Nate Rosenberg

The White House has a new blog, and it’s powered by Tumblr!

Freakonomics author Steve Levitt confirms: Capt. Chesley Sullenberger yesterday completed the first water landing in the history of commercial aviation.

Ed Glaeser, my college economics professor:

 
Mindless increases in school spending will be an expensive fiasco that will generate more disillusionment than human capital….

The clearest result from decades of education research is the importance of teacher quality… Improving teacher quality has about twice the impact on student outcomes as radically reducing class size….

The first step toward improving teacher quality is to attract more talented teachers. The second step is to improve teacher selection on the job, promoting the best and encouraging the worst to help society in some other way.
 

Tumblr, one of my favorite up-and-coming web apps, just got updated to version 5. Tumblr is a dead simple blogging platform that lets you share anything.

Turk, the Harvard Business School turkey

Shannon and I visited Harvard Business school this fall. As we walked through the campus, we suddenly came upon a wild turkey standing outside one of the lecture halls.

Turns out she had been there for a year and the students named her Turk.

A week after we left, she attacked a local reporter and was removed from campus before she could complete her MBA.

Buy Low, Sell High

1998: Buys New Frontier for $165 million
June 2008: Sells New Frontier for $1200 million (511% compounded annual return)
December 2008: Buys Treasure Island for $750 million

Republicans: 41, Democrats: 58. With Chambliss’ win, Republicans keep Democrats from winning a filibuster-proof 60-seat supermajorrity. In other news, the recount for seat #100 continues in Minnesota.

The Anchorage Daily News reports that Alaska will tally over half the remaining votes tomorrow. Begich (D) trails Stevens (R) for Alaska’s U.S. Senate seat by 3000 votes with at least 70,000 votes left to tally.