his previous salary, benefits as usual, and the company in turn gets to hold on to some of its most valuable employees a year or more past traditional retirement age." - Paul Haahr via Bookmarklet

Seems like this is a case where there were specific knowledge assets locked up in soon-to-be-retirees' heads: mainframe COBOL code and the details of major client relationships. Seems like ideally you would avoid this problem some time before the only people who know these things turn 60. Do you think this process would be more generally applicable? - ⓞnor

I read it as less-specific than that: it seemed to me more like job-sharing in the advance of retirement. And I do think that's generally applicable, even in the case of internal movement. - Paul Haahr

Well, nearly everyone in an intellectual job spends their last months or weeks or days on the job documenting what they know and making sure everyone else is ready to pick up. This much more formalized process is limited, even within Amex, to people in certain departments. But living and working in Silicon Valley, I can't help but boggle at the accumulated knowledge someone would have after working in the same role at the same company for *40 years*. - ⓞnor

p9: "[In] the New York of 1867, horses were killing an average of four pedestrians a week (a bit higher than today's rate of traffic fatalities, although there were far fewer people and far fewer vehicles)." - Paul Haahr via Bookmarklet

p60: "Driving may be particularly susceptible to the above-average effect. For one, psychologists have found that the optimistic bias seems stronger in situations we can control; one study found drivers were more optimistic than passengers when asked to rate their chances of being involved in a car accident." - Paul Haahr

p60: "Polls have shown, for example, that most drivers would like to see text messaging while driving banned; those same polls also show that most people have done it. We overestimate the risks to society and underestimate our own risk." - Paul Haahr

"New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin ordered a mandatory evacuation of the city beginning 8 a.m. Sunday but urged residents to consider escaping "the mother of all storms" before then. "You need to be scared," Nagin said of the Category 4 hurricane tearing along Cuba's western coast." - Paul Haahr via Bookmarklet

"With all due respect again to Governor Kaine, he's been a governor for three years. He's been able but undistinguished. I don't think people could really name a big, important thing that he's done ... [Kaine] was mayor of the 105th largest city in America." - Karl Rove - Paul Haahr via Bookmarklet

""The Republicans can't seem to get a break when it comes to August and when it comes to the weather," said Rove" - Paul Haahr via Bookmarklet