Locavores, Offshore Banking, Gender, Oil Prices, Academic Publishing
They Are Feeding You Fiction
Laura Reiley | Tampa Bay Times | 13th April 2016
Restaurants that claim to sell strictly local produce are lying, mostly. They can charge more, the customers like it, and who is going to call them on it? In this rare case, a food critic. “How do you know the Dover sole on your plate is Dover sole? Only that the restaurateur said so. Your purchases are unverifiable unless you drive to that farm or track back through a restaurant’s distributors and ask for invoices. I did”. They were all lying (6,700 words)
I Work For A Swiss Bank
W. Bank | Reddit | 10th April 2016
Private banker explains how to organise offshore companies for rich Russians. “The wealth planner tells the client that a Panama company would be a good choice. The wealth planner calls up Mossack Fonseca and receives a list of company names. The client picks a name he likes. The incorporator (Mossack Fonseca) already has a nominee director and a nominee shareholder so the client’s name doesn’t show up in the founding documents” (2,200 words)
Caitlyn Jenner And Cognitive Dissonance
Robert Sapolsky | Nautilus | 14th April 2016
We are starting to understand human gender as a continuum. Genes, organs, hormones, external appearance and self-identification vary independently and combine infinitely. “Many people have categories of gender identification going on in their heads that bear no resemblance to yours”. But humans need categories; that’s how we think. It’s hard to see where the new equilibrium will be found between many genders and none (2,900 words)
Forecasting The Oil Price
Brad Plumer | Vox | 13th April 2016
Roughly speaking, nobody can forecast the price of oil. Why so? First, because demand for oil depends on global GDP growth, which is too complicated to forecast. Second, technological innovation delivers supply shocks, and innovation is by definition unpredictable. Third, political crises move oil markets, and nobody cares to forecast those. Which invites the question: Why do we bother to forecast the oil price at all? (1,700 words)
The Black Market In Academic Papers
Dana Ruggiero | The Conversation | 13th April 2016
The pirate trade in scholarly papers on Twitter uses the hashtag #ICanHazPDF. You tweet a request for a paywalled paper, a well-wisher sneaks you a PDF, you delete your tweet. SciHub, a server safe from prosecution in Kazakhstan, holds an open repository of 48m pirated papers to which scholars are adding more each day. Publishers seem to have over-estimated both the morality of academia and its willingness to pay (1,170 words)
Video of the day: Kant’s Axe
What to expect:
Is it ever right to lie? No, said Kant. Script by Nigel Warburton, voice by Harry Shearer (1’30”)
Thought for the day
Nobody is forgotten when it is convenient to remember him
Benjamin Disraeli