Monday 27 April 2009

Morning roundup

First, congrats to Denis Dutton, who's now scheduled for the 2010 TED conference!

A morning links roundup:
  • Easterly on some problems in mosquito net distribution: resale of subsidized net for use as fabric
  • More problems with fMRI studies (note Glenn Harrison's prior take-down of neuroeconomics)
  • Brad Taylor on the massive costs of regulatory impediments to development of anti-aging treatments.
  • Gary Becker on the problems of maintaining central bank independence. New Zealand under the prior government provides a nice case in point (not discussed by Becker): regardless of any signed policy targets agreement, Finance Minister Cullen effectively gave Reserve Bank Governor Bollard the nod to operate well outside the inflation band for extended periods: Sept2005-Sept2006 and Dec2007-Dec2008 inclusive had inflation outcomes above 3%). It took the global financial meltdown to get inflation back to hitting the target band.

2 comments:

  1. Saw Dennis on the Colbert Report earlier in the year. I think he'll talk about his book and the imaginative advantage man has over other animals.
    Doesn't seem all that fresh or impressive to me!

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  2. Except for that so many folks in cultural studies insisted for so long on pure cultural relativism: that we can never understand another culture's art, that there's no common basis for aesthetic appreciation, etc. Denis shows that not to be the case.

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