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mefi
The Next New Deal
With the vaunted post-Cold War "Peace dividend" evaporating, the United States found itself unable to invest adequately in either its infrastructure or its children. Eventually people began to talk of another Great Depression, before the coming of the next New Deal.
posted to MetaFilter by Kwantsar
at 6:27 PM on October 1, 2008
(8 comments)
The financial turmoil of 2007-?: a preliminary assessment and some policy considerations
(pdf) "All episodes of financial distress of a systemic nature, with potentially significant implications for the real economy, arguably have at their root an overextension in risk-taking and in balance sheets in good times, masked by the veneer of a vibrant economy. This overextension generates financial vulnerabilities that are clearly revealed only once the economic environment becomes less benign, in turn contributing to its further deterioration."
A scholarly, sane, relatively brief, accessible-to-the-layperson, and mostly apolitical look at the current turmoil.
posted to MetaFilter by Kwantsar
at 3:31 PM on April 23, 2008
(36 comments)
Was the Wealth of Nations Determined in 1000 B.C.? (pdf)
We assemble a dataset on technology adoption in 1000 BC, 0 AD, and 1500 AD for the predecessors to today’s nation states. We find that this very old history of technology adoption is surprisingly significant for today’s national development outcomes. Although our strongest results are for 1500 A.D., we find that even technology as old as 1000 BC matters in some plausible specifications. (
via)
posted to MetaFilter by Kwantsar
at 10:57 PM on February 26, 2007
(53 comments)
Much
of the “jobs of the future” rhetoric surrounding the eagerness to end shop class and get every warm body into college, thence into a cubicle, implicitly assumes that we are heading to a “post-industrial” economy in which everyone will deal only in abstractions. Yet trafficking in abstractions is not the same as thinking...
posted to MetaFilter by Kwantsar
at 7:53 PM on September 7, 2006
(54 comments)
Charts.
This page contains many charts.
posted to MetaFilter by Kwantsar
at 7:09 PM on August 1, 2006
(22 comments)
Let me tell you what we're gonna do.
We're gonna put them handcuffs in front of ya. Cut you a little slack. But if you don't start operating, we're gonna put the mother fuckers behind your back, and I'm gonna take this slapjack and I'm gonna start working that head over, you understand? ...you sign this son of a bitch, or I'm gonna hit you again.
Audio.
.pdf transcript.
Full Story.
posted to MetaFilter by Kwantsar
at 11:05 PM on April 25, 2006
(61 comments)
Commentary Magazine's Gabriel Schoenfeld
suggests that the
New York Times has violated the
Espionage Act of 1917.
Slate's Jack Shafer
remarks that the case is not too far-fetched, while noting that Scott Johnson of
The Weekly Standard seems to have
anticipated the
Commentary article.
via
posted to MetaFilter by Kwantsar
at 9:56 PM on March 12, 2006
(6 comments)
About ten hours
(over the course of two days) and exactly two bloodshot eyes later, it was complete. I had 100 letters to 100 different companies — stuffed, sealed, stamped, and ready to go. I put all 100 letters into the mail on Friday, February 24, 2006 at 9 AM. Now all that was left to do was sit back and wait for a response (or two?)
via
posted to MetaFilter by Kwantsar
at 8:54 AM on March 4, 2006
(62 comments)
Free land.
Northwest North Dakota has an opportunity for 5,000 people.
Not the first 5,000... the right 5,000.
odds are, you are not a candidate for nw north dakota. you have succumbed to the cities. all of your pleasure must be provided and you gladly stand in long lines to receive them. but if you are of those who is wondering what they are doing in that line, continue this may be the journey you have been waiting for, but had no idea where the line was to get tickets. it's ok; there are no lines in nw north dakota./small>
They're doing it in Kansas, too.
posted to MetaFilter by Kwantsar
at 2:25 PM on November 22, 2005
(49 comments)
Norman Wildberger's New Trigonometry
Dr Norman Wildberger has rewritten the arcane rules of trigonometry and eliminated sines, cosines and tangents from the trigonometric toolkit. The First chapter of his new book, Divine Proportions, is online (.
