192.com London street map and aerial photography
Incredibly detailed aerial photos of London - 4cm/pixel, apparently. Let the great ’spot-the-celebrity-sunbathing-naked-in-their-back-garden’ game begin!
(tags: maps london photography)...
The Sharpener » Blog Archive » Tax and Attacks on the Sick
Very good piece by Merrick about incapacity benefit
(tags: poverty welfare)
CJR: Secrets of the City
What The Wire reveals about urban journalism, and much else besides. Hat-tip to The Filter^
(tags: tv america cities media)
VOA News - African Music Treasures Blog - Home
Rare gems of African music from the VOA archives
(tags: music africa)...
Language Log: OK, you wireistas, listen up
Exhaustive linguistic archaeology of ‘yo’ as third person singular pronoun in The Wire.
(tags: language america tv)
Moody’s lament: Our job is too hard - Salon.com - How the World Works
Credit rater says it can’t rate credit: “Risk traceability has declined, probably forever … in the financial industry … more competition means more, and perhaps socially undesirable, risk-taking.”
(tags: finance markets economics)...
Streetsblog » Hans Monderman, Engineer of Livable Streets, 1947-2008
(tags: transport cycling cities liberty)
No joke | Gristmill: The environmental news blog | Grist
Land-use policy is not a laughing matter, says Ryan Avent, summing up how car-led growth in sprawling American suburbs is going to bring some nasty consequences.
(tags: transport cities environment)
Dani Rodrik’s weblog: Jeff Sachs vindicated
Free distribution of insecticide-treated bednets works better than (subsidised) market mechanisms. Would be nice to see this acknowledged by the various free-marketeers who loudly proclaimed the contrary, but I won’t hold my breath
(tags: free-marketeers health malaria aid)
squattercity: A big year for the wrecking ball
Mumbai and Istanbul are...
Immigrants Assimilate asCommunities, Not Just as Individuals - paper by Timothy Hatton and Andrew Leigh - AEA 2008
“We find that history matters in immigrant assimilation: the stronger is the tradition of immigration from a given source country, the better the economic outcomes for new immigrants from that source”.
(tags: economics sociology)
2008 AEA Conference Papers Listings
Stuff your face with economics papers
(tags: economics)
Skills in the City - William Strange, Marigee Bacolod, Bernardo Blum - AEA 2008
Fascinating: “the urban wage premium is … larger for a worker with strong people skills … soft skills are an essential aspect of agglomeration economies … Urbanization thus enhances thinking and social interaction, rather than...
links via Cognition January 7th, 2008 at 16:55
Puisi-poesy: “The Almond Tree” (John Stallworthy)
(tags: reading)
“Walking Away” - C. Day-Lewis
(tags: reading)
230 - Papua New Guinea, the Linguistic Superpower « strange maps
A sort of cartogram of linguistic diversity, with country size varying by the number of extant indigenous languages.
(tags: language)...
Edward L. Glaeser and Giacomo A. M. Ponzetto, ‘Did the death of distance hurt Detroit and help New York?’
Clever: While cheaper communications might erode some of the old advantages of urban proximity, by increasing global markets they may also increase the return to ideas and thus drive more growth in ‘ideas-producing’ cities
(tags: economics cities)...
Bradford Plumer
Why good old regulation may be a better spur for technological innovation than government splurging money on R&D. Relevant to current climate change debates, of course.
(tags: climate environment science)...
Crooked Timber » » A lot or a little ?
Aid per person to Africa over time hasn’t really been that much, no matter what William Easterly tells you.
(tags: aid africa)...
UK heading for second hottest year on record | Environment | The Guardian
In other words, the country has *cooled* since 2006. A new ice age is approaching!
(tags: environment climate)...
Charles Kenny: Baywatch: Bigger than Aid?
Someone’s got too much time on their hands: “without considerably greater academic attention to the subject, we may never know the coefficient of Baywatch episodes on per capita income growth.”
(tags: economics aid)...
EconLog, Global Warming and CO2, Arnold Kling: Library of Economics and Liberty
A good case study in how far some people go to dress up ignorance in the language of intellectual investigation. What is it about global warming that makes so many free-marketeers go crazy?
(tags: climate environment free-marketeers)...
Liverpool legends past and future with striking similarities | Liverpool - Times Online
Torres meets Dalglish. Kenny: “We are the ones who carry out the dream, the dream that the supporters will never achieve because they can’t play. So they live through us”. Great article.
(tags: football)...
Cycleliciousness [Copenhagen Bicycle Culture Blog]: Cyclopornography Film - Copenhagen Bike Ride
Nice idea - time-lapse footage of one Copenhager’s cycle into work
(tags: cycling denmark)...
EconLog, Climate Skeptic Movie, Arnold Kling: Library of Economics and Liberty
Arnold Kling makes a fool of himself over global warming, again. This time he’s finding the ‘Great Global Warming Swindle’ film ‘convincing’. Which makes me wonder, why are so many self-professed sceptics so gullible?
(tags: environment climate)...
Expected value « Common Tragedies
How expected expectations support the case for cap-and-trade over a carbon tax.
(tags: environment climate economics)...
Greenbriar Picture Shows - Campaigning for Kane
Original posters, advertisements and other promotional material for Citizen Kane. Tagline: “It’s Terrific!”
