Economics, global development,current affairs, globalization, culture and more rants on the dismal science, and the society.
"As usual, it's like being a kid in a candy store. I'm awed by the volume of high-quality daily links in general. Thanks!" - Chris Blattman
The talk will focus on the main theme of the book, which is how the military, porn and food industries have been the biggest drivers of technology over the past century. The links between these three are not immediately clear, but they are all rooted in humanity's basest instincts. In essence, my book is about how the worst parts of human vice have resulted in some truly incredible achievements
It's no secret that porn is a major force on the internet - an estimated 25 per cent of all search requests are for adult content, while about one third of all websites are pornography-related. About 28,000 people are watching porn of some kind online , spending about $89 doing so, every second. Porn, despite being commonly thought of as a negative by-product of one of our basest instincts (the need to have sex), has been a big force for innovation over the past century.
Kissing as part of sexual foreplay is common in the West but virtually unknown in other parts of the world (Ford & Beach, 1965). There are some cultures where penetration was the key element to intercourse, and neither foreplay nor afterplay was recorded. Ford and Beach pointed out that physical pain and biting are sometimes permitted as part of sexual foreplay and, therefore, such behaviors are likely to be readily incorporated into the sexual repertoire
Contemporary studies, for instance, have shown that married people are less likely to get pneumonia, have surgery, develop cancer or have heart attacks. A group of Swedish researchers has found that being married or cohabiting at midlife is associated with a lower risk for dementia. A study of two dozen causes of death in the Netherlands found that in virtually every category, ranging from violent deaths like homicide and car accidents to certain forms of cancer, the unmarried were at far higher risk than the married. For many years, studies like these have influenced both politics and policy, fueling national marriage-promotion efforts, like the Healthy Marriage Initiative of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. From 2006 to 2010, the program received $150 million annually to spend on projects like “divorce reduction” efforts and often cited the health benefits of marrying and staying married.
Mr. Willey, who grew up in Virginia and Massachusetts and received a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and Tufts University, has done all sorts of painting: a rendering of the Last Supper for a juice stand, in which a smoothie occupies Jesus’s position and fruit stands in for the disciples; koi ponds on cement floors; and fallen flowers so lifelike that people stoop to pick them up.
“With murals, people think of the post office, they think of Diego Rivera and civil war and epics,” he says. “I paint on walls intimately within your home, whatever those needs are.”...
A few years ago, after he and a friend started a company called TellmeOmuse, which sells products related to Greek myths and epics, he finally did, painting the winged horses on his walls.
They are the horses of Helios, the Greek sun god, Mr. Willey explains. In Greek mythology, Helios leaves his palace in the east in the morning and charges into the sky, descending to his palace in the west at night.
“The part I love is that he gets up and does it again tomorrow,” Mr. Willey says. “That is what a painter’s life is like, it’s how arduous. There is a quote by van Gogh, ‘Not a day without a line.’ You don’t always know what is going to happen, but if you don’t get up and climb the horses out of the palace, how are you going to ever know?”
Q&A with Kate White
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From my Q&A with Kate White, author of The Last Time She Saw Him: A Novel:
How much work does your title do to take readers into the story? I really
love t...
CMS Guidance on IRA Price Negotiation: Part 3
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See my previous posts on IRA price negotiation on drug selection (Part 1)
and manufacturer data submission (Part 2). Today we will talk about the
negotiati...
Ross Gittins: An appreciation
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For quite a while I’ve been meaning to write a piece appreciating Ross
Gittins’ 50 year run as Australia’s leading economic journalist. He’s one
of the few...
Originalism For Realists: Two Obvious Thoughts
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Looks like I haven’t posted for a couple years. Probably time to fix that!
This one kicks off from a tweet I fired off, off-handedly, that led
somewhere us...
The Role of Towing in Accident Recovery
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Accidents have become a normal for roads all around us, whatever the causes
may be. When they happen, they always come along with grief and other
troubles...
Making US Permian Basin Part of OPEC (Really)
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In a matter of days, ExxonMobil will complete its $60 billion acquisition
of Pioneer Natural Resources, which is one of the concerns that have made
drill...
How mindstorming supercharges innovation
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Looking for a better way to generate creative ideas and drive innovation?
Traditional brainstorming often encourages group thinking, where group
members ...
The two notions of amenities in spatial economics
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Spatial economists use the word “amenity” in two imperfectly aligned ways.
The first refers to place-specific services that are not explicitly
transacted a...
Thatcherism is dead: Thatcherism lives
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Thatcherism is dead. It has ceased to be. It has expired and gone to meet
its maker. It has kicked the bucket, shuffled off this mortal coil and
joined the...
Some Links
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(Don Boudreaux) TweetWriting in the Wall Street Journal, NYU physicist
Steven Koonin reports on how the Biden White House inadvertently told the
truth abou...
Chromostereopsis
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The effect varies for different people. Take a moment and look at this.
Some people don’t see anything special: just a blue iris in a red eye. For
me thoug...
Do Higher Wages Mean Higher Standards of Living?
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Editor's note: We have updated macroblog's location on our website,
although archival posts will remain at their original location. Readers who
use RSS sho...
A new shop for parents who've done better
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It has been a while. Actually, I am not sure anyone reads this blog anymore
and even if they did how they might find out about a new post.
Anyhow, your eco...
The WSJ Law Blog: 2006-2017
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More than a decade ago, The Wall Street Journal launched Law Blog. It had a
simple name but a novel approach to legal coverage in the pre-Twitter era.
The ...
herbal untuk jantung dan darah tinggi yang ampuh
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Apakah Anda tahu bahwa madu mampu memberikan M segala macam manfaat bagi kesehatan
manusia? Madu diakui mengingat bahwa zaman kuno sebagai obat, dan penggun...
Why model?
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The first question that arises frequently--sometimes innocently and
sometimes not--is simply, "Why model?" Imagining a rhetorical
(non-innocent) inquisi...
Good Text Book on Public Policy
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Section I: What Is Public Policy? Chapter 1: Public Decision Making
Chapter 2: Why Is It So Hard to Make the World a Better Place?
Section ...
The end …
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This is the end of our broadcast day here at Murketing.com. Thanks for
having tuned in! Please head over to RobWalker.net for more on whatever I’m
up to no...
this site is moving
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After more than eight years at this address and more than more than seven
years blogging with the same old version of MovableType software, I am
shifting o...
An Announcement
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Michael Blowhard writes: Dear Friends -- You imagine it can't happen to
you, and then it does. Here's why 2Blowhards disappeared: Our webhost,
who'd given ...
Armenian genetics
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Armenian genes: Scientist in Yerevan launches a project to reveal genetic
history of the nation. The description of the science in the piece is *very*
garb...
New site
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I have a new site at *WordPress*:
http://www.harryrclarke.com/
*Readers please adjust your browser settings. *
It is goodbye *Blogger* for at least a whil...