Como a escola tradicional mata a criatividade

A situaçao triste que o ensino sob o controle do estado mata a criatividade e a felicidade de aprender.

Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity.

http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

Ensino inteligente contra ensino estúpido da matemática

Today's math curriculum is teaching students to expect -- and excel at -- paint-by-numbers classwork, robbing kids of a skill more important than solving problems: formulating them. Dan Meyer shows classroom-tested math exercises that prompt students to stop and think.

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_meyer_math_curriculum_makeover.html

A arte e prazer do "tinkering"

In less than 6 minutes  Gever Tulley teaches life lessons through tinkering  Veja

A criatividade do "tinkering"

Ideias e Inovação – Época NEGÓCIOS

“Tinkering”

10:00, 9/08/2011

Clemente Nobrega

Sem categoria

Cientistas já desvendaram os princípios fundamentais das coisas que tornarão o amanhã viável, mas os engenheiros é que as construirão.
Sinceramente? Nem sempre é necessário o pleno entendimento de fundamentos científicos para se produzir artefatos que resolvam problemas práticos. A máquina a vapor, por exemplo, já retirava água de minas antes de se conhecerem os princípios da termodinâmica que explicam porque elas funcionam. Criatividade prática-sinônimo de inovação- é um talento demandadíssimo hoje.Todos os grandes inovadores empresariais são tinkerers- experimentadores de modelos de negócios.
Inovação vem de experimentação em cima de coisas que já estão aí. De um ponto de vista prático, não é ciência, é engenharia. Os desafios de nosso tempo- energia limpa etc..-serão resolvidos por gente assim- tinkerers-experimentadorers práticos.
Os princípios da física que explicam, p.exemplo, como uma bateria funciona,são conhecidos há tempos, mas baterias eficientes o suficiente para adoção em larga escala na indústria automotiva ainda não foram produzidas. Idem artefatos para energia solar ou ventos.Engenheiros nos farão chegar lá.
Fonte

A origem da prosperidade

Vídeo clip de 3:21 minutes que explica a origem da prosperidade
http://video.kauffman.org/services/player/bcpid40280745001?bckey=AQ~~,AAAAAF1AP-k~,paP-6btd7SPcN3he8b6wgT6uI64ClnLc&bctid=1148130737001
Mais:
http://www.kauffman.org/

Autor esceve livre para celular

Autor escreve livro infanto juvenil para celular

Geek –

Foto: Reprodução: Ubergizmo
O livro foi todo escrito em um aparelho celular Nokia N6.
Por Fernanda Morales
Na era dos e-books, a experiência de ler livros se tornou incrivelmente tecnológica e pensando em levar essa expriência a outro nível, o autor de livros infanto juvenis, Terry Deary, escreveu um livro para celular.
The Perfect Poison Pills (As perfeitas pílulas envenenadas, em tradução livre), uma comédia com um víeis macabro, foi toda escrita em um aparelho Nokia E6 e estará disponível para a leitura em aparelhos celulares.
De acordo com o Ubergizmo, a juventude que está muito ligada com seus computadores está pouco interessada em ler livros. A ideia de Deary com a iniciativa é tornar a leitura mais próxima dos jovens e incentivá-los a buscar a literatura.
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Inovação - lançamento de uma coca cola islâmica

Uma coca cola chamada "Haji" feito segundo a lei islâmica de pureza foi apresentada em Hamburgo:
Das ist wirklich mal was Neues: Ein Hamburger hat die erste Cola nach islamischen Reinheitsvorschriften auf den deutschen Markt gebracht. Ihr Name: „Haji“. Sie ist bisher in Berlin, Hamburg und Teilen Nordrhein-Westfalens zu haben. 
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Ig Premio Nobel para "improbable research"

Announcing the 2011 Ig Nobel Prize winners

September 29th, 2011

The 2011 Ig Nobel Prize winners were announced and introduced at the 21st First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony at Harvard University.
Click here for the list of winners.
The ceremony was webcast live on YouTube. Here’s a recording of it:
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Uma alternativa de patentes

