Category Archives: Economics

WHY DO PEOPLE WATCH BAD MOVIES? SHARKNADO.

WHY DO PEOPLE WATCH BAD MOVIES? SHARKNADO. Sharknado, a movie, was estimated to have between one and two million viewers on July 11, to have generated over 500,00 Google searches, and to have generated over 5000 Tweets a minute at … Continue reading

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THE DOG AND THE FRISBEE—LEVERAGE RATIOS.

THE DOG AND THE FRISBEE—LEVERAGE RATIOS. I posted last year on a speech (“The Dog and the Frisbee”) by Andrew Haldane of the Bank of England, in which he argued for simpler financial regulations. The Bank of England summary that … Continue reading

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THE FDA GOES AFTER CHEESE MITES.

THE FDA GOES AFTER CHEESE MITES. I posted here about how Mary Jane’s mother and grandmother were fond of casa marzu (maggot cheese), which contains lots of maggots, and in this post I linked to a wikipedia article that says … Continue reading

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INTELLECTUAL JOKES.

INTELLECTUAL JOKES. Tyler Cowen on the Marginal Revolution site posed a question that he got from the AskReddit site: What’s the most intellectual joke you know? The responses included a lot of good jokes, many puns, and some jokes that … Continue reading

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METAL DETECTORS AND “PRODUCTIVE SITES”.

METAL DETECTORS AND “PRODUCTIVE SITES”. In 1983, says Katharina Ulmschneider, the archaeologica evidence came from major excavations of “emporia” which had produced “not only vast amounts of Continental pottery, querns, and glass, but also unprecedented quantities of coins”. Shortly thereafter, … Continue reading

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LOCAL MARKETS—THE NEW VIEW OF THE DARK AGES ECONOMY IN ENGLAND.

LOCAL MARKETS—THE NEW VIEW OF THE DARK AGES ECONOMY IN ENGLAND. Browsing the Surrey Medieval site, I found a recommendation by Robert J S Briggs of this article by Katharina Ulmschneider as an introduction to the concept of “productive sites”. … Continue reading

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PLACE NAMES THAT ARE GUIDES TO ARCHAEOLOGICAL FINDS—“MIDDLETON” AND “MELTON”.

PLACE NAMES THAT ARE GUIDES TO ARCHAEOLOGICAL FINDS—“MIDDLETON” AND “MELTON”. In the post that Surrey Medieval linked to, my interest was that place names that combined Viking names and Anglo Saxon names were evidence of Vikings and Anglo Saxons living … Continue reading

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LINKING WITH SURREY MEDIEVAL.

LINKING WITH SURREY MEDIEVAL. WordPress notifies me when another blog links to this blog. Thanks to this feature (and lee Bryant’s alertness), I became aware that Robert J S Briggs of the Surrey Medieval website linked to my post from … Continue reading

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HOW LANGUAGE CAN SHAPE THINKING ABOUT THE FUTURE (COMMENT).

HOW LANGUAGE CAN SHAPE THINKING ABOUT THE FUTURE (COMMENT). I have posted several times about the controversies among linguists over whether it is possible for language to affect how you think. I am a Whorfian; that is, I think it … Continue reading

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DOES YOUR LANGUAGE AFFECT HOW MUCH YOU SAVE? (COMMENT)

DOES YOUR LANGUAGE AFFECT HOW MUCH YOU SAVE? (COMMENT) In a comment on the marshmallow experiment, Andrew sent this link to a paper by Keith Chen which argues that how much you save is affected by the language you speak. … Continue reading

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