They read them so we don’t have to

Posted on July 30, 2012 by Frederick Guy

From Sunday’s (London) Observer:

Victoria Coren explains that what draws readers to Fifty Shades of Grey is not sex, but – I’ll let her explain why – pancakes and maple syrup.

Which will not be as kinky as some had hoped, but probably taste better than stale British upper crust: Alexander Larman ~~reviews~~ discards the Memoirs of former Times editor William Rees-Mogg:

“Meaningless name-dropping … Virtually everybody significant in his life he met while up at Oxford… Pooterish banality … collection of measured banalities and grandly privileged utterances.”

The review is followed by a helpful link for ordering the book.

Don’t count on global governance…

Posted on July 26, 2012 by Frederick Guy

Say Rodrik, Zedillo, Frieden & Pettis.

Sadly, I think they’re correct. This is one of the reasons we see governance shifting to regional blocs like the EU and regional mega-states like China.

Canal towpath as security threat

Posted on July 25, 2012 by Frederick Guy

The Olympics have actually emptied much of London. I cycled in to work yesterday, and it was quiet. Russell Square, between the tube station of the same name and the British Museum, has been made into some sort of Olympic(TM) bus hub, with all the regular bus stops closed. There aren’t many cars about. A student came to see me at 5pm and had to get security to let her in because our building was locked up tight – usually, the front door’s open until 9. All very nice, if you’re riding a bike, though I expect most restaurants in central London will lose quite a bit from this big festival.
Continue reading →

Going up

Posted on July 25, 2012 by Frederick Guy

This is The Escalator. If you live in a bubble world of rational discourse, it may seem an unnecessary demonstration of the obvious, but as you will have heard there are millions who do subscribe to petro-funded climate ~~skeptic~~denial stories based on cherry-picked short-term trends (the blue lines). When you meet such a person, it would be an act of loving kindness towards them and all of us to take some time out to show him or her the graphs above, together with the explanation here (that, together with the follow-up posts also make a good tutorial in graphical data analysis). There’s a lot more good material at the same site: SkepticalScience.

The information economy doesn’t pay its taxes

Posted on July 20, 2012 by Frederick Guy

At least, it doesn’t in California. Click for graphic (courtesy of a site bizarrely called “MastersDegreeOnline.org”)

Kenya vs. Jersey

Posted on July 19, 2012 by Frederick Guy

An imagined war on tax havens…

Monbiot: no peak oil, only warming

Posted on July 18, 2012 by Frederick Guy

Anybody still entertaining the notion that peak oil would somehow help us kick the carbon habit should see this nice piece by George Monbiot in the Guardian.

At least since plublication of The Limits to Growth (LTG) in 1972, many have put natural resource limits and the damage caused by pollution in the same frame. Continue reading →

ECB in Spain: finally hitting the bondholders?

Posted on July 17, 2012 by Frederick Guy

It’s about time. If this is true, it’s a step in the right direction – towards a fairer sharing of the burden of the crisis, towards increased demand (reduced austerity), and towards creation of a more stable financial system through a reduction in moral hazard.

Save the poor German banks!

Posted on June 30, 2012 by Frederick Guy

In case you were still wondering who was being bailed out (h.t. Counterparties) in Spain…
Blaming the governments of the Eurozone periphery for the current banking & currency crisis is not so different from blaming the mayors of Atlanta and San Bernardino for the US housing bubble.