The Daily Dozen

1. Can Pakistan be governed?
   
2. Kindle competitors to get wireless connectivity.
3. The ultra-simple guide for getting amazing things done. 1) Find Something Amazing to work on. 2) Hole yourself up and just work on the Something Amazing. 3) Take a nap.
4. The biggest waste of time. Often people say "yes" when they should say "no" or "no" when they should say "yes."
   
5. An iPod your majesty? Obama gives an iPod to the Queen of England. Tacky or not, at least it's better than the American DVDs he gave to Gordon Brown that wouldn't play on British DVD players.
   
6. Free healthcare! From Walgreens, not Obama.
   
7. How an airplane ride bricked someone's Kindle 2. Remind me to bring some back-up reading material the next time I fly.
8. One number to rule them all. Google Voice routes calls from multiple lines, transcribes voice mail, and gives you one number for life.
   
9. What can law schools do? "At some point, we are going to have to do something about law school tuition that is painfully out of whack with the reality of the post-graduate legal market... Law schools (obviously) aren't doing a great job helping their students find jobs, and they are most likely not going to reduce tuition any time soon." Why not make law a two-year program instead of three? I don't think the third year gives much value-added to the students -- just tuition-added to the schools.
   
10. Why tables are really much better than graphs. "Graphs are gimmicks, substituting fancy displays for careful analysis and rigorous reasoning. It's basically a tradeoff: the snazzier your display, the more you can get away with a crappy underlying analysis. Conversely, a good analysis doesn't need a fancy graph to sell itself. The best quantitative research has an underlying clarity and a substantive importance whose results are best presented in a sober, serious tabular display. And the best quantitative researchers trust their peers enough to present their estimates and standard errors directly, with no tricks, for all to see and evaluate."
11. An interesting survey of economics bloggers about the economy. [PDF]
    
12. Quote of the Day: "Government is good at one thing: It knows how to break your legs, hand you a crutch, and say, "See, if it weren't for the government, you wouldn't be able to walk." -- Harry Browne