Inducement Prizes and Innovation,” L. Brunt, J. Lerner and T. Nicholas (2011)

September 27th, 2011 § Leave a Comment

Patents have many problems, deadweight loss from temporary monopoly being only one of them. There are also patent thickets where so many patents bind on any downstream investment, particularly in high tech, that patenting is only a defensive move – apparently these were less politically correctly called “Mexican standoffs” in the literature in the 1970s. There is the problem of inducing invention toward favored fields since patents treat everyone equally, and Moser’s lovely 2005 AER shows that in the era when patents were limited to fewer industries, they definitely affected the direction of innovation. These problems have led to proposals for prize systems to partially replace patents, such as the proposals of Michael Kremer, or the X Prize contests. But is there any evidence that prizes work?
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I Seminário Afro-Internacional - Alagoas

Inovação tipo Capes

Trocando as teses na pós-graduação por artigos científicos

setembro 12, 2011 – 11:10

A reportagem de Sabine Righetti publicada na Folha desta segunda-feira, informa que o Brasil, seguindo o exemplo de países como Holanda e EUA, passa a adotar os artigos científicos nas pós-graduações, suprimindo a necessidade de escrever uma tese.
Para tanto o aluno deverá defender, em banca, três artigos publicados ou aceitos para publicação em revistas científicas, sendo que dois deles precisam estar em periódicos de Qualis A.
A substituição da tese pelos artigos é feita com garantia da Capes. A publicação nos periódicos mais conceituados recebem notas mais elevadas e obtêm mais recursos, como bolsas.
fonte

Fim do roubo intelectual sob o pretexto do copyright

Princeton University Insists on Open Access

SEPTEMBER 28, 2011 by JEFFREY TUCKER

A new policy at Princeton prohibits (unless a special waver is granted) professors from assigning exclusive rights to publishers. This might at first appear to be a mandate but it is really a liberation. Professors have been browbeat for generations by publishers who demand all rights to an author’s work, which, under the law, they can keep for a lifetime. The new university rule makes it possible for the faculty to insist on a different policy. It is obviously true that faculty want open access and certainly do not want publishers to maintain exclusives to an author’s work. This policy might also help to crack the cartel and force a change of policy at major publishing outlets, which have been reluctant to change even in the digital age.

A grande transformação

 

As Scorn for Vote Grows, Protests Surge Around Globe

By NICHOLAS KULISH

 "... Increasingly, citizens of all ages, but particularly the young, are rejecting conventional structures like parties and trade unions in favor of a less hierarchical, more participatory system modeled in many ways on the culture of the Web. In that sense, the protest movements in democracies are not altogether unlike those that have rocked authoritarian governments this year, toppling longtime leaders in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. Protesters have created their own political space online that is chilly, sometimes openly hostile, toward traditional institutions of the elite. The critical mass of wiki and mapping tools, video and social networking sites, the communal news wire of Twitter and the ease of donations afforded by sites like PayPal makes coalitions of like-minded individuals instantly viable. “You’re looking at a generation of 20- and 30-year-olds who are used to self-organizing,” said Yochai Benkler, a director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. “They believe life can be more participatory, more decentralized, less dependent on the traditional models of organization, either in the state or the big company. Those were the dominant ways of doing things in the industrial economy, and they aren’t anymore.” --

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Vaga no NURI

O Nucleo de Relações internacionais da Universidade Federal de Sergipe informa a abertura de concurso para professor substituto.

Disciplinas: Política Externa das Grandes Potências, Política Internacional, Blocos Econômicos nas

Relações Internacionais e Teoria das Relações Internacionais I

Titulação:Graduação e Mestrado em uma das seguintes áreas: Relações Internacionais, Ciências Sociais, Ciência Política, Ciências Econômicas, História ou Direito

Período da inscrição: De 28/09/2011 a 11/10/2011, apenas em dias úteis e nos locais e horários especificados no edital.

