From the Guardian, Dan Brown's new book sold 550,000 copies last week. The next best hardcover fiction book sold shy of 7,000. I read the Da Vinci code in about four hours; if I read it any slower, I would start thinking about it, and that's a bad thing. I figure the optimal time for reading a complete Dan Brown book is around two hours.

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Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh are not worth getting fired up about. They are not even worth a post saying "Look at the latest outrage from these two." Because it's their job to do outrageous stuff. As I've said before it's not their job to find the Truth, or argue fairly, or have a consistent set of beliefs, or even represent conservative views. Their job is to make money by attracting as many viewers or listeners as they can. And they've found a very successful formula for doing this; tell a story of fear, communism, and populist economics that has little base in reality, and which gives people a warped view of the world. While I can't blame people for wanting to be entertained, and feel a little better about their political group at the expense of another group, it's a shame that people fit the opinions espoused by Beck and Limbaugh into their worldview. But when Megan McArdle, Ezra Klein or Andrew Sullivan post about the latest outrage by these guys, I don't believe that they are helping anything. The people who already follow Beck and Limbaugh aren't going to be swayed, and for everyone else you're merely preaching to the choir. I am surprised that they seem surprised by the antics of Limbaugh, Beck and the rest of the Fox News crew. Beck et al. boil frogs on live TV because they want attention; the antics drive viewers, and profits, to their shows (and that's what they are - "shows"). The problem goes deeper than the pair of talkers; for the majority of people in the United States, politics are a form of entertainment; there's no money riding on false, or hurtful beliefs. That is, people have no incentive to believe in policies that work. We're not going to change that, or the ability of the Becks & Limbaughs to thrive unless something happens that changes politics as entertainment. Update: Limbaugh's response to David Brooks's critical column, "You're jealous," pretty much sums it up.

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Athletes spend their whole lives working out and trying to make it to the big leagues; what happens when they do? Over 78% of NFL players are bankrupt two years after leaving the NFL. Furthermore, having spent their whole lives having things handed to them on a silver plate they're unprepared to work in other careers. How do they go bankrupt? Bill Simmons knows, in my favorite column that he wrote.

"Wait, how can a dude making $8-10 million a year live paycheck to paycheck?" Easy. First, he's only banking 40 percent once the IRS and agents are done with him. Second, he's probably overpaying for multiple houses and luxury cars just to keep up with everyone else. Third, he's buying expensive clothes and dinners, chartering planes, buying expensive TVs, going to casinos, and paying for friends and family at every turn. Fourth, there's a decent chance he's supporting a bunch of people back home -- family and extended family -- and not just that, but he might have gotten roped into funding at least one dumb "investment" by a loser family member. ("Uncle Lenny, I thought you told me this nightclub couldn't miss?") Fifth, he is, um, "dating" frequently -- even if he's married -- and if you "date" frequently, mistakes might happen that lead to hospital bills and child support payments. (If you catch my drift.) And sixth, he's not adding these numbers up in his head because he's thinking, "I don't need to worry about money, I'm making $10 mil a year!" I know it sounds farfetched, but I've heard the Inexplicable Tale Of Financial Woe with NBA stars too many times to count … and that doesn't include stars such as Scottie Pippen who were screwed by their financial advisers.

The flipside is that thousands of people cheer for you, and you have had everything handed to you up until the point you leave the league. After that, good luck with the concussions, lack of education and financial troubles. Hope you don't end up like Lenny Dykstra.

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There's been a penny sitting on the floor outside our bathroom for the past two days.

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“What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it.” - Gabriel Garcia Marquez While in Scotland I met a guy who said he was from Oxford. Cool, I said, I spent three weeks there when I was 17. I thought about the Pitt Rivers (a legendary museum), and the grass in the quad you weren't supposed to walk on, ever, but those topics were both non-starters. And that was that; really boring, shutting that avenue down and forcing the conversation to restart from the beginning. What could I talk about? Later I was thinking about the didgeridoo guy. Every day I'd see him on Cornmarket Street outside the Tesco wearing dirty, loose-fitting clothes, and bare feet which were callused and caked with dirt. On one foot he had slipped on a sort of tambourine; the other foot had a pedal which beat a gong when pressed; between his legs was a drum, and of course he had a didgeridoo in his mouth. Every fifteen minutes or so he would play; just the didgeridoo at first, in long, slow bursts, luring in the crowd. Then he'd start with the gong and the tambourine, building up to the drums in a frenzied crescendo which could be heard for about three blocks in any direction. Any visitor or local would know exactly who the didgeridoo guy is. Here's video of him on the street. Here's his website (which I checked after recalling the previous paragraph from memory - I think the steel drums are new). So now when someone tells me they're from Oxford, going to Oxford or want to know what it's like, I'm gonna talk about the didgeridoo guy. So when you're trying to relate a great trip you had, a place you've been to, or just find some common ground, find specific good memories. They probably won't come to you right away unless you keep a journal or you're diligent about noticing them.

