Edge magazine has a list of famous scientists' answers to the question "What have you changed your mind about?" It's a pretty awesome read.

Hat Tip: 3quarksdaily.

3 Quarks also has a link up to an article in the Boston Review about the rise of India and China that is worth looking at. It challenges the myth that democracy is always better for development and details some of the effects the different political systems in the two countries have contributed to their current development. I don't agree with everything, but it is an article that at least tries to examine the issue more closely.

Oh well, since I've already gotten going, I'm going to continue and link to some of the articles I have been actually meaning to comment on over the past few days and haven't discussed. I don't have time for much discussion, but there are several that are waiting on the list.

The New America Foundation has a piece about the end of American hegemony. This is, to some extent the kind of thing that comes out every few years calling the end of the US from the rooftops, and I think it goes a little far in asserting that the world the article describes is either that new or that revolutionary; while the US's military might is far ahead of other countries, the economic hegemony has always ,waxed and waned and so has any cultural hegemony. However, those are small quibbles because the article is very good at teasing out details of the world power balances and giving suggestions for the ways in which the US can actually begin to act rationally and effectively on the world stage. PS: The New America Foundation just announced that Eric Schmidt (Google's CEO) will be taking over as chairman of the board.


James Fallows also has a piece in The Atlantic about China's economic entanglement with the US which actually makes an effort to explain the banking nuts and blots that have enabled the current situation.

Daniel Davies over at Crooked Timber has written a post in response to One Economics, Many Recipies that highlights the effect debt has on developing economies. Money quote:

I don’t think it’s sensible to carry out international comparisons of crime rates without taking demographics and urbanisation into account, I don’t think that any kind of comparative analysis of developing economies can be carried out at all without conditioning on the debt burden. It’s that important. When you have a situation in which a country’s capital account is dominated by contractual flows payable in foreign exchange, that is far and away the most important fact about that country’s economy. This is because as long as the debt service constraint is binding, then unless the country is receiving massive net transfers from abroad, the entire economic development program is going to end up being twisted toward a capital account constraint which almost certainly has nothing to do with a sensible locally-based development plan of the kind that Dani advocates.

It's makes one want to go cry on Bono's shoulder and tell him he was right, but it is an cool post.

Last, Bush has a stupid Middle East policy and the next president needs to do better; who is exactly surprised by this one.