I am currently reading Ryszard Kapscinki's collection of essays on living in and and reporting from Africa called The Shadow of the Sun. As many of you know, I am intrigued by parochialism and in-group and out-group preferences. Kapuscinski (2001, 188-89) captures the idea perfectly in his essay 'The Black Crystals of the Night,' Our contemporary suspicion of and antipathy for the Other, the Stranger, goes back to the fear our tribal ancestors felt towards the Outsider,...

As it was the festive season I took time off to ignore my google reader, get research done and then take a couple of days off with my wife over our anniversary (shock horror no internet access crazy!), I also went to Plett with my family before returning to Italy. As my South African sojourn ended there were flights and waits in airports (someone should write 'Doha: An Ode'). Consequently, I managed to read some books, mostly works of fiction, but there are a few non-fiction...

I just watched the TED talk below by Steve Levitt. In it he highlights some of his work with Sudhir Venkatesh (who regularly posts on the Freakonomics blog) about gang membership and the extent to which economic theory and the performance of crack-cocaine selling gangs coincides. Very interesting. HT: Mind Hacks.Two points that brought it home for me, as a crack-selling foot soldier you have a greater chance of dying than someone on death row. Second, any black teenager...

The 6th Carnival of the Africans is being hosted by Angela who runs 'Skeptic Detective'. Here are my picks from the carnival.Ivan, of a subtle shift in emphasis, tells the tale of his journey to atheism. He recounts the struggles of really understanding and relating to Christianity after seeing stark depictions of Jesus's torture and crucifixion in the Zeffirelli depiction thereof (in Jesus of Nazareth) and how this vivid experience was followed by catechism, mathematical...

A recent paper by Camillo Padoa-Schioppa and John Assad investigates the encoding of value in the brain for rhesus monkeys, a renewal of efforts to understand how and whether the assumption of transitivity, so crucial to the behavioral sciences, is in fact an accurate description of how individuals act when making choices. It builds on a previous paper (2006) of theirs in Nature, 'Neurons in the orbitofrontal cortex encode economic value.' The novelty in their (2008)...

William Easterly, aid sceptic extraordinaire (note aid not AIDS), has started a blog: Aid Watch. I am often in disagreement with Easterly, but he does make decent points in his research about aid, about accountability and about guidelines for policy. He starts of his contribution to the blogosphere by commenting on two recent opeds by Robert Zoellick, the president of the World Bank. Easterly criticises Zoellick for his personal pet hate: aid for aid's sake, rather...

Jonah Lehrer has a recent piece in the WSJ in which he comments on several books on decision-making as a lead up to the release of his upcoming book How We Decide. The problem I wanted to highlight with his article was a reference to the book by Daniel Kahneman, Paul Slovic and Amos Tversky, Judgment Under Uncertainty. Lehrer comments that, "in experiment after experiment, the psychologists demonstrated that, unlike the hypothetical consumers in economics textbooks,...

Financial CrisisRobert Shiller - Recession InsuranceRobert Skidelsky - The Business Cycle MythLeigh Caldwell - Bounded Rationality and the Credit EnvironmentBarry Eichengreen - Was the Euro a mistake?Luigi Zingales - Yes we can, Mr GeithnerRicardo Caballero - A Global Perspective on the great financial insurance run: Causes, consequences and solutions (Part 1, Part 2)Economics GenerallyJeff Sachs - A Breakthrough Against HungerEliot Spitzer - America's Fear of CompetitionPoliticsNaom...

Larry Young has a recent article in Nature on the neuroscience of love.  A friend of mine posted a link to the BBC science reporting on the topic (Is Love Just a Chemical Cocktail?) on facebook.  I posted a few comments, and disagreed with the outright agreement of several people with the methods adopted by Young.  _____________________Add Comment - 5 comments - ShareFaaiza Asma at 18:24, on 10 January.I agree..as sad as this is, we are just a walking...

The Times Online (UK) published its 'Hottest Reads of 2009' on December 31st.  I thought I'd note some of my fiction highlights (i.e. the books that will sit on my amazon.co.uk wishlist for ages before I actually buy them).   First, the publication of Raymond Carver's Beginners before his editor (Gordon Lish) ripped up the text. I am a big fan of Raymond Carver, though I only own three of his short story collections (What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,...

Several categories of links today as I haven't done this in a while:GeneralGoogle gives libraries a raw deal with new agreementBen Goldacre on Maggiore's Death10 Lectures on Evolution (I will watch these, I promise, they look quite grand)The Skepchick - 10 Speptics Who Kicked Ass in 2008Marketing Geek - Kelele - An African Blogging Conference in 2009Newsweek - 4 Thinkers Whose Ideas Captured the Moment (including Sunstein & Stiglitz)PoliticsAddress by Yoweri Museveni...

What do you think of this?David Laibson knows that when he procrastinates, mere deadlines are notalways enough to get him going. So, when this Harvard economicsprofessor collaborates on a major project, he'll sometimes promise todeliver a finished product by a certain date -- or else pay hisco-authors $500.Article here.  HT: Nudges.I think this is a fantastic idea.  I think, though, that there should be an escape clause for genuine family emergencies, but...