“died of states’ rights”
2011/11/24
I am reading the first paragraph of “Local Defense and the Overthrow of the Confederacy“†:
“In recent years it is becoming more apparent to students of Confederate history that the Confederacy collapsed more from internal than from external causes and the most disastrous of these internal ailments was the attempt of the southern people to practice their theory of state rights during the war. This destroyed the possibility of cooperation, embittered and demoralized the people, and pitted the state governments against the Confederate government like hostile powers. This struggle between the states and the Confederate government extended into many fields, mostly related to the conduct of the war. One of the most important of these fields was the matter of local defense. It is the object of this paper to present a careful study of the policy of local defense in the Confederacy, and show how it contributed to the downfall of that government.”
How’s that any different from the EU (the Confederacy) and the financial crisis (the conduct of war) it is in right now?
[†] – Interesting paper for Game Theory newbies by the way
It does not compute
2011/10/31
Political Game Theory
2009/11/16
Thanks to Hacker News a book on Game Theory (with a political twist).
Not for the faint-hearted.
Disclaimer: I am not a Game Theorist, not even close.
essentials of game theory
2009/09/10
Someone landed on this blog looking for introductory material to Game Theory (The search term was “θεωρια παιγνιων βιβλιο εισαγωγικο”).
Well “Essentials of Game Theory” seems like a good candidate and is available via scribd too.
PS: I am not a Game Theorist.
Algorithmic Game Theory has a blog!
2009/07/08
The author of the book “Alogorithmic Game Theory“ (also available online) -for which thanos has commented earlier- has a blog: http://agtb.wordpress.com/
[via @miketrick]
parentonomics
2009/05/11
Unlike what one might expect from the title, parentonomics is not Jo Frost disguised as an economist, nor an economist playing Jo Frost. Joshua Gans is a father of three, applying his scientific discipline into parenting and documenting the results. And he does so in an instructive and humorous way. I wish I could write my experiences with my three children in a similar way. Maybe someone else can document parenting while viewing it though an algorithmic or engineering prism.
In my opinion this is a book for fathers. Other books on parenting that I have checked have a more motherly approach, so this is a refreshing change. Because unlike the “no two kids are the same” principle, significant others’ reactions seem to follow a pattern* regardless of the number of children. Soon to become fathers prepare yourselves.
I really liked the fact that this book discusses parenting of three. Most of the literature that I have browsed seems to address the issue of the first (or single) child in the family. One would expect that after the first child one is prepared to deal with the second (and third), but hey you are not: Family management complicates exponentially. And in my case (child 0 first+, twins next) it complicates even faster than Gans’.
One interesting observation that occurred to me while reading the book is that all parents seem to be non systematically trained game theorists (game practitioners maybe?). Which is basically the reason why many strategies we employ as parents are flawed or simply not working. All in all this is a good book that has advice to offer and data to back up the opinions it carries. I really enjoyed reading it.
[*] – Either there is a pattern, or our wives would definitely be friends (or both).
[+] – Gans enumerates his children as Child 1, 2 and 3. I prefer the K&R approach :)
