Dawkins Legacy

Related;
A Natural Selection

Photos from America for Europeans

Children of God

Mauritius Economic Update

Recently from the Fund;

Mauritius: 2008 Article IV Consultation-Staff Report

Mauritius: Selected Issues

I'm waiting to see Fazeer's comments on the IMF's review.

The Changing Middleast

In Jordan, God's Work on Modernity's Doorstep

Related;
Islam and Economic Development
Religion as the solution to collective action problems

The Dollars Fall and its implications

The U.S. dollar has depreciated by about 25 percent in real effective terms since early 2002, in what has been one of the largest sustained episodes of dollar depreciation in the post-Bretton Woods era. The largest previous such episode-where the dollar depreciated by over 30 percent in real effective terms-took place between 1985 and 1991, also against the background of a large U.S. current account deficit. In both episodes, the pace of depreciation was relatively gradual, with daily changes below 2-3 percent in nominal effective terms. In both cases, the US currency in broad terms moved in line with shifts in interest rate differentials. Moreover, in the earlier case, the dollar depreciation episode ended with the U.S. currency's level roughly consistent with broad, medium-term equilibrium, as per Fund calculations. Following the post-2002 decline, we assess that the U.S. currency today is the closest to its medium-term equilibrium value in a decade.

During the 1985-91 episode, the US current account deficit narrowed from a high of 3½ percent of GDP in 1987 to about balance in 1991. In contrast, the current episode has not been associated with a quick and sharp adjustment in U.S. current account balances. Indeed, in the recent episode, the current account widened initially to reach an all time high of nearly 7 percent of GDP in late-2005. It began to moderate only in 2006, and remained at around 5 percent of GDP in the first quarter of 2008. This modest shift has created doubts about the impact of exchange rate flexibility. However, when the change in the current account balance over the two episodes is deconstructed, accounting for some lags to adjust for the timing of the export and import responses to the depreciation, it becomes clear that two key factors are driving the difference in the behavior of the current account in the two episodes.

· The first is the oil trade balance. In the previous episode, the price of oil initially fell and then remained roughly flat in US dollar terms. This led to an very modest improvement in the oil trade balance of 0.1 percent of GDP between 1987 and 1991. By contrast, oil prices have risen rapidly over the past few years to a record high. Thus, between 2004 and 2008, the U.S. oil balance is expected to have deteriorated by 1.3 percent of GDP.

· The second key factor underpinning the difference in the current account behavior is the receipt of large transfers associated with the first Gulf War in 1991-amounting to as much as 0.7 percent of GDP. Similar transfers have not occurred in the current episode.

The implication is that, after stripping out the oil trade balance and war-related transfers, the change in the US current account between the two episodes in fact appears to have been roughly similar. The "underlying" current account (excluding oil and transfers) improved by 2.7 percent of GDP in the previous episode, compared with 2.4 percent in the current period. Moreover, in the earlier episode, the depreciation was more "front loaded", with the bulk of the depreciation occurring between 1985 and 1989. In the current episode, half of the depreciation has taken place since 2006. Given the long lags (up to 2 years) in the current account response to exchange rate changes, we expect to see further improvement in this "underlying" current account in the coming years.

-Perspectives on the Global Economic Landscape and the Role of the Dollar

Assorted

The Dark Knight and Game Theory

The Joker’s Trap

Chris Blattman On Writing reading list

Are We a Nation of Financial Illiterates?

Deterring Suicide Bombers

Ask an Agricultural Economist

What Is the Most Racist City in America?

Do Cell-Tower Climbers Have the Nation’s Deadliest Job?

China paper

David Friedman, Barack Obama, and the Game of Telephone

Question for teachers: How do you nudge students to work harder?

The News you need

It's the Economy Stupid


Obamania

Podcasts

World Bank's Ravallion Sees Growth Constraints in Africa
and admiration for China

Frankel Says Euro May Replace Dollar as Reserve Currency

Doug Rivers on polling

The Pirate's Dilemma

Modern miracles; a history of medicine

The story of highways

History of the Popes

The Wisdom of Water
The popular advocate and water expert, John Archer, has turned his attention to the waters that flow through almost all the spiritual traditions of the world. From clouds and rivers and rainbows, to dew-drops and thunder, water is a universal and ancient motif in religion

The great grammar debate
Is learning formal grammar essential to becoming a good writer and communicator? Or is it more important to develop a feeling for language that can be applied in different contexts?

