Category Archives: economics

heard on the wind

Gary Becker and Richard Posner have a blog (any day now)

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three extropian items

Mike Linksvayer attended a lecture on “Changes in the Disparities in Chronic Diseases During the Course of the Twentieth Century”. Perry Metzger shares a report (pdf) on infrastructure in Somalia. (Later: Michael Tennant comments on it at Strike The Root.) … Continue reading

Posted in economics, futures, medicine | 1 Comment

a limit to fission?

Say, is the number of telephone lines dedicated to modems declining, as traffic moves to broadband? NANPA might know: it affects how soon more areas will need to be split or overlain.

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crimes against astronomy

The Campaign for Dark Skies collects evidence that brighter lights do not deter crime. (Cited by Bruce Schneier; link updated 2006.)

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Great Hackers

quoth Paul Graham: But VCs are mistaken to look for the next Microsoft, because no startup can be the next Microsoft unless some other company is prepared to bend over at just the right moment and be the next IBM. … Continue reading

Posted in economics, neep-neep, psychology | Leave a comment

QotD

Jim Henley on Spider-Man 2: We are fortunate that genuine equality is impossible because it would be the social analog of entropy [ . . . ] ‘heat death’ of the social universe.

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the price of pot

Educated Guesswork relays graphs – purporting to be from the ONDCP, no less – showing that the retail prices of heroin, cocaïne and methamphetamine (as adjusted for purity as well as currency inflation) declined fairly steadily between 1981 and 2001, … Continue reading

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