Mumbo Jumbo?

Via Respectful Insolence

For Discussion; Is Dawkins' approach the best way to win back people to science? His confrontational style may have the negative effect of what he intends.

Related;
Economics of Witch Hunting
The Great Indian Witch Hunt

Flu Struck

Light blogging next week.

Assorted Podcasts

Recent EconTalks;
Deborah M. Gordon, Professor of Biological Sciences at Stanford University on Ants, Humans, the Division of Labor and Emergent Order.

Weingast on Violence, Power and a Theory of Nearly Everything

Others
What do Muslims Believe?
Ziauddin Sardar, writer, broadcaster and cultural critic, and Visiting Professor, the School of Arts, the City University

The Great Partition: the Making of India and Pakistan

Bill Bryson - A short history of nearly everything

Into the blue: voyages of discovery 1700-1850

Why creationism is wrong and evolution is right

Manic Times

How swarming theory could inform plasma physics and financial markets

Harold Bloom interview- Part 1, 2, 3

ACHIEVING & MAINTAINING FULL EMPLOYMENT

Michelle Grattan - Is Politics Still a Profession?


A Guide to the Perfect Latin American Idiot


BBC;
Love Bollywood

Grammar Challenge: Must and mustn't

Allan Little profiles Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney

Blog of the Day

Statistical Expert Blogs

Quality Rating (1 out 10, very poor)

Spam disguished as Praise

Another of example of Spam;

Hey buddy! Nice blog that you maintain here.. I just chanced upon your blog surfing the blogosphere. I was thinking.. you could try out some interesting widgets on your page and spice it up with some great pictures. E.g try out the poster widget on http://www.widgetmate.com with your relevant keywords. It has some of the best images i have ever seen.

Readers, imagine you're spammer- try out the most creative spam you can write in the comments.

Courses you wish you had taken

International Micro Economics by Edward Leamer

Congratulations Masa

A new economics PhD is minted.

Photo of the Day

Via FP blog.

Imagine a World Without Us

Sounds like a fascinating book, The World Without Us.

Related;
Daily Show interview
Your House Without You

The Fall of New York
NYT Review;

When it comes to antiquity Mr. Weisman can draw on tangible evidence to back up his speculation. He marvels at the scope and durability of the large underground city of Derinkuyu in Cappadocia, Turkey, especially in comparison to showier monuments with less staying power. There is also hope for the endurance of Mount Rushmore and for Egypt’s Khufu pyramid, although the latter “should not look very pyramidal at all” a million years from now.

“The Panama Canal,” on the other hand, “is like a wound that humans inflicted on the Earth — one that nature is trying to heal,” according to a superintendent of its locks on the Atlantic side. And a disintegrating coral reef in the Pacific is on “the slippery slope to slime.”

From the gyre that is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch to the flower-growers of Kenya to the Rothamsted Research Archive in Britain, a repository for more than 300,000 soil samples, Mr. Weisman covers a huge amount of terrain...

Imagine you are a terrorist

Colbert reponds to Levitt's challenge,If You Were a Terrorist, How Would You Attack?

You Tube of the Day- Why War is Rational

Robert J. Aumann talk about Game Theory in the Middle East;

There are two approaches to cancer. One is clinical. You have, say, breast cancer. What should you do? Surgery? Radiation? Chemotherapy? Which chemotherapy? How much radiation? Do you cut out the lymph nodes? The answers are based on clinical tests, simply on what works best. You treat each case on its own, using your best information. And your aim is to cure the disease, or to ameliorate it, in the specific patient before you.

And, there is another approach. You don’t do surgery, you don’t do radiation, you don’t do chemotherapy, you don’t look at statistics, you don’t look at the patient at all. You just try to understand what happens in a cancerous cell. Does it have anything to do with the DNA? What happens? What is the process like? Don’t try to cure it. Just try to understand it. You work with mice, not people. You try to make them sick, not cure them.

Louis Pasteur was a physician. It was important to him to treat people, to cure them. But Robert Koch was not a physician, he didn’t try to cure people. He just wanted to know how infectious disease works. And eventually, his work became tremendously important in treating and curing disease....

If you want peace, prepare for war...If you shout peace, peace, peace all the time, you will not get peace...If we sell our Arab cousins on the proposition that we're intending to stay here, then we'll get peace

Watch it especially if you're in Middle East.

