People to Watch- David Berlinski

He is the author of numerous books, including The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and It Scientific Pretensions (Crown Forum, 2008; Basic Books, 2009), Infinite Ascent: A Short History of Mathematics for the Modern Library series at Random House (2004), The Secrets of the Vaulted Sky (Harcourt, 2003), The Advent of the Algorithm (Harcourt Brace, 2000), Newton’s Gift (Free Press, 2000), and A Tour of the Calculus (Pantheon, 1996). William F. Buckley Jr. said of The Devil’s Delusion that “Berlinski’s book is everything desirable; it is idiomatic, profound, brilliantly polemical, amusing, and of course vastly learned.

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Measures of economic well-being in UK

Take an IT Course from Stanford for Free

Introduction to Databases and more

21st Century Social Networking Tools- the basics

David Pogue gives a basics guide to social networking tools;

As a public service, therefore, I’m offering a handy clip-’n’-save guide to the social networking services you’re most likely to hear about at this summer’s barbecues.

Facebook- This is the biggest social networking service, with almost 500 million members — 22 percent of everyone on the Internet — and it’s growing by 5 percent a month. Similar to Facebook- Myspace, Bebo, Orkut

LINKEDIN - It’s Facebook for the professional set

TWITTER -This is the service that lets you send tweets — er, brief, 140-character updates that feel a lot like text messages. Using search.twitter.com, you can find out what the world is saying about you, your company or any topic that interests you. Similaar: Google Buzz,FriendFeed,


Others: FOURSQUARE, Gowalla, Loopt, Brightkite, YELP, OpenTable,UrbanSpoon,

Schelling Quote- The Very Basics of Game Theory

"If I go downstairs to investigate a noise at night, with a gun in my hand, and find myself face to face with a burglar who has a gun in his hand, there is a danger of an outcome that neither of us desires. Even if he prefers to just leave quietly, and I wish him to, there is danger that he may think I want to shoot, and shoot first."

via David Henderson

The Lesson: 'in thinking through various actions you might take to have an effect on B, ask yourself how you would respond to such actions if you were B. In other words, put yourself in the other person's shoes, not to get a touchy, feely, we're-all-in-this together Kumbaya moment, but to come up with your most-realistic analysis'

John Kay's ‘long walk’ problems

For years, I have identified what I think of as ‘long walk’ problems - knotty issues that are best tackled if you can get away from it all. I often come back with an answer, or a few paragraphs, composed in my head.

Assorted Writing Tips

Stiglitz the Omniscient;

When writing a novel, one of the things you have to decide is point of view. If you focus on one character, your point of view might be limited to what that character sees.

One point of view for the author to take is that of an omniscient observer. As you read, you know that the author knows what is coming (you keep getting hints) and understands all sorts of things that the characters are innocent about.

Stiglitz always writes as the omniscient observer. He knows exactly what should have been done to prevent or solve each of the 100 financial crises that he cites.

This omniscient-observer vantage point has its limits. It does not convey the uncertainty and trade-offs that policymakers face in real time. For example, as the housing bubble was inflating, there were not many Congressional voices raised against lending to first-time homebuyers.

From NYT's Paper Cuts;

The Economist article contained a passage that would never pass muster in an American news story:

“Recently, independent voters passed Republicans to become the biggest group in the state. Some of this is due to Colorado’s growing Hispanic population, some of it is due to Californians and some of it reflects the general unpopularity of the national Republican Party. But there is a more important reason for the Republicans’ woes: their elected representatives are bonkers.”

To most American readers, that last sentence certainly looks like an opinion, and should never be presented as news in a responsible publication. (As an editor, I’d never let it get through.) But consider this: what if Colorado’s congressional delegation really is bonkers, and the Economist correspondent was merely doing his job by informing his readers of that “fact.” Sometimes judgments, even if they aren’t as solid as hard facts, are more than merely matters of opinion.

A long goodbye;

It seems fitting to begin with the ancestors. One of the exceptional characteristics of this newspaper is the degree to which it still follows the principles and methods begun 163 years ago by its founder, James Wilson, and perfected by his son-in-law, Walter Bagehot. The Economist was launched to campaign for free trade and all forms of liberty, what proponents and detractors alike today call globalisation, blended with what George Bush likes to call “the freedom agenda”. It did so with a formula that was three parts factual description and one part strongly held opinion or argumentative analysis. That is what we continue to attempt today.

