Quick links

Here are a few of the links I’ve been clicking over the past few days:

When is economic growth good for the poor? At Consider the Evidence Lane Kenworthy reveals the awful truth — governments can make poor people better off by giving them money.

Money and happiness. When people in rich countries get a lot richer, they get a little bit happier too. A nifty chart from the Economist.

A Bully Finds a Pulpit on the Web. Thanks to Google, pissing off customers can be good for business. The New York Times article everyone’s linking to (I heard about it from Ezra Klein).

Buffy the Vampire Slayer returns — but without Joss Whedon. And stranger still, high school student Buffy Summers, will not be played by 33 year old actress Sarah Michelle Gellar. "This is a sad, sad reflection on our times," says Whedon, "when people must feed off the carcasses of beloved stories from their youths—just because they can’t think of an original idea of their own, like I did with my Avengers idea that I made up myself."

Actually, Glenn Beck Is Not Father Coughlin. Despite the comparisons, it turns out that tea party darling Glenn Beck is not in the same league as the notorious anti-Semitic radio broadcaster of the 1930s — but that’s mostly because Coughlin was far worse than most people realise.