Hans Rosling: 200 Years that Changed the World

I am pretty convinced that one can learn practically all subjects from easily accessible content available for free on the web. This summer I am teaching a development economics course at University of California at Berkeley, Econ171. I will use the web extensively.
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Minsky on Words

Marvin Minsky of MIT is a cognitive scientist and an artificial intelligence pioneer. I recently came acros his 1981 paper on “Music, Mind, and Meaning” which I found informative and profoundly thought provoking. Here’s an extended quote from it, for the record.
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Weekend links: Stuff worth a look

A couple of links. One video lecture by David Weinberger. One excellent article by James Fallows.
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The US Empire in Decline

R Vaidyanathan has an interesting piece in expressbuzz cryptically titled “The Lost Horizon of the Emperors.” He takes a very big picture view of what’s happening around the world. Big picture painted rather randomly. He starts off with USA’s decline and quickly moves to India and Pakistan. Regarding the decline of the US, he write, “US is going the banana republic way what with a national debt of more than $10 trillion, which is more than 80 per cent of its national income.”
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A Letter to Aalisha

My friend Salil Naik asked me to write a letter to his daughter on her birthday. Hence you can say that this is a commissioned post. So in the style of “A Letter to Abhishek“, I offer this letter to Aalisha.
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False bottom suitcases and $134 billion

134billion

It is hard to believe that anyone can be caught with $134 billion worth of bonds in a false-bottomed suitcase. I did a search for “134 billion” and even Google couldn’t believe it.
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Babysitting the US economy

Krugman is always good for a nice read. His June 14th NT Times op-ed, “Stay the Course“, does not disappoint. He writes, “For this is the third time in history that a major economy has found itself in a liquidity trap, a situation in which interest-rate cuts, the conventional way to perk up the economy, have reached their limit. When this happens, unconventional measures are the only way to fight recession.”
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Rajan Parrikar’s Photo Blog

My friend Rajan Parrikar has a photo blog which you must visit. Rajan’s photography site has breathtaking pictures of Goa, India, and California. Awesome. I particularly like his Death Valley National Park pictures.

The Lesson that the BJP needs to learn

“What exactly is ‘Hindu nationalist’ about the BJP?” asks T V R Shenoy in an excellent piece in rediff.com news.
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