Attention Economy


Friday, May 29, 2015

AI, Robots and Jobs


Related:
Fully automated trucking may be feasible in the future
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-32837071

Richard Thaler and Behavioral Economics


Michael Lewis on Thaler and Behavioral Economics

Spelling Bee and American Society


What do ‘Americans’ look like?

“The domination of the bee by Indian American spellers over the past 15 years has created some backlash, including an ugly outburst of racial insults on social media last year. Paige Kimble, the longtime director of the bee, said that she was approached Thursday and asked whether any “Americans” made it to the finals. “ ‘Yes, they’re all Americans,’ I told them,” Kimble said. “We obviously still have a long way to go.””

By the way, Indian-Americans dominate National Geographic Bee as well:

Thursday, May 28, 2015

Economic Development [May 28]

Time for a New Development Agenda
Growth and Living Standards

Africa Economic Update
Luanda – Angola and the Natural Resource Curse
Ethiopia
South Africa
Nigeria

Book Recommendation –
Geek Heresy: Rescuing Social Change from the Cult of Technology by Kentaro Toyama

Science and Philosophy

Exciting new theory in Physics addresses a fundamental puzzle:
“Despite its sway over the motion of stars and galaxies, the force of gravity is hundreds of millions of trillions of trillions of times weaker than magnetism and the other microscopic forces of nature. This disparity shows up in physics equations as a similarly absurd difference between the mass of the Higgs boson, a particle discovered in 2012 that controls the masses and forces associated with the other known particles, and the expected mass range of as-yet-undiscovered gravitational states of matter.”

Meditation and Neuroscience

Stoicism and the Fear of Death

Upon reading the above articles, one is reminded of ‘Heaven‘– the famous Rupert Brooke (1887–1915) poem: http://www.bartleby.com/232/504.html
“FISH (fly-replete, in depth of June,
Dawdling away their wat’ry noon)
Ponder deep wisdom, dark or clear,
Each secret fishy hope or fear.
Fish say, they have their Stream and Pond;
But is there anything Beyond?
This life cannot be All, they swear,
For how unpleasant, if it were!”

Helene Rey on the US Dollar and the Dilemma vs. Trilemma Debate