Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago School economists and fellow travelers.
I am usually loathe to recommend anything remotely related to the NY Times or even link there*, but the Freakonomics Blog is very good reading, and the comments are usually very civil, intelligent and interesting.
*My main reasons are the terrible editorial pages and the fact that they will not renounce the Duranty Pulitzer.
One of my favorite blogs is The Middle Stage, written by Chandrahas Choudhury.
Chandrahas writes about literature as well as history, fiction and nonfiction, and very frequently alerts me to books I have never heard of, but which I wish I had time to read. In particular, he writes about Indian history, a vast subject I want to know more about.
His list of best nonfiction for 2008 contains several which might interest the ChicagoBoyz team, and our readers.
I would particularly like to hear about what others think about his choices related to India.
Cross-posted on Antilibrary.
I sometimes mention this blog in class. Not wanting to indicate its politics, I never give them the name and when they ask about its nature, I say something like: “I don’t know why they let me write there. It’s full of guys who’d like a tank in their backyard.” Last week, the two Corps guys in the front row started grinning – “Actually,” one said, “that would be pretty cool.”
Anyway, clearly the guys here “have a pair” as Brad Paisley would say. The only one close to its 91% among Gateway’s examples is Vodkapundit’s 90%. (Maybe gender is defined by tanks & liquor)
I want to thank David Foster for putting up his post and thus allowing me to comment in a rambling manner. I’m one of those people who doesn’t know what I think until I say it – and having a forum is better than daily analysis. (Indeed, given the results from Woody Allen’s intensive time on the couch, Jonathan is probably more justified in charging a fee to posters & commentors than are some highly paid analysts.)
Some comments assume those in the hard sciences, engineering and business are likely to be conservatives/Republicans. Since, of course, I agree on their broad picture, I haven’t nit picked. Their position echoes Horowitz’s opponents, who also assume business & engineering departments are conservative. Liberal arts & social science colleges are more heavily weighted (in some, I’m sure, Nader got more votes than Bush). But I’ve seen studies finding most colleges within universities (business, engineering, hard sciences) lean left – just not as far. Shannon notes that they are more centrist and that is probably true. And, practicing engineers and scientists may well move right. Academia attracts leftish sympathies and peer pressure is a factor.
Nonetheless, the only college likely to be majority Republican is the same that probably would do such projects as those cited by Chel and Anonymous – Ag schools. They are also often geographically separated from the university because of the land-consuming nature of their research. I support funding that research and many who share my general political positions would. I came out of one of the great American institutions – the land grant college – and respect that history.
Encyclopaedia Britannica is the venerable institution that prints all of those bound volumes that you had at your house (or your grandparent’s house) when you were a kid. Interestingly enough, their headquarters is right here in River North Chicago, and I walk by the building often on my way to work (it is on LaSalle Street, just North of the Chicago River.
When I mention Brittanica, the first thing that most people say is “Are they still in business?” This was Dan’s exact question when I mentioned that they are headquartered here in Chicago.
Early on, when the web was first starting up, many companies had the idea that capturing information would be a big money maker. For example, Microsoft has an encyclopedia called “Encarta” that was big news back in the ’90s, when it was battling Brittanica for leadership. About this time Microsoft also started up their online movie database “Cinemania” which was also popular for a while as an attempt to create valuable content.
People did pay for content back in the early days, when the web was somewhat of a novelty. I remember a good friend who bought Cinemania and loved it, since he was a giant movie buff, and he got a big kick out of being able to search through all the data and reviews and see some clips, as well. I think at the time if you mentioned that this all would be on the web, it seemed pretty far fetched, especially since home high-bandwidth broadband was a long ways away and we were stuck with dial up (remember all those AOL CDs in the mail?).