Performance Auditing Best Practice

Climate Engineering: Technical Status, Future Directions, and Potential Responses;

Climate engineering technologies do not now offer a viable response to global climate change. Experts advocating research to develop and evaluate the technologies believe that research on these technologies is urgently needed or would provide an insurance policy against worst case climate scenarios--but caution that the misuse of research could bring new risks. Government reports and the literature suggest that research progress will require not only technology studies but also efforts to improve climate models and data. The technologies being proposed have been categorized as carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and solar radiation management (SRM). CDR would reduce the atmospheric concentration of CO2, allowing more heat to escape and thus cooling the Earth. For example, proposed CDR technologies include enhancing the uptake of CO2 in oceans and forests and capturing CO2 from air chemically for storage underground. SRM technologies would place reflective material in space or in Earth's atmosphere to scatter or reflect sunlight (for example, by injecting sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere to scatter incoming solar radiation or brightening clouds) or would increase the planet's reflectivity (for example, by painting roofs and pavements in light colors). GAO found these technologies currently immature, many with potentially negative consequences. Some studies say, for example, that stratospheric aerosols might greatly reduce summer precipitation in places such as India and northern China. Many experts advocated research because of its potential benefits but also recognized its risks. For example, a country might unilaterally deploy a technology with a transboundary effect. Research advocates emphasized the need for risk management, envisioning a federal research effort that would (1) focus internationally on transparency and cooperation, given transboundary effects; (2) enable the public and national leaders to consider issues before they become crises; and (3) anticipate opportunities and risks. A small number of those we consulted opposed research; they anticipated major technology risks or limited future climate change. Based on GAO's survey, a majority of U.S. adults are not familiar with climate engineering. When given information on the technologies, they tend to be open to research but concerned about safety.

The Consolations of Economics and other Podcasts

Princeton’s Dixit Discusses Nobel for Ostrom, Williamson

Calvo Sees Difficulty Unwinding Stimulus Packages

Bill Clinton Cites Discipline, Growth to Cut Deficit

Rogoff, Reinhart on Their Book `This Time Is Different'

Skidelsky Says Stimulus Debates Today Same as 1930s

Zandi Sees Little Traction for U.S. Recovery in 2010

Plosser Says No Bank Should Be Too Big to Fail

Sustainable Wealth: Achieve Financial Security in a Volatile World of Debt and Consumption

The Consolations of Economics
Speaker: Tim Harford

The Strange Friendship of Pauli and Jung: when physics met psychology
Speaker: Professor Arthur I Miller

Keynes and the Crisis of Capitalism
Speaker: Professor Lord Skidelsky

The current state of the economy
Speaker: Professor Edward C. Prescott

Building windmills not walls – Hungary's approach in the economic storm
Speaker: Gordon Bajnai

Optimal Financial Structure and Economic Development
Speaker: Dr Justin Yifu Lin

Islam: what I believe
Speaker: Professor Tariq Ramadan

The Future of Banking and Financial Regulation
Speaker: Eric Chaney, Professor Charles Goodhart

Predictioneer: How to predict the future with game-theory
Speaker: Professor Bruce Bueno de Mesquita

A Year after the Collapse of Lehmans: where does global capitalism go now?
Speaker: Professor Andrew Gamble, Will Hutton, Professor Danny Quah

Risk, Behaviour and Applications to Health Policy
Speaker: Dr Joan Costa-i-Font, Dr Caroline Rudisill

How to Control and Change Individual Behaviour: the world as installation
Speaker: Professor Saadi Lahlou

Human Rights in the 21st Century
Speaker: Professor Noam Chomsky

The Idea of Justice
Amartya Sen

Capitalism and Confusion
Amartya Sen

The Role of Political and Economic Ideas in Policymaking
Douglas Irwin, Professor of Arts and Sciences, Department of Economics, Dartmouth College
David Colander, Professor of Economics, Middlebury College
Murray Dry, Professor of Political Science, Middlebury College
James Morrison, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Middlebury College

Capitalism 3.0
Dani Rodrik

Natural Resource Management -Collier

A Conversation with Lord Nicholas Stern

Developing Rural Areas - Esther Duflo

The Life and Impact of Ayn Rand

It's Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistleblower

Create Your Own Economy: The Path to Prosperity in a Disordered World

The Return of Depression Economics

The Global Financial Crisis: Causes and Consequences - Greenspan

Controlling corruption
Out of the Fitzgerald Inquiry, the National Integrity System was born, and is now used by governments and authorities in most countries around the world. The latest is Kurdistan. Corruption, like death and taxes, is inevitable. Ian Townsend explores ways in which it can be managed and minimised.

