by Anurag Wadehra
As a pivotal year comes to a close, there is little doubt that the government power is on the rise in human affairs. Most people, certainly in popular media, are clamoring for it.
Over the summer, there was at least a discourse on the merits of softening the punch of government's intrusions. This was triggered by the book Nudge by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein of University of Chicago, wherein they mated two opposing species of ideas - liberty and paternal authority - to produce an offspring called libertarian paternalism.
Continue reading "From Nudge To Shove" »
by Anurag Wadehra
This may very well be the best commentary written to date on the end of Wall Street. The author is none other than Michael Lewis who rose to fame with his book Liar's Pokerin mid-80s. This long piece called The End appeared recently in Portfolio and is worth reading in its entirety. Here are a few excerpts with my comments to whet your appetite.
There’s a long list of people who now say they saw it coming all along but a far shorter one of people who actually did. Of those, even fewer had the nerve to bet on their vision. It’s not easy to stand apart from mass hysteria—to believe that most of what’s in the financial news is wrong or distorted, to believe that most important financial people are either lying or deluded—without actually being insane. A handful of people had been inside the black box, understood how it worked, and bet on it blowing up. ...At the top was Steve Eisman.
Continue reading "The End of Wall Street: Michael Lewis" »
by Anurag Wadehra
The fact that we have an ocean of information at our fingertips is not a source for solace but the root of chronic anxiety for many. We live interrupt-driven lives where mobile calls, SMS beeps, email alerts and now always-on-net iPhone make us flit from one subject to another - with little time for reflection and even less for cognitive processes that require sustained attention. To stumble on the quintessential "Aha" moment, we need concentrated, free play - a state described as flow - which is rare to achieve when we are distracted.
Continue reading "Distracted!" »
by Reena Kapoor
Two friends have now pointed me to this suprising content in the New York Review of Books. The June 12th issue contains a review by Freeman Dyson of two books about global warming. The reviews are interesting and thoughtful (for example he seems to have a good idea about just how expensive Gore-ism will be if we embrace it) but what is really intriguing are the last three paragraphs.
Interestingly, Freeman Dyson is no libertarian and in fact quite sympathetic to the cause of environmentalism. That does not however prevent him from calling it as he sees it. I applaud his intellectual honesty; at least we can stop pretending that any of the environmental doom & gloom has any scientific basis.
Here are the passages in question:
Continue reading "Surprising honesty!" »
