Gross Domestic Politics

September 20, 2009 in counting, economizing, naming, performing, politicizing, quantifying, testing
Tags: fitoussi, gdp, sen, stiglitz

Some new guys on the block, Stiglitz, Sen and Fitoussi, just let us know that the GDP doesn’t represent the economy correctly: it may be leaving out the world.
Choices between promoting GDP and protecting the environment may be
false choices, once environmental degradation is appropriately included in our
measurement of economic performance.
“Choices between promoting GDP and protecting [...]

Against Corporate Monoculture

September 11, 2009 in economizing, objecting, performing, politicizing, printing, socializing, testing
Tags: capitalism, cooperatives, davies, demos, finance, ownership, socialism, uk

Will Davies is the author of Reinventing the Firm, a Demos report made available today. A praise for corporate pluralism and financial mutuality:
“Capitalism is always a curious mixture of liberalism and despotism. It grants freedom, equality and participation with one hand, while it imposes orders, hierarchy and inequality with the other. We barely notice that [...]

Balls

September 11, 2009 in capturing, politicizing, publicizing
Tags: flashball, france, hortefeux, police, theuriau

This is a little reminder about how French policemen like to use their great weapon, the proverbial flash-ball (from Verney-Carron),  in order to to fight chaos and defend order: pointing straight towards the face of the “chaotic” (a note on terminology below). Someone lost an eye in a demonstration this summer in Montreuil. And the [...]

Bright Young Wild Things

September 3, 2009 in counting, explaining, politicizing
Tags: economics, economists, haidt, moral, politics, science, unemployment

For those who follow economists in their world-making activities, this roster of brilliant economists in The Economist provides some ancillary relevance. It says that
[...] today’s economists show no great attachment to the rational model of behaviour that guided Mr Becker. Economic theory has become so eclectic that ingenious researchers can usually cook up a plausible [...]

Starved for Review

September 2, 2009 in explaining, objecting, performing, publicizing
Tags: africa, agriculture, biotech, fedoroff, food, gmos, monsanto, nature, paarlberg

Readers of Nature got the chance of hitting a very nice review of Robert Paarlberg’s Starved for Science: How Biotechnology is Being Kept Out of Africa, by Ian Scoones and Dominic Grover (see also here). A little excerpt:
“The book has quickly become influential. Paarlberg was asked to speak about hunger alleviation in front of the [...]