Fim do monopólio informacional

A internet e o futuro da liberdade

27 de Setembro de 2011 - por Antony Mueller

​ Estamos no meio de uma revolução: a revolução da informação pelas novas mídias. A ferrovia e o automóvel revolucionaram o transporte. A televisão e o rádio foram fundamentais para estabelecer e manter sistemas autoritários. A revolução da informação moderna, e a internet em particular, representam uma revolução sócio-política; provavelmente a mais poderosa revolução desde o início da modernidade. Esta revolução de hoje trabalha em favor da liberdade. Diferente do passado, quando a revolução serviu para que certo grupo ou certo partido pudesse impor a sua vontade sobre o resto da sociedade, a revolução da internet fez o contrário. Em vez de um grupo limitado poder se apropriar do poder, a internet contribuirá para abolir as concentrações de poder.
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Para uma educação nova

video show
http://blog.mises.org/18531/economics-of-education/

Utilitarismo

Moral philosophy

Goodness has nothing to do with it

Utilitarians are not nice people

Sep 24th 2011 | from the print edition

A good man?

IN THE grand scheme of things Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill are normally thought of as good guys. Between them, they came up with the ethical theory known as utilitarianism. The goal of this theory is encapsulated in Bentham’s aphorism that “the greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation.”
Which all sounds fine and dandy until you start applying it to particular cases. A utilitarian, for example, might approve of the occasional torture of suspected terrorists—for the greater happiness of everyone else, you understand. That type of observation has led Daniel Bartels at Columbia University and David Pizarro at Cornell to ask what sort of people actually do have a utilitarian outlook on life. Their answers, just published in Cognition, are not comfortable.
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A era da desconfiança

Americanas estão desilusionados com a política
Key Findings:

• 82% of Americans disapprove of the way Congress is handling its job.
• 69% say they have little or no confidence in the legislative branch of government, an all-time high and up from 63% in 2010.
• 57% have little or no confidence in the federal government to solve domestic problems, exceeding the previous high of 53% recorded in 2010 and well exceeding the 43% who have little or no confidence in the government to solve international problems.
• 53% have little or no confidence in the men and women who seek or hold elected office.
• Americans believe, on average, that the federal government wastes 51 cents of every tax dollar, similar to a year ago, but up significantly from 46 cents a decade ago and from an average 43 cents three decades ago.
• 49% of Americans believe the federal government has become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens. In 2003, less than a third (30%) believed this.  
• Fonte

Antropologia científica

RECLAIMING ANTHROPOLOGY
FOR SCIENCE:
A LIBERTARIAN APPROACH
Dr Edward DuttonScientific anthropologists tend to argue for the veracity of
their approach and assume that the most logical approach
will ultimately reclaim the discipline from postmodernists
and extreme-naturalists. This article advocates scientific
anthropology but stresses that being logically coherent is
only part of the process of scientific revolutions. It demonstrates
that anthropology is broadly in the grip of those
who are implicitly religious—not rational—and then presents
a libertarian manifesto on how anthropology—in
practical terms—might be returned to the scientific fold.
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Educação

"If you are thinking 1 year ahead, plant seeds If you are thinking 10 years ahead, plant a tree If you are thinking 100 years ahead, educate the people." -- Chinese Emperor Kuan Tsu, 5th centuring BC

"Reductio ad hitlerum"

Godwin's "law of Nazi analogies": "As any online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 100%." Mike Godwin

Mais rápido que a luz

Particle might have traveled faster than speed of light

By Seth Borenstein, Associated Press

GENEVA – A pillar of physics — that nothing can go faster than the speed of light — appears to be smashed by an oddball subatomic particle that has apparently made a giant end run around Albert Einstein's theories.

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A revolução da internet

fonte

Maior airbus

Airbus quer aumentar o tamanho do gigante A 380 para um modelo A380 XXL que pode transportar 1000 passageiros.

Eugenia progressivista

Art Carden and Steven Horwitz

Eugenics: Progressivism’s Ultimate Social Engineering

"... In a 2005 article in theJournal of Economic Perspectives, “Eugenics and Economics in the Progressive Era,” the economist Thomas C. Leonard offered a completely new historical account of the sources of Progressive-Era labor legislation and the intentions of its supporters. Leonard’s work, including an important 2009 article coauthored with legal scholar David E. Bernstein for Law and Contemporary Problems, “Excluding Unfit Workers: Social Control Versus Social Justice in the Age of Economic Reform,” indicates that lurking behind what many people see as humanitarian reforms was something much uglier.

