Rabbit’s blog

Os países nórdicos voltam a ficar no topo de um ranking de países mais amigos do capitalismo, desta vez do Economist Intelligence Unit

Business environment ranks and scores
	2008-12	2008-12	2003-07	2003-07	Change in	Change
	Total score	Rank	Total score	Rank	total score	in rank
Denmark	8.76	1	8.74	2	0.01	1
Finland	8.74	2	8.71	3	0.03	1
Singapore	8.73	3	8.84	1	-0.11	-2
Canada	8.71	4	8.64	5	0.07	1
Switzerland	8.68	5	8.67	4	0.01	-1
Australia	8.65	6	8.20	14	0.45	8
Hong Kong	8.64	7	8.64	7	0.00	0
Netherlands	8.63	8	8.59	8	0.04	0
Sweden	8.63	9	8.34	11	0.29	2
USA	8.60	10	8.64	6	-0.04	-4
Ireland	8.57	11	8.53	9	0.04	-2
UK	8.56	12	8.52	10	0.04	-2
Germany	8.48	13	8.13	15	0.35	2
New Zealand	8.29	14	8.20	13	0.08	-1
Austria	8.26	15	8.00	16	0.26	1
Belgium	8.25	16	8.22	12	0.03	-4
Norway	8.14	17	7.97	17	0.16	0
Taiwan	8.11	18	7.57	22	0.54	4
France	8.03	19	7.89	18	0.14	-1
Chile	8.02	20	7.80	19	0.22	-1

via Will Wilkinson

Na série nada como o Departamento de Inglês para entreter a malta:

Ms. Venkatesan lectured in freshman composition, intended to introduce undergraduates to the rigors of expository argument. “My students were very bully-ish, very aggressive, and very disrespectful,” she told Tyler Brace of the Dartmouth Review. “They’d argue with your ideas.” This caused “subversiveness,” a principle English professors usually favor.

Ms. Venkatesan’s scholarly specialty is “science studies,” which, as she wrote in a journal article last year, “teaches that scientific knowledge has suspect access to truth.” She continues: “Scientific facts do not correspond to a natural reality but conform to a social construct.”

The agenda of Ms. Venkatesan’s seminar, then, was to “problematize” technology and the life sciences. Students told me that most of the “problems” owed to her impenetrable lectures and various eruptions when students indicated skepticism of literary theory. She counters that such skepticism was “intolerant of ideas” and “questioned my knowledge in very inappropriate ways.” Ms. Venkatesan, who is of South Asian descent, also alleges that critics were motivated by racism, though it is unclear why.

After a winter of discontent, the snapping point came while Ms. Venkatesan was lecturing on “ecofeminism,” which holds, in part, that scientific advancements benefit the patriarchy but leave women out. One student took issue, and reasonably so – actually, empirically so. But “these weren’t thoughtful statements,” Ms. Venkatesan protests. “They were irrational.” The class thought otherwise. Following what she calls the student’s “diatribe,” several of his classmates applauded.
Ms. Venkatesan informed her pupils that their behavior was “fascist demagoguery.” Then, after consulting a physician about “intellectual distress,” she cancelled classes for a week. Thus the pending litigation.

No Wall Street Journal via uma série de blogues da direita americana.

Na série já não há direita como antigamente:

Boris Johnson[, the newly-elected Conservative Mayor of London,] has appointed Richard Barnes, an openly gay man “as one of his deputy mayors.”

The New Mayor even plans to attend London’s Pride celebration later this year.

It looks like gay conservatives may have a new hero across the pond, a principled conservative who reaches out to and recognizes the accomplishments of men and women like us. Seems that we have more to celebrate than “Red Ken” being voted out.

No gay patriot, um site conservador gay, via Andrew Sullivan

Mais uma mostra de que os Tories precisam de ser eleitos rapidamente. A direita liberal-desempoeirada precisa de um exemplo no poder de um grande país ocidental.

Na série isto já parece um blogue de mau gosto:

via Andrew Sullivan

Social psychologist Michelle Hebl … had volunteers evaluate a mock job applicant. Some volunteers saw the applicant sitting in a waiting room next to an overweight person, while others saw the applicant in the waiting room sitting next to a person of average weight. … Hebl found that volunteers rated job applicants more negatively when they had been seen seated next to an overweight person than when they were seen seated next to an average weight person.

Washington Post via overcoming bias

All politics stink. Even democracy stinks. Imagine if our clothes were selected by the majority of shoppers, which would be teenage girls. I’d be standing here with my bellybutton exposed. Imagine deciding the dinner menu by family secret ballot. I’ve got three kids and three dogs in my family. We’d be eating Froot Loops and rotten meat.

P.J. O’Rourke via Marginal Revolution

Escreve Pacheco Pereira num daqueles textos holier-than-thou que de vez em quando faz:

O desemprego pode suscitar mil e uma discussões teóricas, e ser inevitável como “destruição criadora”, como “reconversão” da nossa economia, como efeito de políticas erradas que assentam na ilusão de um “modelo social europeu” insustentável face à natalidade e à globalização, tudo isso.

