Tuesday 16 March 2010

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Torrance Stephens - All-Mi-T

Liberally Conservative

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openDemocracy

James Joiner

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Comment

General Welfare Clause : Did Alexander Hamilton Waffle ?

Alexander Hamilton at one point in his political career seemed to have held a very limited view of the federal government’s powers, believing that such things as "agriculture and manufacture" were under the purview of state governments. (...)

3 nov. 2009 | | Frank Staheli

Comment

Meanwhile, Back In The Real World...

SAME BUT DIFFERENT : 1965 AND 2009 It’s always interesting to come in off the road — in this case 10 days away from the unrelenting drumbeat of the news in the service of wrapping up my forthcoming book as well as catching some rays and music. (...)

11 aoû. 2009 | | Shaun Mullen

International

The dynamics of women in Morocco

A new book, Gendering Religion and Politics, features a paper entitled ’Language, Gender and Power in Morocco’ written by Fatima Sadiqi. The book is edited by Hanna Herzog and Ann Braude of Harvard University, and is published by Palgrave (...)

17 jui. 2009 | | The View From Fez

Comment

Innovation at the Bottom of the Pyramid : The Olyset Net in Africa

A few years ago I read C.K. Prahalad’s The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid : Eradicating Poverty Through Profits, a stunning book about how development can take place and successful economies can emerge even in the poorest of places. Prahalad (...)

16 jui. 2009 | | David Eaves

Arts & Entertainment

Behind the Bedroom Door : Women Write About Sex

The personal essay collection "Behind the Bedroom Door : Essays About Sex by Today’s Most Gifted Women Writers," had some striking pieces. The themes varied, from warm and amusing to deeply serious : illness, betrayal, the appeal of greasy (...)

6 jui. 2009 | | Kesher Talk

Arts & Entertainment

Review: ’Neal Cassady: The Fast Life of A Beat Hero’ & The Dark Side of Fame

Like many a child of the Sixties, I exalted over the writings and the adventures of Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and the other Beats, but it was a free spirit by the name of Neal Cassady who held a special attraction for me. For want of (...)

24 Jun. 2009 | | Shaun Mullen

People

24 avr. 2009 | | BlogTO

Arts & Entertainment

Indecent behaviour at a police station, TPCA 1847

This essay by Ian McEwan in the Guardian Review shows precisely why the Decent influence on British intellectual life is so damn depressing. You may think, and I would say the AaroWatch crew are guilty of this, that they are just a bunch of wankers left (...)

3 jui. 2008 | 1 comment | Alex Harrowell

Politics

the rEVOLution will not be publicized...

In another of a long string of incompetent campaign moves, Ron Paul has just published his provocatively-titled new book, The Revolution : A Manifesto. Your local mega-bookstore probably won’t have it in stock, but it’s currently second only (...)

18 avr. 2008 | | svf

Arts & Entertainment

Harry Potter author sues Harry Potter fan

J.K. Rowling sues Steven Vander Ark, a fan who has laid some plans. Joanne Kathleen Murray Rowling leads a surreal life. The woman writes under the pen name J. K. Rowling. As the celebrated British author of the Harry Potter fantasy series, she enjoys an (...)

15 Apr. 2008 | | Michael Teodoro G. Ting Jr.

Comment

Retribution, by Max Hastings

In the course of the war, Germany lost 781 submarines, Japan 128. By contrast, the Japanese navy sank only 41 American submarines, 18 percent of those which saw combat duty. Six more were lost accidentally on Pacific patrols. Even these relatively modest (...)

31 mar. 2008 | | Marginal Revolution

Comment

Jeff Sachs’s Common Wealth

A few MR readers have written in and asked for a more detailed assessment of Jeff Sachs’s new book Common Wealth : Economics for a Crowded Planet. I’d like to go through some of the core chapters of the book, focusing not so much on the book (...)

26 mar. 2008 | | Marginal Revolution

Comment

Common Wealth : Economics for a Crowded Planet

That’s the new Jeff Sachs book. It promotes resource pessimism, Nordic-style social democracy, foreign aid, and a fundamental rethinking of U.S. foreign policy. Most of all it expresses a faith in global cooperation. Sachs is very smart and, though (...)

17 mar. 2008 | | Marginal Revolution

Comment

Kathy Sierra : Storyboarding for Non-Fiction

Kathy Sierra talks about storyboarding(click to enlarge) How do you create riveting technical presentations and user manuals ? Tell a story. Kathy Sierra is teaching the tutorial and using her own experience creating the ’Head First’ books (...)

