Articles & Fragments

• the celebrities in Nigeria are priests and generals. odd. BBC News: "Nigeria's new celebrity class"
• To read later: David Brooks' "The Segmented Society" and "Questions of Culture"
• From "Questions of Culture":

  · "Economics, which assumes people are basically reasonable and respond straightforwardly to incentives, is no longer queen of the social sciences. The events of the past years have thrown us back to the murky realms of theology, sociology, anthropology and history. Even economists know this, and are migrating to more behaviorialist and cultural approaches. The fundamental change is that human beings now look less like self-interested individuals and more like socially embedded products of family and group. Alan Greenspan said that he once assumed that capitalism was "human nature." But after watching the collapse of the Russian economy, he had come to consider it "was not human nature at all, but culture.""

• What I want to study: "It all amounts to this: Events have forced different questions on us. If the big contest of the 20th century was between planned and free market economies, the big questions of the next century will be understanding how cultures change and can be changed, how social and cultural capital can be nurtured and developed, how destructive cultural conflict can be turned to healthy cultural competition."
• My love for Sasha Frere-Jones is growing and growing. His look at artists on MySpace: "Full Exposure: Making it on MySpace"
• NYtimes on Facebook advertising: "The Evolution of Facebook's Beacon"
• To read next: Rajan and Subramanian's report: "What Undermines Aid’s Impact on
  Growth?"
• New book on my Amazon.com wish list: Culture Matters: How Values shape human progress
• "This collection of essays addresses a difficult question: Are some cultures better than others at creating freedom, prosperity, and justice? Although Culture Matters offers varying responses to this politically incorrect question, its editors, Lawrence E. Harrison and Samuel P. Huntington, as well as the bulk of its contributors, answer in some form of the affirmative."