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Month: May 2011

Links of the Day

Links of the Day

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1. Getting Smart on Aid. Exciting developments in empirical research about how to improve the lives of the poor in developing countries: Now we reach a central question for our age: How can we most effectively break cycles of poverty? For decades, we had answers that were mostly anecdotal or hot air. But, increasingly, we are now seeing economists provide answers that are rigorously field-tested, akin to the way drugs are tested in randomized controlled trials, yielding results that are…

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Morality and ethics – part 4

Morality and ethics – part 4

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Note: This is part 4 of a series on morality and ethics. Here are the other parts: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 5, part 6, and part 7 (plus additional posts on hypocrisy and free will). The entire series makes up the fourth chapter of my book, The Triple Path, which can be downloaded for free here in PDF and eReader formats or purchased at all major book retailers (in print and eReader formats).   In this part,…

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Links of the Day

Links of the Day

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1. Serenity Parenting. Going along with my previous post, “Sensible Parenting”, about Brian Caplan’s book “Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids”, this is a good quote from his book: Once I became a dad, I noticed that parents around me had a different take on the power of nurture. I saw them turning parenthood into a chore—shuttling their kids to activities even the kids didn’t enjoy, forbidding television, desperately trying to make their babies eat another spoonful of vegetables. Parents’…

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Morality and ethics – part 3

Morality and ethics – part 3

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Note: This is part 3 of a series on morality and ethics. Here are the other parts: part 1, part 2, part 4, part 5, part 6, and part 7 (plus additional posts on hypocrisy and free will). The entire series makes up the fourth chapter of my book, The Triple Path, which can be downloaded for free here in PDF and eReader formats or purchased at all major book retailers (in print and eReader formats).   In this part,…

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Links of the Day

Links of the Day

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1. Photos of skyscrapers in different cities in the state of São Paulo, Brazil. Wealthy and middle class Brazilians often live in highrise apartments in their city’s downtown area. The effect of this is that even smaller Brazilian cities often have beautiful skylines. The posts on this forum thread have a lot of cool pictures of modern Brazilian cities in São Paulo, Brazil (Brazil’s richest state). I’ve been to a lot of these places — pretty cool! 2. We’ve Become…

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Judging by appearances: sometimes it works

Judging by appearances: sometimes it works

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We’ve all heard that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. But a recent psychology study indicates that we may be able to make accurate judgments about certain aspects of people’s character “after minimal exposure to [their] physical appearance.” The study is titled “The Accuracy of Inferences About Criminality Based on Facial Appearance”1 and was performed by Jeffrey M. Valla, Stephen J. Ceci, and Wendy M. Williams of Cornell University and published in the Journal of Social, Evolutionary, and…

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Links of the Day

Links of the Day

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1. Mapping the 2010 U.S. Census. This has been out for a few weeks, but it is still worth looking at if you haven’t heard about it yet. The New York Times has created a neat tool which visualizes the results of the U.S. census. You can zoom in at different levels (states, counties, census tracts) to see all sorts of demographic information about any place in the United States. 2. Earth Is Not Random. A summary of a scientific…

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