Mile Zero

August 2, 2007

This month, technically for the August 1st podcast but let's call it July anyway, we dipped into the archives to highlight one of the events that's always on our top ten most-viewed. Our new coordinator/writer is also working on a new description for its main entry. What is it?

There's an old joke that Economics is the only field in which two people can win the Nobel prize for saying the exact opposite thing. For evidence that economic disagreements can be spirited, especially in development, look no further than this entry from the B-SPAN archives. After former World Bank Chief Economist Joseph Stiglitz published his controversial book, Globalization and its Discontents, which expressed his own discontent with the International Monetary Fund, he and IMF Research Director Ken Rogoff squared off in a 2002 panel discussion on its claims. The resulting debate has become one of the most relevant on the role of international institutions in promoting globalization.

You can listen to the dueling economists here.

May 15, 2007

The Islamic Development Bank's lecture series is a bit of an oddball on B-SPAN. It's not directly World Bank sponsored, and it's not your typical economics lecture. It may also seem a little odd as a feature here: I have no love lost for any particular organized religion, much less the orthodox variety. But these are fascinating glimpses into a new perspective on commerce and banking--one that many Americans, steeped in the pro-market ideological slant of Christianity, have probably never considered. It's been a real education for me. You can watch the lectures here, although as usual you must have RealPlayer to view them.

The basic dilemmas at the heart of Islamic banking, and forgive me if I get any of these wrong, are that the Koran forbids charging interest or trading in financial risk as part of its prohibitions against usury and gambling. There is also an element of socially responsible investing here: the Islamic banks put their money in halal enterprises, and profits and losses are to be shared as an extension of charity. In other words, the goal is not to take advantage of customers, but to reach a win-win arrangement for them.

Nevertheless, it is hard to actually be a bank without charging interest or some kind of compensation for loans, which leads to arrangements like murabaha, in which the bank purchases an item for the lendee and sells it to them at a higher agree-upon price, with the implicit profit making up the role that interest would have played for a conventional bank. This is not an uncontroversial method, since some have claimed that it is just a legal workaround.

I recently finished reading Mark Noll's The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, which calls for more evangelical Christians to become scholars and lead a "life of the mind." It is, for the non-evangelical reader, often a confusing book. When Noll states that the titular scandal is that no mind arises from evangelicalism, we can all think of the three Republican presidential candidates who disbelieve in evolution and nod in agreement, but when he speaks of an "evangelical life of the mind," it is much less clear what exactly he means--how does one conduct "Christian" science or research, at least in any valid form? Oddly, the Islamic Development Bank lectures have helped me get a firmer grasp on what he seems to want in terms of applying religious thought and frameworks to intellectual challenges. I am of course not in favor of religiously-run financial institutions for myself, but I do have to say that the basic principles being followed--charity, empathy, and protection from risk--hold a certain appeal.

February 5, 2007

I can't see a preview image on this, and Google Video's been shaky all morning. I hope it doesn't look too stupid.

December 29, 2006

I just finished posting this to the World Bank's internal blog system, but I'm going to reproduce it here. This is part of a new organizational marketing campaign that we're working on. I'm trying to take advantage of tools that the Bank doesn't normally use, as well as a casual, humorous tone. We hope that the combination will grab the attention of other staff, and maybe get it virally passed around as an example to other units.

Pay no attention to the "read more" line: the Bank's secure blogs automatically put all formatting and embedding behind a cut.

November 30, 2006

It's a little late, I know, but this presentation by Carly Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett-Packard and current book-flogging memoirist, is pretty good. You may remember that Fiorina is the woman who rescued HP from a nine-quarter slump, only to be ousted after the controversial merger with Compaq and her pro-globalization testimony to Congress. We really had to fight to get this on B-SPAN, but I'm proud that we did. She's an interesting, polished, and high-profile speaker.

Update: Speaking of late, the Best of B-SPAN podcast was delayed while I was training other staff on audio production. I know you were all on the edge of your seat. The newest edition (retroactively labeled 12/1/2006) is now uploaded, and I enjoyed it very much, personally. It's on the question of "how much human development funding is enough?" With all the emphasis that people like Jeff Sachs place on getting more funding, that's a logical question--but Shanta Devarajan and Michael Clemons explain why it's the wrong question. Highly recommended.