The late great physicist Richard Feynman

The expressive side of the face
60% of people turn their head when asked to pose for a portrait. A prime example is that of Mona Lisa. So why does this bias exist? When people try to express emotion, they turn the left side of the face

Can science teach us anything about morality?

Speed cleaning for your soul

Central banks ‘key’ to stop recession
Economist Professor Stephen Nickell, a former member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee and one of this year’s honorary graduates at Warwick, says the UK could see a severe recession but that will depend on the action of the Bank of England and other central banks around the world

McMafia: A journey through the criminal underworld

International Development Happy Hour?

I wonder what would Dani Rodrik, Chris Blattman and Easterly think of this crowd.

Confessions of a Subprime Lender

Confessions of a Subprime Lender: An Insider's Tale of Greed, Fraud & Ignorance

Photo of the Day

World Swamp Soccer championships

Markets in Everything- The G-Shot

These services add up to what he calls a “boutique cosmetic gynaecological laser surgery programme”, because customers will often have several at once. He does hymen repair, but doesn’t talk about it since receiving death threats from religious groups.

His latest product is the G-Shot. This is when a quantity of collagen — the same stuff that goes into lips — is injected into the rough area inside the vagina that is supposed to constitute the G-spot. It costs £955 (£1,290 for a double hit), and lasts four months before being reabsorbed. Matlock also ships G-Shot kits to doctors all over the world.

-The man who wants to reshape your private parts

Silly regulation?

Bmi, Britain's third largest airline, will fly near-empty "ghost flights" in order to keep valuable take-off and landing slots at Heathrow.

The company admitted it would continue flights, despite an expected slump in passenger numbers, in order to avoid losing the multimillion-pound slots.

Government "use-it-or-lose-it" rules mean airlines must use 80 per cent of their scheduled slots, or forfeit them.

The rise in fuel prices and an expected slump in passengers after the summer break will force many airlines to cancel flights. However, bmi said it will go to extreme lengths to ensure it does not lose any of its coveted slots.

Tim Bye, deputy chief executive of bmi, said the airline would prefer to cancel uneconomic flights, especially midday flights from London to Scotland and northern England, but were forced to fly the routes eight of ten times to avoid losing the slots.

"We have to keep flying to preserve our slots," he said. "What might have been a marginal service in most winters will become even worse, partly because of the price of fuel and partly because of the drop-off in demand that the general economic cycle will bring. Economic pressures will drive the demand down even more than airlines would normally expect."

Assorted

Make decisions like Spock in a downturn

Global Diseases Alert Map

Israel's nuclear logic

How Many Bumper Stickers Make a Bad Driver?

Creative Capitalism

How Chicago shaped Obama

How We Drive

Walk Score

Media mapping of Iran’s missile range

Trying to Track Mortgage Mess

Room Eight

Graduate Junction

Changing Trade

Source of the Chart Junk: The Economist

Related;
World Trade Report 2008: Trade in a Globalizing World

Should we make condoms a free good?

via Presentation Zen

Volcanic Rocks can save us from Global warming?

A group of scientists at Columbia has used deep ocean-floor drilling and experiments to show that volcanic rocks off the West Coast and elsewhere might be used to securely sequester huge amounts of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, captured from power plants or other sources. In particular, they say that natural chemical reactions under 78,000 square kilometers (30,000 square miles) of ocean floor off California, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia could lock in as much as 150 years of U.S. carbon dioxide production.

World Economic Outlook Update

Policymakers face a difficult environment. They need to head off rising inflationary pressure, while also being mindful of downside risks to growth.

Many central banks have tightened monetary policy stances but interest rates in emerging and developing economies generally remain negative in real terms, particularly in countries where exchange rate management has limited monetary policy flexibility.

