A recent Scientific American reviews of “Rethinking Expertise” by Harry Collins and Robert Evans got me thinking about the problem of “experts” and expert advice.
From the review:
This slim book by Harry Collins and Robert Evans offers a conceptual typology of “expertises.” The authors invent a plural form of the word to suggest that more [...]
A very heartening report from the UN on crime in the Balkans shows that the region is considerably safer than Western Europe, crime is falling and that the real problem - as I have long argued - is organized crime and its links to corrupt officials.
Here is the press release that accompanies the report:
29 [...]
Not really sure what to think about this. A Danish Muslim girls magazine is running a competition for “Miss Headscarf”. The winner will be featured as a cover girl.
On the one hand I am all for efforts to normalise headscarves and show tolerance for people’s choices of dress ( I mean where is the outrage [...]
The Modern Historian tells the little known story of Belgrade’s 1968 student revolt.
In the late 1960s, student dissatisfaction was not solely confined to capitalist countries. Many students in Yugoslavia shared similar concerns with their fellows at universities in France, the United States, and other countries that had seen campus revolts. The students of [...]
This post is a about Michael Totten’s report “A Dark Corner of Europe” Part 1. You need to read this article for this post to make sense. Michael Totten’s article is mostly very good article, and I, perhaps unfairly, am focussing only on the negatives here.
Michael Totten is a great independent journalist who I [...]
Also filed in Civil Liberties, Critical Thinking, History, Interesting People, Media, Philosophy, Propaganda, Race & Ethnicity, Science, Sociology & Social Sciences, Terrorism, Travel & Transport
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Astroturf activism: The creation of a campaign that looks like grassroots activism, but isn’t
eSkeptic newsletter has a fascinating story about how a Canadian law designed to force health supplement companies to correctly label their goods or face serious fines has come under fierce attack from a faux consumer watchdog campaign mostly orchestrated via Facebook and [...]
The ever superb Theodore Dalrymple expounds on “Why Britain struggles to assimilate immigrants”. He controversially argues that despite the recent riots, France has done a better job of integration:
Living in two countries, France and Britain, I have found it instructive to compare how each has gone about welcoming (if that is the word I [...]
Ever wondered what all this fuss was about “Sub-prime” mortgages, “Credit Crisis”, “Housing Crisis” and dire threats of global financial meltdown?
Wonder no more.
The amazing “This American Life” has a superb program that really explains it in a very easy to understand way.
http://publicradioredux.com/episodes/2008/05/12/355-the-giant-pool-money
My latest in Pajamas Media
Pajamas Media » Serbian Election a Muddle for Pro-EU Forces
From Kevin Kelly:
You’ll be hearing more about sovereign wealth funds and flows in the future.
A sovereign wealth fund is a huge heap of money that is controlled by a nation — say Singapore or Saudi Arabia — rather than by a private transnational company. The latter is called private equity funds and their investments have [...]