Category: Uncategorized

1. The culture that is Sweden (a screaming video).

2. Iranian markets in everything, Ayatollah air freshener edition.

3. The Japanese Kobe beef pizza for $66, by Domino’s by the way.

4. Kevin Drum responds to Jim Manzi on lead and crime.

5. Trudie’s advice to would-be economists (old MR post).

6. Is this for real?  Does WalMart really carry this?

1. Can we ever do better than the toilet?

2. Profile of Joshua Angrist.

3. Ezra Klein post on the platinum coin.

4. Infidelity phones.

5. Killer whale video.

6. David Brooks reviews Jared Diamond.

7. The nature of Japanese fiscal stimulus.

1. There is no great stagnation, toddler edition.

2. Michael Gibson is now blogging at Forbes, including on education and tech stagnation.

3. By Philip Wallach, what really to do about the debt ceiling.

4. Wade Davis reviews Jared Diamond.

5. Analysis of Lindsay Lohan.

6. Long and very good Economist piece on whether there is a great stagnation in technology.

7. Jim Manzi on lead and crime.

1. Upstart.com, venture investing in human capital.

2. This American Life covers Honduran charter cities.

3. Where does the stochastic discount factor come from?

4. Life of Pi is a global hit.

5. How to pick a husband if you want kids.

6. Panagariya defends Indian cash transfers.

I am headed there this morning for a Liberty Fund conference.  In terms of the list, I came up with a bunch rather quickly:

1. Writer: Miguel Ángel Asturias.  I don’t see why he isn’t a bigger deal with U.S. readers, given that he won a Nobel Prize for literature.  His Hombres de maíz is a beautiful book.  There is also Francisco Goldman.

2. Blogger, tweeter, and economist: Andres Marroquin.

3. Painter: Julian Chex, from the naive school of Comalapa, and some of his relatives too.  Carlos Mérida is also Guatemalan and not Mexican as many believe.

4. Movie, set in: You’ve got Predator and El Norte, for a start.  As for filming, the Star Wars medal ceremony was shot in part in Tikal National Park, scroll all the way down here.

The country has some of the best textiles in the world and in great profusion.  It has an important university with a superb museum.  A hotel run by Frances Coppola.  And much more.

1. Russ Roberts interviews Jerven on measuring African poverty and progress.

2. Why is Colombia still a third world economy?

3. Economics of web cartoons.

4. Brad DeLong (?) transcribes a session on fiscal policy, with numerous luminaries.  Alternatively, here is Latvia vs. Greece.

5. Remedial courses for scientific misconduct.

1. Barnes&Noble pessimism.

2. Fukuyama on Albert Hirschman.

3. We have a spending problem and a health care cost problem, and is Obamacare causing health insurance premiums to rise?

4. Carolabinder, new macro blog from Berkeley.

5. How penicillin boosted a sexual revolution (pdf), and why are thieves bartering so much laundry soap?

6. Roger Farmer on fiscal policy.

1. Satmar markets in everything.

2. Canada is a forerunner again.

3. The clones are breeding.

4. The frustrating fiscal stimulus debate.

5. Do reusable grocery bags contain potentially harmful bacteria?

6. New thoughts on the economics of MOOCs (it implies that Texas Ranger jackets may be currently the main source of Coursera revenue).

1. Charles C. Mann reviews Bernard Bailyn.

2. Becker and Murphy on whether we have lost the war on drugs.

3. How loud should religious announcements be?

4. A paper on lead exposure and crime, internationally (pdf), and some predictions here, including that Latin American crime will fall sharply.

5. Is it too easy to meet someone new?

6. What will induce nostalgia in 2033?

7. Is Social Security in worse shape than we think?

1. The statistics software signal.

2. The culture that is Iceland (book flood).

3. Not-new books of the year.

4. Isaac Asimov 1988 video on on-line education (very good).

5. Is education becoming more or less segregated?

6. A negative review of Les Mis.

1. These robots will put *you* out of work.

2. Do higher taxi fares lead to lower tips?

3. A recantation on GMOs.

4. What are disgusted people good at?

5. Do people change more than they expect they will?

6. Profile of Harold Bloom.

Ian Leslie writes to me:

John Lanchester in the LRB:

“Richard Feynman was once asked what he would pass on if the whole edifice of modern scientific knowledge had been lost, and all he could give to posterity was a single sentence. What axiom would convey the maximum amount of scientific information in the fewest possible words? His candidate was ‘all things are made of atoms.’ In a similar spirit, if the whole ramshackle structure of contemporary macroeconomics vanished into thin air and the field had to be reconstructed from scratch, the sentence which packs as much of the discipline into the fewest possible words might be ‘governments are not households.’ “

At the very least I would ask for “In the short run, governments are not households.”  I might even consider “Today is a long run from some time back.”  And I have a suspicion what Scott Sumner would say.

Throughout keep in mind that 99% of all historic cycles have been “real business cycles,” and that sovereign bankruptcy is a historical norm, even though today many major sovereigns are quite creditworthy.

1. Jackson Lears reviews Jared Diamond (some parts of the review are quite good, other parts quite bad).

2. Great Stagnation, iPhone edition.

3. Some weird parts of the fiscal cliff bill.

4. Why don’t more pitchers learn the knuckleball?

5. Michael Blowhard defends the U.S. Constitution.

6. A social club for dogs (“toy aggression” is supposedly a deal breaker).