Kevin Ryan in Tokyo

Category: economics

  • Women and Men in University

    In this newsletter (blog post) Celeste Davis looks at the reasons why fewer men are going to college in the US.

    For every 1% increase in the proportion of women in the student body, 1.7 fewer men applied. One more woman applying was a greater deterrent than $1000 in extra tuition!

    This is also reflected in certain “Male” jobs and “Women’s” jobs. With the new political weather in the US, it will be interesting to see if this trend slows or accelerates. I’m guessing on the second.

    I’m hoping women will not give up and continue to “take over” more universities and departments and whole careers and career paths.

  • Fake Research

    The Whole Earth Catalog was vetted. Not so for many journals.

    Is caused by an evaluation process much like Google’s PageRank, where a paper is rated by how many links there are to and from it. That’s how over 400,000 research articles in the last 20 years are probably fake, created by Paper Mills. From Nature.

  • Good news for readers

    Some books I gave away last year

    Independent bookstores will soon be able to sell over a million electronic books (e-books). I have over 350 books on Amazon (and over 100 on Audible) and am definitely ready to make the move. NYTimes.

  • Gulf of Google

    Google will change the names of Gulf of Mexico and Denali to fall in line behind Trump, reports CNBC. Tim Snyder, author of On Tyranny posts that most progress made by autocrats and wannabe dictators is through accession previous to any pressure. Lesson #1 (of 20): Do Not Obey in Advance.

    Time for me to move away from Google, increase my gulf. What happened to “Don’t do Evil”?

  • Globalization

    Is still on the march. Only the US is falling behind. Kevin Drum, previously of Mother Jones, a liberal magazine, has taken to data analysis and reporting after his retirement while he battles cancer. His blog is a treasure trove of data showing how little things are changing, even as the rhetoric around change is going haywire. In any case, those afraid of a decline in globalization should not be worried, unless you are in the US.