Request for requests

I’m moving to southwest France, middle of the countryside, no major towns near me. After living in DC for two years, I fear I’m going to have feelings of isolation and I’m not going to experience much diversity (in people, foods and culture) as I would if I were in a bigger city. Many people say offhand that it will be great out there. But I’m more sceptical. So the question is: when living in another country, is it better to live in the major metropolitan areas? Or out in the country side amid presumed homogeneity?

Second topic: I’ve lived without an iPod after my last one broke for over a year. I think my life is better off without one. I walk around the streets and hear people and the sounds of the city. Do you think people would lead happier lives if they took their headphones off?

A religious person posed this question to me the other day:

“What is an economist’s opinion on the social cost of sin?”
I explained that “sin” is not an easily defined or accepted term, and we settled on the following:

“What is the cost to society of that society’s failure to live by ‘The Golden Rule’”?

I’d like to hear more about the new networked information economy. Specifically the future of copyright and patent law in this new context. I read this thought provoking book by Yochai Benkler called The Wealth of Networks in which he creates a taxonomy of different actors in the marketplace who each have different motivations, some non-profit driven and argues that this new information economy has efficiencies that have been unrealized in the old industrial information style economy (think wikipedia). I’ve been really looking forward to either you or Russ Roberts having a discussion about this book.

Oh, and how ’bout a flying penguin?

It was a puffin…. And yes, we need more “By the way, here’s a ….” addenda to posts.

tell us who the obnoxious blogger is, or if it was some kind of meta-joke.

He already did – you weren’t paying attention … it wasn’t a joke.

I am compiling a list of fundamental principles and concepts in economics (and other sciences) to serve as bases for lessons in a high school course on original, creative, and scientific thinking. What would your take be on such a list?

more on good sociology/ bad sociology

An examination of the empirical evidence that suggests that higher tax rates (not just extreme tax rates but generally higher rates) result in lower economic growth, either all taxes, or taxes related to capital (capital gains taxes, taxes on dividends, maybe corporate taxes)

Commentary on the recent New Scientist article about a study that purports to show that men live longer in polygamous societies (via Slashdot), and whether or not this somehow involves evil (by your definition of the word).

How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

What incentives might be useful in lifting his output?

How often do you get an “8″ square in the expert level of Minesweeper (16×30 board, 99 mines)? I got one for the first time recently (on Windows XP, it’s very light gray color, like a disabled item on a menu).

What are the mathematical odds of seeing an “8″, assuming completely random distribution of the mines? I tried to calculate it but got an answer which seemed improbably low; did I miscalculate or is the distribution of mines in fact not random but clustered?

Why is third world microcredit “good” (i.e. trendy and Nobel prize winning) but U.S. payday loans “bad” (outlawed in many states)?

I’m am regularly hearing about the inflation of food prices. It was my understanding that “inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.” Is this a misunderstanding or just a mix up of terms?

Some believers in the European model maintain that the US resolves its unemployment problem by putting a (comparatively) large part of its population in prison. The US figures on unemployment would look much worse compared to Europe if those people were not behind the bars (the assumption is, of course, they would be unemployed).

Could you evaluate the claim? It has been mentioned in the comments section already but a stand-alone discussion would be nice.

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