Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Future of Science

I found this on MR, it is long but very good.
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On rewriting

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Poverty numbers

Bill Easterly: There is an obscure piece of theoretical statistics called “garbage in, garbage out.” Calculating “additional poor in poverty due to crisis” requires (a) knowing what growth would have been in absence of crisis in every country, (b) knowing what growth will actually turn out to be in 2009 or 2010 in every country, not to mention in 2008, since the World Bank’s World Development Indicators do not yet have estimates for that year, (c) having good data on the current level of world poverty, (d) knowing the effect of growth on poverty, (e) projecting the effect of food and fuel prices on poverty, not to mention projecting food and fuel prices.

The reality: (a) is impossible, (b) is almost impossible, (c) Voices of the Vulnerable says the last real global poverty numbers were in 2005, which themselves reflected an upward revision of 40 percent ,(d) is unreliable and volatile, and (e) is impossible.

the rest is here

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Monday, September 28, 2009

Definitions

CHICKENS: The only animals you eat before they are born and after they are dead.

COMMITTEE: A body that keeps minutes and wastes hours.

INFLATION: Cutting money in half without damaging the paper.

SECRET: Something you tell to one person at a time.

SKELETON: A bunch of bones with the person scraped off.

TOMORROW: One of the greatest labor saving devices of today.

WRINKLES: Something other people have, similar to my character lines.

Thanks to RF

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Sunday, September 27, 2009

Motorcycle books

I’m almost done reading shop class as soulcraft; weird but interesting. Other nice motorcycle books I’ve read include Jupiter’s Travel (the author describes a night club in Mombasa (Kenya).. as follows: ”there were arm dealers, ivory poachers, currency swindlers, slave traders, Cuban military advisers and agents of the IMF.”) and Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance. Crappy motorcycle books I’ve read are: Mi Moto Fidel; The Motorcycle Diaries (the movie is much better than the book), and Long Way Round

Here‘s a list from Amazon
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The enemy of development..

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Colombian friends

What do you think about this
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Friday, September 25, 2009

Paul Romer

On Charter Cities (my Lebanese friends will understand why they need a moteur)
An interview to Romer here
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Krugman on Skidelsky on Keynes

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Wednesday, September 23, 2009

It all started with Phelps

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Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Reverse causality

My 4-year old daughter: the moon did not come out because the sky is very dark and the moon is scared of darkness

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Fox on the UN

The destruction of UN is predicted in Genesis
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Monday, September 21, 2009

What about this super cool

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Monday, September 14, 2009

Back to 1978

Gordon on the state of Macro
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Quote of the day

If everything feels under control, you're just not going fast enough
Mario Andretti
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Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Il blog di Paolo Manasse

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Monday, September 7, 2009

The Lebanese Madoff

Here: From cousin Amal
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Friday, September 4, 2009

Econgossips

Here (not only job market stuff)
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How much do econ university professors earn?

Here are the salaries at University of Michigan (Ann Arbor). The range seems to be: Assistant professors 100-120k; full professors 170-300k (fields like history pay about half that). Salary of profs at other state universities can be found by searching here.
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James Hamilton on Furlough

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