Addiction, free will and self control

Gandhi and philosophy - the centenary of Hind Swaraj

Beethoven and the modern

How T.H. Huxley helped me teach my students how to write

Should we encourage Swine Flu parties?

Infectious-disease specialists say they understand the logic: surviving the current, apparently mild strain of the virus may be protective if a more virulent strain emerges next fall. But they are generally against it.

Dr. Anne Moscona, a flu specialist at Weill Medical College of Cornell University, said she had been called by a reporter for a women’s magazine “asking if mothers should hold swine flu parties, like chickenpox parties.”

(Chickenpox parties, at which children gather so they can all be infected by a child who has the pox, are often held by parents who distrust chickenpox vaccine or want their children to have the stronger immunity that surviving a full-blown infection affords and are willing to take the risk that their child will not get serious complications.)

“I think it’s totally nuts,” Dr. Moscona said. “I can’t believe people are really thinking of doing it. I understand the thinking, but I just fear we don’t know enough about how this virus would react in every individual. This is like the Middle Ages, when people deliberately infected themselves with smallpox. It’s vigilante vaccination — you know, taking immunity into your own hands.”

The idea has arisen from the history of the 1918 Spanish flu. A mild spring outbreak was followed by two deadly waves in the early and late winter of 1918-1919. Some believe, although there is little evidence beyond anecdotal reports in old newspapers, that those who got sick in the first wave were less likely to get sick in the second and third.

Many cite as the source of their thinking the book “The Great Influenza,” a history of the 1918 pandemic by John M. Barry.

Mr. Barry, in a telephone interview, said he had never publicly suggested deliberate self-infection, “but I used to joke with my wife, and I may have jokingly said it in speeches, that if a virus emerged and looked mild, I’d be on an airplane to Indonesia.”

-Debating the Wisdom of ‘Swine Flu Parties’

Carnival of Podcasts

Tyler Cowen Says Once Banks Are Nationalized, Privatization Is Hard

Levitt Sees U.S. Moving Toward Nationalizing Banks

Harvard's Goldman Sees Russia Worried Over Ruble Weakness

Luigi Zingales Opposes U.S. Bank Nationalization

Burns Says Comparison of Obama to FDR Is `Over-Emphasized'

Paul Krugman Sees Need to Get Stimulus Plan Out `Fast'

Komileva Says U.K. Forecasts `Not Pessimistic Enough'

Pimco's Clarida Sees U.S. Banks Moving Toward Nationalization

Eric Raymond on Hacking, Open Source, and the Cathedral and the Bazaar

A History of History

In the 6th century AD, the bishop of Tours began his history of the world with a simple observation that “A great many things keep happening, some of them good, some of them bad”.

For a phrase that captures the whole of history it’s among the best, but in writing about the past we are rarely so economical. From ancient epics to medieval hagiographies and modern deconstructions, historians have endlessly chronicled, surveyed and analysed the great many things that keep happening, declaring some of them good and some of them bad.

But the writing of history always illuminates two periods – the one history is written about and the one it is written in. And to look at how the writing of history has changed is to examine the way successive ages have understood their world. In short, there is a history to history.

Bad Science and Outsiders
KATHRYN HUNTER on Othello, autism with DANIEL TAMMET, Paul Dirac by GRAHAM FARMELO and Bad Science with BEN GOLDACRE


Anti-planning

British prime minister Harold Macmillan, when asked by a journalist what was most likely to blow a government off course replied, Events, dear boy, events. So how much can any government really plan in advance, given that unexpected events invariably happen?
Randal O'Toole outlines his case against government getting involved in large scale planning projects -- which he says almost always leads to disaster.

The story of highways

Islam and philosophy - Tariq Ramadan

The knee files - part one, part two

Ways of being in Polish, English and Russian
Mary Besemeres explores the different emotional and social worlds that she inhabits while using either Polish, English or Russian, each of which allow her different ways of being.

Meet the Naked Scientist
Why Naked? Dr Chris Smith has appeared on ABC RN every week for some years both on The Science Show and Breakfast. This Cambridge don and doctor has offered a lively, insightful and often cheeky interpretation of new research and has now produced a second book of the highlights. His prize-winning programs and website, called The Naked Scientist, continues to break moulds -- as he tells Nicky Phillips.