The risk of second-round effects from the surge in commodities prices and continued stress in financial markets complicates the response to the slowdown, particularly in advanced economies. The case for policy tightening in these economies is stronger than before the recent oil price increase but still not established, given that inflation expectations and labor costs are projected to remain well anchored and growth momentum is weak. However, inflationary pressures need to be monitored closely. In many emerging economies, particularly those that continue to operate above trend growth, monetary policy needs to be tightened combined with greater fiscal restraint and, in some cases, with more flexible exchange rate management, in order to reverse the recent build-up in inflation.

-Global slowdown and rising inflation

Is the World Bank a Bank?

The World Bank's early reflections on development : a development institution or a bank?

Summary: Until the late 1960s, the World Bank presented itself as an institution devoted to making sound and directly productive project loans. Yet, during its very early years, some discussions developed inside the Bank regarding the possibility of issuing different types of loans, namely (i) loans aimed at tackling social issues ("social loans"), and (ii) loans aimed at providing foreign currency to address disequilibria in the balance of payments ("impact loans"). This paper brings together historical analysis and theories of organization development to study the housing issue as a case in point. The analysis reveals that the Bank was unwilling to lend for housing programs not because these were not sound - in fact, they were - but because they were geared toward achieving social welfare objectives and were not directly linked to productive investment projects, such as dams, power stations, and railroads. This early decision had a significant impact on the subsequent development of the Bank's view of policy-making: it locked the institution into a particular lending pattern, and deprived it of important intellectual resources. It was not until the late 1960s that the Bank began to take social issues into consideration, rather late compared with other multilateral institutions.

Assorted

When the going gets tough, central banks hope for a miracle

Fed Chief Bernanke Has How Many Friends On Facebook?

Sacking Mugabe

Deterring Suicide Bombers

Can Art Be Rated From 1 to 1,000?

Why Children Are Not ‘Little Adults’

Older Americans May Be Happier Than Younger Ones

Ohne Muslime kein Europa

Toynbee to Huntington: Globalization Gone Too Far?

Ellis on the American Creation

He said the founding had two tragedies and five triumphs. The tragedies were slavery and the plight of the native Americans. The first he called a Shakespearean tragedy, meaning it could have been avoided by human agency. The second he called a Greek tragedy, meaning it couldn't.

His best insights into slavery were that none of the founders tried to justify slavery as being consistent with the ideals of the founding and that everyone expected the slavery phenomenon to die a natural death to be followed by the expulsion of the Negro. No one foresaw a multiracial coexistence. Ellis argued that the the unforeseen invention of the cotton gin ignited the Southern economy and increased the demand for slaves.

History podcast- Tacitus

Tacitus;

“The story I now commence is rich in vicissitudes, grim with warfare, torn by civil strife, a tale of horror even during times of peace”. So reads page one of The Histories by the Roman historian Tacitus and it doesn’t disappoint.

Tacitus’ Rome is a hotbed of sex and violence, of excessive wealth and senatorial corruption. His work is a pungent study in tyranny and decline that has influenced depictions of Rome, from Gibbon’s Decline and Fall to Robert Graves’ I, Claudius.

But is it a true picture of the age or does Tacitus’ work present the tyranny and decadence of Rome at the expense of its virtues? And to what extent, when we look at the Roman Empire today, do we still see it through his eyes?

How to Misuse Governance Indicators

The worldwide governance indicators and tautology : causally related separable concepts, indicators of a common cause, or both ?

Summary: Aggregate indexes of the quality of governance, covering large samples of countries, are widely used in research and in aid policy. Few studies examine the validity of these indexes, however. This paper partially fills this gap by examining empirically the dimensionality of the Worldwide Governance Indicators. The six indexes purportedly measure distinct concepts of control of corruption, rule of law, government effectiveness, regulatory quality, political stability, and voice and accountability. Using standard statistical techniques for testing measurement validity, the analysis concludes that the six indexes do not discriminate usefully among different aspects of governance. Rather, each of the indexes merely reflects perceptions of the quality of governance more broadly. An implication of the findings is that the Worldwide Governance Indicator indexes are frequently misused in research and policy applications, where it is commonly assumed that the indexes provide distinct measures of different aspects of the quality of governance. A further implication is that Transparency International's even more widely-known aggregate index similarly reflects perceptions not only of corruption, as intended, but of the quality of governance more broadly.

