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Who’s on First
by Cass R. Sunstein & Richard Thaler
Post date: 08.27.03
Issue date: 09.01.03

Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game By Michael Lewis (W. W. Norton, 288 pp., $24.95)

Michael Lewis’s new book is a sensation. It treats a topic that would seem to interest only sports fans: how Billy Beane, the charismatic general manager of the Oakland Athletics, turned his baseball team around using, of all things, statistics. What next–an inspirational tale about superior database management? But there are some broader lessons in Lewis’s book that make it worth the attention also of people who do not know the difference between a slider and a screwball. Those lessons have to do, above all, with the limits of human rationality and the efficiency of labor markets. If Lewis is right about the blunders and the confusions of those who run baseball teams, then his tale has a lot to tell us about blunders and confusions in many other domains.

• L’importance du rythme vertical en design CSS
  (tags: ergonomie typography webdesign)
• La social-démocratie toujours en débat au PS
  Il est certainement trop tôt, mais aucun début de consensus ne s’est encore dégagé entre la gauche du parti et son courant social-démocrate, dimanche, jour de clôture de l’université d’été du PS.

  (tags: PS)
• Curse of the Bambino
  The curse was said to have begun after the Red Sox sold Babe Ruth, sometimes called The Bambino, to the New York Yankees.
  (tags: baseball sports)
• Curse of the Billy Goat
  According to an interview with William Sianis’ nephew, the Curse of the Billy Goat can only be dispelled by the Chicago Cubs organization showing a true sincere fondness for goats, sincerely allowing them into Wrigley Field because they like them.
  (tags: baseball sports wikipedia)