(tags: films)
Why poor kids may make sicker adults
Evidence that poverty and other chronic risk factors induce physiological changes, to stress regulatory mechanisms in the cardiovascular and neuroendocrine systems, that appear to be related to long-term health problems
(tags: health poverty)
Economist’s View: Are Immigrants Good for Cities?
Evidence from the US suggests that immigration increases wages, but that’s almost exactly cancelled out by higher house prices, leaving owner occupiers as the main (native) beneficiaries.
(tags: economics migration cities)...
Stage6 · Liverpool Nottingham Forest Season 1987-88 - Video and Download · Albatros99
Football nirvana for Liverpool fans - the great team of the late 80s, with Beardsley, Barnes, Aldridge and Houghton running Forest (2nd in the league at the time) ragged. No exaggeration to say they could easily have had twice as many.
(tags: football)
Arguments from Global Warming Skeptics
Ooh, handy: The top 47 arguments against AGW and what’s wrong with them.
(tags: climate environment science)
BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Climate science: Sceptical about bias
Richard Black does his best to find an anti-sceptic bias in mainstream science, but - surprise! - no-one can show him any.
(tags: climate science)
Global Development: Views from the Center: Will Cutting Red Tape...
RealClimate » Gee-Whiz Geoengineering
Why trying to blot out the sun might not be the cleverest answer to global warming.
(tags: climate environment)...
FT.com / Comment & analysis - Rethinking development policy: A new consensus
(tags: Development Trade)...
Heaven on Earth | Art & Architecture | Guardian Unlimited Arts
Jonathan Jones asks, is Gaudi the greatest urban architect of modern times? Yes, yes he is.
(tags: architecture cities)...
Crooked Timber » » How the Edwardians Spoke
(tags: languages)
EconLog, Clark gives Greif Grief, Arnold Kling: Library of Economics and Liberty
“It is indeed a sad irony that the Achilles heel of the new institutional economics is the very definition of the term “institution.”" Much like how microeconomics seems to have great difficulty defining “utility” in a non-tautologous way, I suppose.
(tags: economics)...
Global Development: Views from the Center: The End of An African Nightmare: Steve Radelet Writes from Liberia
“I hate to be a sexist, but maybe we ought to put more women in charge in tough places around the world.”
(tags: africa politics development)
5 Myths About Sick Old Europe - washingtonpost.com
(tags: economics free-marketeers)...
Democracy - Power Broken: Thomas Bender reviews ‘Robert Moses and the Modern City’
Reassessing the reassessment of Robert Moses and his impact on New York, Bender concludes that public engagement has improved urban development rather than pointlessly stymieing it, and that we need more democratic involvement, not less.
(tags: new_york planning design architecture cities)
Global Development: Views from the Center: Trade Policy for the Bottom Billion: AGOA is good but it’s not enough
Reviewing Paul Collier’s proposals on trade, Kimberly Ann Elliott persuasively argues that the rules and multilateral nature of the WTO give the poorest countries much more power than a bilateralised system of trade rules would.
(tags: trade)
The Bellows - Ryan...
BLDGBLOG: Inhaling 9/11
For weeks after 9/11, New Yorkers were inhaling lead, mercury and god knows what else is produced when you vaporize two skyscrapers. They’ll continue feeling the effects for a long time.
(tags: new_york architecture health)
The Nation: The Passenger - Ryszard Kapuscinski
Andrew Rice hits on something when he notes that what Kapuscinski mainly communicated, albeit vividly and in beautifully evocative language, was the experience of mutual misunderstanding.
(tags: books africa)...
Grasping Reality with Both Hands: Brad DeLong’s Semi-Daily Journal - The Decadent Perversity of George W. Bush
Sidney Blumenthal says it’s even worse than we thought: ‘Every morning, Josh Bolten, the chief of staff, greets Bush with the same words: “Thank you for the privilege of serving today”‘
(tags: america)
Tim Worstall: Acomplia
Makes me proud to be a citizen journalist, it really does
(tags: free-marketeers)...
Cycleliciousness [Copenhagen Bicycle Culture]
(tags: cycling denmark transport cities)
Cycle Chic - Copenhagen Girls on Bikes
(tags: cycling denmark photography)
Bradford Plumer - The Tobacco Toll
“One in eight trees cut down each year worldwide is being destroyed for tobacco production … the 9 million acres being deforested annually for tobacco production account for nearly 5 percent of greenhouse gas emissions.”
(tags: health environment climate)
Crooked Timber » » Shedding blood for liberty
Generally not getting involved in endless bloody wars is a good thing, but can have the side-effect of encouraging the less thoughtful elements of society to believe that war is a fun and easy thing to make.
(tags: war)
Grasping Reality with Both...
Bloomberg.com: Opinion - New Evidence on Old Idea That Works for the Poor: Gene Sperling
Clinton’s massive expansion of tax credits should caused much of the reduction in unemployment and welfare enrollment during the 1990s. In other words, it wasn’t just welfare reform.
(tags: america poverty)...
Drifting apart | Free exchange | Economist.com
Another good post, this time on the role of access to education in widening US inequality, and the feedback from that inequality through constrained mobility to lower investment in education and ultimately lower growth
(tags: inequality education economics)...