Empirics of Governance

An interesting discussion series from World Bank on governance indicators;

The seminar "Empirics of Governance" was held on May 1 to 2, 2008, at the World Bank Headquarters in Washington D.C. This seminar was organized by the Office of the Chief Economist and Senior Vice President, Development Economics (DEC). One important question which the seminar aimed to address is how to help practitioners “use the right indicator for the right job”.

More specifically, the following objectives were set for the seminar: firstly, creating common understanding among the various stakeholders of the complexity of the issues and the need to move ahead when perfection is not attainable, and deepening the interaction between producers of indicators, researchers and operational users; and secondly, helping develop an operational/research agenda going forward. The latter includes development of indicators, their operational use within the Bank, and priority research activities.

Speakers included nine academics and five experts from outside the Bank who are involved in the production of governance indicators, representatives from International Financial Institutions, and a number of Bank staff. A special effort was made to capture a range of experience and views. A number of staff and advisors to the Executive Directors participated in discussion.

The first day of the seminar focused on “Governance Indicators: Issues of Measurement and Use in Research and Policy”. Four types of governance indicators were discussed during the four sessions: broad-expert based indicators, narrow/actionable expert-based indicators, indicators based on representative household and firm surveys and aggregate/composite indicators

Can somebody please explain.

The costs of war keep increasing

Mr. Dwyer died last month in North Carolina. He was 31 and very sick. For years he had been in and out of treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder and addiction. He was seized by fearful delusions and fits of violence and rage. His wife left him to save herself and their young daughter. When the police were called to Mr. Dwyer’s apartment on June 28, he was alone. They broke down the door and found him dying among pill bottles and cans of cleaning solvent that friends said he sniffed to deaden his pain.

-Losing Private Dwyer

Related;
My Plan for Iraq - Obama

Book Recommendation

The Street Porter and the Philosopher; Conversations on Analytical Egalitarianism
Sandra J. Peart and David M. Levy, editors

Include essays by:

* James M. Buchanan
* Tyler Cowen,
* Eric Crampton, University of Canterbury, New Zealand
* M. Ali Khan, Johns Hopkins University
* Thomas Leonard, Princeton University
* Deirdre McCloskey, University of Illinois, Chicago
* Warren J. Samuels, Professor Emeritus, Michigan State University
* Gordon Tullock, George Mason University

NY Fact of the Day

“The city should not be in the business of deciding what goes on, whether there is dancing or not dancing,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said in 2004. “We have dance police. This is craziness.'’

The mayor was referring to the city’s 1926 cabaret law, which forbids dancing by three or more people in any establishment that does not have a valid cabaret license — even if the business serves alcohol and plays music. In the past, bars have been padlocked when a few patrons were caught swaying to music, and the Giuliani administration often used the law as a tool against clubs deemed nuisances.

-A New Effort to End the ‘Dance Police’

Blog of the Day

Habermasian Reflections

Quote of the Day

“How the discipline of economics fares in revealing previously unrecognized social relations depends on the competition of disciplines in terms of both subject matter and techniques, as Coase has noted. I expect economics to fare well in this competition, but in the end to reveal, describe, and explain no more than an island in man’s behavior.”

-G. Warren Nutter 1979, p. 268.

cited in How to Buy, Sell, Make, Manage, Invent, Produce, Transact, Consume, Marry with Words by Deirdre McCloskey

Quote of the Day

Chinese Ambassador Wang Guangya, whose nation is one of Zimbabwe's major trading partners, expressed similiar sentiments, saying Zimbabwe should be allowed to resolve its political crisis on its own.

''The development of the situation in Zimbabwe until now has not exceeded the context of domestic affairs,'' Wang said, adding that sanctions would ''interfere with the negotiation process.''

-Russia and China Veto U.N. Sanctions on Zimbabwe

Related;
Is it true what they say about the Chinese? The effects of China’s lending in Africa

Iranian Revolutionary Guards sent for Photoshop training

For more see The Lede

Welcome to America!

NINE years ago, Ahmad Batebi appeared on the cover of The Economist. He was a 21-year-old student, one of thousands who protested against Iran’s government that summer. He was photographed holding aloft a T-shirt bespattered with the blood of a fellow protester. Soon afterwards, he was arrested and shown our issue of July 17th 1999. “With this”, he was told, “you have signed your death warrant.”...

