A week of links
Links this week:
A disturbing way of maximising fitness. A fertility clinic worker may be the father of a lot of children.
Some chaff in with the wheat, but this article on Social Darwinism reports some interesting research.
The Santa Fe Institute’s MOOC Introduction to Dynamical Systems and Chaos has kicked off.
A new paper in JEBO. People cooperate because they are selfish. (ungated pdf)
And to close, my twitter and blog feeds contain an inordinate amount of baseball content. I don’t understand why economists are so interested in baseball, despite the fact they can use their statistical skills to re-live the jock versus nerd battles of their childhood (In the same way, I don’t understand my countrymen’s infatuation with cricket - adults chasing balls?). Surely there are more interesting statistics.
So, to get some real sport into your feeds (this being the only sport in which I can bring myself to watch), I’m introducing a semi-regular surf link or clip to my week of links posts. Today, some awesome Pipeline footage (using drones, another area that economists seem to be infatuated with). I love how you can see the reef, the holes in it, and how the water depth changes so suddenly at its edge. Other highlights - Kelly Slater at 1:05 catching the wave that won him the recent Pipe Masters, and the crowd all paddling for the horizon at 2:54 when they see some sets starting to rear up on third reef. (As an aside, surfing could use some numerate economists - from the almost award of the Eddie Aikau to Tony Ray to the premature crowning of Kelly Slater as world champion, the surfing hierarchy could benefit from the ability to add.)
[vimeo http://vimeo.com/83187924 w=800&h=450]