pdf).
posted to MetaFilter by Kwantsar
at 9:34 PM on September 25, 2005
(21 comments)
Solutions For Grandeur
Nicolas Sarkozy has become the most popular French politician by diving headfirst into the country’s most explosive political issues. If he has his way, this hyperactive, pro-American, Gaullist, free marketer will transform French politics for good. via
posted to MetaFilter by Kwantsar
at 9:25 PM on September 9, 2005
(18 comments)
Local
governments in Colorado have agreed to deliberately impede traffic on existing highways near a toll road in order to protect the toll roads' investors.
Article includes examples of similar public/private "cooperation" in Virginia and California.
posted to MetaFilter by Kwantsar
at 1:24 PM on August 17, 2005
(30 comments)
She was, after all, a girl you could take anywhere.
One minute she could be the slinkiest cat on the hot tin roof, wrapping her dancer’s body... around a client’s body in a hotel elevator. Then, when the door slid open, she’d look classic, like a wife even, on the arm of a Wall Street CEO or Asian electronics magnate.
Last week, she was
busted.
posted to MetaFilter by Kwantsar
at 12:02 PM on August 4, 2005
(55 comments)
How Powerful Is Productivity?
TCS interviews Former Carter Staffer (and Democrat) William Lewis, who makes some interesting remarks about worker productivity:
There were many disparaging comments made in the US and maybe even stronger abroad, (and especially in Japan) about how the US labor force was getting what it deserved because it was lazy, uneducated and maybe even dumb. And of course, the Japanese then showed -- the really capable, competent Japanese manufacturing companies -- showed that was wrong by coming here, building their own factories, managing American labor and taking a lot of other local inputs and coming within five percent of reproducing their home country productivity.
posted to MetaFilter by Kwantsar
at 10:18 PM on June 20, 2005
(11 comments)
Who caught Zacarias Moussaoui?
Clancy Prevost smiles at the absurdity of his story. We are just a few miles down the road from the Eagan flight school where, one month before the September 11th attacks, he tried to teach Zacarias Moussaoui how to fly a Boeing 747.
posted to MetaFilter by Kwantsar
at 6:38 AM on May 24, 2005
(9 comments)
Radley Balko fisks the DEA's Karen Tandy
'So which is it? Are doctors a "very small part of the problem," or are they "the primary sources of diverted pharmaceuticals available on the illicit market?" ...I guess it depends on whether the agency is trumpeting its victories to Congress, or defending its tactics from critics in newspaper op-eds.'
posted to MetaFilter by Kwantsar
at 8:07 AM on May 16, 2005
(34 comments)
Student Attacks Against Teachers: The Revolution of 1966
At the Middle School attached to Beijing Teacher's College, Yu Ruifen, a female biology teacher, was knocked to the ground and beaten in her office. In broad daylight, she was dragged by her legs through the front door and down the steps, her head bumping against the cement; a barrel of boiling water was poured on her. Though she died after approximately two hours of torture, it did not satisfy the students. All other teachers in the "ox-ghost and snake-demon team" were forced to stand around Yu's corpse and take turns beating her.
posted to MetaFilter by Kwantsar
at 6:52 AM on May 2, 2005
(41 comments)
Framing the Economic Debate.
If you read Metafilter,
you've no doubt seen a few links criticizing Bush's handling of the economy. The unabashed partisans at the
Heritage Foundation have put together a document from which many of Bush's talking points about the economy (tonight, and throughout the campaign) are likely to come.
posted to MetaFilter by Kwantsar
at 12:49 PM on October 8, 2004
(16 comments)
Cass Sunstein's
The Future of Free Speech"I seek to defend a particular conception of democracy — a deliberative conception — and to evaluate, in its terms, the outcome of a system with perfect power of filtering."
posted to MetaFilter by Kwantsar
at 11:29 PM on September 13, 2004
(9 comments)
