1. BSG analysis; excellent but full of spoilers. Julian Sanchez has a good prediction, also a spoiler if he is right but I've wondered the same.
2. Game theory and torture prosecution.
3. Feuchtgebiete, coming soon to a British country near you; U.S. Amazon link here, note that the text of the first link is not for a "family blog" like MR.
4. New Diane Coyle blog on economics books.
(Spoiler)
Ellen not the 5th and Dee the actual 5th? I think this is a baseless prediction made by a large hunk of the fan base who are upset with Ellen being revealed as the 5th. That was Kara Thrace’s body in the viper remains, it had *blonde* hair, so could not have been Dee. She (Dee) was established well before any of the writers even dreamed about have “The Final Five,” so the fact that her name means “resurrection,” doesn’t add much. If Ellen were an aged version of the model six, Tigh would surely have recognized her as such!
If you read the predictions on the “You Will Know The Truth” website, you’ll find that people are usually right and wrong randomly (and that there are a lot of really, really wild, stupid predictions). I wouldn’t trust anyone to be more accurate in predicting future events in BSG any more than I’d trust a fellow economist to predict GDP growth three quarters from now
@Matt Collin
While I was already assuming that to be the result, it WAS a spoiler and not a very well-disguised one, as Firefox jumps way beyond the warning marker you put at the top of your comment. For those of us who read fast, it’s not enough of a warning…
As an aside, I’d hypothesise that the same psychological group-think and complicated incentives caused a lack of decent intelligence before Iraq in 2003 and before the financial crisis in August 2008.
It’s the same beauty contest problem; it was politically difficult for serious people within the administration to suggest there were no WMDs, just as it was financially unpopular to suggest the whole financial world was bound to come crashing down on itself.
There’s a failure of behavioural policy going on in both cases – or am I fundamentally missing the point? (Which isn’t impossible.)
Yglesias is wrong: there are not merely good political reasons, but also about a trillion good economic reasons to avoid a distracting years-long sideshow and Watergate-style paralysis in Washington.
It’s simple. Waterboard the lot of them.
And I for one am not a hypocrite. You can probably google my tirades against the madness on MR.
really great resource for this kind of stuff, thanks!!!
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