Tag Archives: history

The End Of Decades Having Identities In The USA? We are closing on the centennial of the beginning of decades having identities in the USA, the “Roaring 20s” of the 20th century.  It may be that this centennial will clearly mark the end of this odd phenomenon that we had been used to, but which was always a bit odd.  Why did this start and why might ibe ending?  I have a few thoughts on this. My theory oon why it started in the 1920s is that this was...

The Rise and Fall of the Roman Republic: part 4 of 4: the Empire as hegemonic “Banana Republic” ruled by caudillos As we have seen, the Roman Republic was brought down by an escalating series of acts of political violence, from murders to organized political mobs, to private legions, to four military marches over a period of 40 years on a Rome which had no permanent  defense force whose loyalty was to the Republic. The violence and military takeovers...

They spend the next 45 minutes arguing about Stata vs. R. (In honor of the new Jack Ryan season) Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action. Dave Evans offers a short PhD in Michael Kremer’s work, with quick summaries of 100+ of his papers. But being a Nobel-winning researcher is only one of his jobs. He’s founded, or been instrumental in, more than one non-profit, and in USAID DIV. As a friend told me this morning, most people who know him from just one facet of his life...

The Rise and Fall of the Roman Republic: part 3 of 4: the final hammer-blows “The Republic is nothing, a mere name without body or form.” – Julius Caesar This is part 3 of my four part look at why the Roman Republic, which was successful and stable for nearly 4 centuries, ultimately fell into tyranny. In part 1 I described the structure of the Republic and the underlying reasons for its fall. In part 2 I described the first 4 episodes of civil war that...

The Rise and Fall of the Roman Republic: part 2 of 4: the first hammer-blows This is part 2 of my four part look at the Roman Republic and subsequent Empire. In part 1, I described the structure of the Republic, and its several centuries of stability and success, as well as the underlying causes of its ultimate downfall. The hammer-blows that rained down on the Republic from the existential dispute between Senatorial oligarchs on the one hand, and Roman...

Interesting stuff from the One Handed Economist From Intellectual to influencer: “In the case of the public intellectual, the institution was the academy and the role was thinking. In the case of the public influencer, the institution is the corporation and the role is marketing. The shift makes sense. Marketing, after all, has displaced thinking as our primary culture-shaping activity, the source of what we perceive ourselves to be.” How true does this...

One of the original Kodak “Shirley” cardsGuest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action Have fun to everybody at the NEUDC conference this weekend! Fun fact: the Northeast Universities Development Consortium conference is being held at Northwestern, which is neither in the Northeast, nor the Northwest. The conference has never been held at Northeastern University. So for everybody complaining about confusing econ speak, this is what they do to themselves.An interesting idea...

The White House released this document on Wednesday, September 25, 2019. It details a July call between President Trump and President Zelensky of the Ukraine. About midway through it, there is a warning of the contents not being a “verbatim transcript.” I have taken some time to include the notes (red) which are found at the end of the post and have notated the particular passages to which the notes are detailing. If you need direction other than the...

Eighty year old retired salesman John Garver the morning of March 28, 1979 remembers the acrid odor permeating Harrisburg as he walked out of a restaurant in Pennsylvania’s capital city. “We had this smell in the air, wondering what it was. Well it didn’t take us long to find out … that the accident started.” Fourteen miles away, the “accident” was unfolding in Unit 2 at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant, triggering panic, confusion, and within...

It’s That Day again. I mostly stayed off Facebook (except for birthday greetings) and Twitter, but even LinkedIn has posts of now-yellowed newspaper articles of survivors–and probably some of those who didn’t. In another ten years, it will be as far from 11 Sep 2001 as that date was from 11 Sep 1973. At least now, most people know what a sh*t Rudy Giuliani was, both in setting up the firefighters for disaster and moving the NYC Office of Emergency...