Category: Uncategorized
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Celebrating and Avoiding Groundhog Day
Happy Groundhog Day to everyone. As a graduate student doing fieldwork and writing up my dissertation, I relate far too well to the circumstances of Bill Murray in that movie (although my piano playing has not improved). A week or so ago I stumbled into a revealing anecdote about China. In order to extend my…
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Travel and Reading
Jessica and I did not make it to Macau during our stay at the Universities Service Centre at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. By the time that we actually do make it there, it seems likely that it will be just another Vegas, if this story is at all accurate. An interesting, and slightly…
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What I’m Reading
Gil and Levitt 2006. “Testing the Efficiency of Markets in the 2002 World Cup.”UNDP Report: Trade on Human Terms — Transforming Trade for Human Development in Asia and the Pacific
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China factoid of the day
Cite – from NRDC via Worldwatch: According to China’s Ministry of Education, 4.13 million students will graduate from universities and colleges in 2006, 750,000 more than last year and three times the number in 2001. (emphasis added) Isn’t there something odd about the number of college graduates tripling in 5 years?
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Historical Counterfactuals
What if … Zheng He’s Chinese fleets had sailed to the Americas before the Europeans? What if … Quebec were a US state? How would the world and subsequent world history have changed? FYI: Historians are strongly skeptical of the Menzies/new map claim regarding Zheng He and the ‘New World.’ However, these things very well…
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Economic Inefficiencies in Health Care
From the front page of nytimes.com: BAD BLOODIn the Treatment of Diabetes, Success Often Does Not PayBy IAN URBINADoctors and hospitals profit by treating complications of diabetes but lose money when they try to prevent them. The article has two related graphics:Good Care, Bad BusinessBad Health, Good Business
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Natural Resources and Natural Monopolies
Backgrounder:Beijing eases oil, coal grip – Wu Zhong in The Standard There are growing indications that the Chinese government, alarmed by last year’s “oil crisis” – which actually may have been manufactured by state- owned oil companies – is finally getting ready to liberalize its energy policy and allow more competition. … While coal miners…
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Bias
Going Nucular compiles essays by the linguist Geoff Nunberg. Each essay focuses on a linguistic oddity that provides some insight into our ever-changing world. In an essay originally published in the New York Times Week in Review (2002.12.22) entitled “Some of My Best Friends,” he points out one that has been incorporated into my (and…
Jeremy Wallace 