1. Jerry Seinfeld (September 1993) clearly beat Laibson (1994) to the punch on (the rebirth of) present-biased preferences, the conflict between future and current selves, and the value of commitment:
    The Glasses   I never get enough sleep. I stay up late at night, cause I’m Night Guy. Night Guy wants to stay up late. ‘What about getting up after five hours sleep?’, oh that’s Morning Guy’s problem. That’s not my problem, I’m Night Guy. I stay up as late as I want. So you get up in the morning, you’re … , you’re exhausted, groggy, oooh I hate that Night Guy! See, Night Guy always screws Morning Guy. There’s nothing Morning Guy can do. The only Morning Guy can do is try and oversleep often enough so that Day Guy loses his job and Night Guy has no money to go out anymore. 

    Hey we can’t let Jerry beat us, so let’s credit this agenda to its rightful originator, Strotz (1956), before his fourteen year presidency of Northwestern.

  2. Gary Becker (1973) only barely edged out Sylvester Stallone (1976) on the importance of strategic complements in the marriage model. Sly had has this wonderful metaphor in Rocky: “I dunno, she’s got gaps, I got gaps, together we fill gaps.”
  3. Patrick Billingsley – who taught me convergence of probability measures at Chicago — was also a part-time actor. I was unaware he was a bailiff in “The Untouchables” (with Kevin Costner, Sean Connery, and Robert De Niro). His Probability and Measure textbook was his chef d’oeuvre. I find it cool that a world-renowned star of probability pursued his passion as an obscure actor.
  4. Why won’t the Happy Days owners release season 5 and later on dvd? After all, I have been waiting over two years to get past season 4.  For the uninitiated, this is the season in which the TV series gave us the timeless metaphorical image to “jump the shark”. Perhaps they do not want to reveal this moment of futility?PS Which research agendas in the profession have also “jumped the shark”. ^_^ And could it be that their ratings (citations) decline long after their fundamentals do?
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