He is cagey about how exactly he escaped. But he says he used a cellphone camera to record virtually every step of his journey, and will soon go public with the pictures and his commentary. Meanwhile, he seems to be enjoying America. He praises the way “people have the opportunity to become who they want to be”. Shortly after he arrived, he posted a picture of himself in front of the Capitol on his Farsi-language blog, with the caption: “Your hands will never touch me again.”

-Iran and The Economist

Econ Talks

India: The Emerging Giant
Featuring the author Arvind Panagariya, Jagdish Bhagwati Professor of Indian Political Economy, Columbia University with comments from Swaminathan Aiyar, Research Fellow, Cato Institute.

Botswana and Mauritius: African Success Stories

Dutch Fact of the Day

In January 2007, the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture issued a report in which it took 29 pages to explain "quality standards for onions," complete with 43 photographs

-Europe Debates Perfection It Demands of Its Produce

U.S.-Cuba Tourism will be bad for Caribbean tourism?

Recently from the Fund;Vacation Over: Implications for the Caribbean of Opening U.S.-Cuba Tourism ;

An opening of Cuba to U.S. tourism would represent a seismic shift in the Caribbean’s tourism industry. This study models the impact of such a potential opening by estimating a counterfactual that captures the current bilateral restriction on tourism between the two countries. After controlling for natural disasters, trade agreements, and other factors, the results show that a hypothetical liberalization of Cuba-U.S. tourism would increase long-term regional arrivals. Neighboring destinations would lose the implicit protection the current restriction affords them, and Cuba would gain market share, but this would be partially offset in the short-run by the redistribution of non-U.S. tourists currently in Cuba. The results also suggest that Caribbean countries have in general not lowered their dependency on U.S. tourists, leaving them vulnerable to this potential change.

The State of the Economy in photo

U.S. Considers Takeover of Two Mortgage Giants

Dogs on Pills or humans are in fact using animal drugs

An interesting article from NYT;

Dogs are a geneticist’s dream. Lab rats can be artificially induced to suffer certain problems — for example, electrically shocked to create a fearful state — whereas dogs are natural models, exhibiting anxiety, phobias and compulsions on their own. The canine genome, whose sequencing was recently completed, is considerably easier to analyze than the human one. The canine gene pool has been highly restricted and segregated during the creation of distinct dog breeds, much of which happened within the past 200 years. Members within a breed are highly similar genetically, making mutations that might cause behavior problems easier to spot. Purebred dogs are also excellent for testing theories about heritability. “There are fantastic genealogical resources that can connect dogs within a century for dozens of generations,” Hamilton says.

In certain breeds, almost all of the dogs alive today are descendants of a handful of popular sires that exemplified traits that breeders liked — for instance, a snowy white coat or exceptional herding ability. In selecting for these desired traits, however, the breeders sometimes inadvertently selected for the sires’ undesirable genetic mutations. This appears to be the case with canine compulsive disorder. A half-dozen or so breeds are predisposed to get it and in fact are susceptible to particular forms of the disorder — for example, German shepherds tend to tail-chase, while Doberman pinschers suck their flanks. Dodman and his colleagues are running genetic analyses of 146 Dobermans, more than half of them afflicted and the others not. His hunch is that a genetic glitch that leads to overactive glutamate receptors may increase susceptibility for developing compulsive behaviors. The same may be true for people. If this is correct, then it would ratify an approach that Dodman and a colleague have patented for treating both animal and human compulsive disorders with drugs that inhibit the glutamate receptors. Similar hunts are under way for the genetic underpinnings of what looks like psychotic rage in cocker spaniels and phobias in Australian shepherds, and those searches, too, may yield drug treatments for the canine and human versions of those problems.

Though certain dogs are probably genetically predisposed, environmental factors are clearly involved as well. “All of the animals I see that have O.C.D. are anxious individuals who’ve been in a rock-and-a-hard-place conflict situation in their lives which precipitates their condition,” Dodman says. Stressful situations in which an animal is repeatedly prevented from doing what it wants to do lead to anxiety, and anxiety can be relieved by indulging in a repeated behavior that long outlasts the original situation. That, it turned out, was exactly the case with Max. Though he lived a perfect dog’s life in California — plenty of love, company and exercise — Allan said that for most of the first year of his life, when he belonged to another owner, he was confined inside and all alone.