Related;
On the Applicability of Game Theory in Economics: A Survey
Nobel Lecture

What Is Game Theory Trying to Accomplish?
Risk Aversion in the Talmud
Agreeing to Disagree
Game Theory in The New Palgrave Game Theory,
An Interview with Robert Aumann, Interviewed by Sergiu Hart, Macroeconomic Dynamics

Best Self-Help Lecture for the Year

Robin Hanson talks at OSCON 2007- via Arnold Kling.

Some interesting ideas from Hanson;

Tax Leisure with Time Audits
The "Would Have Banned" Label
Regressions of Student Evaluations/Grades
Sources on Reforming Social Institutions

His Preferred Microeconomics Textbooks? (I'm just listing from some of the courses he has taught- is he biased?)

Robert S. Pindyck and Daniel L. Rubinfeld, Microeconomics (chapters 1 to 5 available online)
David M. Kreps, A Course in Microeconomic Theory,
Walter Nicholson. Microeconomic Theory: Basic Principles and Extensions
Edgar K. Browning, Mark A. Zupan, Microeconomics: Theory & Applications,
David D. Friedman, Hidden Order, The Economics of Everyday Life
Hal Varian, Intermediate Microeconomics, A Modern Approach,

Related;
Hanson on Health

The Mullahs and the Rock Star

Assorted on Salman Ahmed;

"In high school, I prayed to Allah for Yankees to win"

Salman Ahmed interview with Riz Khan- Part 1 and Part 2

Junoon Official Website (biggest rock band in South Asia, sold over 25 million albums, the first rock band to be invited to perform at the U.N. General Assembly.)

isufirock- see also their blog

On Faith; Salman Ahmed

When the rock star met the mullah

Some of Salman's Songs;
Al Vida (on AIDS awarness)
(More about AIDS in South Asia from World Bank)
Ghoom Tana (India and Pakistan links)

Salman's Documentaries;
The Rock Star and the Mulla; Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5,6
It's My Country Too; Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

Did Ataturk use the rhetoric of Islam to come to power?

According to Muhammed Asad, it seems to be the case (he’s talking about Sayyid Ahmed, an Islamic activist);

One should remember that, in the beginning, the heroic struggle of Kemal’s Turkey stood in the sign of Islam, and that it was religious enthusiasm alone that gave the Turkish nation in those grim days the strength to fight against the overwhelming power of the Greeks, who were backed by all the resources of the Allies.

Placing his great spiritual and moral authority in the service of the Turkish cause, Sayyid Ahmed traveled tirelessly through the towns and villages of Anatolia, calling upon the people to support the Ghazi, or ‘Defender of the Faith’, Mustafa Kemal. The Grand Sanusi’s efforts and the lustre of his name contributed immeasurably to the success of the Kemalist movement among the simple peasants of Anatolia, to whom nationalist slogans meant nothing, but who for countless generations had deemed it a privilege to lay down their lives for Islam.

But here again the Grand Sanusi had committed an error of judgment – not with regard to the Turkish people, whose religious fervour did lead them to victory against an enemy many times stronger, but with regard to the intentions of their leader; for no sooner had the Ghazi attained victory than it became obvious his real aims differed widely from what his people had been led to expect. Instead of basing his social revolution on a revived and reinvigorated Islam, Ataturk forsook the spiritual force of religion (which alone had brought him to victory) and made, quite unnecessarily, a rejection of all Islamic values the basis of his reforms. Unnecessarily even from Ataturk’s viewpoint: for he could easily have harnessed the tremendous religious enthusiasm of his people to a positive drive for progress without cutting them adrift from all that had shaped their culture and made them a great race.

-The Road to Mecca, p. 319

Maybe some of our Turkish readers could help us understand why the Turkish society seems now so polarized about their, ‘Father of the Turks’?

Related;
The Sanusi of Cyrenaica, E. E. Evans-Pritchard

"The Sanusi Letters: a checklist" Sudanic Africa

Sufi and Scholar on the Desert Edge: The Heritage of Muhammad B. Ali Al-Sanusi and His Brotherhood By Knut S. Vikør

The Right Way to take notes in Meetings

A Beginner's Guide to Mind Mapping Meetings

Film Recommendation- 'In the Name of God'

Defying the Fatwa

www.Inthenameofgod.com

Blog of the Day

On Faith;

Islam and Women

Meeting God with a Sound Heart

Persistence in Error is Reckless

No One is Guaranteed a Free Pass into Heaven

When Muslims Ruled Spain

Questioning is Part of Life

Can you judge a book by its cover?

