Category: Web/Tech
Assorted links
Assorted links
1. Profile of Arthur Brooks, new head of AEI.
2. Did Evangelicals check the housing bubble?
3. David Brooks on General Motors.
4. Symposium on Parfit's new ideas.
Assorted links
1. Discussion of money illusion in economics journals: a graph (over time) and discussion.
2. The crisis: who wrote the software?
3. Top young economists? I can think of a few who are missing…but here is the working papers page for the ranked #1, Marc Melitz. The world has some funny disconnects when he doesn't have his own Wikipedia page (TC: he has one now! Try doing the rest of the list.).
4. Expected vs. unexpected uncertainty.
5. How European newspapers are making do.
6. Profile of Ezekiel Emanuel, new health care advisor to the Obama administration.
Assorted links
1. Are vasectomies countercyclical? Some people wish to get theirs before their health insurance is yanked away.
2. Local specialty dishes served by McDonald's around the world.
3. Daniel Akst reviews Parentonomics.
Toward a theory of Raivo Pommer-Eesti
Every day, usually promptly, he (it?) leaves comments on MR posts. His comments read like this:
Bayern LB Bank
Die krisengebeutelte BayernLB traut sich nach einem Verlust von rund
fünf Milliarden Euro im vergangenen Jahr auch für 2009 keine konkrete
Prognose zu. Die Unwägbarkeiten an den internationalen Finanzmärkten
seien zu groß, sagte BayernLB-Chef Michael Kemmer in München.
Die Bank sei aber zufriedenstellend ins neue Geschäftsjahr
gestartet. 2008 haben die Milliarden-Belastungen aus der Finanzkrise
tiefe Löcher in die Bilanz der BayernLB gerissen, sie musste alleine
vom Freistaat Bayern mit zehn Milliarden Euro gestützt werden. «Es ist
zu bedauern, dass vor allem die bayerischen Steuerzahler in Anspruch
genommen werden mussten, um die existenzbedrohende Lage bei der
BayernLB zu beseitigen», sagte Kemmer.
No link is offered (he's not trying to boost a Google ranking), but the posts do list an email. If you don't know German, I can assure you that is not an ad for Viagra. It is simply dull (or is it?) chat about German banks. He (it?) leaves these posts all over the internet, often on economics blogs. Each comment to MR comes from a new IP address, so reporting him (it?) as spam does not stop the flow.
What motivates Raivo Pommer? Do you have a theory of Raivo Pommer? Is this proof of a multiverse? (Apparently a world with Raivo Pommer is a possible world.) And will he offer a report about German banks on this post too?
Here is one man's frustration with Raivo Pommer, worth a read. Here is a Twitter about Raivo Pommer.
If I were ever to write fiction (or a song), my first effort would be about Raivo Pommer.
Tom Foster on the Kindle
Tom, a loyal MR reader, writes to me:
I've been following your Kindle posts for a while now and something that struck me is the signalling effects of reading a book versus a reading using a Kindle – yes I read Robin Hanson's blog too!
Reading with a Kindle, the signal is relatively constant and, at the moment, is something like "I'm an early technology adopter and I like to read". As the Kindle gets more commonplace the efficacy of this signal will, I think, diminish. Compare this with the signalling effects of reading a traditional book, where you signal to people not only that you like to read, but crucially what you are reading.
I wonder if Kindle advocates are underestimating how important it is for people to show those around them not just that they like to read, but also what they like to read?
Assorted links
1. Candy as a countercyclical asset.
2. Martin Feldstein:don’t tax charities.
3. Short film about James Buchanan.
What Steven Johnson likes about the Kindle
He wrote a list of pluses and minuses, but this one stuck out at me:
When he was on John Stewart, Jeff Bezos mentioned that the Kindle was
great for one-handed reading, which got a salacious chuckle from the
audience (and Stewart), but I think it's best for no-handed
reading: i.e., when you're reading while eating a meal, one of life's
great pleasures. It's almost impossible to read a paperback while
eating, and you really have to snap the spine of a hardcover to get it
to lie flat, but the Kindle just sits there on the table helpfully
while you cut up your teriyaki.
Assorted links
1. Download Free Banking in Britain, for free.
3. Felix Salmon and William Cohan, the guy who wrote the new Bear Stearns book, doing Bloggingheads.TV.
4. An Icelander, on Michael Lewis.
5. "Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke tells lawmakers he wanted to sue
AIG to stop its bonus payments, but was told a lawsuit could end up
awarding the bonus recipients more in punitive damages." –story is here.
Assorted links
1. Blog of Italian economists, sometimes in English.
Assorted links
1. Useless tossers.
2. New Paul Collier book, reviewed here.
3. Datablog, from The Guardian.
4. Are vasectomies countercyclical?
5. Excellent comments thread on cryonics; post is here.
Assorted links
1. Tigers.
2. Cuy, China import of the day?
3. Microcredit for geek hardware?
4. Does handling money warp your psychology?
5. Skewing Scrabble payoffs, is revision needed?
I thank Bob C. for three of the pointers.
The information architecture of Kindle 2.0
Chris F. Masse alerts me to this very interesting article. Excerpt:
Letting customers read a book's initial pages for free is a great
Kindle innovation and makes good use of the digital medium's ability to
dissolve the print requirement to bundle chapters. (Thus, this is a better-than-reality
feature.) The innovation will no doubt sell more books – particularly
for fiction, where people will want to see what happens next once
they're gripped by a story. In fact, for mystery novels, Amazon could
probably give away the first 90% for free and charge the entire fee
just for the last chapter.
The article is interesting throughout on a variety of Kindle-related topics. The author agrees with my basic claim that the Kindle favors plot-driven fiction over complex non-fiction or for that matter postmodern fiction. Referring back and forth across sections is a no-no, so goodbye Pale Fire.
Assorted links
1. Malaria and African economic development, via Chris Masse.
2. Lengthy profile of Larry Summers, from TNR, interesting and has new material.
3. Via Chug, markets in everything: topless coffee shop in Maine. And, via Matt, a topless doughnut shop, same state.
4. Update on Massachusetts health care; interesting throughout. Can they really do away with fee for service? ""Really controlling costs requires just stopping spending,” said Stuart H. Altman, a professor of health policy at Brandeis University." The Obama administration would be wise to keep those words in mind.
Assorted links
1. Harlequin romances, a countercyclical asset?
2. By request: Tyrone on the crisis, here and here.
3. Has Portuguese drug decriminalization been a success? Possibly so.
4. Ten Chinese proposals for stimulating economic growth.
5. Life at GMU.
6. Steven Johnson on the future of the newspaper.