Thu 04 March 2010 | tags: antitrust, bundling, cabletelevision, churchandstate, crime, dailylinks, education, eminentdomain, federalism, ideaguy, losangeles, meritpay, murder, omaha, paranoia, religion, sexting, shopclass, startups, teaching, utah, -- (permalink)
What I've been reading lately:
- Building a Better Teacher -
NYTimes.com
- "Teachers working in the same building, teaching the same grade,
produced very different outcomes. And the gaps were huge. Eric
Hanushek, a Stanford economist, found that while the top 5 percent
of teachers were able to impart a year and a half’s worth of
learning to students in one school year, as judged by standardized
tests, the weakest 5 percent advanced their students only half a
year of material each year."
Via Seth Roberts.
- "Teachers working in the same building, teaching the same grade,
produced very different outcomes. And the gaps were huge. Eric
Hanushek, a Stanford economist, found that while the top 5 percent
of teachers were able to impart a year and a half’s worth of
learning to students in one school year, as judged by standardized
tests, the weakest 5 percent advanced their students only half a
year of material each year."
- Latest MacHeist bundle brings even more software on the
cheap
- How can a company make money by bundling 5 applications together
and selling the package for \$19.95, when each app individually
would cost more than that? They "make it up through volume", as the
saying goes. Of course it only works if the price is higher than
your marginal cost, which is easy for downloadable software where
your marginal cost is essentially zero.
Bottom line: there are occasions where a bundle will be better for consumers than only having a la carte options. On the other hand, consumers in this case have the option of choosing whether to buy a bundle or an individual app. That's not generally true of cable television, for example, which regulators regularly threaten to unbundle.
- How can a company make money by bundling 5 applications together
and selling the package for \$19.95, when each app individually
would cost more than that? They "make it up through volume", as the
saying goes. Of course it only works if the price is higher than
your marginal cost, which is easy for downloadable software where
your marginal cost is essentially zero.
- The Volokh Conspiracy » Utah May Try to Use Eminent Domain to Take
Federal Government
Land
- Good luck with that.
- The Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » “Separation of Church
and State”
- At my high school, the most common shop class projects were cutting boards and various kinds of weapons (grappling hooks, shuriken ... ours wasn't the most attentive shop teacher really). I doubt that someone making a Wiccan altar would have even raised an eyebrow.
- Marginal Revolution: Los Angeles fact of the
day
- Los Angeles'; murder rate is now lower than those of Columbus, Ohio, Tulsa, Oklahama, and Omaha, Nebraska.
- When should sexting be illegal? - By Emily Bazelon - Slate Magazine - Attention parents, legislators and the local news: the sky is not falling. The most important sentence in this story is saved for the last paragraph. "We've been keeping consistent records in the U.S. since the 1960s, and they show that teens now are less violent, use drugs less, smoke less, and drink less. They stay in school more and take more AP classes. Their suicide rate is lower, and so is the teen pregnancy rate."
- There's no room for The Idea Guy -
(37signals)
- Amen.