Category: Web/Tech

1. Bug resurrected after 120,000 years.

2. Autistics solve problems forty percent faster.

3. The most beautiful words in the English language?

4. The first chapter from Peter Leeson's The Invisible Hook; buy the book here.

1. Charles Kenny on development vs. growth (intro plus 184 pp.); Felix Salmon summarizes.

2. Ethicists aren't especially ethical.

3. Reinterpreting Alan Blinder on outsourcing.

4. Titlenomics.

5. Hail Scott Sumner!

1. Testing the Schelling tipping point segregation model, done by Bill Easterly.

2. Markets in everything: Ms.Taken, false engagement rings.

3. More on Zeke Emanuel, from TNR.

4. New developments on the origin of life on earth.

5. The Kennedy plan, as seen by the CBO.

1. Markets in everything: strange beds.

2. Lawrence H. White joins our faculty.  In addition to his economics savvy, Larry is an expert on surf music and Bollywood.

3. Will England lead the recovery due to its monetary policy?  I hope you're all still reading Scott Sumner.

4. Secret Ballot: an excellent satirical movie on whether Iranian democracy is savior or farce.

5. $134 billion in bearer bonds; trying to get to the bottom of the story, via Chris Masse.

1. Money doesn't matter as much in politics as you might think.

2. How does math look on the new Kindle?

3. Regional variations in Medicare spending, revisited.

4. Markets in everything: monkey-digested coffee (really).

5. Does your Kindle underinspire you?  Buy the smell of books, in an aerosol can.

6. Arlington: The Rap.

1. Artists should make more money.

2. Markets in everything: meat dress.  By the way, here is a Russian woman who wrote a book on the relevance of the Kama Sutra for chess (scroll down for that info).  Or maybe you prefer The Geek Atlas.

3. Daron Acemoglu chapter on economic growth.

4. The rise and fall of E-Gold, with reference to Vera Smith.

1. The influence of Milton Friedman on U.K. economic policy.

2. Felix Salmon on the top living artists.  Here is a related Times (UK) poll.

3. Claims about neutrinos.

4. How to pitch proposals.

5. Pharmaceutical executive sentence to write book.

Tyler Cowen @ Victor Niederhoffer's Junto: relentlessly reasonable argument that information atomization is an increase in attn. span. Wow,

Some parts of this talk were from my forthcoming book Create Your Own Economy, due out July 9.  Order it here.  Eric's Twitter feed is here.

1. Michael Pollan or Michel Foucault? — a new blog.

2. The swine flu rate of hospitalization: about 2 percent.  The crisis isn't over.

3. Via Arnold Kling, an excellent economics blog by Matthew Rognlie, a twenty-year-old.  Here is Matt's vita, hire him.  His blog is much better than what most professors could do plus he has an 800 trifecta on his SATs.

4. Videos of the world's top scholars.

5. Peak car?

6. From Julian Sanchez, a proposal for Hansonian journalism.

1. Profile of Paul Wilmott, the new hot quant.

2. Speech excerpt, via Brad DeLong.

3. Goodminton.

4. The unraveling of Latvia.

5. Michael Mandel on the innovation slowdown.

1. Equity markets in everything, this time lawsuits.

2. A new school of thought on sardines.

3. How would the economy look under McCain?

4. Ezra Klein interviews Christina Romer.

5. New Atlantic blog by Conor Clarke.

Although men and women follow a similar number of Twitter users, men have 15% more followers than women.
Men also have more reciprocated relationships, in which two users
follow each other. This "follower split" suggests that women are driven
less by followers than men, or have more stringent thresholds for
reciprocating relationships. This is intriguing, especially given that
females hold a slight majority on Twitter: we found that men comprise
45% of Twitter users, while women represent 55%. To get this figure, we
cross-referenced users' "real names" against a database of 40,000
strongly gendered names.

Even more interesting is who follows whom. We found that an average man is almost twice more likely to follow another man than a woman. Similarly,
an average woman is 25% more likely to follow a man than a woman.
Finally, an average man is 40% more likely to be followed by another
man than by a woman. These results cannot be explained by different
tweeting activity – both men and women tweet at the same rate.

I read that on Twitter from…a woman whose tweets I follow.  I don't know who she is or, for that matter, how I ended up following her.

1. My NYC talk Thursday night.

2. Nostalgianomics.

3. Outsourcing elder care, via India.

4. General Motors and Iraq.

5. Why are SUVs more profitable?

6. Why Colin Marshall postponed travel; and his review of Silent Light.