I didn’t ever think that I’d comment on the game theory of the fashion industry, but hey the fashion industry contains profit-maximising firms that rely on a brand to maintain their profits, so why not? We’ve known for a while that various fashion houses employ many tactics to improve their branding, for example sending free products to celebrities so that their products are associated with these celebrities. This morning, though, I came across an article in which...

I've just read this review - by John Gray - of Matt Ridley's book The Rational Optimist.  I originally intended to comment on the article's content, then realised that I had to refer to some commenters who would probably just troll (because, I suspect, their ignorance displays their misunderstanding of the position that they advocate).  Anyway, here's the extended version of the comment I planned to write.  My comment is intended to be about the comments...

I am slowly uploading my lectures from Cooperation and Competition (EC2007S) at the University of Cape Town to Cooperation and Competition - 1st Lecture 26 July 2010 from Simon Halliday on Vimeo. ">vimeo, a good video sharing site.  You can see the "channel" for the videos here: Cooperation and Competition.  You can subscribe to the RSS feed of the channel if you're interested.   Cooperation and Competition is a course in introductory game theory...

My sister is an actress, doing more stage acting and dancing than screen work.  My brother is a musician.  I dabbled in acting and singing for much of my youth, even heading up the University of Cape Town choir for a while when I was a student.  Now why is this relevant? As a consequence of these affiliations and activities I occasionally end up watching programs like So You Think You Can Dance (which my brother-in-law did quite well in previously) and...