Some book cover art;


Unofficial Winner of the University Presses Book Cover Art Competition- Princeton University Press

Some related University Press blogs; Harvard Press (poor design), MIT Press,Stanford Press, The Chicago Press Blog, California Press, Yale Press, Nebraska Press, LSU Press, Cork University Press, Oxford,Indiana University, Brookings Press, McGill-Queens, Penn Press, Hawaii University, Georgia Press, Mississippi Press,

How do Mathematicians Think?

"Perhaps I can best describe my experience of doing mathematics in terms of a journey through a dark unexplored mansion. You enter the first room of the mansion and it’s completely dark. You stumble around bumping into the furniture, but gradually you learn where each piece of furniture is. Finally after six months or so, you find the light switch, you turn it on, and suddenly it’s all illuminated. You can see exactly where you were. Then you move into the next room and spend another six months in the dark. So each of these breakthroughs, while sometimes they’re momentary, sometimes over a period of a day or two, they are the culmination of—and couldn’t exist without—the many months of stumbling around in the dark that precede them."

-Andrew Wiles, quoted in How Mathematicians Think: Using Ambiguity, Contradiction, and Paradox to Create Mathematics by William Byers

The Secret Life Of The English Language

Looks like an interesting book;Buttering Parsnips, Twocking Chavs-The Secret Life Of The English Language by Martin H. Manser and David Pickering

A Farewell to Alms-Why did the Industrial Revolution happen?

All our readers are encouraged to participate in the book forum on the book at Marginal Revolution.

Related Podcasts;
Interview with author
Interview at Princeton University Press

Eight Lectures in Macroeconomics

Lectures by Martin Uribe;

Lectures in Open Economy Macroeconomics

Lecture 1 Deep Habits
Lecture 2 Pricing to Habits
Lecture 3 Imperfect Pass-Through
Lecture 4 The Small-Open-Economy RBC Model
Lecture 5 Driving Forces I: Productivity Shocks and Terms of Trade Shocks
Lecture 6 Driving Forces II: World-Interest-Rate Shocks and Country-Spread Shocks
Lecture 7 Overborrowing
Lecture 8 Sovereign Debt

International Macroeconomics

Rating; 8 ( from 1 to 10); how useful it would be if professors rated each others lecture notes- what do the readers think?

Which Economist are teaching the IMF Staff?

Some of their internal courses-

Games from the IMF

Trading Around the World;

Experience the challenges and excitement of international trade in this interactive game. See if you can get the best price for the goods you sell and the biggest bargains for the goods you buy. Watch how the global economy is doing: the prices you'll be able to get and the deals you can make depend on how healthy the global economy is.

Where in the World & What in the World is Money?

And more

Economics- Mathematical Commonsense?

An interesting paper by Uskali Maki- Two Portraits of Economics;

This is an assessment of two recent philosophical accounts of the nature of economics, those given in Alexander Rosenberg's ECONOMICS--MATHEMATICAL POLITICS OR THE SCIENCE OF DIMINISHING RETURNS? (1992) and in Daniel Hausman's The Inexact and Separate Science of Economics (1992). The focus is on how they portray the predictive capabilities of economics and the links between economic theory and empirical evidence. Some major suggestions of the two books are found wanting in interesting ways. Examples are Rosenberg's explanation of the predictive weakness of economics in terms of its folk psychological roots and his depiction of economics as a branch of political philosophy and applied mathematics; and Hausman's claim that the 'economists' deductive method is appropriate while 'economics as a separate science' is not.

Related;
"Economics, Philosophy of," Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Beware of Economists Bearing Advice

A new style of spam

I have found the following person commenting on several blogs (same words, same guy);

Just browsing the internet, your blog is very, very interesting- by Freddi Sirmans

Here is his most recent blog that he found interesting.

Is the Surge Working?

See the Terrorism Index from FP.

A Premier of Global Capital Flows

Global Capital Flows- Defying Gravity

Paralyzed into inaction?

