With the quality of teaching in economics often so poor, it is good to see discussions of teaching methods that work. Robert Frank’s writing assignments force his students to explain a real-world story with economics, without hiding behind graphs and terminology. The ability he is developing in his students, to apply concepts to [...]
After Hurricane Katrina, Tyler Cowen posted a link to a post on Peter Gordon’s weblog, which quoted extensively a Randal O’Toole article, titled “Lack of Automobility Key to New Orleans Tragedy”. The thrust of this post was that the automobile is key to evacuations, and that Katrina proved that car-free cities are a bad [...]
This was at a Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing today with Michael Crichton as the key witness.
The money quote: “Mr. Chairman, given the profound human suffering and ecological damage along the Gulf Coast, why are we having a hearing that features a fiction writer as our key witness?”
Jeffords also reassures us that he [...]
In Friedrich Hayek’s “The Constitution of Liberty”, he lays the groundwork for his argument for liberty in part through the idea that advances in civilization come in the form of the ability of an individual to take advantage of knowledge he does not possess:
“In other words, it is largely because civilization enables us constantly to [...]
The number one way to not prevent a shortage of something is to give people every reason to believe that the item won’t be there tomorrow, and then ask them not to stockpile it for themselves. Somebody please explain this to the Governor of Georgia. From CNN’s Rita coverage:
“Ga. Gov. asks schools to [...]
As a follow-up to Tavis’s post on Global Warming and Hurricanes, it’s worth pointing out the research covered in a St. Petersburg Times story, which suggests that the increase in hurricane numbers that has occurred over the past decade is caused not by global warming, but by a phenomenon known as the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation. [...]
This is intended as a super-basic introduction to one of the first steps in understanding basic economics: learning how we use curves to model market interactions. This piece only discusses from where supply and demand curves are derived, in super-simple terms. I’d really appreciate editorial comments on its clarity and accuracy; I have [...]
“There are scores of contexts – for instance the clothes you wear are one aspect of your everyday context but they do not take into account where you live, your age, your sex, et. cetera. Media and technology that respond to you, that is ‘context-aware’ – the new hip term in the tech world [...]
A stylistic note…
Classic English style dictates that the relative placement of punctuation and quotation marks is to be determined logically. Thus, commas and periods typically come after quotation marks, as in the following example:
…a post titled “Don’t Linger in this CAFE”, showing once and for all…
In America, we use a different set of rules:
“Put [...]
What follows is a passage from “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” by Robert Pirsig. It’s one of my favorite books, both because it speaks to that part of me that has spent so many hours working as a mechanic and in part because Pirsig’s insights strike eerily close to home.
I’m including this [...]