Leonard and Bernstein argue that some of the most prominent of the Progressive reformers were “partisans of human inequality.” They supported interventions as ways to forward their eugenic goal of a purer (that is, whiter) human race by eliminating the opportunities for the “unfit” to get meaningful work. The “unfit” here included not just nonwhites (especially African-Americans) but also the “insane,” immigrants (especially from central and eastern Europe), and in a somewhat different way, women..."  Mais 

Eugenia no Brasil:

O Brasil foi o primeiro país da América do Sul a ter um movimento eugênico organizado. A Sociedade Eugênica de São Paulo foi criada em 1918.^[7] O movimento eugênico no Brasil foi bastante heterogêneo, trabalhando com a saúde pública e com a saúde psiquiátrica. Uma parte, que pode ser chamada de ingênua ou menos radical, do movimento eugenista se dedicou a áreas como saneamento e higiene, sendo esses esforços sempre aplicados em relação ao movimento racial.

Em 1931 foi criado o Comitê Central de Eugenismo, presidido por Renato Kehl e Belisário Penna. Propunha o fim da imigração de não-brancos, e "prestigiar e auxiliar as iniciativas científicas ou humanitárias de caráter eugenista que sejam dignas de consideração". Medidas que visavam impedir a miscigenação.^[8] Higienismo e eugenismo se confundem, no Brasil.^[9]

A Revista Brasileira de Enfermagem passa por três fases em relação à eugenia; conceituação (1931-1951), conflitos éticos, legais e morais (1954-1976), e eugenia como tema do começo do século XX (1993-2002). Fonte

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Reforma da lei dos patentes

Stephan Kinsella lamenta: "It's increasingly recognized that our current patent system is "broken."[1] Billions are paid in ransom to patent aggressors. Patent lawyers are enriched. Patent trolls have emerged. Competitors, like Android smartphones and tablets, are shut down or delayed by entrenched patent oligopolists. While some confused souls argue that patents create jobs and innovation and can even stimulate the economy,[2] more and more people have begun to realize that patents do not foster innovation but rather stifle it.[3] 
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A psicologia da inovação

James Altucher explica:
How To Be Disobedient:
If you google the phrase “How to Be Disobedient” there are ZERO results. The only results are things like “What to do about a disobedient teen” or pages on how God does not want “disobedience”. I personally searched about a trillion web pages using the most disobedient search engine of all, Google.

(the original disobeyer)

