Let’s Get Something Straight By: John Cole June 13, 2008 at 6:35 pm
I liked Tim Russert, even though I thought his BS gotcha nonsense was thorough idiocy and not helping the debate at all. He was a likable guy- friendly, always smiling. I understand it is a loss for the beltway folks, and he had a lot of really good friends and meant a lot to people, and I would be dishonest if I failed to mention that I feel sad by his passing.
MSNBC has been running nothing but a 5 hour (and presumably it will go until 11 pm or beyond) marathon of Russert remembrance. CNN has done their due diligence, and Fox news has spent at least the last half hour talking non-stop about him.
But let’s get something straight- what I am watching right now on the cable news shows is indicative of the problem- no clearer demonstration of the fact that they consider themselves to be players and the insiders and, well, part of the village, is needed. This is precisely the problem. They have walked the corridors of power so long that they honestly think they are the story. It is creepy and sick and the reason politicians get away with all the crap they get away with these days.
Tim Russert was a newsman. He was not the Pope. This is not the JFK assassination, or Reagan’s death, or the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion. A newsman died. We know you miss him, but please shut up and get back to work.
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Devoting the whole NBC Nightly News bulletin (on Friday, June 13, 2008) was simply insane.
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INSANE.
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i followed him every Sunday.
But his slanted interview of Ron Paul left me with a sour taste in my mouth.
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Previous blog posts by Chris F. Masse:
Justin Wolfers [*] is the most cited prediction market economist
The Orb @ Texas Tech University
IS IT SAFE TO LOCATE A PREDICTION EXCHANGE NEAR A RIVER???
RIVER RISING. POWER PLANT CLOSED. IOWA ELECTRONIC MARKETS AT RISK? DEVELOPING…
U.S. COAST GUARDS DEPLOYED TO SAVE THE IOWA ELECTRONIC MARKETS
VIDEO: The financial markets hacker who will impress Jason Ruspini
I have downloaded the final program schedule (PDF file) of the 28th International Symposium on Forecasting, and browsed thru all the paper abstracts that will be presented. Wow. There are dozens and dozens.. many one hundred or two…- It took me a while to get to the bottom of that file.
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I saw 3 or 4 papers on prediction markets (or “-betting markets”-).
I spotted some names I know.
Besides Andreas, who will be at Nice for the symposium?
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The field of prediction markets can be seen as a sub-set of the forecasting community. However, browsing the forecasting paper abstracts, I came up with the idea that we are competitors of all those guys / gals. We propose a process by which traders (like bees) go out there and gather all bits of information (sometimes coming from those forecasting experts), and a market mechanism delivers a collective verdict about what’-s going to happen. One can set up a prediction market, and skips the reading of those forecasting experts’- reports —-let the incentivized traders do the work. In that perspective, the prediction market process is both more meta than the forecasting methods and also a competitor of them.
Why bother reading all those forecasting experts’- reports when we can read the prediction markets?
Convenience, convenience, convenience.
Time is money. Let the incentivized traders do the time-consuming work.
) refers to the fact that Internet citizens don’-t read on the Web.