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Here's Abhijit Banerjee talking about why aid programs fail, even when they have adequate funding:

The real issue is often in program design. Our endlessly repeated line is that details matter infinitely. The difference between successful programs and unsuccessful programs is not the sector, it is how you do it. Has the implementer thought completely about the reasons why a program might not work? In my experience, even when you talk to very competent, well-meaning organizations, that is the step where you see the biggest gap. Perhaps because the paradigms are easily available to jump into, the last mile thinking just doesn’t happen. Details unexpectedly and often in unfortunate ways determine everything. You get the details wrong and you got it all wrong. So we often end up ritualistically talking about big picture research, and how this didn’t work or this did work. But in practice those big picture issues probably do not matter. What matters is that some programs are well designed and some are not. Our goal very much has been to draw attention to the detailing of that. Take water – within water there are any number of special solutions, and then a couple of things that seem like good ideas. The most valuable work is not in distinguishing water from health, but in separating the many meretricious ideas that get lots and lots of coverage and turning them into practical programs that are not overly complicated or unnecessarily expensive. There is a tendency to think, “I have a hammer so everything is a nail.” Everyone has their own particular bias and everything has to go through that filter. Ideology is a huge reason why you get bad design.

Banerjee's colleague Esther Duflo recently won a MacArthur grant. Their lab, the Jameel Poverty Lab at MIT, uses randomized trials to determine which antipoverty programs are actually effective. Hope more people can start doing work like they are. UPDATE: Alex Tabarrok points out that the problems facing Africa today are the same ones they faced in 1938.

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I will be blogging every day from now until Oct. 31. If I don't blog one day, then email me anytime before then and I'll give you a dollar next time I see you.

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Top chart from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bottom chart from Gallup. Hope they enjoyed the auto bailouts.

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I like The Daily Show. It's probably the closest thing on my TV to actual coverage. I've laughed at the jokes they tell and the hypocrisy they point out in cable news. I'm glad Stewart is willing to take people like Jim Cramer on, even though his show is on Comedy Central. One of their classic bits - which runs pretty much every day - is to run some commentary from cable news, or point out hypocrisy between something Republican commentators say and what they were saying when Bush was in office. Here's an example:

www.thedailyshow.com

This was funny, until I realized that cable news anchors aren't being paid to make sense, have consistent worldviews, tell the truth, or any other things we'd expect from experts. The only reason I thought it was funny is because we expect talking heads to be rational people. Sadly, American cable news viewers don't care for the truth; I think they're more interested in confirming their own worldview and disdaining/getting outraged at whatever the other side's doing. I'm surprised that people are amused by clips that point out hypocrisies in cable news. These bits are funny in the same limited way that Happiest People Ever, Shit My Dad Says and the DC Interns blog are funny; in a very specific way, that's good for about five seconds of laughs. I know this recipe works well for Comedy Central but I'm wondering if Stewart can't evolve his show a little bit. Perhaps I'm demanding too much of someone whose show runs on a comedy channel. I'll part with the video of Stewart ending Tucker Carlson's career on Crossfire.

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I was pretty disappointed by this show. The idea has promise - a divorced, broke, washed up high school football star resorts to prostitution to make ends meet and curry favor with the kids. His pimp is a wannabe poet, an artsy woman who is ill-suited for the smooth talking and innuendo that the job requires. In the hands of semi-competent writers this would lead to comedy gold. Unfortunately, Hung is not very funny. The two main characters keep screwing up the prostitution gig - but in ways that aren't really too funny, like Ray (the main character) falling for a client or Tanya getting suckered into providing free service. His kids are the complete rejection of Ray - out of shape, gothic, unpopular - but I can't really believe them being the dad's children. Furthermore you could tell from the second episode on that the show is setting up for Ray's ex-wife to order his services, there's no real way around it. The show's billed as a comedy, but I fail to see the humor. I should have stopped watching way earlier than I did.

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