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Superb NYTimes disquisition on a masterpiece of Indian miniature painting. The text, formatting, visuals, all beautifully done–better than any museum exhibit I can recall. In addition to the subject matter this piece has a lot to say about online education and how news is becoming a winner take-most market. Note wha...

Here is a new research paper from Tomas Ståhl: There is a widespread cross-cultural stereotype suggesting that atheists are untrustworthy and lack a moral compass. Is there any truth to this notion? Building on theory about the cultural, (de)motivational, and cognitive antecedents of disbelief, the present research investigated whether there are reliable similarities as well […] The post Why are atheists so unpopular? appeared...

Tony O’Connor requests I cover this: A few times you have said that the important thinkers of the future will be the religious ones. It would be interesting to hear more about what led you to this conclusion. Concretely, I wonder if this would arise because religious populations within liberal polities are expanding over time […] The post Why will the important thinkers of...

Here is the audio, transcript, and visual. Here is part of the CWT summary: Benjamin Friedman has been a leading macroeconomist since the 1970s, whose accomplishments include writing 150 papers, producing more than dozen books, and teaching Tyler Cowen graduate macroeconomics at Harvard in 1985. In his latest book, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, Ben argues that […] The post My Conversation with Benjamin Friedman appeared...

The spiritual gap between Iran’s Shia ayatollahs and the people they rule is widening. The strictures of the theocracy and the doctrine of Shia supremacy alienate many. So growing numbers of Iranians seem to be leaving religion or experimenting with alternatives to Shiism. Christians, Zoroastrians and Bahais all report soaring interest. Leaders of other forms […] The post Are disenchanted Iranians turning to other...

Dana is what I call one of the world’s information billionaires.  For more specifics, here is part of his Wikipedia page: Michael Dana Gioia (/ˈdʒɔɪ.ə/; born December 24, 1950) is an American poet and writer. He spent the first fifteen years of his career writing at night while working for General Foods Corporation. After his […] The post What should I ask Dana Gioia?...

That is a new paper by Kevin D. Hoover and Andrej Svorenčík: The leadership structure of the American Economics Association is documented using a biographical database covering every officer and losing candidate for AEA offices from 1950 to 2019. The analysis focuses on institutional affiliations by education and employment. The structure is strongly hierarchical. A […] The post Who Runs the AEA? appeared first...

The Stargate Project was a long-running program, funded under various names, by the CIA, Army, and Defense Intelligence Agency to investigate and use psychic powers to defeat enemies of the United States, foreign and domestic. The program can be dated back to the end of World War II but it picked up in the 1970s […] The post The Stargate Project appeared first on...

The Supreme Court has sided with religious institutions (NYT) against some of the pandemic restrictions of state and local governments: The opinion said the state had treated secular businesses more favorably than houses of worship. “The list of ‘essential’ businesses includes things such as acupuncture facilities, camp grounds, garages, as well as many whose services […] The post SCOTUS, houses of worship, and the...

As noted, Ben has a new and very interesting book coming out Religion and the Rise of Capitalism.  He is also the author of the superb The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth, and the earlier Day of Reckoning, about the economic policies of the Reagan administration.  Ben has been a leading macroeconomist since the 1970s, […] The post What should I ask Benjamin M....

That is the new, forthcoming book by Benjamin M. Friedman, due out in January, you can pre-order here.  I will be inviting him to do a CWT, he was also an excellent macro professor way back when. Via Henry C. Clark. The post *Religion and the Rise of Capitalism* appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

That is a work in progress by Brian Wheaton, job market candidate from Harvard University.  Here is the abstract: Over the past several decades, working-class America has been plagued by multiple adverse trends: a sharp increase in social isolation, an even sharper increase in single parenthood, a decline in male labor force participation rates, and […] The post Secularization and the Tribulations of the...

That is the new book by Nicholas McDowell, and it is one of my favorite non-fiction works this year.  Milton is today more relevant than he has been in a long time, excerpt: Milton’s political development is shaped by his evolving understanding of the ways in which ‘tyranny’ — defined initially in ecclesiastical and clerical […] The post *Poet of Revolution: The Making of...

From Alice Evans: Region is a strong predictor of female survival, literacy, autonomy, employment, and independent mobility. A woman with the exact same household wealth/ caste/ religion will likely have more autonomy if she lives in the South. It does not seem to be a function of wealth, nor was colonialism a major factor.  And […] The post Why are North and South India...

Also known as markets in everything: Bill Edgar has, in his own words, “no respect for the living”. Instead, his loyalty is to the newly departed clients who hire Mr Edgar — known as “the coffin confessor” — to carry out their wishes from beyond the grave. Mr Edgar runs a business in which, for […] The post Those new service sector jobs, coffin...

Evan Sharp, the co-founder of Pinterest, hired Sacred Design Lab to categorize all major religious practices and think of ways to apply them to the office. They made him a spreadsheet. “We pulled together hundreds of practices from all these different religions and cultural practices and put them in a spreadsheet and just tried to […] The post Bringing religion back into business appeared...

Daniel Klein sets the record straight: Olsson: But was it Christianity in particular, or monotheism more generally, that opened up the road to liberalism? Don’t other religious traditions and civilizations also have ideas on individuals, moral agency, and the conscience? Klein: Monotheism is necessary but not sufficient. Other monotheistic religions didn’t have moral agency, moral […] The post From Christianity to liberalism appeared first...

I will be doing a Conversation with her, she is the famed Haitian author.  Here is her extensive Wikipedia page.  Or here is part of a shorter bio: Author Edwidge Danticat was born on January 19, 1969 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti to André Danticat and Rose Danticat. In 1981, she moved to Brooklyn, New York, where […] The post What should I ask Edwidge Danticat?...