Huvitavaid artikleid
The Genesis 2.0 Project – pikem artikkel Vanity Fair’is maailma suurimast masinast ehk osakeste kiirendist Prantsusmaa ja Shveitsi piiril:
The L.H.C. is not merely the world’s largest particle accelerator but the largest machine ever built. At the center of just one of the four main experimental stations installed around its circumference, and not even the biggest of the four, is a magnet that generates a magnetic field 100,000 times as strong as Earth’s. And because the super-conducting, super-colliding guts of the collider must be cooled by 120 tons of liquid helium, inside the machine it’s one degree colder than outer space, thus making the L.H.C. the coldest place in the universe.
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The Root of the Financial Crisis – Arnold Kling proovib Hoover’i Instituudi jaoks veel kord finantskriisi tekke narratiive lahti harutada – minu arvates päris edukalt:
A deeper narrative of the financial crisis is that risk-taking tends to be cyclical, and that the housing bubble reflected a boom in risk taking. In the period when the bubble was inflating, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke himself spoke of the “global savings glut” that was helping to feed U.S. credit markets. Rapidly growing economies, particularly in Asia, produced incomes that grew faster than consumption. Having experienced currency crises in the 1990s, Asian investors, including central governments, sought dollar-denominated investments. This large increase in savings found its way into the U.S. housing market. As noted earlier, one could argue that if housing finance had been better regulated, the global savings glut would simply have found its way into another risky arena, leading to a different bubble and a different locus for the crisis.
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The internet: A missing link – kui elad eelkõige inglise keelses veebiruumis, siis tundub loogiline, et see ruum on kõigi jaoks. Tegelikus kipub aga ikka olema mõnevõrra keerulisem ja huvitavam. Hiinlaste interneti kasutamise harjumusi valgustas hiljuti Financial Times:
One reason for these difficulties is that US companies took a long time to realise that Chinese people use the web differently from their counterparts in other markets. Simply put, they tend to roam the web like a huge playground, whereas Europeans and Americans are more likely to use it as a gigantic library. Recent research by the McKinsey consultancy suggests Chinese users spend most of their time online on entertainment while their European peers are much more focused on work.
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Game Theories – pikem artikkel online mängude majanduslikust poolest ja Edward Castronova’st, kellest on Vabalogis ka varem juttu olnud – hea ja ülevaatlik lugu koos paljude huvitavate tähelepanekutega:
Ultimately, Castronova says, EverQuest supports one of Adam Smith’s main points, which is that people actually prefer unequal outcomes. In fact, EverQuest eerily mirrors the state of modern free-market societies: only a small minority of players attain Level 65 power and own castles; most remain quite poor. When game companies offer socialist alternatives, players reject them. “They’ve tried to make games where you can’t amass more property than someone else,” says Castronova, “but everybody hated it. It seems that we definitely do not want everybody to have the same stuff all the time; people find it boring.”
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In N. Korea, a strong movement recoils at Kim Jong Il’s attempt to limit wealth – hiljuti Washington Postis ilmunud artikkel annab hea ettekujutuse viimastest arengutest Põhja-Koreas s.h. sellest, millist rolli mängivad ettevõtlikumad ja rikkamad kohaliku korra õõnestamise:
“The private markets have created a new power elite,” said Koh Yu-whan, a professor of North Korean studies at Dongguk University in Seoul. “They pay bribes to bureaucrats in Kim’s government, and they are a threat that is not going away.”
In the past year, the elites in Pyongyang have been granted authorized access to mobile phones — the number is soon expected to reach 120,000. In the border regions with China, unauthorized mobile phone use has also increased among the trading classes. And unlike most of the mobile phones in Pyongyang, the illegal phones are set up to make international calls.
Chinese telecom companies have built relay towers near the border, providing strong mobile signals in many nearby North Korean towns, according to the Chosun Ilbo, a Seoul-based daily.
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