At end of the day that I visited Dodman, we sat watching video clips of dogs repetitively pacing, chasing shadows and snapping at nonexistent flies. Dodman, leaning back in his chair, launched into a story about a human obsessive-compulsive-disorder sufferer he had met — a man who repeatedly tugged at his beard. Dodman asked him if he had ever stopped, and the man said he did during a hitchhiking trip across Canada. Dodman thought he knew why: “He went back to being a human being. He was watching out for real dangers. He was trying to go to real places. He was concerned about his next meal. He was thinking about where he was going to sleep. And he wasn’t concerned about the stupid beard pulling, because now he had a real life. When did the problem start again? The minute he sat back in front of a flickering computer screen.”

Dodman’s theory, essentially, is that the causes of mood disorders and obsessions in humans and our pets aren’t so different — faulty genetics, dreary environments. Whether cubicle- or cage-bound, we get too little exercise; we don’t hunt, run or play enough to produce naturally mood-elevating neurochemicals. Strangely enough, I had already heard this theory — from a pharmaceutical company executive who, for obvious business reasons, didn’t want to be named. “All of the behavioral issues that we have created in ourselves, we are now creating in our pets because they live in the same unhealthy environments that we do,” he said. “That’s why there is a market for these drugs.”

Economics of the End of the World

John Kay on economics of the end of the world;

Last week was the 100th anniversary of the Tunguska explosion in Siberia. If you weren’t celebrating, you should have been. The incident was probably the nearest we have come to extinction in modern human history – and we survived.

A large object – presumably an asteroid or meteorite – collided with the Earth. If it had landed in Manhattan, it would have destroyed New York. A bit bigger, and it would have been calamitous wherever it landed. A similar event at Yucatan, 65m years ago, wiped out the dinosaurs and most other species. It would have wiped us out too had we been there. We survived Tunguska because the impact was not too large....

Martin Rees, who engages with a litany of catastrophes, gave his book the provocative title of Our Final Century? But while technology causes many problems, it also fixes many. The Black Death was probably bubonic plague and if so we could now cure it. Even the asteroid can be deflected if we see it coming.

It is difficult to think about these issues in a dispassionate way. In his book Catastrophes, Richard Posner – an American legal scholar who loves economics more than most economists – proposes a cost/benefit analysis of all possible disasters. But the attempts to model the end of the world are mostly bogus. We have good data on frequencies of near-Earth objects but there is no meaningful way to attach probabilities to these other calamities.

The best way of dealing with grave uncertainties, as with more banal disasters, is to buy options against them. For each potential catastrophe, we should undertake research to ascertain what we might do if a remote possibility becomes a plausible reality. Instead, we talk endlessly about less dangerous issues that give more scope for moral and political posturing. Speeches about man-made environmental damage and terrorism arouse audiences, but asteroids and grey goo elicit only a chuckle. Our actions against more catastrophic threats are few, ineffectual and sometimes counterproductive.

In the meantime, mark February 1 2019 and April 13 2029 in your diaries. These are the next dates on which a very large object from space may land on your head.

Debate of the Day

A Historian, a Lawyer, and the Heller Decision

Assorted

Which Would You Choose: Gas or Cash?

How Much Does It Cost You in Wages if You “Sound Black?”

Putting Your Money Where Your Model Is

Are you serious Mr. Stiglitz?

However, Stiglitz is also scandalously sloppy as a public intellectual. Robert Skidelsky recently summed up Stiglitz's problem as follows: "he lacks the eloquence, urgency, and passion of the preacher, while he has too often abandoned the rigor of the scientist."

Politicians Make My Eyes Tear Up

John McCain's Budget Policy: Government by the Underpants Gnomes!

David Leonhardt Has Been on Fire for the Past Couple of Months

Participatory Dictatorship

Can production subsidies explain China’s export performance?

