Monthly Archives: May 2015

The sins of the fathers …

Posted on May 28, 2015 by Nicholas Gruen

Hold the presses – Coal may not be good for humanity. OK that was a cheap ideological shot – the kind you might see on our rival ideologically aligned blogs but surely not here at Club Pony. In any event, … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate Change, Cultural Critique, Economics and public policy, History | 1 Comment

Ratings: the downside

Posted on May 24, 2015 by Nicholas Gruen

This article by Maureen O’Dowd on the stress of getting a good rating as a user of a service like Uber is worth pondering. It’s important what ratings are for. They’re supposed to be for the exchange of information. But … Continue reading →

Posted in Economics and public policy, Information | 3 Comments

The generative commons of generalised social capital

Posted on May 16, 2015 by Nicholas Gruen

Paul Krugman has an interesting blog post on the extent to which there might be contagion from one area of social capital (or lack thereof) to another. He’s responding to the claim CEOs made to him that they only started … Continue reading →

Posted in Economics and public policy, Philosophy, Political theory, Politics - international | 18 Comments

The best films of the German Film Festival

Posted on May 15, 2015 by Nicholas Gruen

Festival Website | Films | Melbourne Schedule Top Picks Who Am I-No System is Safe Benjamin is a socially inept nobody. Max is handsome and charismatic. What these strangers have in common is computer hacking. After proving his skill, Benjamin … Continue reading →

Posted in Films and TV | 2 Comments

Politics in the Courtroom: Political Ideology and Jury Decision Making

Posted on May 11, 2015 by Nicholas Gruen

by Shamena Anwar, Patrick Bayer, Randi Hjalmarsson. Publication is available here. This paper uses data from the Gothenburg District Court in Sweden and a research design that exploits the random assignment of politically appointed jurors (termed naemndemaen) to make three contributions to … Continue reading →

Posted in Ethics, Law, Philosophy, Political theory | Comments Off on Politics in the Courtroom: Political Ideology and Jury Decision Making

Showdown at the Supreme Court corral

Posted on May 11, 2015 by Ken Parish

Queensland’s judicial system looks to be in quite a bit of strife at present. The former Newman LNP government’s ill-advised appointment of an utterly unsuitable Supreme Court Chief Justice in Tim Carmody is continuing to cause serious problems. Mercifully, at … Continue reading →

Posted in Law, Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Irreducibility: the micro-foundations

Posted on May 10, 2015 by Nicholas Gruen

I’ve written about what I call irreducibility at least twice before. Then along comes this nice article in the excellent new publication The Mandarin on the “19 reasons why agencies find it hard to hire technologists“. It’s a classic case of how top … Continue reading →

Posted in Business, Economics and public policy, IT and Internet | 1 Comment