Monday Medley

What we read while getting nostalgic about driving the New York State Thruway in the Summer of ’69:

• Two months ago, John S wrote about the unclear future of television; this week, Slate did the same thing. WITH NO HAT TIP! All we want is an apology, our 75 cents back, and for Seth Stevenson to be fired! (We’re also excited for Slate to continue to be two months behind our intrepid reporting: in October, a careful pondering of the legacy of Funky Winkerbean.)

• We’ve already talked about our fascination with Brewers’ utility infielder Craig Counsell (if parenthetically); apparently, we’re not alone.

• The Economist discusses the rise of home-schooling in America and what that says about the citizenry and the school system. If you hadn’t noticed, we’ve had a few things to say about “Education” ourselves (and by “we,” we mean “Josh”).

• We basically should just tell you to read the New York Times Magazine each week, but when Political Science gets a feature-length article, it merits additional mention: Check out this article chronicling Political Science Professor Bruce Bueno de Mesquita’s impressive modeling to predict Iranian nuclear behavior, among other interesting tidbits.

• Want to know why to you have to shut-off your iPod during take-off? If you’ve ever flown on a plane before, you should find this series of interviews by the Freakonomics blog with an anonymous commercial pilot quite interesting.

• We’ve previously mentioned the NPI-consensus best announcing trio in baseball, but our feelings about this recent Neil Best subject are, shall we say, more nuanced. Yankee fans have a much more intricate relationship with broadcasters, sometimes involving/requiring alcohol.

• You may have noticed by now that two of NPI’s favorite things are rankings and literature. Rankings of literature, then, are a rare and precious thing, like this list of the 100 greatest writers of all time. So we can forgive a few egregious mistakes, like Faulkner at #1 and Shakespeare at #3.

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