Category: Web/Tech
Spam I like to receive
I smile whenever I read one which says “get paid for your opinion.”
Hayek is blossoming in the blogosphere
Two new Hayekian blogs started this week. Taking Hayek Seriously is a group blog with an Austrian and free market orientation. Cafe Hayek is run by Russ Roberts (he guestblogged for us a few weeks ago) and Don Boudreaux. Don is my chair and boss at GMU. I am glad to see he has the blogging bug. I like their subtitle: “Where Orders Emerge”.
Here is a humorous site comparing the two Hayeks.
Daniel Drezner describes my weekend
Read his witty and salacious account of a conference on Steven Pinker, attended by some of the major bloggers, including Alex. What I found most interesting was the following. The fellow bloggers (who in general had not previously met) had more to say to each other, even when the topic was not blogging. If you read (and write) blogs, you probably have different ideas what the cutting edge questions are, compared to your blog-ignorant friends.
Thanks Craig!
We thank Craig Newmark for doing a great job as a guest blogger – despite the fact that he promoted our competition and received better fan posts than Tyler and I ever have!
A note on the econoblog market
Tyler and Alex want to “dominate the market in econ blogs.”
When an industrial organization economist reads such a statement–O.K., maybe not all industrial organization economists, but at least this one–he asks: “How do you define the market?” I first thought, “Economists who blog regularly about a wide range of topics from an economic perspective.” On second thought, that definition has problems. (Market definitions usually do.) Should econoblogs be restricted to just “economists”? What’s a “blog,” anyway? How often is “regularly”? Should the definition include blogs that specialize in just one area of economics, such as taxes, international economics, neuroeconomics, oligopolies? What about some of the fine public policy blogs?
On third thought, since the antitrust authorities aren’t suing Alex and Tyler yet–but Institutional Economics cracks, “It is just as well Marginal Revolution are only intellectual entrepreneurs. Commercial entrepreneurs would be setting themselves up for anti-trust action were they to put in writing their intention to dominate a market”–there’s no need to overthink this. At least not unless readers express interest, and offer to help, and someone provides major, major financial support. I’ll just note 20 other blogs–one is actually a list of links to blog posts, a list that changes weekly– that I think would probably belong in the market and that I think are worth a look.
The first four are already listed in Tyler and Alex’s links and are probably the dominant oligopolists in the market. I especially recommend EconLog, by Arnold Kling. It is consistently interesting, thoughtful, and free of cant.
EconLog
The Knowledge Problem
Dynamist Blog
Brad DeLong
Sixteen more:
A Random Walk
Agoraphilia
Asymmetrical Information
Atlantic Blog
Ben Muse
Carnival of the Capitalists
Cold Spring Shops
Deinonychus antirrhopus
EconoPundit
Jacqueline Mackie Paisley Passey
Law and Economics Blog
The Angry Economist
The Idea Shop
The Proximal Tubule
The Sports Economist
Truck and Barter
Marquee blogger
We’ve got one, at least as a guest, check out the photo.
Craig Newmark to guest blog!
We are delighted that Craig Newmark of Newmark’s Door will be guest blogging with us this week. Tyler and I read Craig’s blog every day for the links that no one else finds. In his regular job, Craig teaches economics at North Carolina State University. Craig’s wife Betsy is also a well known blogger at Betsy’s Page which makes me wonder if they argue over the DSL line the way other couples argue over the TV remote?
Thanks also to our colleague Russ Roberts for blogging with us last week.
Gmail?
Google will be launching a new no-charge (“free” as the rest of the world likes to call it) email service, Gmail, with one gigabyte of storage, 100 times the amount offered by rivals Yahoo and Hotmail. The catch? There will be small ads included. One gigabyte? Think of how many offers for mispelled intimate products or urgent assistance for foreign oil ministers that will hold. There is one other catch. The news was announced yesterday, March 31st with an April 1 date on the news release. Many are suggesting that it’s merely a hoax. At MarginalRevolution, we only report. You decide. Here’s the Google page announcing the beta version. Looks pretty convincing, but it would, wouldn’t it?
New economics blogs
One is called The Idea Shop. Andrew David Chamberlain, the blogmeister, describes the focus as “economics made simple.” So far it looks promising. The other is a new blog on economics for undergraduates.
Twenty questions
Co-blogger Alex Tabarrok is interviewed by Will Baude of Crescat Sententia. Read Alex on why he blogs, the Alien and Sedition Acts, his 7-point plan for financial security, why we do not have comments, and many other interesting matters.
Are video games art?
Some time ago I asked whether video and computer games would provide the next artistic explosion. I concluded: “I’m still waiting to see the payoff.”
The New York Times ($) has nominated one such game, www.worldofawe.net as an aesthetically worthy experience, click on the link if you are curious. The game combines elements of music, travelogue, diaries, narrative, and digitally constructed artwork. One of the artworks has been included in the recent Whitney Biennial.
My take: Judge for yourself, but for me it is an interesting novelty more than a sustaining attraction. That being said, I didn’t like Faulkner at first either.
We welcome the fools
The Motley Fool investment site wrote a nice article on MR. Thanks! We welcome all our new readers!
Russ Roberts, Guest Blogger!
We are delighted to have our colleague, Russ Roberts, blogging with us over the next 10 days or so. Russ is the world’s only economist who has written a fable and a romance and a number of papers in top academic journals like the Journal of Political Economy.
What’s an economist doing writing a romance? Well, economics is a romantic science. Don’t believe me? Here is a description of Russ’s book The Invisible Heart.
Sam lives and breathes capitalism. He thinks that most government regulation is unnecessary or even harmful. He believes that success in business is a virtue. He believes that our humanity flourishes under economic freedom. Laura prefers Wordsworth to the Wall Street Journal. Where Sam sees victors, she sees victims. She wants the government to protect consumers and workers from the excesses of Sam’s beloved marketplace. While Sam and Laura argue about how to make the world a better place, a parallel story unfolds across town. Erica Baldwin, the crusading head of a government watchdog agency, tries to bring Charles Krauss, a ruthless CEO, to justice. How are these two dramas connected? Why is Sam under threat of dismissal? Will Erica Baldwin find the evidence she needs? Can Laura love a man with an Adam Smith poster on his wall?
Doesn’t it just make you want to tune in tomorrow?
Ebay vigilantes
Imagine spending your spare time perusing ebay for fraudulent listings and stopping them. A fair number of people do exactly that. Read Cronaca.com for the full story.
Is Microsoft the new language arbiter?
Microsoft has decided to write Windows for Welsh.
Microsoft programmes already run in 40 languages including English, Spanish, Arabic and Chinese variants.
A Welsh start menu and some commands will be available in about six months.
Microsoft said it has received complaints from places such as Catalonia, Malaysia and the Arctic regions of Canada.
They claim the switch from native languages online is also affecting everyday speech, said BBC North America Business Correspondent Stephen Evans.
Some argue the fewer languages the better for global trade and understanding, but Microsoft is siding with “linguistic diversity”, he said.
The other big linguistic groups to benefit from the expansion will be speakers of Gujarati and Tamil in India, of Catalan in Spain, and of Bahasa in Malaysia.
Native languages from Northern Canada and Ethiopia will also be added.
My take: Whether or not a language is focal will be determined with increasing rapidity.
Thanks to Cronaca.com for the link.