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How Think-Tanks Work: Well, when it comes to the astroturf free-marketeer kind, they just take anyone’s money to say anything. Exploit malaria to help Philip Morris fight off tobacco regulation? No problem!
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Great work by Tim Lambert to expose the extreme mendacity of the campaign against Rachel Carson and, by insane extension, the use of insecticide-treated bed-nets to combat malaria.
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It’s Bob Zoellick, and Dani’s sceptical: “The last thing the Bank needs is a free-market zealot”. Interesting points on state intervention in Chile’s exports too.
links for 2007-05-31
31-May-07
links for 2007-05-27
27-May-07
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With less need to be neighbourly, we have less common ground on which to establish connections with those around us, so we find need to worry more about incivility and anti-social behaviour, so we ‘outsource our social control’
links for 2007-05-22
22-May-07
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Good review of Tom Slee’s book by Alex Tabarrok, and the final kick I shouldn’t have needed to go and buy the thing.
Comments snafu
20-May-07
It’s just been pointed out to me that there’s a problem with the comments function on this blog. I’m away at the moment but I’ll have a look at it when I get home during the week. Thanks to Luis Enrique for the heads-up!
Threats to the nation #94: Owen Barder
20-May-07
Tim brings news of a bizarre attack in the Daily Mail on, of all people, Owen Barder, who is a blogger, authority on international development, civil servant and a friend of this blog. I won’t go into the details (Tim does) but suffice to say the mouth-breathers at the Mail don’t seem to have anything better to do then trawl the internet looking for public servants whose characters they can assassinate because they happen to have (or had) an opinion not shared by the paper which said “Hurrah for the Blackshirts!”.
Obviously the people who produce the Mail are nasty cowards, but we already knew that. What I didn’t appreciate until today was how pathetic they are. To rational people, Owen is not a worthy target for such a hatchet-job: he is just a hard-working, scrupulously decent civil servant who, like many intelligent and principled people, has developed his own opinions out of reasoned deliberation rather than some deep-seated fear and loathing of a complicated world, which I think is the case with Daily Mail writers. But we are not dealing here with rational people.
Owen Barder is the epitome of what can be so good about the civil service. The Daily Mail, and its ‘reporter’ Simon Walters, are the epitome of what is so very wrong about the British press. I doubt they’re capable of feeling shame, but they really fucking should.
Update: It’s really heartening to see so many bloggers giving this story the reaction it deserves: in addition to Tim (who I should have complimented on his willingness to wade through shit to point out just how ridiculous the Mail story is, there’s Alex, Unity and Justin that I know of. At least four people,including myself, have left comments on the Mail story (okay, I’ll link to the thing if I must) pointing out how they’ve effectively managed to bring shame on a newspaper known for supporting the Nazis - none of these have yet been published, further evidence of the kind of people we’re dealing with.
links for 2007-05-17
17-May-07
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Fine fisking of Frank Field’s critique of the New Deal for the young unemployed.
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Brilliant Julien Temple documentary on Joe Strummer the man, about a million million miles from a hagiography and all the better for it. Showing from Friday at a cinema near you!
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A great little comix shop in London - was in there briefly today to get an Osamu Tezuka, will definitely go back for a more extended browse soon.
links for 2007-05-16
16-May-07
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Environmental and Urban Economics: Explaining Declining U.S Urban Crime: Lead Emissions vs. AbortionLess harmful lead emissions = less crime. Incidentally, unequal exposure to lead during childhood probably explains a lot of the black-white education attainment gap in the US.
links for 2007-05-13
13-May-07
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Bertie Ahern, unfussy but spot-on:” We cannot change what went before on this ground or across these islands, but history can make many turns, and today in this special place for our history it is another good day”
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Blimey: “almost a third of Brazilian schoolgirls between the ages of 14 and 17 are out of school because they are pregnant”.
links for 2007-05-12
12-May-07
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“I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, ‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.’”
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Yes, that is scary. “Every year, 14 million to 18 million new malaria cases are reported in Tanzania, and 100,000–125,000 deaths occur”
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Hmm: “The data available for the period since 1990 raise concerns that the climate system, in particular sea level, may be responding more quickly to climate change than our current generation of models indicates.”
links for 2007-05-11
11-May-07
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Beautifully argued: “As corruption goes, this particular episode is penny-ante corruption … but it is corruption, it is a straw, and it is the straw that breaks the camel’s back”.
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Best climate post ever.
links for 2007-05-10
10-May-07
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Under what conditions will trade liberalization enhance economic performance?
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Blimey, the man’s on a roll.
links for 2007-05-03
03-May-07
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Gas flares “have contributed more greenhouse gases than all of sub-Saharan Africa combined, according to the World Bank”