Given the continued coverage of crimes it is sometimes easy to forget we are very lucky. As reported this morning, murder and other crime continues to drop in California and around the world. In fact, if you look at crime from a historical perspective, we are really the luckiest people that have ever lived, and things are only getting better. Steven Pinker’s TED talk on the myth of violence does a great job showing how we are living in the most peaceful time in our species’ existence.
Professional Chinese WoW Gold Farmer interview
This video is six months old, which is ages World of Warcraft’s RMT (Real Money Transactions) economy, but it still contains a lot of great information on the game market economics. For those of you not familiar with WoW, it is the largest massively multiplayer online role-playing game in the world with over 12 million subscriptions each month. There is a large market system built up around the in-game economy (gold) with brokers, farmers (gold producers), and customers who pay real money for in-game currency.
Professional Chinese Gold Farmer tells all – Exclusive Interview with Jared Psigoda
Economics reading
I’ve been catching up on a lot of reading with instapaper and our kindle. Here are some of the more interesting economics reads I’ve had in the last few months:
- Business Is Booming – America’s leading corporations have found a way to thrive even if the American economy doesn’t recover. This is very, very bad news.
- Why Isn’t Wall Street in Jail? Financial crooks brought down the world’s economy — but the feds are doing more to protect them than to prosecute them
- Jonathan Lebed’s Extracurricular Activities
- Overdrive – Who really rescued General Motors?
Citizenship
I intended to do a write-up about my experience becoming a US Citizen last year. However, as is frequently the case, if I don’t start on a post right away it never happens. Fortunately, Dafna Linzer wrote up a article on Slate that captures a lot of the things I was going to write about:
The Problem With Question 36: Why are so many of the answers on the U.S. citizenship test wrong?
In addition to the sometimes puzzling questions and answers posed by the test (we have a free market economy, really?) I thought she did a good job giving an overview of the interview tone and the swearing-in ceremony emotions. It was very touching to see in people’s reactions just how far they had come, and how much joy that moment gave them. If you ever feel a bit depressed, get yourself invited to a swearing in ceremony. It is hard to leave without a lump in your throat and a changed heart.
Weekend in Idyllwild
Thanks to the generosity of friends of friends we spent a lazy weekend in Idyllwild a few weeks back. The weather and location was lovely, as you can see from the photos.