4 mar. 2008 | | Phil Windley

Comment

Book forum : Tim Harford’s chapter six on Schelling’s segregation model

Tim Harford has the best exposition of Tom Schelling’s segregation model I have read. Maybe no one prefers segregation, but if you mind being a minority in a neighborhood an invisible hand process can lead to segregated outcomes. Individuals will (...)

12 fév. 2008 | | Marginal Revolution

Media

Are you sufficiently inconvenienced yet?

An Inconvenient Book, by Glenn Beck. Threshold Editions, 304 pages. Reviewed by Werner Patels After learning about the inconvenient truth from a former and failed presidential candidate, Americans, and anyone else who cares (or doesn’t), are now (...)

2 Jan. 2008 | | Werner Patels

Comment

Speed reading the coverage of ’Love and Sex With Robots’

The reviews of David Levy’s book predicting human-robot marriage (and, um, other activities) are in and they’re... skeptical : + In the New York Times, Robin Marantz Henig writes that her experiences in reporting a previous story about (...)

5 déc. 2007 | | Bioethics.net

Comment

Brave new world

In the 24th century, Starfleet personnel will write up their reports, read books and do a host of other things on small devices known as PADDs - in the world of Star Trek, that is. Thanks to online bookseller Amazon, we are now a step closer to the world (...)

22 Nov. 2007 | | Werner Patels

Comment

Books John Nye should read

Since the 1990s the policies of the three major players (Taiwan, China, and the United States) have become unstable in many ways. The possibility of a miscalculation by any participant with respect to the two others is quite high. China thinks that (...)

11 oct. 2007 | | Marginal Revolution

Comment

Authors of Bestseller Crucial Conversations Bring Us, Influencer - The Power To Change Anything

I always thought the ability to influence and the ability to persuade were much the same thing. If you can influence someone’s behavior it’s probably because you persuaded them to see something your way, right ? I headed to the dictionary to (...)

3 oct. 2007 | | BusinessKnowMoreMedia

Comment

Farewell to Alms, final session

The final section of Greg’s book has many fascinating bits, but I would rather conclude by summing up why the book is important. The Industrial Revolution, or whatever it was that happened, is the big question in Western history. Yet most economists (...)

13 sep. 2007 | | Marginal Revolution

Comment

The doubts of mother Teresa are saintly

A new book entitled ’Come Be My Light’ puts together in one place Mother Teresa’s writings where she struggled privately with emptiness and darkness towards her faith in God and all that is good. "Where is my Faith - even deep down (...)

3 Sep. 2007 | | James Anthony Mehrle, Jr.

Comment

Can you judge a book by its cover ?

I read Darfur : The Ambiguous Genocide, by Gerard Prunier, and was quite impressed. I thought "what a smart and unbiased introduction to such a difficult topic." But why was I impressed ? I don’t know nearly enough about the topic to judge the (...)

3 aoû. 2007 | | Marginal Revolution

Comment

My Dinner with Ayaan and Alexandr

I just finished reading Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. I found it a page-turner, with a propulsive force as Hirsi moves through her tumultuous life. Her uncompromising message came after a profound moral awakening that reminded me of the journey of (...)

30 jui. 2007 | | Kesher Talk

Arts & Entertainment

Conquering Gotham

Last month, I heard an interview on the Diane Rehm Show with Jill Jonnes about her book Conquering Gotham. The book tells the story of the Pennsylvania Railroads effort to bring rail service into Manhattan. The effort combined financial, engineering, (...)

24 jui. 2007 | 1 comment | Phil Windley

Arts & Entertainment

Latest Harry Potter online

Is anyone still interested in the Harry Potter books ? My family lost interest after the second one. Anyhow, they’re definitely a cut above the average kid’s book from all kinds of points of view, the fact they’re just as popular with (...)

18 jui. 2007 | 1 comment | Jon Newton

Business

War, Wine, and Taxes

John Nye’s new War, Wine, and Taxes : The Political Economy of Anglo-French Trade, 1689-1900 argues that 19th century Britain was not nearly as free trade as is commonly supposed. Here is one summary of that argument. Nye also argues that an odd (...)

2 jui. 2007 | 1 comment | Marginal Revolution

People

Richard Rorty dies

Here is one account, not many obits are up yet. Rorty was important for economists for a few reasons... 1. He emphasized that there is no unique way to translate the results of a model into an interpretation of the real world. This is trivial for those (...)

12 jui. 2007 | | Marginal Revolution

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