Learning From Napoleon – Russia, The Underestimated Enemy I THE GREAT WAR – Week 12
16 Oct 2019 Leave a comment
in defence economics, war and peace Tags: World War I
Cultural appropriation: can minorities appropriate the culture of other minorities?
15 Oct 2019 Leave a comment
This is the kind of question that arises when you adopt full-blown intersectionalism. It’s apparently been decided that it’s okay to culturally “appropriate up“, i.e., Chinese people can wear jeans, and Africans suits, but it’s not okay to “appropriate down“, so that white people can’t wear cornrows or play jazz—at least not without explicitly acknowledging the borrowing and, as this article by Bianca Lambert, a freelance beauty writer, maintains, studying all the nuances of that borrowing.
The article at hand is, of course, at PuffHo, and the answer to the question in the title is a clear “yes: it’s appropriation for minorities to adopt black culture.” But it’s apparently not wrong for blacks to adopt Hispanic or Hindu culture. Click on the screenshot to read:
Most of the article is the usual culture-protection and calling-out of appropriators, and not worth commenting on again; but the thesis…
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The Delusion of Diversity Destroys Our Common Humanity.
15 Oct 2019 Leave a comment
Heather MacDonald, on how the Delusion of Diversity Destroys Our Common Humanity. Well, yes. “Diversity” has become one of the big judgemental words. You have to measure up! But why and who is doing the measuring?
I would suggest that you can find more real diversity among groups of all one race, or all one ethnic origin than among a university’s sophomore class, But it’s always valuable to question one’s assumptions! That’s one of Heather MacDonald’s greatest skills.
BBC’s ME editor says “there haven’t been all that many” terror attacks in Israel
15 Oct 2019 Leave a comment
The BBC’s Middle East editor recently gave a long interview to Paul Blanchard at ‘Media Masters’.
“Jeremy Bowen is the BBC’s Middle East editor. One of Britain’s best-known war correspondents, over the last 35 years he has brought the region’s most important stories to our screens – despite being shot, robbed at gunpoint, threatened, arrested and even thrown in jail. In this in-depth interview, Jeremy relives some of his most pivotal moments, from his first foreign assignment covering the invasion of Kuwait in 1990 to his recent battle with cancer; discusses the practical challenges of reporting impartially on issues like Israel, when both sides complain every report is biased and even the choice of individual words have to be taken carefully; and takes us behind the scenes of his interview with Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.”
Listeners to that podcast (transcript available here) may have been surprised by the extent…
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Global climate agreements could be counterproductive
15 Oct 2019 Leave a comment
by Judith Curry
International climate agreements like the Kyoto Protocol may discourage much-needed investment in renewable energy sources, and hence be counterprodutive, according to new research.
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@WorldBank was said to fight world poverty one staff member at a time. Is one field research grant at a time to reconfirm the obvious any better?
15 Oct 2019 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, comparative institutional analysis, development economics, econometerics, economics of education, growth disasters, growth miracles, health economics Tags: The fatal conceit
Nobel prize for discovering if you subsidise something, you see more of it!! Many years worth of randomized controlled trials just to make sure in dirt poor countries. Didn’t know child vaccination payoffs so marginal that you had to check.
15 Oct 2019 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, development economics, econometerics, economics of education, economics of information, growth disasters, growth miracles, health economics Tags: The fatal conceit, The pretence to knowledge
Accent Expert Explains How to Tell Accents Apart | @WIRED
15 Oct 2019 Leave a comment
in economics of education Tags: economics of languages
“I vividly remember traders screaming, ‘The market’s broken! I can’t get a price, any price! Said @JARRODWKERR IN @THESPINOFFTV?
15 Oct 2019 Leave a comment
in economic history, financial economics, global financial crisis (GFC), macroeconomics, monetary economics
Figures 7A and 7B display data for the interest rate on commercial paper with a maturity of 90 days for financial and non-nancial corporations2 . These figures show that, during the financial crisis, this interest rate has risen for financial institutions and has barely budged for non-financial institutions with a AA rating. It has risen fairly dramatically for non-financial corporations with an A2/P2 rating. Note that, even though the interest rate for financial institutions has risen recently, it is still well below the levels that prevailed from the beginning of 2006 to the middle of 2007. These figures show that the financial crisis has not led commercial paper rates to rise to levels well beyond historical levels. Taken together, Figures 6A through 7B show that the third claim is false, at least as of October 15.
Did interbank lending dry up at onset of the #GFC as claimed by @JarrodWKerr in @TheSpinoffTV?
15 Oct 2019 1 Comment
in economic history, financial economics, global financial crisis (GFC), macroeconomics, monetary economics
“We knew we were witnessing history, but at the same time, we were haemorrhaging,” he wrote in a piece for The Spinoff marking the crash’s 10th anniversary. “I vividly remember traders screaming, ‘The market’s broken! I can’t get a price, any price!’… The fear of contagion crippled financial markets, and each bank was asking the same question of the other: ‘what dodgy exposure do you have?'”
From https://thespinoff.co.nz/business/sme/15-10-2019/the-economist-who-forgot-everything-he-learned/
BTW, what Kerr really said:
We knew we were witnessing history, but at the same time, we were haemorrhaging. I vividly remember traders screaming, ‘The market’s broken, the market’s broken! I can’t get a price, any price!’. Screens and keyboards were smashed, and millions were lost. I still to this day struggle to believe the so-called ‘major banks’ refused to deal with each other. The fear of contagion crippled financial markets, and each bank was asking the same question of the other: ‘What dodgy exposure do you have?’ The market for bank bills, the short-term pieces of paper (IOUs) that banks buy off each other and which account for a large part of their funding, froze. An interest rate that was ‘always’ 7bps (percentage points) above the cash rate (OCR) sudden became 180bps above cash. That’s banker talk for ‘bloody hell, the cost of everything we do has just blown out’. Credit, the availability of money to do stuff like buy a home, is the oil in the economic engine and when it dries up the engine seizes. What we had was a recession, and it was a bad one. Bailouts came in a number of forms but many feared it wasn’t enough. (emphasis by this blog)
BTW, one basis point (BP) is one hundredth of one percentage point, not a whole percentage point as the editor of his article suggested.
Why ‘Sign in With Apple’ Beats Passwords and Facebook | @WSJ
15 Oct 2019 Leave a comment
in economics of information, economics of media and culture, entrepreneurship, industrial organisation, law and economics, property rights Tags: creative destruction
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