The 12/15 podcast, for those who have an aversion to Real Media, will be Fiorina's presentation. Truly, MP3 is what brings us all together.

September 25, 2006

A quick hit, hot off the wires, which I'm sure everyone will be flogging shortly: Apple has decided to legally shut down the use of the word "podcast." Since part of my job description now literally involves producing podcasts, I think I'm qualified to ask the following question:

Is Apple completely insane?

I'm not a big fan of the word podcast in general, but it has a catchy ring and it does roll of the tongue cleanly. More importantly, when I explain this to anyone in the outside, non-geek world, it generally requires at least a few sentences establishing that a podcast does not actually require an iPod. The two are linked, at least by name, strongly in the public ear.

So let's get this straight: there's an entire burgeoning community of content-creators (as well as useless blowhards, to be sure) out there who are driving large parts of iTunes traffic, who represent a hip thing that even the World Bank (read: not the cutting edge) can apply and use, and who are providing exposure for Apple's products just by existing--and Apple basically wants to kill a tremendous part of that advantage. It is a profoundly stupid move.

Oh, and they don't want you making games for their hardware either. Seriously, guys, take a valium and ease back on the control freak urges. You're giving me the creeps.

August 15, 2006

The World Bank slows down a lot during the late summer, until it ramps up for the annual meetings again. I've actually been fairly busy, but only because about half the department is out on vacation. So there hasn't been much in the way of new B-SPAN material, and the most recent podcast pulls from the archives.

But it's a great pull: Jeffrey Sachs, author of The End of Poverty and Director of the UN Millennium Project, spoke in 2004 on his approach to poverty. Sachs is kind of a brute-force development expert: he believes that while corruption can be a factor, the real problem in development is donor stinginess and lack of will. Whether or not you agree (William Easterly, author of the excellent The Elusive Quest for Growth and no fawning Bank panderer, considers it foolish), Sachs is a gifted speaker whose passion is inspiring to hear.

P.S. If you want to see something really disgusting, check out the comments on this Daniel Drezner post about Sachs' plan. Perhaps my "favorite" is here:

Wow.

You know, I've commented on this before (back when I had my own conservative troll), so I probably shouldn't be so shocked, but it still takes me by surprise. Even if you think Sachs is an idiot, $150 billion for his initiatives isn't really that much money on the scale of the US budget. The fact that some are so disproportionately opposed to aid really worries me.

August 1, 2006

The just-released Best of B-SPAN podcast is my first Pro Tools production. As promised, it is almost completely revamped, and includes a musical bed with gratuitous software synthesizers. Probably not very exciting for anyone else, but it's a big step forward--even if Pro Tools is driving me nuts trying to figure out why the busses aren't bouncing to audio tracks.

The funny thing about using a real heavy-duty audio workstation, as opposed to Audacity or a bundled copy of Cubase, is that I'm spending a lot of time in the virtual equivalent of hooking up a VCR. Virtual outputs go to virtual inputs, creating signal chains to do what I want--such as the pre-emptive ducking, which splits the vocal track between a compressor and a delay. In real life it would probably bore me to tears. When it's mouse driven, I could rewire the virtual studio all day long.

June 30, 2006

You thought I'd forgotten, didn't you! Well, yes. I did forget. But in my defense, it's because I've been so busy catching up on B-SPAN's June 19 rush that I hadn't had a chance to take a wider view of the month. Our podcast this month focuses on the Presidential Fellows Lecture Series, featuring Mr. Anwar Ibrahim, the former Deputy Minister of Malaysia. I picked it for the podcast because it's a high-profile event for our internal audience. But the event that I've enjoyed the most this month has been Rethinking the Role of Jobs for Shared Growth, which I just posted today. Parts of it are dry, but the central topic often under discussion--that is to say, the contrast between "good jobs" and "bad jobs" as opposed to a focus only on employment rates--is interesting for both the developing world and our own employment situation.

May 24, 2006

From Tim Besley, professor at the London School of Economics:

It has to do with competition improving efficiency, he says. This is apparently also true for companies--a CEO killed in office improves corporate performance. It's a real-world Dead Roommate Rule!

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