Using Internet donations after the 2004 tsunami as a case study, we show that media coverage of disasters has a dramatic impact on donations to relief agencies, with an additional minute of nightly news coverage increasing donations by 0.036 standard deviations from the mean, or 13.2 percent of the average daily donation for the typical [...]
Daring Fireball points out:
Today:
Saudi Arabia Friday rebuffed President Bush’s request to immediately pump more oil to lower record prices, saying it does not see enough demand to increase production.
Eight years ago:
Gov. George W. Bush of Texas said today that if he was president, he would bring down gasoline prices through sheer force of personality, by [...]
Hilarious, touching paean to Van Morrison’s gorgeous 1968 album Astral Weeks on music blog T-sides.
What did you accomplish at around 22, 23 years old? Well, I’ll tell you what you didn’t fucking make — Astral Weeks. When you were making Frappuccinos and spilling half of it on your apron, Van Morrison was singing you breathe [...]
MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.
(via Wooster Collective, and as seen on re:think 2.0)
Dan Yergin’s Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) sees oil rising to $150 before policy, technology, and alternative fuels collectively put a halt to the run-up.
At the heart of the Break Point scenario is a slow pace of growth in liquids supply that reflects the range of aboveground risks. “Decision making to facilitate new development in [...]
Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, managing partner at VC firm Founders Fund, and manager of Clarium Capital, is the author of a dense, academic article in the Hoover Institution’s Policy Review on apocalypse and prospects for globalization. He ultimately espouses a case for optimism, arguing that the various China, technology, and hedge fund bubbles along [...]
Many of the critiques about ineffectuality and an unclear mission in this FP piece could be leveled at any number of development organizations.
Today, the Peace Corps remains a Peter Pan organization, afraid to grow up, yet also afraid to question the thinking of its founding fathers. The rush to fulfill John F. Kennedy’s 1960 campaign [...]
Readers of my last several posts may have noticed a strange obsession with wildlife and communications technology. I’m interested in how information technology — especially imagery and mapping tools — can and are being used in service of biology and conservation. I keep harping on cameras and charismatic megafauna, but truthfully that is only one [...]
