Paul Krugman and Jim Manzi both long for the freedom and safety of their childhood, of course. Everyone does. But the childhood of the 1950s was no safer than the childhood of today.

I would say a lot about this, but Alex Tabarrok does it much better, and I encourage you to go read what he says. The key bit:

Has childhood freedom been lost? No. Childhood freedom hasn’t been “lost,” it has been taken away by parents.

My ING account is currently giving me one percent interest. I have thought about giving loans with Kiva, and I probably should, but it doesn't solve the interest rate problem. Which is why I was intrigued to hear about Prosper:

By putting lenders directly in touch with borrowers—rather than through the banking system—person-to-person lending sites claim that they can cut down on overhead costs, thereby making it cheaper to lend to people with poor credit.

And they claim returns for me, the lender, of around 10 percent.

Of course, it's probably just the next bubble, and as soon as I get involved it will pop.

Bill James has a fun and interesting excerpt arguing that we are very good at developing sports talent, and saying that's a good thing. This has attracted some interesting commentary. We have Alan Jacobs, who says James got the math wrong, and Ross Douthat who basically just agrees with Jacobs. Most interesting is Ta-Nehisi Coates, who highlights what sports has to do with race and opportunity.

But the thing that struck me was one throwaway sentence that we in the United State are very very good at teaching people to drive automobiles.

It's true. Driving is not a trivial skill. It's moderately hard. As hard as learning calculus, I would say. But yet, pretty much everybody learns to drive, but not everybody learns calculus.