"A recent study I conducted with Deborah Small of the University of Pennsylvania and George Loewenstein of Carnegie Mellon University found that donations to aid a starving 7-year-old child in Africa declined sharply when her image was accompanied by a statistical summary of the millions of needy children like her in other African countries. The numbers appeared to interfere with people’s feelings of compassion toward the young victim.

Other recent research shows similar results. Two Israeli psychologists asked people to contribute to a costly life-saving treatment. They could offer that contribution to a group of eight sick children, or to an individual child selected from the group. The target amount needed to save the child (or children) was the same in both cases. Contributions to individual group members far outweighed the contributions to the entire group. A follow-up study by Daniel Västfjäll, Ellen Peters, and me found that feelings of compassion and donations of aid were smaller for a pair of victims than for either individual alone. The higher the number of people involved in a crisis, other research indicates, the less likely we are to “feel” for each additional death"

-Numbed by Numbers, By Paul Slovic

Related;
From Passion to Politics: What Moves People to Take Action?

You Tube of the Day- Silence = Despotism

Alejandro Toledo talk at SIPA, Columbia University;

It is not sufficient to be elected democratically, we have to govern democratically as well

Related;
Economic Reforms and Wage Differentials in Latin America
Eduardo Aninat: Public Policies for Investment in Human Capital: The Case of Chile
Latin American Development Series: The Future of Reforms in Latin America
Social Development, Integration, and Public Policies in Latin America

Peru - The Royal Tour

Silence = Despotism;

POLITICAL democracy will take root in Latin America only when it is accompanied by economic and social democracy. Likewise, Latin Americans will be able to achieve sustained economic growth and eliminate extreme poverty only when our political systems are free and fair for all.

The ability of our citizens — all of them — to be heard is an integral part of this process. If freedom of speech is restricted in one of our countries, silence could spread to other nations, especially those with leaders who wish to be permanently flattered...

When one voice is silenced, we all become mute. When one thought is eliminated, we all lose some awareness. And when a space for the expression of ideas becomes closed, we all become trapped in the dungeons of dictatorship. The authoritarian populism of Venezuela strives to convert all of the people of Latin America into silent citizens, and we cannot permit this.

Latin America’s common enemies are poverty, inequality and exclusion — not dissident thought. Hunger is not fought by silencing critics. Unemployment does not disappear by exiling those who think differently. We cannot have bread without liberty. We cannot have nations without democracy.

Former President of Peru- podcast of a talk

Peru - Microeconomic constraints to growth : the evidence from the manufacturing sector
Peru - Opportunities for all - poverty assessment

Sharia Complaint Microfinance

Links to a series of online discussions on Islamic Banking from World Bank;

ISLAMIC DEVELOPMENT BANK LECTURE SERIES

A New Approach to Islamic Banking

Hedging in Islamic Finance

Islamic Approaches to Microfinance

Related;
Distance Courses on Islamic Finance and Economics

Rational Fools

Paper for discussion in class;
Rational Fools: A Critique of the Behavioral Foundations of Economic Theory, Amartya K. Sen, Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 6, No. 4. (Summer, 1977), pp. 317-344;

There is not much merit in spending a lot of effort in debating the "proper" definition of rationality. The term is used in many different senses, and none of the criticisms of the behavioral foundations of economic theory presented here stands or falls on the definition chosen. The main issue is the acceptability of the assumption of the invariable pursuit of self-interest in each act. Calling that type of behavior rational, or departures from it irrational, does not change the relevance of these criticisms, though it does produce an arbitrarily narrow definition of rationality. This paper has not been concerned with the question as to whether human behavior is better described as rational or irrational. The main thesis has been the need to accommodate commitment as a part of behavior. Commitment does not presuppose reasoning, but it does not exclude it; in fact, insofar as consequences on others have to be more clearly understood and assessed in terms of one's values and instincts, the scope for reasoning may well expand. I have tried to analyze the structural extensions in the conception of preference made necessary by behavior based on reasoned assessment of commitment. Preferences as rankings have to be replaced by a richer structure involving meta-rankings and related concepts.

I have also argued against viewing behavior in terms of the traditional dichotomy between egoism and universalized moral systems (such as utilitarianism). Groups intermediate between oneself and all, such as class and community, provide the focus of many actions involving commitment. The rejection of egoism as description of motivation does not, therefore, imply the acceptance of some universalized morality as the basis of actual behavior. Nor does it make human beings excessively noble.

