Holiday

Sorry, but I've been too busy to blog. I was enjoying a pre-holiday burst of productivity.
I'll be back in two weeks.

Hayek, the "socialist"

Has Glenn Beck actually read The Road to Serfdom? If so, I would like to know his take on this:

"There is no reason why, in a society which has reached the general level of wealth ours has, the first kind of security should not be guaranteed to all without endangering general freedom; that is: some minimum of food, shelter and clothing, sufficient to preserve health. Nor is there any reason why the state should not help to organize a comprehensive system of social insurance in providing for those common hazards of life against which few can make adequate provision" Hayek (1944)

Markets in everything: Kaggle

Kaggle is a website to set up prediction competitions. What a great idea! Somebody uploads the data, and number crunchers all over the world will compete for the best predictions. The themes range from the mundane (Eurovision voting *) to the important (HIV progression).
(HT More or Less).

(*BTW,the unexpected winner of Eurovision 2010 is the perfect guilty pleasure song).

Napoleon in Russia meets Google Maps

The famous Charles Minard graph: 1869 and 2010.
(HT Rafael Pereira)

Strange world: industrial tourism

The last French trend. Amazon.fr has even a section on the subject. (But I'd rather visit the 300,000 workers Foxconn unit in Shenzen.