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- HOW BANKS PREPARED FOR A U.S. DEFAULT. (2)
- GREECE’S ADVANTAGE IN THE CHICKEN GAME. (2)
- Nick: That makes sense. It reminds me of the stories Pater Familias would tell me about how in Boston the person with...
- Dick Weisfelder: Greece seems to me to be playing a game that Karl Deutsch called “underdog.” While one...
- FOOTBALL PLAYERS DELIBERATELY CAUSING CONCUSSIONS? (3)
- Nick: It was my understanding that boxing gloves were to protect the puncher’s hands and not the...
- Dick Weisfelder: Remember the Roman arenas? Bare knuckled boxing? Such injuries were taken as natural and accepted in...
- Mary Jane Schaefer: This isn’t about football. Or even sportsmanship. Well, it is about sportsmanship. But what...
- A 25 % CHANCE OF A EURO DEFAULT? (1)
- Nick: The fact that this has gone on for so long is pretty perplexing. The Economist is referring back to articles it...
- DECIDING WHAT KIND OF PATIENT YOU ARE. (1)
- Dick Weisfelder: One can be very open to new technology, but also risk averse. The recent debates about how to...
- THE EUROZONE—A CHICKEN GAME WHERE EVERY MEMBER CAN BLOW IT UP? (1)
- Mary Jane Schaefer: This is not a matter of chicken. These are all turkeys.
- PLAYING WITH MATCHES NEAR A GASOLINE TANK. (1)
- Mary Jane Schaefer: Why would the French care? As long as they take down Britain?
- NORWAY’S CHRISTMAS BUTTER SHORTAGE. (1)
- Mary Jane Schaefer: Christmas with a butter cookie shortage–in Scandinavia. This isn’t even Scrooge. This...
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Monthly Archives: December 2007
A PLAY-OFF SYSTEM FOR THE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINATIONS?
A PLAY-OFF SYSTEM FOR THE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINATIONS? Now is the time for football bowl games and for sportswriters arguing for a college football championship playoff system. Why not have playoffs for the Presidential nominations? The playoffs could take many forms, … Continue reading
Posted in Politics
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LOOKING BACK– OPPOSITION TO SAVING LIVES BY USING CHECKLISTS.
LOOKING BACK– OPPOSITION TO SAVING LIVES BY USING CHECKLISTS. I posted here about Atul Gutwande’s argument that doctors would do a better job if they used checklists for complicated procedures. I was surprised that they didn’t already use checklists. In … Continue reading
DIEHARD MARXISTS.
DIEHARD MARXISTS. Stoppard has a memorable character in ROCK ‘N’ ROLL, a professor who is a devoted Marxist, whose loyalty to Communist regimes cannot be shaken. The character seems to be completely unaffected by the restrictions on freedom that his … Continue reading
Posted in History
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EAST GERMANY AND WEST GERMANY.
EAST GERMANY AND WEST GERMANY. There was a controlled experiment run for about forty years comparing Communism in East Germany and capitalism in West Germany from an economic point of view. The East German economy was a huge failure. West … Continue reading
Posted in Economics, History
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HAVING ONE BIG INK BLOT ON YOUR RECORD.
HAVING ONE BIG INK BLOT ON YOUR RECORD. I think that it is sometimes an advantage to have a huge blot on one’s historical copybook. An example is Richard Nixon. Watergate dominates any other negatives on his record; those other … Continue reading
Posted in Economics, History
3 Comments
STOPPARD AND THE FALL OF THE IRON CURTAIN.
STOPPARD AND THE FALL OF THE IRON CURTAIN. ROCK ‘N’ ROLL is one of the few works of fiction that I am aware of that have dealt with the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Iron … Continue reading
Posted in History, Literature, Theater
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ROCK ‘N’ ROLL.
ROCK ‘N’ ROLL. We got to see another wonderful Tom Stoppard play. ROCK ‘N’ ROLL has a two act structure that reflects the history of Eastern Europe before and after 1989. The first act is in many ways painful. The … Continue reading
Posted in History, Politics, Theater
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SHAKESPEARE AND NEUROSCIENCE.
SHAKESPEARE AND NEUROSCIENCE. Jonah Lehrer (author of PROUST WAS A NEUROSCIENTIST) links here to a report by Phillip Davis on an experiment which measured the brain’s reaction to some Shakespearean language. The experiment measured the effect on the brain of … Continue reading
Posted in Literature, Shakespeare
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IN PRAISE OF SCROOGE.
IN PRAISE OF SCROOGE. Steven E. Landsburg (the Armchair Economist), who is an illustration of Robertson Davies’s proposition that “[A]ll economists are rapt, fanciful creatures; it is necessary to their profession”, praises Scrooge. In fact, he has a whole chapter … Continue reading
Posted in Economics, Literature
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