Monday, February 22, 2010

Natural Experiments of History - Diamond and Robinson (ed.)

Jared Diamond ("Guns Germs and Steel") and James Robinson ("Reversal of Fortune" with Acemoglu and Johnson) have edited the book. The table of contents is impressive!:
1. Controlled Comparison and Polynesian Cultural Evolution
Patrick V. Kirch
2. Exploding Wests: Boom and Bust in Nineteenth-Century Settler Societies
James Belich
3. Politics, Banking, and Economic Development: Evidence from New World Economies
Stephen Haber
4. Intra-Island and Inter-Island Comparisons
Jared Diamond
5. Shackled to the Past: The Causes and Consequences of Africa's Slave Trades
Nathan Nunn
6. Colonial Land Tenure, Electoral Competition, and Public Goods in India
Abhijit Banerjee and Lakshmi Iyer
7. From Ancien Régime to Capitalism: The Spread of the French Revolution as a Natural Experiment
Daron Acemoglu, Davide Cantoni, Simon Johnson, and James A. Robinson
* Afterword: Using Comparative Methods in Studies of Human History
Jared Diamond and James A. Robinson

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Physics envy

"Any scientist who doesn’t have physics envy is an idiot."

J.M. Epstein in REMARKS ON THE FOUNDATIONS OF AGENT-BASED
GENERATIVE SOCIAL SCIENCE. (HT Bernardo Furtado)

Friday, February 19, 2010

Thursday, February 18, 2010

The first law of development

There is no street children where tap water is safe.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Sunday, February 7, 2010

New movies

  • Moon (2009)-a retro sci-fi movie. Kevin Spacey is the voice of the computer Hal Sam.
  • The invention of lying - At first glance, it is another feel-good movie from Hollywood. It is not. Thanks, Ricky Gervais.
  • Flood with love for the kid. A one man remake of do Rambo First Blood (!?!?!?). The critics say it is great.
Bonus track: how to watch Daily Show and the Office outside the US.

Friday, February 5, 2010

Netbook and Windows 7

Surprisingly, Windows 7 runs quite well in my new Lenovo S10-3t with only 1G of RAM.

Thursday, February 4, 2010