Category: Web/Tech
Assorted links
1. Markets in everything: "Miracle on Hudson" plane is for sale.
2. Early risers are more proactive.
3. Another song about Paul Krugman.
Assorted links
1. New talk of principal writedowns.
2. How do women bargain differently?
3. It's hard to aid Haiti without infrastructure.
4. The Institute for Unethical Studies.
5. Good account of Haiti, before and now.
6. Turing tests, in a Chicago theatre.
Assorted links
What is not right in this picture?
How might you improve access to scientific research? Write an editorial calling for greater access…and then put it behind a paywall.
Hat tip goes to Michelle Dawson on Twitter.
Addendum: Registration suffices, you don't need to pay, my apologies!
Assorted links
1. Paul Collier: Haiti needs sweatshops, a UN report.
2. Haitians and Hasidim share a town, Spring Valley, NY.
3. New paper on how music works on us (by the way, I'm not convinced).
5. Japanese publishers collude against Kindle.
7. What works in dating profile photos, a very interesting post.
How is Chinese web use different?
There was a good (not on-line) FT article on this topic yesterday. It suggested the following:
1. Chinese tend to "roam the web like a huge playground," whereas Americans and Europeans use it more as a giant library.
2. Chinese users are more likely to use the web for entertainment and less for business, relative to Europeans.
3. Chinese users are younger and less educated.
4. Chinese users don't like to type ("Typing is a pain in Chinese") and thus they use the mouse much more for navigation.
5. "Most portals have reacted by filling their pages with hundreds of colourful links competing for attention — creating a cluttered and disorderly view to the western eye but making life easier for Chinese users."
The article may come on-line eventually, if so you can find it by googling that last quotation.
Addendum: Daniel Lippman finds the link.
Assorted links
Assorted links
1. Who owns Sherlock Holmes? (Hint: it's not in the public domain in the U.S., not until 2023).
2. Can you tell Republicans and Democrats from their faces?
3. How calm is Haiti and why does it matter?
Assorted links
1. The cognitive infiltration of extremist groups; is it you, Alex?
2. What are the facts about China's exports?
3. When wealth doesn't matter for height.
4. Interview with Eugene Volokh.
5. The typecasting of professors.
6. Zombie warnings.
7. Letter from a Birmingham Jail.
9. Markets in everything: cruises to Haiti still going on.
Assorted links
3. How Haitians share food, norms and customs as taught to children.
4. Can you build a nation without a government?
*You are Not a Gadget*
That is the new book by Jaron Lanier, a humanist critic of how the internet is shaping our lives and cultures and providing a new totalizing ideology. Of all the books with messages in this direction, it is the one I would describe as insightful. Here is one bit:
It breaks my heart when I talk to energized young people who idolize the icons of the new digital ideology, like Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, and free/open/Creative Commons mashups. I am always struck by the endless stress they put themselves through. They must manage their online reputations constantly, avoiding the ever-roaming evil eye of the hive-mind, which can turn on an individual at any moment. A "Facebook generation" young person who suddenly becomes humiliated online has no way out, for there is only one hive.
And this:
People live longer as technology improves, so cultural change actually slows, because it is tied more to the outgoing generational clock than the incoming one…So Moore's law makes "generational" cultural change slow down.
It's still a book I mostly disagree with. You can buy the book here; too bad it isn't on Kindle yet. Reviews are here.
Assorted links
2. How much of the consumption binge was health care?
3. An economic analysis of "hearts and minds."
4. DR newspapers (here and here) have lots of extra and highly detailed Haiti stories, in Spanish, mostly bad news relative to U.S. accounts.
5. How much does Minnesota value the Vikings?
6. Why men visit prostitutes; here is one take: "I am paying for it and it is her job to give me pleasure. If she enjoys it I would feel cheated." It's a scary article.
7. And this time it's legal. The interview is an interesting and indeed Gladwellian perspective on the "talent" of the first legal male prostitute, via Chris F. Masse.
Assorted links
1. How to guarantee your luggage won't be lost (pack a pistol).
2. Interview with James Heckman on the crisis.
3. A successful auto-appendectomy, in the Antarctic.
Assorted links
1. More on growth vs. levels, with some polemics thrown in.
2. Relative prices of different liquids.
5. Haiti and debt.
Assorted links
2. One attempt to estimate an "imaginary Europe," along with other Europe-U.S. comparisons.
3. Papers about the U.S. are more likely to be published.
4. Charles Rowley on macroeconomics: a personal anecdote which reflects his approach to economics.
5. Why we sit through movie previews.
6. Via Chris F. Masse, why hasn't scientific publishing already been revolutionized?