Nor, of course, does the use of reasoning imply remarkable wisdom.

It is as true as Caesar's name was Kaiser,
That no economist was ever wiser,

said Robert Frost in playful praise of the contemporary economist. Perhaps a similarly dubious tribute can be paid to the economic man in our modified conception. If he shines at all, he shines in comparison -in contrast-with the dominant image of the rational fool.

Related Videos;
Conversations with History: On Theory, with Amartya Sen

Identity and Violence

A Lesson in Trade Offs

Stephen Dubner offers a quiz;

You're offered a brain implant which will make you 40% intelligent if successful-but if it fails you become 10 percent less intelligent; would you accept the offer of the implant?

Related;
You Don't Have To Be Smart To Be Rich
I think, therefore I am, I think
Why Hawks Win;

Social and cognitive psychologists have identified a number of predictable errors (psychologists call them biases) in the ways that humans judge situations and evaluate risks. Biases have been documented both in the laboratory and in the real world, mostly in situations that have no connection to international politics. For example, people are prone to exaggerating their strengths: About 80 percent of us believe that our driving skills are better than average. In situations of potential conflict, the same optimistic bias makes politicians and generals receptive to advisors who offer highly favorable estimates of the outcomes of war. Such a predisposition, often shared by leaders on both sides of a conflict, is likely to produce a disaster. And this is not an isolated example.

Our Lives, Controlled From Some Guy’s Couch;

Dr. Bostrom assumes that technological advances could produce a computer with more processing power than all the brains in the world, and that advanced humans, or “posthumans,” could run “ancestor simulations” of their evolutionary history by creating virtual worlds inhabited by virtual people with fully developed virtual nervous systems.

Some computer experts have projected, based on trends in processing power, that we will have such a computer by the middle of this century, but it doesn’t matter for Dr. Bostrom’s argument whether it takes 50 years or 5 million years. If civilization survived long enough to reach that stage, and if the posthumans were to run lots of simulations for research purposes or entertainment, then the number of virtual ancestors they created would be vastly greater than the number of real ancestors.

Are More Complicated Revelations Less Probable?

Hofstadter's Strange Loops -- as Well as Colbert and Borat;

This all may seem quite esoteric, but questions like these lie near the surface of popular culture from the virtual world of "Second Life" to the surreal world of television news. I just read of a panel discussion held in Colorado, for example, whose subject was the number of levels of reality present if Stephen Colbert, anchor of the faux news "Colbert Report," were to interview Sacha Baron Cohen, creator of the characters Borat and Ali G.

Colbert is, one senses, a very nice guy, but he is also a comedian who pretends to be a self-centered, overbearing blowhard of a television pundit. Cohen is intelligent and thoughtful, but he is also a comedian pretending to be an ignorant, anti-Semitic homophobe. We sit at home watching the interview and forming little ancillary "I" symbols in our minds for each of these men as well as for their ancillary sub "I" 's.

This self-referential tangle, being indefinitely extensible and recursive, leads to strange psychological effects, one being that the characters played by Colbert and Cohen can be more truthful in disguise than they can if they present themselves straight.

That we can understand these various levels and personas, their interaction, and analogies to other situations is testament to how natural are some of the seemingly abstract ideas in "I Am a Strange Loop." Humor, in particular, calls on our ability to model others' personalities, understand their points of view, and stand outside ourselves.

Even the verbal and nonverbal cues (raising an eyebrow, changing one's tone of voice, winking) that are present in joke-telling are somewhat paradoxical. They say, in effect, "This is unreal," and they are more or less equivalent to the classic "I am lying," or, "This statement is false," which is true if and only if it's false.

Risks and Rewards

Weighing the Risks of Hormone Therapy

The Economics of Fickleness

A Crash Course for Central Bankers

From the Chairman himself;

Central bankers got it right in the United States in 1987 when they avoided deflationary pressures as well as serious trouble in the banking system. In the days immediately following the October 19th crash, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan—in office a mere two months—focused his efforts on maintaining financial stability. For instance, he persuaded banks to extend credit to struggling brokerage houses, thus ensuring that the stock exchanges and futures markets would continue operating normally. (U.S. banks, which unlike their Japanese counterparts do not own stock, were never in any serious danger from the crash.) Subsequently, the Fed’s attention shifted from financial to macroeconomic stability, with the central bank cutting interest rates to offset any deflationary effects of declining stock prices. Reassured by policymakers’ determination to protect the economy, the markets calmed and economic growth resumed with barely a blip.