Trumpeting maths and science

One laptop per child

Nursing in Australia and the UK

Professor Linda Shields from Curtin University of Technology in Perth has written, together with Professor Roger Watson from the University of Sheffield in the UK, about the state of nursing in Australia and the UK.
She talks about the international nursing shortage which threatens the health of Australians, the nursing recruitment drive and the difference in education of Australian and British nurses, and about the treatment of nurses by health authorities in both countries.

Charles Darwin in Australia

The Trials of the Templars

At dawn on 13 October 1307 all the Templars in France were arrested by royal order, on the charge that they had been involved in secret blasphemous rituals. This led to other arrests of Templars in Europe, and an investigation by Pope Clement V. The University of Sydney Rare Books and Special Collections Library recently obtained trial documents from the Vatican archives, which John Pryor discusses with Rachael Kohn

Inside the minds of murderers and sex offenders

Ken Feinberg: what is a life worth?
Meet lawyer Ken Feinberg. It was his job to hand out US$7 billion dollars to the families of those who died and to those injured in the September 11 attacks. How did he deal with claims from the families of wealthy financiers, illegal aliens and heroic firemen? And how did he deal with grieving loved ones, squabbling relatives and a shocked nation?

Buckminster Fuller

Policy Responses to the Financial Crisis
Dr. Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve System

Fiscal responsibility and the recession

Podcasts

Keene, Schneider Review 2008 Financial, Economic Turmoil

Stanford University's Zare Says Teachers Need to Inspire

Taylor Says U.S. Response Made Financial Crisis Worse

Altman Says Obama Stimulus Plan Must Reach `Very Far'

O'Driscoll Criticizes U.S. Response to Financial Crisis

Beyond Firefighting: Rethinking Financial Market Regulation

World Energy Outlook

China`s Sex Ratio Imbalance and its Implications for the Domestic and Global Economies

Revisiting Marx: is Marxism still relevant?

The Subprime Crisis - Schiller

Advising America`s Next President: Rethinking Trade Policy

Nature's numbers
Our economy may fall over, but it's not just about the financial meltdown. Nature is seizing up, and it's costing big bucks. Putting a dollar value on nature might help, but how much is a bacterium in a lake really worth?

Science and public policy
Aynsley Kellow argues that the reliance of environmental science on mathematical models and the infusion of values into its conduct have produced a preference for virtual over observational data.

Nigerian writer: Chris Abani

history of Black Liberation Theology

John Harvey, executive director of IBM Australia, looks to the future of computing.

Blessed Days Of Anaesthesia
We are not very good at putting up with pain. Little more than a hundred years ago people had no choice. Legs, breasts and teeth were removed with no relief beyond a stiff drink. But then, as author Stephanie Snow tells Nicky Phillips, scientists groped their way towards effective anaesthetics. But why wasn't the process of discovery more straightforward?

William of Ockham and the black death

Lamarck's Evolution - Two Centuries of Genius and Jealousy
In 2009 we celebrate the birthday of evolution. Before Charles Darwin, Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck created the first theory of evolution in 1809. However, his theory was discredited by most in the scientific community once Charles Darwin published his theory of evolution, 50 years later. Ross Honeywill tells us this fascinating story.

The Ark Goes to Israel - Masada
Herod's lavish palace 450 metres above the Dead Sea was also the site of the Zealots' last stand against the Romans in 73 CE. Masada is on the UNESCO World Heritage List

The Emergence of Science, Part 1, Part 2

THE CONSOLATION OF PHILOSOPHY;

In the 6th century AD, a successful and intelligent Roman politician called Boethius found himself unjustly accused of treason. Trapped in his prison cell, awaiting a brutal execution, he found solace in philosophical ideas - about the true nature of reality, about injustice and evil and the meaning of living a moral life. His thoughts did not save him from death, but his ideas lived on because he wrote them into a book. He called it The Consolation of Philosophy.

The Consolation of Philosophy was read widely and a sense of consolation is woven into many philosophical ideas, but what for Boethius were the consolations of philosophy, what are they more generally and should philosophy lead us to consolation or lead us from it?

