Category: Web/Tech

1. Nabokov in Berlin.

2. Diane Coyle picks some favorite books.

3. William James writes to Henry James.

4. She doesn't look Scandinavian to me (click through photo gallery), but I guess people from New Jersey will believe anything.

5. Very bad sentences.

1. Chuck Close and face blindness.

2. C'mon on, pick a number!

3. Economics of medical marijuana.

4. Free trade vs. protection, Gaza again.

5. Do human rights abuses spur liberalization?

6. More on Nazi fiscal policy.

1. Bitcoin: peer-to-peer money.

2. Not sure what title to give this link.  But I think you should read it.

3. The five-state solution?

4. Top SNL skits.

5. Predictions.

6. Russ Roberts on Hayek.

7. A very, very smart person suggested I link to this podcast, which concerns structural adjustment, including in the Caribbean.

8. Does Merkel also play a "long game"?

1. The Berlin subway slide, video.

2. I've been saying similar things to Bryan Caplan.

3. Chinese multiple currency names and what they mean.

4. Tim Harford reviews The Age of the Infovore.

5. The tents are falling apart in Haiti.

6. Sumner and Caplan on wage stickiness.  On the same topic, here is another perspective.  Clearly wages are to some extent sticky in nominal terms.  But if people who work on commission and tips are out of work in large numbers, or if truly flex-wage workers are being laid off, why see wage stickiness as the #1 culprit?  (Scott isn't following through the logical implications of his cyclicality point.)  In economies with truly flexible wages, people are forced to retreat into household production in down times and that is perhaps a better parable for America today.  No one will hire them, flexibility or not.  Plus if workers are irrational by focusing on the nominal rather than the real values, it's easy enough to trick them by cutting real benefits and working conditions, thereby saving the employer money.  Real wage flexibility should be enough to keep them at work, yet it isn't.

1. Via Chris F. Masse, Sergey Brin's search for a Parkinson's cure.

2. Journal of Economic Perspectives, now free and on-line.

3. Do intellectuals think they are more left-wing than they really are?

4. Immigration and IQ, from Garett Jones.

5. It matters what you touch.

6. Lowest-scoring World Cup in history.

1. James Buchanan talk on the Chicago School, plus other history of thought talks.

2. Stuttgart's pig museum (recommended).

3. Iceland banks fail yet again.

4. Analysis of the recent "flash crash."

5. The Danish miracle and the cultural values behind freedom.

6. Profile of Larry Summers.

7. More on "acting white."

1. The Germans criticize Krugman, and vice versa.

2. Austrian (China, Scott Sumner, big house for farmers, etc.).

3. My older MR posts on Nazi fiscal policy, here, and here.

4. A sculpture of Jesus, completed by 40,000 bees.

5. The economics of Fahrenheit 451.

6. Catholic financial scandals in Germany.

7. From back home: Tysons Corner plans are coming along only slowly.

8. Scenarios for Franco-German cooperation, or lack thereof.

1. More evidence on the labor market in this recession.

2. What happens when you don't have curb rights.

3. Chinatown markets in everything, shoplifter edition.

4. iPad verboten in the Bundestag? (in German)

5. Interview with Victor Niederhoffer.

6. Proof that humans are special (some think it is not totally safe for work).

7. The economics of the App Store.

1. Price transparency in earlier German medicine.

2. Labor productivity in Latin America; an important post, though I don't so much view IS and WC as causal in this context.

3. Ryan Avent on the stimulus debate.

4. Do chimps need a single tax on land?

5. Do World Cup losses predict negative stock returns?  (A fun topic, but I do wish to encourage a healthy skepticism about results such as these.)

6. The problem of missing heritability, and more here.

1. Siegfried Lenz marries at 84, a fine story and photo.

2. Good sense on a carbon tax.

3. Computers and names.

4. Richard Epstein seeks to reform soccer.

5. Growing market for Hitler memorabilia — in India.

6. Yglesias on UK austerity.

7. Very good Ross Douthat column.

It’s no accident that most of the great scientific and technological innovation over the last millennium has taken place in crowded, distracting urban centers. The printed page itself encouraged those manifold connections, by allowing ideas to be stored and shared and circulated more efficiently. One can make the case that the Enlightenment depended more on the exchange of ideas than it did on solitary, deep-focus reading.

Here is more.

1. Paul Krugman speaks to the Germans.  I enjoyed imagining this dialogue and don't forget this addendum.  For another point of view, Germany spending is not the cure.

2. The usefulness of "trembling hand perfection."

3. Browse the web with constant vuvuzela noise.

4. China fact of the day: Chinese masons used to make mortar using sticky rice.

5. Did the Olympics help Greece?

6. Herbert Gintis on Austrian economists and the crisis, very critical.

7. John Gray on science fiction.

8. How good are computers at Jeopardy!?

1. Why the alternatives to a carbon tax are worse.

2. Bookslut goes to the Berlin opera (I'll be at her event tonight; I'm excited).

3. Good article about small amounts of progress in Haiti.

4. Cognitive advantages of Tourette's Syndrome.

5. How to think about central bank independence.

1. Stand-up comedy in German, about bread.

2. Markets in everything, safe for work but not family-oriented.