You Tube of the Day -Chairman Bernanke

Bernanke at Princeton

Related;
Ben Bernanke and Inflation

The Best Writings of Ben S. Bernanke

Ben Bernanke, economist

Google Wins

Google Wins the Most Hearts on the Web

Assorted Podcasts

Addiction: Dis-ease over diseased brains

Your brain hijacked - possessed by a chronic, relapsing brain disease. Scientists now view addiction as a disease, not a behavioural problem. Brain circuits involved in reward and pleasure, planning and control are dramatically changed. The priority is medical treatment, not shame and blame. But others challenge what they dub the 'disease rhetoric', arguing it's fatalistic and reductionist. Do we treat the brain, or the person? And, should we surrender control to the addicted brain?

Nigel Calder
Nigel Calder was one of the first editors of New Scientist magazine. He went on to make films for the BBC such as The Weather Machine. Most recently he has appeared on ABC TV in the notorious Great Global Warming Swindle. Nigel Calder says most experts usually get things wrong, as they did about black holes, continental drift, and now, climate change. How could so many professors be so much in error?

India and the legacy of Partition

Pakistan and the legacy of Partition

Fading words
The applied linguist, Ruth Wajnryb, talks about how some words and phrases go silent, fading out of our everyday lexicon until - like Tom, Dick and Harry who have simply walked away - they are labelled archaic or obsolete

The art of writing the government report

The anthropology of daily life

What is the worst argument in the world?

Stockmarket Panic

Stronger, smarter, nicer humans

Liquidity, Asset Prices and Market Efficiency

Muses, Madmen and Prophets

State of the Oceans

Meltzer, Malpass, Fed Cut Sends Signal `We Hear You' to Markets

Global Crises, Global Solutions

Who's the Real Father of the Turks?

From Al-Jazeera a documentary about Ataturk- Part 1 and Part 2

Updated;
Did Ataturk use the rhetoric of Islam to come to power?

Discover your lunch economist

It's Edmund Phelps at lunch with FT;

Since 2001, Phelps has been director of the Center on Capitalism and Society, based at Columbia University. This is an economic forum for discussing what it is that allows commercial ideas to blossom into economic success for a country.

The waitress is back to take our order. We both choose corn chowder as a starter. He then selects the Maryland crab-cake sandwich, a regular choice of his. I follow his recommendation and opt for a Cobb salad, in this case a chicken and Roquefort mixture. “There’s a lot going on in the Cobb salad,” says the waitress. Phelps tells me it was invented in Manhattan, although later research suggests Californian origins.

Phelps feels that he is at the stage in his career “where I can afford to be as radical as I want to be. And so I am having a lot of fun thinking about capitalism and trying to imagine how economics would have to be re-written to capture the heart of that kind of system.” Traditional economics, he explains, sees the world as if it were a plumbing system. “It’s basically rooted in equilibrium – things work out as people expect them to do.” Capitalist reality, however, “is a system of disorder. Entrepreneurs have only the murkiest picture of the future in which they are making their bets, and also there is ambiguity, they don’t know when they push this lever or that lever that the outcome is going to be what they think it is going to be – there is the law of unanticipated consequences. This is not in the economic text books, and my mission, late in my career, is to get it into the text books.”

Yes spontaneous orders are beneficial!

'It's unashamedly biased...This is not a fair book...it's designed to open up a conversation...'- author of the book, Andrew Keen

Related;
Andrew Keen v Emily Bell

Andrew Keen blog

The Cult of the Amateur -NYT review

Mr. Keen argues that “what the Web 2.0 revolution is really delivering is superficial observations of the world around us rather than deep analysis, shrill opinion rather than considered judgment.” In his view Web 2.0 is changing the cultural landscape and not for the better. By undermining mainstream media and intellectual property rights, he says, it is creating a world in which we will “live to see the bulk of our music coming from amateur garage bands, our movies and television from glorified YouTubes, and our news made up of hyperactive celebrity gossip, served up as mere dressing for advertising.” This is what happens, he suggests, “when ignorance meets egoism meets bad taste meets mob rule

Are spontaneous orders always beneficial?

