Category: Web/Tech
Assorted links
1. Steve Levitt on driving drunk.
2. What English sounds like to foreigners.
3. What works in development? Links to excellent essays.
4. In a world of micro-credit, moneylenders flourish.
Assorted links
1. Bhutan stocks trade twice a week, in the name of happiness, apparently.
2. Via Bookslut, 1986 interview with Thomas Bernhard.
3. Does travel have cognitive benefits?
4. Does beauty have a Darwinian downside?
5. Profile of Daniel Lippman (he supplies public goods and he is also an MR reader, correspondent, and link supplier).
Assorted links
Assorted links
1. Video interview with John Nash.
2. Portfolio theory: does "green buying" make you more of a jerk?
3. Robin Hanson on Medicare expansion.
4. Don't trust your own repugnance.
5. Are spankers voting Republican?
6. John Storm Roberts passes away; a career I very much admired and his books I loved.
7. Profile of Karl Case, who is retiring.
Assorted links
1. Sniping vs. squatting, on eBay.
2. Boycott pink?
3. Road map for the next stimulus: federalize Medicaid.
4. Lowering health care costs without a central plan.
5. What do philosophers think?
7. Does wine advertising in magazines bias wine product reviews?
Assorted links
Assorted links
1. Why do aphorisms and cynicism go together?
2. When did bank executives cash out?
3. In defense of managed care, with a pointer on median wage stagnation.
4. Chinese vs. Russian reforms.
5. Monkey language has syntax.
6. The final paragraph of the article: "But the big winner is the rabbi, a recent arrival from Brooklyn who is
working hard (against tough odds) to bring his Lubavitch movement to
Montana. He has been scouring the state for anyone who can speak
Hebrew, and is elated to have found a German shepherd he can talk to."
Assorted links
1. Should public sector jobs come first?: a symposium, including me.
2. Tim Duy's version of the recalculation story, recognizing a significant cyclical component as well.
4. What should I eat?, part II.
5. Can there be a market for used digital files?
6. Is Wikipedia making us stupid?, and other links from Michael Nielsen.
Assorted links
1. The British Roissy is in fact Speaker of the House.
4. How starfish eat a seal (video).
5. The Arabs, by Eugene Rogan; a superb book which somehow I had forgotten to review this year. It's especially good for showing how their response to Western imperialism has been conditioned by their Ottoman experiences.
Assorted links
Wikipedia knowledge deserts Africa fact of the day
Almost the entire continent of Africa is geographically poorly represented in Wikipedia. Remarkably, there are more Wikipedia articles written about Antarctica than all but one of the 53 countries in Africa (or perhaps more amazingly, there are more Wikipedia articles written about the fictional places of Middle Earth and Discworld than about many countries in Africa, Asia, and the Americas).
There are some countries that are crammed with a dense amount of floating virtual information, such as Germany (with an average of one article tagged for every 65 square km), while others remain as virtual deserts, such as Chad (with an average of one tagged article every 17,000 square km).
Sharp divides between the Global North and the Global South can likewise be seen when looking at the number of geotagged articles per person. Austria, Iceland and Switzerland all have around one geotagged article for every 1,000 people, while in China or Guinea there is just over one article for every 500,000 people.
Here is the full article, interesting throughout and with a good map. For the pointer I thank Michelle Dawson.
Assorted links
1. Jeff Frankel's vision of fiscal responsibility.
2. Sumner on Selgin; Scott remains one of the best arguments for the blogosphere.
3. Why was the Canadian housing market different?
4. "We found that negative emotions play a key role in how much we enjoy sports."
5. Dubai photo show; use "Full Screen" mode.
6. Uh-oh.
Assorted links
1. 83-year-old woman fights poverty in Haiti.
2. Will monkeys type Shakespeare if given enough time?
4. "I am not a number, I am a free man!": free and on-line.
5. More on China's excess capacity.
6. Willem Buiter to be chief economist at Citigroup, yet here is the clincher.
7. Where should I eat? Chain restaurant flowchart.
Assorted links
1. "Best buy" programs, from the Poverty Action Lab.
2. More favorite fantasy novel picks.
3. The research productivity of Robert Tollison varies with the business cycle.
4. Economic incentives can work for blood donation: another blow against the Titmuss hypothesis.
5. Blog posts to giggle over; read the comments too. And then there is Robin's response.
Assorted links
2. European arts philanthropy continues to grow.
3. Cookbooks aren't about cooking.
4. Magma bleg: is there anything to these jokers? Please let me know.