Interesting macro-economic insight and thesis. Very interesting design of a publication (almost certainly the most beautiful economic text I've ever read). I'll bet complexity is really just a proxy for a bunch of other things, but I doubt the authors would really disagree.
Alright... So I should get around to seeing a Noam Elkies lecture some time.
"Starting with Miguel, Satyanath, and Sergenti (2004), a large literature has used rainfall variation as an instrument to study the impacts of income shocks on civil war and conflict. These studies argue that in agriculturally-dependent regions, negative rain shocks lower income levels, which in turn incites violence. This identiÂ…cation strategy relies on the assumption that rainfall shocks affect conflict only through their impacts on income."
Interesting idea. I'm worried about getting too excited though since so much is up in the air. If I were this group, I would have waited until I had something to announce.
"The Data Privacy Lab is dedicated to creating technologies and related policies with provable guarantees of privacy protection while allowing society to collect and share private (or sensitive) information for many worthy purposes. We do this by partnering with institutions, agencies, and corporations facing real-world privacy concerns."
Add this to the list of great looking talks I didn't know about until too late. In general, I think the combination of mapping, history, and crowdsourcing is an unlikely but potentially very rich combination.
This guy gave away a copy of Ted Nelson's literary machines. Horrible news he's gonna be gone.
Nice write-up of a good talk by Bollier that I saw at Berkman.
"An undergraduate was robbed with a "realistic BB gun" while walking along Plympton St. Saturday night, according to the Harvard University Police Department."
Harvard loses $8 billion in the market. Whoops.
Watch the whole series. This is awesome.
New startup by friends Ward and Sasha. Good luck guys!
