Boston Review — Leland de la Durantaye: How to Be Happy →
bostonreview.net
The Ethics of David Foster Wallace
April 2011
“Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity.”
—George Bernard Shaw
“Marriage is for women the commonest mode of livelihood, and the total amount of undesired sex endured by women is probably greater in marriage than in prostitution.”
—Bertrand Russell, Marriage and Morals [via Annalisa Chirico]
“Vilfredo Pareto was arguably the greatest economist of the 1800s and possibly the greatest social scientist of all time. He was one of the first to suggest applying the cold hand of mathematics to what was previously a liberal art rather than a mathematical science. His work is still considered controversial today, despite the fact that it is self-evidently true, mostly because the average modern economist or sociologist is more an ideological fashion victim than an applied mathematician.”
—Scott Locklin [at Taki’s Magazine]
“Come ragazzo non ho vizi. Ieri sono andato in Stazione centrale, ai cessi: 1 euro per entrare. Ho iniziato, dentro e fuori per due ore. Ho speso 300 euro. I dirigenti hanno chiamato la vigilanza per sapere cosa facevo. Ho detto: “Avete ragione, andate al bar qui di fronte: c’è gente che sta tutto il giorno davanti alla macchinetta mangiasoldi”. Vigilanza: “Qui è diverso, per il cesso è una questione di igiene”. Io: “Igiene cosa? Entro ed esco dalla porta automatica, non vado in zona orinatoi”. La vigilanza chiama un dirigente di stazione. Lui: “E’ inutile che sta qui a buttar via soldi, qui non vince niente”. Io: “Infatti! Mettete anche voi che ogni 100 entrate si vince 500 euro e vedrà che la gente vien più volentieri, anche senza avere bisogno”. Dirigente: “Ha ragione! La assumo come responsabile marketing della stazione”.”
—Innamorato Fisso del 25 aprile 2011
Taxation
- Sir Humphrey: "Taxation isn't about what you need."
- Jim Hacker: "Oh, what is it about?"
- Sir Humphrey: "Prime Minister, the Treasury doesn't work out what they need to spend and then think how to raise the money."
- Jim Hacker: "What does it do?"
- Sir Humphrey: "They pitch for as much as they think they can get away with and then think what to spend it on."
- [Yes, Prime Minister - Series 1, Episode 3]
Google Art Project →
googleartproject.com
Explore museums from around the world, discover and view hundreds of artworks at incredible zoom levels, and even create and share your own collection of masterpieces
Law's Information Revolution - Bruce Kobayashi & Larry Ribstein - SSRN →
papers.ssrn.com
Lawyers traditionally have conveyed legal expertise in the form of advice tailored to the needs of individual clients. This business model is reinforced by licensing and ethical rules designed to ensure lawyers’ competence and loyalty to clients’ interests. The traditional professional model is being challenged by an alternative model based on the sale of legal information in impersonal product and capital markets. In this new world, legal information engineers would to some extent replace legal practitioners. This article provides a theoretical intellectual property framework for the regulatory decisions that must be made as the two models collide. We show that traditional professional regulation inhibits full development of the new business model by limiting intellectual property protection for legal information. This regulation assumes that consumers get legal information in one-to-one relationships with lawyers where they have little ability to evaluate the advice they are receiving. However, a fully developed legal information market could substitute for some of the protection consumers now receive from licensing and ethical rules without the current model’s costs of restricting the supply and raising the costs of legal services. We apply our analysis to some actual and potential markets in legal information.
A licence to text money: New insights on mobile money in Kenya - Voxeu →
voxeu.org
The success of the mobile money programme in Kenya – where money is exchanged via mobile phone – has been phenomenal. In four years, a country with only 850 bank branches has seen the number of outlets providing the service grow from 4,000 to 25,000. People have access to formal finance as never before. This column studies 3,000 households between 2008 and 2010, tracking this social and economic transformation.
“In their film about the history of Facebook, David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin found a way to make computer programming a little sexier: play up the rivalries, the parties, the relentless pursuit of fame and fortune, and add Justin Timberlake to the cast. But “The Social Network” should also be celebrated for casting an intellectual property dispute as its central conflict — and in doing so, chipping away at the legitimacy of modern intellectual property protections.”
—The Daily Caller