Blog of the Day

The Wisdom of the Whores

Assorted Podcasts

The Wisdom of Whores

The Post American World- Fareed Zakaria

Skills, Rights and Resources in the East Asian Path to Development
Professor Kenneth Pomeranz

Why Civilisations Can't Climb Hills: a political history of statelessness in Southeast Asia

Fixing Failed States

McMafia: Crime without frontiers

The Uses and Abuses of History
The philosopher George Santanyana said that "those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it".
But how much does history really teach us? Can we draw clear lessons from the past when so much of what has been written is coloured by political agendas and the interpretations of previous generations?
A new book by prize-winning Oxford University historian Margaret Macmillan explores the way nations use - and abuse - history to shape their decisions and justify their actions.

Climate Change Policy & the Garnaut Report

Evangelical influence: myth and reality

Black Liberation Theology

The economic costs of spelling
English-language countries have higher rates of dyslexic failure in literacy than those where languages have more consistent spelling. That's just one of the many costs of the unnecessary difficulties in English spelling which the UK Spelling Society tried to quantify at its centenary conference earlier this month.

Join the British Army and learn to read
Some of those joining up to the British Army these days have less than adequate literacy skills, some as low as those normally expected of five- to seven-year-olds. So it falls to basic recruit training to bring them up to the literacy levels of nine- to 11-year-olds required in order to pass out.
Jill Kitson interviews Martin Rose, Basic Skills Development Officer for the British Army, about how the Army succeeds after schools have failed.

Apes, legal personhood and the plight of Nim Chimpsky
In Austria, animal activists have taken the case of a chimp called Matthew as far as the European Court of Human Rights. Controversially, they're fighting for his right to legal personhood. And, the incredible saga of Nim Chimpsky. A landmark effort to teach a chimp sign language and raise him like a human child. Project Nim became a scientific soap opera of epic proportions. More links here

Michael Gazzaniga: Split brains and other heady tales

Where We Stand On the Financial Crisis

The Book of Dead Philosophers

Egalitarianism and fairness

The jury that played Sudoku

Perfecting PowerPoint and presentation

The Origin of the Dalai Lama
The institution of the Dalai Lama - the Buddhist 'Pope' of Tibet - has a history that goes back at least to the 12th century, but Buddhist myth traces the origin of the Dalai Lama to a Brahmin boy who met the Buddha under the Bodhi tree. Professor of Buddhist Studies at Columbia University, Robert Thurman, traces the unusual history of the Dalai Lama.

Sexual Abuse in Religious Contexts

The People's Republic of Capitalism

It is good in Down Under

Four year net policy decisions included in each Budget and Growth in government operating expenses


A new architecture for infrastructure


Corporate tax rates in Australia and the OECD 2008

Making provision for future priorities

IMF gives an A+ to Australia's economic management;

10. Fiscal policy focused on medium-term sustainability has delivered a sequence of surpluses that has eliminated commonwealth net debt. This leaves Australia with a strong fiscal position, an enviable situation by international standards. We support the strategy in the latest budget to save the revenue windfall from the commodity driven boom and thereby allow automatic stabilizers to support monetary policy. Saving some of the revenue from the commodity price boom in three new funds will take pressure off monetary policy in the near term and enable increased infrastructure investment over the medium term.

11. The reduction in public spending growth in the latest budget illustrates the government's commitment to help reduce inflation. With the upside risks to the outlook for inflation, more public spending restraint could be required and we encourage the authorities to identify areas where additional spending cuts could be implemented. In addition, positive revenue surprises should be saved to assist monetary policy until it is clear that inflation will decline. Given the uncertainty about how much of the increase in commodity prices will be permanent, saving the additional revenue in the near-term may avoid sharp changes in taxes and spending in the future.

12. The states have increased capital spending and their budget balance has shifted to a small deficit in aggregate, thereby adding stimulus to the economy. This highlights the importance of maintaining restraint at the commonwealth level.

13. To the extent that the improvement in the budget balance is structural, associated with permanently higher commodity prices, this should provide scope to reduce taxes or increase spending over the medium term. The governments' intention to achieve a positive balance over the medium term should increase public net worth, further strengthening the fiscal position. Our analysis suggests that a combination of lower labor and capital income taxes, along with increased public investment, will generate the largest economic gains. The gains from other options such as lower consumption taxes or higher public consumption are not as large. Despite the expected structural improvement in the medium term, significant long-term fiscal challenges remain, particularly in the area of healthcare spending, and early adjustments will be key to preserving fiscal sustainability.