Subtitle of the book in England; how today's internet is killing our culture and assaulting our economy
Subtitle of the book in America;how today's internet is killing our culture

The Economy in Pictures- Latin America

• In Latin America as a whole, according to calculations by Banco Santander, a Spanish bank, some 15m households ceased to be poor between 2002 and 2006.

Source; Adiós to poverty, hola to consumption , The Economist

Related;
Infrastructure in Latin America & the Caribbean
Economic Survey of Latin America and the Caribbean, 2006-2007

Headlines of the Day

OECD removes the Marshall Islands from its List of Unco-operative Tax Havens

Other countries that escaped the list;

The OECD has determined that three other jurisdictions - Barbados, Maldives, and Tonga - identified in the 2000 Progress Report as tax havens should not be included in the List of Unco-operative Tax Havens.

-Barbados will not be included in the list because it has longstanding information exchange arrangements with other countries, which are found by its treaty partners to operate in an effective manner. Barbados is also willing to enter into tax information exchange arrangements with those OECD Member countries with which it currently does not have such arrangements. Barbados has in place established procedures with respect to transparency. Moreover, recent legislative changes made by Barbados have enhanced the transparency of its tax and regulatory rules.
-The OECD has determined after careful review of the current laws and practices of Tonga and the Maldives that these jurisdictions do not meet the tax haven criteria.

Public nudity is losing its power to shock- The Economist reports

If the influence of nudity is declining, that may be a sign of the times. After expelling the pair from the Garden of Eden, God’s immediate priority was to clothe Adam and Eve in animal skins. The resurgence of nudity is not a sign of a return to a less sinful age but rather the tail end of the crumbling of restrictive social mores since the 1960s. But as public nudity has become more acceptable, its power to surprise and so its usefulness as a catalyst for change has diminished. The connection between nudity and purity, while remaining a potent part of the symbolism of religious art, is long broken beyond the canvas. Now the last vestiges of baring all as a symbol of dissatisfaction with the system have slipped away too.

The shedding of clothes as a means of direct action has some history. Lady Godiva’s famous bare horse ride through the streets of 11th century Coventry was the culmination of a successful high-profile campaign against her husband’s repressive tax regime. Around the beginning of the 20th century, a radical faction of the Doukhobors, a Russian Christian sect that had escaped persecution by fleeing to Canada, used mass nudity as a means of protesting against materialism. But as that century wore on a great unclothing gathered pace.

The World Next Week: August 17, 2007

Used Hardcovers are Cheaper than Paperbacks

The Commanding Heights: The Battle Between Government and the Marketplace That Is Remaking the Modern World

Hardcover starts at $ 0.01
Paperbacks starts at $ 5.55

The reasons why used hardcovers are 'generally cheaper' seems a good question for the 'economic naturalist'- I prefer the term 'Tell Me Why Economics'.

Readers are encouraged to explore their inner economic naturalist on the new series we intend to start on the blog- Tell Me Why Economics.

A Strange Loop on Amazon

The Cheapest Book on Amazon;

Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern (Paperback)
by Douglas R. Hofstadter

Starts from $ 0.01

Some Blogs

Strange Maps

Ogle Earth

Building Blog

MoneyLaw

kevincure- an economist who wishes he was a graphic designer

Do you know this economist?

Photos of Economists series;

Books you might want to pre-order

The Right to Life, Security, Privacy and Ownership in Islam (Fundamental Rights and Liberties in Islam series) (Paperback) by Mohammad Hashim Kamali

Some other books on Islamic law.

Even Angels Ask

Continuing with my series- Advice to Young Muslim;

Advice No. 2; Don’t be like the following ‘scholar’ mentioned in the quote below- and read ‘The Road to Mecca’ and other books by Muhammad Asad ( but with a critical mind).