We do not do so merely out of loyalty to our founders: if those principles had turned out to be wrong, they would have been ditched long ago. And their application must always evolve. I, for one, had Bagehot grumbling in his grave when, in 1994, we declared the British monarchy to be “an idea whose time has passed”, in flat contradiction to his great 1867 book, “The English Constitution”. But in general what is striking about the past 13 years is how strongly this period has fitted Wilson's original view, how it made his principles feel more relevant than ever, and how in some respects our world is one whose issues he would have recognised.

Writing resources;

I would recommend them in the following order:

1. William I. Strunk Jr. and E.B. White, “The Elements of Style”

2. William Zinsser, “On Writing Well”

3. Deirdre N. McCloskey, “Economical Writing”

4. Keith Hjortshoj, “The Transition to College Writing“

Assorted

Why Are Exchange Rates So Difficult to Predict?

Building a Better World: Infrastructure's Role in Economic Growth

Clearing the Roadways: The Case for Congestion Pricing

Why the U.S. Treasury Began Auctioning Treasury Bills in 1929

Poverty in New York City, 1969-99:
The Influence of Demographic Change, Income Growth, and Income Inequality

The Changing Nature of the U.S. Balance of Payments

Early warnings of inflation in India'

Explainer on Turkey Crisis

So people can wear tank-tops to the universities?

Sure, no problem with that. When we talk about Turkish secularism it's almost a misnomer. It's not the secularism that we enjoy here in the United States, where people can wear whatever religious garb they want. In Turkey, the authorities are directly involved in controlling religion. The state is directly involved in engaging surveillance of the public sphere to ensure that religion doesn't enter the public sphere. And that's the difference. It's state control of religion to enforce this principle that religion shouldn't enter the public sphere.

Related;
Economic survey of Turkey 2008

Angus Maddison on Chinese Growth

Measuring China’s Economic Performance (subscription required)
Angus Maddison & Harry X. Wu

China is the world’s fastest growing economy and is also the second largest. However, the official estimates of the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics exaggerate GDP growth and need adjustment to conform to international norms as set out in the 1993 System of National Accounts (SNA). This paper presents and discusses the necessary adjustments. The two major contributions are new volume indices for the industrial sector and for "non-material" services. Finally, in order to measure the level of Chinese GDP in internationally comparable terms, the authors use a measure of purchasing power parity (PPP) instead of the exchange rate.

Must Read Macro for the Day

Calvo vs Krugman;

Guillermo Calvo is one of my favorite economists. But — you know there had to be a but — I just don’t buy his latest missive. Still, it’s important that we have this debate: something awesome is happening to oil and other commodities, and figuring out what it means is crucial

Assorted

Urban congestion

China Quarterly Update, June 2008

A Simple Proposal to Make Exam Grading Easier

Mike Myers 'Love Guru' movie offends some Hindus

Barack Obama is a "choice architect" aiming to implement "libertarian paternalism

Chris Blattman's Links I Liked

Inside a 9/11 Mastermind’s Interrogation

Ten things for India to achieve its 2050 potential

In Turkey, Bitter Feud Has Roots in History

China’s One-Child Rule, Post-Earthquake

Pay For It: Radical Water Privatization for Poor Countries

Where Does the Money Go? Best and Worst Practices in Foreign Aid

Advice to impressionable young minds who want to change the world

Big Picture's LinkFest

The Perfect Siesta

Two Bubbles, Two Paths

A theory of military dictatorships

What Happens if We’re Wrong?;

The key word is “consequences.” I learned this lesson many years ago from studying Blaise Pascal, a French mathematical genius in the 17th century who spelled out the laws of probability more clearly than anyone before him. This was a thunderclap of an insight that, for the first time, gave humanity a systematic way of thinking about the future.

Pascal was both a gambler and a religious zealot. One day he asked himself how he would handle a bet on whether “God is or God is not.” Reason could not answer. But, he said, we can choose between acting as though God is or acting as though God is not.

Suppose we bet that God is, and we lead a life of virtue and abstinence, and then the day of reckoning comes and we discover that there is no God. Well, life was still tolerable even if less fun than we might have liked. Here, the consequences of being wrong would be acceptable to most people.

Suppose, however, we bet that God is not, and lead a life of lust and sin, and then it turns out that God is. Now being wrong has put us into big trouble.

