Friday, June 26, 2009
C-Span Book TV
I recently discovered this really neat website that allows you to see book talks. It is searchable and easy to use. Check it out here.
Friday, June 19, 2009
Nothing to Fear: FDR's Inner Circle and the Hundred Days that Created Modern America
by Adam Cohen. Penguin Press. 2009
Anyone read this? I came across this book recently via a review on Bloomberg.com. Cohen, with the editorial board of the NY Times, focuses on 5 people in the FDR admin. who helped shaped policy during the first 100 Days. I was particularly interested in Frances Perkins as I have recently read some interesting things about her. As a young lady she was a witness to the fire tragedy at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company in NYC where 146 people perished in this horrible event. Many of the victims were young girls working behind locked doors in this sweatshop environment. Perkins later had a huge impact in labor rights and better working conditions. She was instrumental in developing unemployment insurance that many people are gratefully using now in the current economic downturn. Check out Amazon for more information as well as the status of the book in the Gorgas Library.
Anyone read this? I came across this book recently via a review on Bloomberg.com. Cohen, with the editorial board of the NY Times, focuses on 5 people in the FDR admin. who helped shaped policy during the first 100 Days. I was particularly interested in Frances Perkins as I have recently read some interesting things about her. As a young lady she was a witness to the fire tragedy at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company in NYC where 146 people perished in this horrible event. Many of the victims were young girls working behind locked doors in this sweatshop environment. Perkins later had a huge impact in labor rights and better working conditions. She was instrumental in developing unemployment insurance that many people are gratefully using now in the current economic downturn. Check out Amazon for more information as well as the status of the book in the Gorgas Library.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
International Labour Organization
I am currently doing a web review of this site. There are quite a number of pdf downloadable books and publications by this tri-partite UN Agency that was established in 1919. I am learning a great deal about this unique source and what they do by virtue of this review. Check out their site sometime.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
6 Degrees of UA
Just like the "6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon" game, what we have here is "6 Degrees of UA" . I bet you didn't know that Bernard Madoff once attended UA. Check out this site from the New York Times.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Morals and Markets: An Evolutionary Account of the Modern World
by Daniel Friedman.
Read about the book @ Amazon.
Appetizer: Friedman notes that morals and markets need realigning so that they work better together. To take a small example, as he mentions in chapter 12 "Future Morals and Markets", would be to consider spam e-mail. He says the underlying cause is that it:
"costs almost nothing to e-mail a thousand more strangers about how to make a fortune or improve their sex appeal. A spammer can make money if only one person in ten thousand goes for the bait, but all ten thousand suffer from clogged in-baskets and wasted time. It's a classic social dilemma, and the profit opportunity has defeated all technical fixes tried so far.
Perhaps it would be more effective to harness people's moral outrage. For example, require all e-mail senders to post a bond, perhaps twenty dollars for an ordinary user, and a much larger sum for anyone who wanted to send bulk mail. Have routers confirm the bond balance before forwarding messages, and let recipients click a "spam" button to take a nickel or so from the sender's bond. This cheap form of vengeance would, I believe, soon raise the cost of sending another unwanted email enough to make spam unprofitable." (Friedman, pages 179-180).
Have you read this book?
Click here to see if Bruno Library copy is available.
Read about the book @ Amazon.
Appetizer: Friedman notes that morals and markets need realigning so that they work better together. To take a small example, as he mentions in chapter 12 "Future Morals and Markets", would be to consider spam e-mail. He says the underlying cause is that it:
"costs almost nothing to e-mail a thousand more strangers about how to make a fortune or improve their sex appeal. A spammer can make money if only one person in ten thousand goes for the bait, but all ten thousand suffer from clogged in-baskets and wasted time. It's a classic social dilemma, and the profit opportunity has defeated all technical fixes tried so far.
Perhaps it would be more effective to harness people's moral outrage. For example, require all e-mail senders to post a bond, perhaps twenty dollars for an ordinary user, and a much larger sum for anyone who wanted to send bulk mail. Have routers confirm the bond balance before forwarding messages, and let recipients click a "spam" button to take a nickel or so from the sender's bond. This cheap form of vengeance would, I believe, soon raise the cost of sending another unwanted email enough to make spam unprofitable." (Friedman, pages 179-180).
Have you read this book?
Click here to see if Bruno Library copy is available.
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