Out of the crowded bustle of Mousky Street, Cairo’s oldest shopping centre, we reached a small, out-of-the-way square, one of its sides occupied by the broad, straight front of the Azhar Mosque. Through a double gate and a shadowy forecourt we entered the courtyard of the mosque proper, a large quandrangle surrounded by ancient arcades. Students dressed in long, dark jubbas and white turbans were sitting on straw mats and reading with low voices from their books and manuscripts. The lectures were given in the huge, covered mosque-hall beyond. Several teachers sat, also on straw mats, under the pillars which crossed the hall in long rows, and in a semicircle before each teacher crouched a group of students. The lecturer never raised his voice, so that it obviously required great attention and concentration not to miss any of his words. One should have thought that such absorption would be conducive to real scholarship; but Shaykh Al-Maraghi soon shattered my illusions:

‘Dost thou see those “scholars” over there?’ he asked me. ‘They are like those sacred cows in India which, I am told, eat up all the printed paper they can find in the streets … Yes, they gobble up all the printed pages from books that have been written centuries ago, but they do not digest them. They no longer think for themselves; they read and repeat, read and repeat- and the students who listen to them learn only to read and repeat, generation after generation.’

‘But, Shaykh Mustafa,’ I interposed, ‘Al-Azhar is, after all, the central seat of Islamic learning, and the oldest university in the world! One encounters its name on nearly every page of Muslim cultural history. What about all the great thinkers, the theologians, historians, philosophers, mathematicians it has produced over the last ten centuries?’

“It stopped producing them several centuries ago,’ he replied ruefully. ‘Well, perhaps not quiet; here and there an independent thinker has somehow managed to emerge from Al-Azhar even in recent times. But on the whole, Al-Azhar has lapsed into the sterility from which the whole Muslim world is suffering, and its old impetus is all but extinguished. Those ancient Islamic thinkers whom thou hast mentioned would never have dreamed that after so many centuries their thoughts, instead of being continued and developed, would only be repeated over and over again, as if they were ultimate and infallible truths. If there is to be any change for the better, thinking must be encouraged instead of the present thought imitation…’

Shaykh Al-Maraghi’s trenchant characterization of Al- Azhar helped me to realize one of the deepest causes of the cultural decay that stared one in the face everywhere in the Muslim world. Was not the scholastic petrifaction of this ancient university mirrored, in varying degrees, in the social sterility of the Muslim present? Was not the counterpart of this intellectual stagnation to be found in the passive, almost indolent, acceptance by so many Muslims of the unnecessary poverty in which they lived, of their mute toleration of the many social wrongs to which they were subjected?

- The Road to Mecca, pp.189-90 (emphasis mine)

Muhammad Asad is talking about the Azhar of the early twentieth century, and as I understand it has largely modernized its curriculum. However in a lot of the other Islamic countries it still seems, ‘read, repeat and don’t think’ to be the standard approach.

Related;
The Sorry State of Knowledge in Islamic Countries
Even Angels Ask! Corruption of Public Discourse in Islamic Countries
Muhammad Asad (1900-1992): The Pakistani Connection
Excerpt from The Road to Mecca;

When we returned home, I happened to glance at my desk on which lay open a copy of the Koran I had been reading earlier. Mechanically, I picked the book up to put it away, but just as I was about to close it, my eye fell on the open page before me, and I read:

You are obsessed by greed for more and more
Until you go down to your graves.
Nay, but you will come to know!
Nay, but you will come to know!
Nay, if you but knew it with the knowledge of certainty,
You would indeed see the hell you are in.In time, indeed, you shall see it with the eye of certainty:
And on that day you will be asked what you have done with the boon of life.

For a moment I was speechless. I think the book shook in my hands. Then I handed it to Elsa. "Read this. Is it not an answer to what we saw in the subway?"

Berlin to Makkah

Book recommendations from Tom Palmer

Suicide Bombing Cannot Bring Salvation

Multimedia;
A Conversation with Muhammad Asad

Muhammad Asad Speaks on Bedouins & The Desert

Talal Asad (son of Muhammed Asad) discussing 'On Suicide Bombing'"

Crisis in Emerging Markets

Some free-reads from Jeffrey Frankel's World Trade and Payments;

Chapter Three, "Expanded Gains from Trade with Resource Movements,"

Chapter Twenty-Four, "Crises in Emerging Markets,"

Here is link to the study guide (free).

PowerPoint Presentations (9th edition)

PowerPoints (10th edition)

Video interview with Frankel

Related;
Help Me Make a TextBook

This is Hilarious

Thanks to EclectEcon;



Or this one is much better prank (not worksafe in some places).