A Short Course in Behavioral Economics

in Business, Economics, Online Courses | October 9th, 2008

Here’s a course for our his­tor­i­cal moment.…

Behav­ioral economics—“the study of how think­ing and emo­tions affect indi­vid­ual eco­nom­ic deci­sions and the behav­ior of markets”—is a rel­a­tive­ly new dis­ci­pline. This approach to eco­nom­ics, which mar­ries psy­chol­o­gy and eco­nom­ics and dis­cards the assump­tion that every eco­nom­ic actor is ratio­nal, was devel­oped part­ly by Richard Thaler, Direc­tor of the Cen­ter for Deci­sion Research at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go Grad­u­ate School of Busi­ness. Now, thanks to the Edge.org, you can fol­low a short class on the sub­ject. It’s taught by Thaler him­self and he’s joined by Har­vard econ­o­mist Send­hil Mul­lainathan and Nobel Lau­re­ate Daniel Kah­ne­man.

The course, deliv­ered in text and video, is being rolled out week­ly on the Edge web site in six install­ments. You can find Weeks 1 and 2 here and here. And you can check back for new install­ments here (scroll to the very bot­tom of the page.)

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And the 2008 Nobel Prize in Literature Goes To …

in Literature, Video - Arts & Culture | October 9th, 2008

You can get more on the author here.

The 2nd Presidential Debate in Ten Easy Minutes

in Current Affairs, Video - Politics/Society | October 8th, 2008

In case you missed it, here’s a paired down ver­sion of last night’s sec­ond pres­i­den­tial debate in all of its unin­spir­ing glo­ry:

via Talk­ing Points Memo

Joseph Stiglitz on Managing the Global Credit Crunch

in Current Affairs | October 7th, 2008

As part of our effort to pro­vide insight into the ongo­ing cred­it cri­sis, we present a talk just giv­en at Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty by the Nobel Prize win­ning econ­o­mist, Joseph Stiglitz (iTunes — Rss Feed). The author of Glob­al­iza­tion and its Dis­con­tents uses the talk as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to out­line the events that con­tributed to the glob­al cred­it cri­sis, and the future reg­u­la­tions that could get us back on track. The talk runs a good hour, and it takes about 20–25 min­utes for Stiglitz to real­ly focus on the cred­it crunch, and about 45 min­utes before he starts dis­cussing tan­gi­ble solu­tions. Don’t expect any mag­ic bul­lets, any short term solu­tions that will get the cur­rent cri­sis under con­trol. It’s more prag­mat­ic long-term solu­tions that you’ll find here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Finan­cial Cri­sis Explained

Ten Days That Shook The Finan­cial World

This Amer­i­can Life Demys­ti­fies The Cred­it Cri­sis

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Tina Fey Does Sarah Palin Round #3

in Current Affairs, Video - Politics/Society | October 5th, 2008

Here’s SNL’s satire of last week’s wide­ly viewed vice pres­i­den­tial debate. Thanks to Tina Fey’s impres­sion of Palin, SNL’s rat­ing are up 40% over last year. Quite a boon for NBC.

You can get Rounds 1 and 2 here and here.

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The Global Challenges Facing The Next U.S. President

in Current Affairs, Video - Politics/Society | October 3rd, 2008

CNN recent­ly host­ed a con­ver­sa­tion with sev­er­al recent Sec­re­taries of State, and they all dis­cussed the major chal­lenges that Barack Oba­ma or John McCain will be fac­ing next year. This is no ordi­nary time, and it’s rare to find Hen­ry Kissinger, Madeleine Albright, War­ren Christo­pher, Col­in Pow­ell, and James Bak­er all sit­ting on the same stage and offer­ing their advice. Below, we have post­ed the first seg­ment. You can watch the remain­ing parts here.

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UCLA on YouTube

in YouTube | October 2nd, 2008

Add anoth­er one to our col­lec­tion: Intel­li­gent Life at YouTube: 75 Edu­ca­tion­al Video Col­lec­tions

UCLA has brought their videos to YouTube, join­ing a grow­ing num­ber of oth­er well-respect­ed cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions. Com­pared to oth­er new­com­ers, the ini­tial set of videos (see the UCLA col­lec­tion here) is rea­son­ably strong, and I sus­pect that it will get more sub­stan­tive over time. Straight off the bat, I’d point you to a longer course that you can watch online. It’s called Life, Con­cepts & Issues, and the first video appears below.

While on the top­ic of YouTube, I want to men­tion that I’ve been work­ing at Stan­ford on a fun (and also free) media project that we’ll be rolling out next week. Stay tuned for more details.

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Depression Humor Revived

in Comedy, Video - Arts & Culture | September 30th, 2008

You know things are look­ing bleak when com­e­dy starts mak­ing fod­der out of depres­sion themes. Here’s a bit that tells you how to go from office work­er to home­less drifter in sev­en easy steps. (Video cour­tesy of How­cast)

via Val­ley­wag

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George Orwell’s 1984: Download Free Audio Book Version

in Audio Books, Literature | September 28th, 2008

I first post­ed this one dur­ing the dead of sum­mer, so it seemed worth revis­it­ing this now that we’re all a bit more focused .…

Over at the Inter­net Archive, you can find George Orwell’s clas­sic, 1984, avail­able as a free audio book. As you’ll see, the record­ing is pro­fes­sion­al­ly done. You can down­load the full zip file here. Or alter­na­tive­ly you can get the indi­vid­ual mp3 files, or stream them, from this page. On a more per­ma­nent basis, you can find Orwell’s 1949 work housed in our Free Audio Book Col­lec­tion along with lots of oth­er free texts. Or see it on our list of Life Chang­ing Books.

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Used Book Sculptures

in Art, Books | September 27th, 2008

Thanks to a heads up from one of our loy­al read­ers (thanks Bob!) you can see a new artis­tic trend that’s turn­ing books back into trees. Good stuff.

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