Jakarta bombing and Islamism

by Daniel on September 9, 2004

It appears that the bomb outside the Australian Embassy in Jakarta (which killed 20 (Update: latest figure is more like 8) people and injured about 170, almost all of them locals and therefore presumably Muslims) was set by Jemaah Islamia, the Al-Quaeda offshoot that was responsible for the Bali nightclub bombing. This is yet another outrage in what is turning out to be a very grim month. What this the precise nature of this outrage tell us about Islamism?

[click to continue…]

Theory and Practice

by Kieran Healy on September 9, 2004

“Dan Drezner”:http://www.danieldrezner.com/archives/001619.html reports on a “small tiff”:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/09/business/worldbusiness/09outsource.html?pagewanted=all&position= between Paul Samuelson and Jagdish Bhagwati over outsourcing. It contains a good line that tells you a lot about neoclassical economics:

bq. But Mr. Bhagwati … says he doubts whether the Samuelson model applies broadly to the economy. “Paul and I disagree only on the realistic aspects of this,” he said.

In contrast, Marxists tend to agree fully on the realistic aspects of things but disagree about the unrealistic ones, such as when exactly the revolution is coming, who will be in charge, and whether people or robots will clean the toilets afterwards.

Fafblog

by Henry Farrell on September 9, 2004

“Best. Blog. Ever.”:http://fafblog.blogspot.com/2004_09_05_fafblog_archive.html#109473871601998017

Secrets of the Bush Presidency

by Kieran Healy on September 9, 2004

As “Kitty Kelly’s hatchet-job on the Bush family”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0385503245/ref=lpr_g_1/002-7398203-0818411?v=glance&s=books nears publication, lots of people are linking to these “additional revelations about George W. Bush”:http://www.thepoorman.net/archives/003137.html by the Poorman. And you know what? “So am I”:http://www.thepoorman.net/archives/003137.html, because they’re great. Go read, especially if you are a staff writer for the Kerry campaign.

IEM Analysis Spit’n’Polish Dept

by Kieran Healy on September 9, 2004

As a spin-off from Daniel’s discussion of “whether the DEM04 contract is overvalued”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/002460.html on the “Iowa Electronic Markets”:http://128.255.244.60/graphs/graph_Pres04_WTA.cfm, here’s a version of the trend surface he calculated that shows “differences between the Black-Scholes valuation and the observed market price”:http://www.kieranhealy.org/files/misc/dem04.pdf over time (you can look at it in smaller “PNG”:http://www.kieranhealy.org/files/misc/dem04.png format or better-quality “PDF”:http://www.kieranhealy.org/files/misc/dem04.pdf). I created it using “R”:http://www.r-project.org/, the free[1] statistics package because I “didn’t like Excel’s default effort”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/kerrychart2/surface.JPG and I hadn’t had a reason to use R’s wireframe() function before. It’s still not up to the standards of the “Bill Clevelands”:http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/ms/departments/sia/wsc/ or “Ed Tuftes”:http://www.edwardtufte.com/ of this world, but it was the best I could manage on short notice. Thanks to Daniel for sending me the data, and remember that whereas I am happy to field questions about graph colors and chart widgets, technical queries about option valuation, Black-Scholes volatility fluctuations and arbitrage should still be directed to him.

fn1. As in “free to make your own mistakes.”

Favorite first line – music version

by Eszter Hargittai on September 9, 2004

Matt Weiner over at Opiniatrety puts a musical spin on the question of favorite opening hooks by exploring “the greatest first lines of record albums”. Songs usually either grab me in their entirety or they don’t speak to me much at all so although there are lines I really like, they are rarely first lines. I guess by the time you realize whether you like the first line of a song you are half way through the entire piece so perhaps the effect of that first segment is not as important as it may be for a book. In any case, there seem to be lots of music aficionados around here so I thought you might enjoy heading over to Matt’s blog and discussing favorite first lines of songs. There are also a couple of people who comment about first lines of movies in response to the book post. Oh, the possibilities…:)