The numbers behind the news with presenter Tim Harford. This week: the accuracy of professional forecasts, the Lake Wobegon effect and what is an average wage?
Forecasting the future

Carnival of Podcasts

Guha Says Indian Muslim Response to Mumbai Terrorism `Heroic'

Marvin Goodfriend Says Fed to Focus on Inflation After Crisis

Goodhart Recommends `Aggressive' Bank of England Policy

Meghnad Desai Says India `Unprepared' For Terrorist Attacks

UC's Hamilton Says Global Economy Is `Deteriorating Quickly'

AIG's Frenkel Says Global Collaboration Needed in Crisis

Navigating Global Economic and Financial Change
Speaker: Mohamed A El-Erian; Chair: Professor Willem Buiter

The Conceptions of Social Policy: Universalism vs. Targeting

Global Cooperation and Sustainable Development-Sachs

A Discussion of the Global Financial Crisis


The history of trade

William Bernstein in his new book A Splendid Exchange - how trade shaped the world argues that while most history is about raiding, in the form of wars, it ought to pay more attention to trading.

Economic gangsters

Enron's Spectacular Collapse

Controlling pornography

Universal Declaration of Human Rights turns 60

Iceland's Meltdown

Taking liberties: John Milton and the English language

Teaching children to be philosophers
How young is too young to think philosophically? Philosophers like Philip Cam from the University of New South Wales say there's no developmental reason why primary school age children can't be taught to think and to reason, and that developing these skills has a significant effect on their lives both in and out of the classroom.

Doing without a ruler: in defence of anarchism

Public sector whistleblowers

Freeman Dyson
Prof Freeman Dyson of Princeton has long been a critic of climate change orthodoxies. Here he talks of his life as a daring proposer of ideas - such as the genetically modified trees to soak up carbon dioxide and kites flying in Antarctica to cause more snowfall and abate sea level rise

How Nations Prosper: Economic Freedom and Doing Business around the World

Future Imperfect: Technology and Freedom in an Uncertain World

Let Failing African Governments Collapse: A Radical Solution to Underdevelopment

Descartes' Bones: A Skeletal History of the Conflict Between Faith and Reason

Descartes' Bones: A Skeletal History of the Conflict Between Faith and Reason by Russell Shorto

U=EV/ID

Chronic procastinators, who make up 20 per cent of the population, are more impulsive and erratic than other people and less conscientious about attention to detail and obligations to others, he says in his forthcoming book, The Procrastination Equation: Today's Trouble with Tomorrow.

The psychologist, from the University of Calgary, has subsequently formed an equation for why people procrastinate, which began by studying 250 college students.

The equation is U=EV/ID.

The 'U' stands for utility, or the desire to complete a given task. It is equal to the product of E, the expectation of success, and V the value of completion, divided by the product of I, the immediacy of the task, and D, the personal sensitivity to delay.

Prof Steel says procrastination is becoming a bigger issue because many more jobs are "self-structured", with people setting their own schedules.

-Academics invent a mathematical equation for why people procrastinate

The Best of New York Times

Investors Buy U.S. Debt at Zero Yield ;

In the market equivalent of shoveling cash under the mattress, hordes of buyers were so eager on Tuesday to park money in the world’s safest investment, United States government debt, that they agreed to accept a zero percent rate of return.

Weak Oversight Lets Bad Hospitals Stay Open;

Mistakes happen even at good hospitals, of course. But evidence shows that University, which is owned by the State University of New York system, is not a good hospital. In fact, in late 2006 a state commission recommended that it be scaled back and merged with another hospital.

$73 an Hour: Adding It Up





The Pain May Be Real, but the Scan Is Deceiving

Primal, Acute and Easily Duped: Our Sense of Touch;

Touch also turns out to be easy to fool. Among the sensory tricks now being investigated is something called the Pinocchio illusion. Researchers have found that if they vibrate the tendon of the biceps, many people report feeling that their forearm is getting longer, their hand drifting ever further from their elbow. And if they are told to touch the forefinger of the vibrated arm to the tip of their nose, they feel as though their nose was lengthening, too.

Some tactile illusions require the collusion of other senses. People who watch a rubber hand being stroked while the same treatment is applied to one of their own hands kept out of view quickly come to believe that the rubber prosthesis is the real thing, and will wince with pain at the sight of a hammer slamming into it. Other researchers have reported what they call the parchment-skin illusion. Subjects who rubbed their hands together while listening to high-frequency sounds described their palms as feeling exceptionally dry and papery, as though their hands must be responsible for the rasping noise they heard. Look up, little Pinocchio! Somebody’s pulling your strings.

In Defense of Teasing

Scorpios Get More Asthma, but Astrology Isn’t to Blame