( shadrach kabango )
9.22.2009
hamas accepts palestinian state in '67 borders...
the head of the hamas government in the gaza strip has told united nations secretary-general ban ki-moon that the group supports any steps leading to the creation of a palestinian state based on the 1967 borders, according to the palestinian news agency ramattan. the letter--written by ismail haniyeh on tuesday to coincide with a UN conference currently underway in new york--stated that, "we would never thwart efforts to create an independent palestinian state with borders [from] june 4, 1967, with jerusalem as its capital." the missive also comes as barack obama prepared to meet with benjamin netanyahu and mahmoud abbas for his first mideast summit as US president// yoav segev, 09.22.09, haaretz
sarkozy to press for tobin tax...
french president nicolas sarkozy will urge fellow G20 leaders to introduce a special tax to reduce risky behaviour by banks, the BBC has learned. mr. sarkozy wants a levy known as a tobin tax to be applied to every financial transaction. the move is aimed at cutting excessively speculative trades and encouraging long-term decision-making. but senior EU officials told the BBC that the chances of getting a global agreement were "less than minimal"// 09.19.09, bbc news
9.21.2009
US proposes net neutrality rules...
the US has proposed new rules that would require internet firms to respect the principle of network neutrality. the head of the federal communications commission (FCC) said that "all web traffic should be treated equally." the new rules are intended to prevent firms throttling bandwidth-sapping web traffic such as streaming video.// 09.21.09, bbc news
9.15.2009
hybrid life...
look at the genome of a sea squirt and you'll get a nasty surprise. half of its genes have a straightforward evolutionary history. in fairness, so does the other half. trouble is, the two histories are completely different. it seems that sea squirts do not, as we had thought, sit among the chordates, on the same evolutionary line as humans and other vertebrates. instead, they are the result of what happens when you fuse an ancient chordate with the ancestor of a sea urchin. the fusion of two distinct evolutionary lines is not supposed to work. according to received biological wisdom, any chimeras that result are meant to be evolutionary dead ends. not for the first time, received wisdom appears to be wrong. "there was a view that hybridisation was bad, and 'pure' species were good," says james mallet of university college london. the truth is, hybridisation is like mutation--mostly it's bad, but occasionally it throws out something that meets a need. "natural selection can use whatever inherited variation comes its way," mallet says. biologists are now coming round to the idea that much of nature is not a product of neat family lines, but a messy mass of cross links. that may be how, for instance, genetic instructions can turn something like a caterpillar into something completely different: a butterfly// michael brooks, 09.02.09, new scientist
9.10.2009
9.09.2009
9.04.2009
...how did economists get it so wrong?
as i see it, the economics profession went astray because economists, as a group, mistook beauty, clad in impressive-looking mathematics, for truth. until the great depression, most economists clung to a vision of capitalism as a perfect or nearly perfect system. that vision wasn’t sustainable in the face of mass unemployment, but as memories of the depression faded, economists fell back in love with the old, idealized vision of an economy in which rational individuals interact in perfect markets, this time gussied up with fancy equations. the renewed romance with the idealized market was, to be sure, partly a response to shifting political winds, partly a response to financial incentives. but while sabbaticals at the hoover institution and job opportunities on wall street are nothing to sneeze at, the central cause of the profession’s failure was the desire for an all-encompassing, intellectually elegant approach that also gave economists a chance to show off their mathematical prowess.
unfortunately, this romanticized and sanitized vision of the economy led most economists to ignore all the things that can go wrong. they turned a blind eye to the limitations of human rationality that often lead to bubbles and busts; to the problems of institutions that run amok; to the imperfections of market—especially financial markets—that can cause the economy’s operating system to undergo sudden, unpredictable crashes; and to the dangers created when regulators don’t believe in regulation// paul krugman, 09.02.09, new york times
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