Category: Web/Tech
Iceland fact of the day
The total literature of Iceland is under 50,000 books, which is easily scannable in 2 years by 12 people using the scribe scanners of the Internet Archive.
Indeed they might put it all on-line. Hat tip goes to Annie Lowrey.
Assorted links
3. Why Norway deported the Norwegian of the Year.
4. How flu spreads among schoolchildren.
6. Leonhardt on Cowen vs. Meyerson; I view inequality as a residual of processes in the real economy. Some common factors are causing both inequality and stagnation (e.g, lack of major broad-based innovations, problems with the financial sector, aging), and to some extent inequality and stagnation have different causes. As Scott Sumner says: "do not reason from a price change," I say: "do not reason from a distribution change." Changes in distribution are not autonomous causes of stagnation.
Assorted links
1. China mega-city of the day.
2. Michael Mandel reviews TGS: he says buy not just one copy, but two.
3. Harold Meyerson of WaPo on TGS. And more from Brink.
4. "Sparks and Praise Fires: A Theory of Unanticipated Revolution."
For the Canadians amongst us
From a loyal MR reader:
When I go to the Amazon site and pretend I'm a new, Canadian customer, GREAT STAGNATION does appear to be available…
I don't understand what that means, or how to do it but I was sent a screen shot, so I am sure it is true. Also remember, you don't need a Kindle or E-reader to buy or enjoy the book.
Assorted links
2. Arbitrage fail in the Canadian Lotto?
3. Carlos Slim: against charity.
4. Steve Pearlstein on TGS. And more on TGS.
5. Moon and Venus over Lichtenstein.
Assorted links
1. Kevin Drum reviews TGS. And Lane Kenworthy. And Nick Schulz at Forbes: "It’s possible the most important non-fiction book this year won’t be published on paper."
2. Megan on the 1954 kitchen. And "densifying" to get more low-hanging fruit, from Ryan Avent. And more from Scott Sumner on the book: "Tyler Cowen’s book has been both a marketing coup and an intellectual game changer. It has gotten people to focus on issues they intuitively knew were out there, but for which they lacked a framework for thinking about."
5. Index method? why not just read the thing?
Assorted links
1. Google finds it hard to reinvent philanthropy.
2. WSJ coverage of The Great Stagnation; "…in terms of framing the dialogue Tyler Cowen may very well turn out to be this decade’s Thomas Friedman."
3. Can schools teach meta-cognition?
4. Could some British real marginal rates of taxation rise to 70-83 percent?
5. Via Tim Harford, analysis of proposed NHS reforms, and sources for following Egypt.
6. Will high-speed rail worsen traffic in China?
7. Ezra Klein reviews TGS. And here is Karl Smith.
Demand Media, a content mill
Via The Browser, this was an excellent article on one of the companies which manufactures superficial web content to draw interest from Google searches. Three bits:
On Jan. 25, Demand Media sold 8.9 million shares at $17 each in an initial public offering. The following day, the price rose 35 percent to $22.61, which would give the company a market capitalization of $1.9 billion, greater than New York Times Co.'s (NYT) value of $1.5 billion.
And:
Many analysts now say the best way to gauge a Web company's financial hardiness is to look not at page views or monthly unique visitors but at how much money it can generate from each user. Matthew Shanahan, senior vice-president of strategy for Web consulting firm Scout Analytics, says thriving digital ventures typically have a high ARPU (average revenue per user). Amazon.com (AMZN), for instance, makes on average $189 per unique user. Google (GOOG) takes in around $24. Web publishers, Shanahan says, tend to become reliably profitable at about $10 a user. Demand's average revenue per user currently hovers around $1.60.
And:
Last year, Demand Media executives told Wired magazine that the mechanized assignments generate 4.9 times more revenue than ideas generated by humans.
The company employs 13,000 freelancers.
Assorted links
1. The most exclusive university in the world?
2. Dating site for sea captains, and the site itself is here (possibly sketchy, one reader tells me). The captains are here. Lots of beards, and some strange requests.
3. The bestselling books in France, 2010.
4. Caplan and Wilkinson and the Libertarian challenge.
5. Why grain prices are high for Tunisians.
Assorted links
1. More from Arnold Kling on The Great Stagnation.
2. Kevin Drum on the Kindle version.
3. Predictions about Egypt, from Egyptians, January 2010.
4. How good is Kobe Bryant in the clutch?
5. Markets in everything: Lie back and think of Mother England.
6. Critique of behavioral economics for not being behavioral enough, full paper here.
Assorted links
1. The Economist reviews Timur Kuran's new book.
2. Scott Sumner buys a Kindle and reviews The Great Stagnation.
3. Forbes review of The Great Stagnation.
4. Ryan Avent review of The Great Stagnation.
5. David Brooks coverage of The Great Stagnation.
Further assorted links
1. Great Stagnation reviews from Brink Lindsey, Mutual Information, and Pegobry, and more Reihan.
2. Whoops! The flight from specificity. How far can it go?
Assorted links
1. Markets in everything, government style.
2. I am reading the new Brian Greene book and it is very good.
3. Hansonian result, though it does not apply to Robin himself.
Matt Yglesias reviews *The Great Stagnation*
Tyler Cowen’s new ebook How The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All The Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History,Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better is a bravura performance by one of the most interesting thinkers out there. I also think it’s a great innovation in current affairs publishing–much shorter and cheaper than a conventional book in a way that actually leaves you wanting to read more once you finish it. My guess is that this is the future of books.
Here is much more, and again the book is here. Here is coverage from Arnold Kling, though I think he (like some MR commentators) is spending too much time on impressions and not considering (at all) the numbers presented in chapter one.