Admito que exista esta visão, que podemos apelidar de religiosa, do desemprego enquanto inevitável sofrimento regenerador da nossa economia.

No entanto, há que distinguir entre defender o desemprego (algo de perfeitamente horrível) e defender políticas que tornem mais fácil a perda de emprego.

O desemprego não acontece no momento em que se perde o emprego, mas sim no momento em que não se consegue encontrar outro.

Paradoxalmente, as políticas que tornam mais dificil a perda de um determinado emprego são as mesmas que tornam dificil o encontrar do seguinte.

Não é por acaso que os países onde é mais fácil despedir são os que têm taxas de desemprego mais baixas.

Nos EUA, tal como em muitos países da Europa, muitos pais começaram a não vacinar os filhos (eu conheço pelo menos um nessa categoria). Infelizmente, os resultados começam também a aparecer:

From January 1 through April 25, 2008, CDC received a total of 64 reports of confirmed measles cases in nine states — the highest number for the same time period since 2001. In four of the states — Arizona, New York, Michigan, and Wisconsin — outbreaks (3 or more cases linked in time or place) are ongoing. Outbreaks may occur when measles cases are imported into the U.S. Ten of the recent case-patients (5 US residents and 5 visitors to the U.S.) acquired measles abroad, and the remaining cases are considered linked to the imported cases.

Of the 64 people infected by the measles virus, only 1 had documentation of prior vaccination.

CDC

Google’s foreign revenues shot head of its U.S. revenues because of a weaker dollar. Google is an exporter. Who knew? And what does Google export? Patterns of electrons.

Alex Tabarrok, no Marginal Revolution

O PS admite mudar a lei que proíbe a abertura dos supermercados grandes todo o santo domingo.

O dia do trabalhador já não é o que era.

Woman in crowd: Senator, you have the vote of every thinking person.

Adlai Stevenson: That’s not enough, madam, we need a majority!

Greg Mankiw

There are two technologies for producing automobiles in America. One is to manufacture them in Detroit, and the other is to grow them in Iowa. Everybody knows about the first technology; let me tell you about the second. First you plant seeds, which are the raw material from which automobiles are constructed. You wait a few months until wheat appears. Then you harvest the wheat,load it onto ships, and sail the ships eastward into the Pacific Ocean. After a few months, the ships reappear with Toyotas on them.

International trade is nothing but a form of technology. The fact that there is a place called Japan […] is quite irrelevant to American’s well-being. To analyse trade policies, we might as well assume that Japan is a giant machine […] that converts wheat into cars.

Any policy designed to favor the first American technology over the second is a policy designed to favor American auto producers in Detroit over American auto producers in Iowa. A tax or a ban on “imported” automobiles is a tax or a ban on Iowa-grown. If you protect Detroit carmakers from competition, then you must damage Iowa farmers, because Iowa farmers are the competition.

—The Armchair Economist, Steven E. Landsburg (que credita a história a David Friedman).

Viva!

Na série isto já parece um blogue geek:

Saíu a nova versão do Ubuntu, a distribução linux da moda. De há um ano para cá que uso e tenho gostado.

Na série mas somos contra a poluição em princípio:

At a time when the world’s top climate experts agree that carbon emissions must be rapidly reduced to hold down global warming, Italy’s major electricity producer, Enel, is converting its massive power plant here from oil to coal, generally the dirtiest fuel on earth.

Over the next five years, Italy will increase its reliance on coal to 33 percent from 14 percent. Power generated by Enel from coal will rise to 50 percent.

And Italy is not alone in its return to coal. Driven by rising demand, record high oil and natural gas prices, concerns over energy security and an aversion to nuclear energy, European countries are expected to put into operation about 50 coal-fired plants over the next five years, plants that will be in use for the next five decades.

NY Times, via marginal revolution.

Penso que as companhias de energia sabem que os governos europeus, por mais anúncios que façam, não vão, de facto, reduzir as licensas que põem no mercado. Sobretudo porque se tratam de companhias sempre ligadas ao poder.

Na série as pessoas não fazem horas na bicha para ir ver a Manuela Ferreira Leite:

Na série ir ver o Obama é muito melhor do que ir ver o Menezes:

Imaginem um acordo ortográfico em que o Reino Unido decidia passar a escrever a palavra colour sem U. Seria ridículo.

Na série isto já parece um blogue de direita:

No arquivo de posters dos Tories.

We live in an age of “policy wonks” who judge [policy] programs by their effects on productivity, or output, or work effort. Wokian analysis uses the jargon of economics while ignoring its content. Economists view the wonks’ fixation on output as a bizarre and unhealthy obsession. Wonks want Americans to die rich; economists want Americans to die happy.

S. Landsburg, The Armchair Economist