Category: politics
-
The “Broken Windows” Theory of Crime
The “broken windows” theory of crime, dating back to an article in The Atlantic from 1982 and more recently popularised by Malcolm Gladwell in The Tipping Point and Rudy Giuliani (mayor, NYC), suggests that signs of petty crime, like littering and broken windows, trigger further criminal behaviour. Now, recent research is starting to suggest that…
-
Transport and Development in West Africa
Tim Harford, the Undercover Economist, takes a look at the problems with the transportation network in west Africa and discusses how this is a major factor in the region’s stunted development. Pity the entrepreneur who wants to do business under such conditions. If goods travel at 75 miles a day […] it is almost impossible…
-
Designing for Democracy
As the Floridian ‘butterfly ballots’ used in the 2000 U.S. presidential election showed, poor design can have far-reaching consequences. With new ballot design guidelines now in place, The New York Times identifies common design problems found on ballots and ways to improve clarity and vote accuracy. It’s good to know people are thinking about issues…
-
Reducing the Risk of Human Extinction
A recent article from the University of Pittsburgh’s Centre for Biosecurity, Reducing the Risk of Human Extinction. Abstract: In this century a number of events could extinguish humanity. The probability of these events may be very low, but the expected value of preventing them could be high, as it represents the value of all future…
-
Keith Olbermann on Proposition 8: A Chance at Permanence
Keith Olbermann’s Special Comment on the passage of Proposition 8; eloquent and persuasive using nothing but common sense and good judgement. Some quotes I particularly enjoyed: If you voted for this Proposition or support those who did or the sentiment they expressed, I have some questions, because, truly, I do not understand. Why does this…
-
Books of the Left and Right
The results from Valdis Krebs’ analysis of political books bought from Amazon is fascinating. Two groups typically emerge from the data: people who read liberally oriented books and people who read conservatively oriented books with a couple of books that both groups read. He ran his analysis again a few days ago and found not…
-
A New Dawn for Generation Y?
Something different for this most historic of days: The true measure of a nation’s standing is how well it attends to its children – their health and safety, their material security, their education and socialization, and their sense of being loved, valued, and included in the families and societies into which they are born. UNICEF…
-
Why ‘Politics of Fear’ Works
Negative campaigning has been a constant of American elections for as long as I can remember, and is now making its way into mainstream UK politics. Seed looks at how evolution can explain both the appeal and recent failings of negative campaigning. Advertisers, like neuroscientists, started out with a so-called cognitive model of decision making — a…
-
American Conservative Intelligentsia Voting Obama
I’m slowly losing interesting in the U.S. presidential election now that the result seems inevitable (get on with the inauguration already). However, the Obama–McCain dance-off video (via Kottke) combined with a feature in the latest The American Conservative, has temporarily piqued my interest again. In said feature, The Right Choice?, 18 prominent conservatives were asked…
-
Overcoming Stigma with Personal Incentives
Elizabeth Pisani, author of The Wisdom of Whores, writes about HIV from various perspectives: social, scientific, and political. In a recent article she notes how personal incentives are enough to overcome the stigma of HIV-infection. Malawi is suspending its payments to HIV-infected civil servants because so many uninfected people are trying to cash in. A…