Our Word is Our Weapon

Excellent post: "allowing cyclists to turn left at junctions against the red light, may be a reasonable suggestion but it does not address the fundamental problem, that the road lay out, highway rules, signage, priorities and general street ambience are all mitigated againsts cyclists. Those few facilities that have been introduced, such as advance stop lines, are welcome, but we are still miles away from putting cyclists at the heart of the traffic system, which is what is needed to really protect them."

Yet more criticism of Dambisa Moyo's 'Dead Aid', this time with some useful stuff on the 'but African countries can just borrow on private markets' argument

"the idea that not caring about distribution constitutes some kind of neutral middle ground is an important underlying premise of much practical political debate, and it’s viability stems from the fact that everyone remembers being taught that this is true in their Economics 101 courses."

Aside from that there's the general argument that certain normative arguments in economics seem impervious to evidence.

QFT: "[T]here's no end to conservatives claiming black people hold themselves back through a culture of grievance. Meanwhile conservatives complain that a small tax increase on people in the top income tax bracket is comparable to the oppression of the Jim Crow South."

No.

"Though there's something undeniably exciting, even exhilarating, about the idea of Instant City, a place unencumbered by the past and free to embrace the future, the reality says otherwise. Indeed, this isn't so much a city of the future as a city in denial of the future."

"Often cited comparisons – which look only at the US – find that today’s crisis is milder than the Great Depression. In this column, two leading economic historians show that the world economy is now plummeting in a Great-Depression-like manner. Indeed, world industrial production, trade, and stock markets are diving faster now than during 1929-30. Fortunately, the policy response to date is much better."

"Much of the seeming success of the financial industry has now been revealed as an illusion."

Awesome music, especially that kid on the single-string guitar

Download a stupendous compilation of South African music, and buy more on 45

Looks like Dambisa Moyo is even more bonkers than I thought.

It's very unfair, Tyler is just as interesting to watch as to read. Lots of value, in about 12 minutes of video. I liked "It's not about conclusions".

"British and American commanders ensured that the liberation of Paris on 25 August 1944 was seen as a "whites only" victory … black colonial soldiers - who made up around two-thirds of Free French forces - were deliberately removed from the unit that led the Allied advance into the French capital … Many of the "French" division which led the liberation of Paris were Spanish"

Good review of Dambisa Moyo's 'Dead Aid', including some useful analysis of the impact of Chinese investment in Africa.

Nice explanation of role of faulty models and contagious expectations in the financial crash.

QFT: "That is to say, confronted by a problem demanding solutions inimical to libertarian beliefs, libertarians were faced with the choice of reneging on their beliefs or turning their back on science. Tellingly, they chose the latter. One might think that’s a rather drastic decision, given the role scientific endeavors have played in delivering the material prosperity so dear to the hearts of the libertarian world, and one would be right."

Fascinating bit of research by Sam Schulhofer-Wohl and Miguel Garrido: "The Cincinnati Post published its last edition on New Year's Eve 2007, leaving the Cincinnati Enquirer as the only daily newspaper in the market. The next year, fewer candidates ran for municipal office in the suburbs most reliant on the Post, incumbents became more likely to win re-election, and voter turnout fell. We exploit a difference-in-differences strategy — comparing changes in outcomes before and after the Post's closure in suburbs where the newspaper offered more or less intensive coverage — and the fact that the Post's closing date was fixed 30 years in advance to rule out some non-causal explanations for these results. Although our findings are statistically imprecise, they demonstrate that newspapers — even underdogs such as the Post, which had a circulation of just 27,000 when it closed — can have a substantial and measurable impact on public life. "

The excellent Tom Vanderbilt ponders the massive disconnect between the actual danger posed by cyclists and car-drivers to pedestrians and the popular perceptions of each. In London, from 2001 to 2005 there were 535 pedestrians killed by automobile and one killed by cyclists.