A pragmatic politician, a benevolent despot (he was prime minister of polyglot Singapore for 31 years), or … the most influential statesman of our time? (Image courtesy of The Encyclopaedia Britannica.)
The artist who created this beautiful 
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Blogs I Follow
Two cheers for Lee Kuan Yew …
Posted in Bayesian Reasoning, Current Affairs, Economics, History, Law, Politics
Tagged Economic Development, Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore
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Sweet Spot
Via reddit, what’s your sweet spot? Ours is teaching …
Posted in Questions Rarely Asked
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77,777 miles
Our sturdy 1993 Jeep Wrangler (pictured above), built in Colorado with six cylinders and manual transmission, recently reached a milestone: 77,777 miles … Continue reading
St Patrick’s Bell
In honor of St Patrick’s Day, check out this paper “St Patrick’s Bell Shrine: Form and Layout of the Plates” written by Robert D. Stevick published in 2008 in The Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland (Vol. 138, pp. 26-46). Also, via the National Museum of Ireland, here is a picture of St Patrick’s bell and its shrine:
“Yes, the song was taught to us …”
Are we born racists, or do we learn racism from others? In his letter of apology to his fellow students at the University of Oklahoma, Parker Rice–one of the students expelled from OU for singing this racist and despicable song–confesses that “the song was taught to us.” We sincerely hope his classmates will accept his apology and give him an opportunity to make amends, but this startling confession begs the question: By whom? Who taught you this song? In other words, the infamous SAE song has a history. (In fact, the song and its connection to SAE should not surprise us. Google “Sigma Alpha Epsilon” and you will learn that it was “the first national fraternity to be established in the deep south, having been founded at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, on 9 March 1856.”) … but in the meantime, do you think David Boren, the President of the University of Oklahoma (and the proverbial “adult in the room,” so to speak), is simply “scapegoating” Mr Rice for the sins of the South? Is that fair?
Visualization of outstanding IMF loans
This simple graphic, via the excellent Ada Swanson of the Washington Post, was created by Matt Mulholland to illustrate the fraction of IMF loans outstanding by member country. In summary, Greece accounts for about 60 percent of the IMF’s business ($27.26 billion), with Ukraine a distant second ($5.25 billion). By the way, this graphic begs an important question: Why did the IMF agree to place such a large bet on Greece in the first place?