RISK management, then, should be a process of dealing with the consequences of being wrong. Sometimes, these consequences are minimal — encountering rain after leaving home without an umbrella, for example. But betting the ranch on the assumption that home prices can only go up should tell you the consequences would be much more than minimal if home prices started to fall.

Stolper-Samuelson for the real world

"Canada's managers are under-achievers"

Nixonland: One, Two, or Many Americas?

The IMF as a reserve manager

Why Is Oil So High? Pick a View

Nothing Sells Like Celebrity

What if Adam Smith was right about poverty?

Steven Pinker: The evolutionary man

There is a better way to stop bank failures

Did the Iraq War Cause High Oil Prices?

Link of the Day

Understanding Uncertainty

Maths Pocast of the Day

Probability;

Heads or tails? It’s a simple question with a far from simple answer. One that takes us into the strange and complex world of probability.

Probability is the field of maths relating to random events and, although commonplace now, the idea that you can pluck a piece of maths from the tumbling of dice, the shuffling of cards or the odds in the local lottery is a relatively recent and powerful one. It may start with the toss of a coin but probability reaches into every area of the modern world, from the analysis of society to the decay of an atom.

More Readings;
F. N. David, Games, Gods and Gambling (Griffin, 1962)

T. M. Porter, The Rise of Statistical Thinking, 1820-1900 (Princeton University Press, 1986)

S. M. Stigler, The History of Statistics (Harvard University Press, 1986)

J. Von Plato, Creating Modern Probability (Cambridge University Press, 1994)

John Haigh, Taking Chances: Winning with Probability (Oxford University Press; New Ed edition (8 May 2003)

Gerd Gigerenzer, Reckoning with Risk: Learning to Live with Uncertainty (Penguin Books Ltd; New Ed edition (24 April 2003)

Frederick Mosteller, Fifty Challenging Problems in Probability With Solutions (Dover Publications Inc.; New Ed edition (1 Feb 1988)

Ian Stewart, Taming the Infinite: The Story of Mathematics (Quercus, July 2008)

Teacher package: Statistics and probability theory

Try the following spelling bee words

eidetic: marked by or involving extraordinarily accurate and vivid recall, especially of visual images.

hemotrophe: the nutritive substance supplied to embryos of some animals.

homeostasis: a relatively stable state of equilibrium or a tendency toward such a state between the different but interdependent elements or groups of elements of an organism, population or group.

laryngitis: inflammation of the larynx, the upper part of the air- breathing tube in humans, most other mammals, and some amphibians and reptiles.

luftmensch: an impractical contemplative person having no definite business or income.

opalescence: reflecting an iridescent light.

Sioux: an American Indian people and their language.

sinecure: an office or position that requires little or no work and that usually provides an income.

-2 Hoosiers make finals of national spelling bee

Visions of the Future

Space elevator






More here and here

NAMA

A simple guide — NAMA Negotiations

Non-agricultural market access negotiations

Law Book Recommendations

Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges
by Antonin Scalia , Bryan A. Garner

How Judges Think
by Richard A. Posner

Assorted

World Bank Scorpions;

Also on Monday, the bank announced the retirement of Praful Patel, its vice president for the South Asia region. This was ahead of the mandatory retirement age of 62 but for the credibility of the bank not a moment too soon. Mr. Patel is the man who presided over $570 million in corrupted World Bank health-sector projects in India, which we first reported on in January1. President Robert Zoellick would have sent a stronger signal that such performance won't be tolerated had he fired Mr. Patel outright rather than allowing him to slink out the back door. But at the World Bank, the main deeds that are punished are good ones.

The financial crises of capitalism
By Samuel Brittan

The Economics of Pirate Tolerance


The Nordic Model: Solutions for Continental Europe's Problems?

Growth Diagnostics for South Africa

A visual Strunk and White

When Should the Fed Crash the Party?

The historical roots of India’s booming service economy

Taxing gambling: Some precedents

Is the Fed on a Bender?

"Lessons from the Great Depression"

Anyone notice a problem here?

What if we'd been on the gold standard?

What happened to global food prices?

A Sports Numbers Reading List

Some of the world's earliest democracies flourished aboard pirate ships

Why Do Some Countries Remain Poor While Others Grow Rich?

Econ Talk of the Day- Dani Rodrik answers the question

Related;
Turkey Country Economic Memorandum

The twentieth-century experience: half empty or half full?