Islam in Contemporary Societies

MA in Islam in Contemporary Societies - an interesting course from Warwick

Related Podcast;
Maqsood Ahmed, the government’s senior advisor on Muslim communities, talks about being the first student on the MA course in Islam in contemporary societies.

Reading List on Middle East

Middle East Studies Greatest Hits

Mugabe wins Wimbledon

Don't miss this week's The Now Show;

It was suggested this week that shoplifters could write poetry as part of their rehabilitation.

Is there any misdemeanour in your past that you would like to confess to in the form of rhyme? ..

Last week we asked you, ‘What was the most idiotic practice that goes on at your work?...

Management decided that each department should sign up on a long term contract to have copier paper delivered on a regular basis, instead of requisitions when needed.
We now realise that even our modest estimates were WAY too high, and every person in the department now has a small mountain of copier paper boxes under their desks, and its unstoppable.
Tony Tarason

Comments: Keeping a sign outside the door that says "Response Level: Heightened".
Emma

Being asked to prepare a report and then having to sit down in a group of 5 or 10 of us to discuss our individual approaches before being given "here's one we prepared earlier" to compare our own work to. Humiliating and time-consuming. Why?
Tim

Ofsted inspections. Waste of time, money, stress and all that bother sending the dodgy kids out on "work experience" for the few days involved...
Ian Ford

Today as a kind receptionist put me on hold and tried to transfer me ( presumably conscious that the wait may be frustrating) she said do you have something else you could do with the other hand. Me- fits of laughter- followed by receptionist
Phil Western

Development Econ Talks

Will China and India be Able to Sustain High Growth?

Commission on Growth and Development: Ideas Informing Actors

Equality of Opportunity in Latin America and the Carribean

The Political Economy of Inequality: Implications for Inclusive Growth

Increase in Food and Fuel Prices—Seminar on Macroeconomic Impact, and Policy Responses

Most boring development blog award

The award goes to Povert & Growth blog of the World Bank.

One suggestion to make it interesting- comment about the following 'secret World Bank report'?

Secret report: biofuel caused food crisis;

Biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75% - far more than previously estimated - according to a confidential World Bank report obtained by the Guardian.

The damning unpublished assessment is based on the most detailed analysis of the crisis so far, carried out by an internationally-respected economist at global financial body.

The figure emphatically contradicts the US government's claims that plant-derived fuels contribute less than 3% to food-price rises. It will add to pressure on governments in Washington and across Europe, which have turned to plant-derived fuels to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and reduce their dependence on imported oil.

Senior development sources believe the report, completed in April, has not been published to avoid embarrassing President George Bush.

"It would put the World Bank in a political hot-spot with the White House," said one yesterday.

Podcast of the Day- Metaphysical Poets

Mourning the death of a good friend in 1631, the poet Thomas Carew declared:

“The Muses' garden, with pedantic weeds
O'erspread, was purg'd by thee; the lazy seeds
Of servile imitation thrown away,
And fresh invention planted.”

The gardener in question was a poet, John Donne, and from his fresh invention blossomed a group of 17th century writers called the metaphysical poets. Concerned with sex and death, with science and empire, the metaphysical poets challenged the conventions of Elizabethan poetry with drama and with wit. And they showed that English, like Italian and French, was capable of true poetry.

But what do we mean by metaphysical poetry, how did it reflect an age of drama and discovery and do poets as different as John Donne, Andrew Marvell and George Herbert really belong together in the canon of English literature?

Download the podcast from BBC- The Metaphysical Poets

Headline of the Day

World leaders enjoy 18-course banquet as they discuss how to solve global food crisis

The following headline appears too suspicious-
G8 says committed to fulfilling Africa aid pledge

Related;The G8 on Africa and development

IMF and World Bank compete for attention;
Export Restrictions Hamper Humanitarian Response, Zoellick Says
Price Surge Driving Some Countries Close to Tipping Point—IMF

Dear readers

I will commit suicide if you dont start posting on youre blog soon

I wish the above statement was by one of my blog readers (it was on Dani Rodrik's blog). I hope to be back soon to regular blogging.