Nine Techniques to be disobedient. You can try them today. Please suggest additional ones in the comments. In our youth we are butterflies, flying everywhere and trying everything. But in the end, life and obedience eats our dying bodies like maggots unless we truly fly free.
- Do the opposite. Buddha, instead of being a king, became the most impoverished, malnourished beggar possible in his quest for happiness. His family had told him his entire life he would be happy if he was king and wealthy. He did the EXACT opposite and found his happiness.
Practice: Everything that you consider doing today, consider doing the exact opposite. You don’t have to do the opposite but at least practice considering it. Maybe don’t go to that meeting. Maybe it can be a phone call. Maybe don’t write that report. Draw it instead. Maybe don’t go to that wedding. Go the beach instead. This is similar to my suggestion in “The Other Day I Woke Up Afraid and Angry” – if you are afraid of X, ask youself how you would react if the opposite of X happens (which is the likely result). Start that practice today! Right now as you’re reading this article even! Arggh! It’s a contradiction. Maybe you need to do the opposite of this article! Here’s a modification: for every thing you are told to do today: flip a coin: heads you do it, tails you don’t.
- Surprise. A surprise is an act of civil disobedience. When they thought you were going to fight, you sat. When they thought you were going to sleep, you loved. When they thought you were going to be a good employee, you stole all of their clients and started your own company. When they thought you were angry, you made them laugh. When they thought you were going to create a website for charities, you created Groupon. Surprise!
- Change one thing. Larry Page, when he was figuring out the PageRank algorithm which launched Google, didn’t start from scratch. He modified a patent developed by Robin Li (who later started Baidu) when Li was working at Dow Jones. The Dow Jones patent for search is 95% of the PageRank algorithm. So why didn’t Dow Jones start Google? Or any search engine for that matter?
Answer: companies have a hard time being disobedient. 99.9999% of the people in a company are very obedient people, so its hard then for the combined entity to be disobedient. Page, living in his garage, had no problems “changing one thing” or maybe two to create his own new search algorithm that works better than anything before or since. (See my post, “Why are Larry Page and I so Different”). This is not a criticism of “obedience” but just a reality. Procter & Gamble, despite having billions of dollars, can’t start Facebook. Which cost a few hundred dollars to build. Companies should train their employees to be disobedient. But they don’t know how. A slug crawls slowly along it’s own secretions and is happy with that meager existence.
- Steal. The best example is the first act of humanity in the Bible. Eve, going against God’s orders, stole the apple of knowledge. The result of this disobedience: all of humanity according to the Bible. For the less biblically inclined, every musical cover is an example of stealing and then “change one thing” or more. I mentioned the other day “A Fifth of Beethoven” done by the Walter Murphy Band and featured in the movie Saturday Night Fever. I’m listening to it this second. He stole Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and “changed one thing” (added a disco beat basically) and had a hit. Or how about Roy Lichtenstein. He blatantly stole panels from pop comic books, added his own text to them, and called it art. BAM! Bad behavior, Roy!

(all he did was change the color of her hair and now his version is worth$20 million)

- Combine. Take two things that are unrelated. How about DNA science and computing. And combine them. Now you have DNA Computing. Here’s the Wikipedia entry. Someone at some point must’ve said, “you can’t do that!”
Or how about Andy Warhol. He “Stole” the brands (I’m thinking the classic Campbell’s Soup can) and combined it with his pop art ideas. Good thing lawyers weren’t giving him advice.

- Question Everything. I’m disgusted with myself. I believed Colin Powell when he said Iraq had “weapons of mass destruction” (itself a phrase I should’ve questioned. What does a “weapon of mass destruction” even mean? The newspaper is a weapon of mass destruction.) and then used that to justify a war. I was for the war in Iraq when it was first proposed. Now I’m disgusted with myself. I wish I had questioned it more. What a pompous ass I was. Little kids got their heads shot off.
Now whenever someone tells me anything: you must go to college, you must buy a home, of course the Revolutionary War was necessary, XYZ religion is the only path to true happiness, I always question it and consider the opposite and the real reasons people are telling me these things.
Very important to remember: There’s always a “good reason” and the “real reason” and in order to find the real reason you have to question and dig deeper. Colin Powell presented us a “good reason” to go to war with Iraq but the real reasons might have to do with oil, psychological issues Bush had about his father, and who knows what else (only Dick Cheney knows).
Everything that someone tells me today I’m going to question. It takes time at first but once you start practicing questioning everything, even if its silently, then it becomes a natural routine. It’s via questioning that we become disobedient to the brainwashing society has thrust on us.
Many get too complacent in the mechanisms of the Zombie Recruitment Machine (you MUST have a job, you MUST be angry at this person who wronged you, you HAVE to be scared about Europe defaulting, you WILL be scared about going broke, you WILL listen to the doctor, etc) so it becomes difficult to question, to avoid the death of a guinea pig. But it’s the only way to break out of the Machine. To remove the bandages. To see the sun for what it is, the source of all light in your life.

- Ignore CAN’T, DON’T, SHOULDN’T, MUSTN’T: The same people who are today telling you “you can’t” are usually the same ones who say “I should’ve” about yesterday. Don’t be one of them. One man’s lunacy is another man’s delight.
- Honesty. Believe it or not, “honesty” is disobedience. Most people can’t be honest. Their friends and family would reject them. Their peers would ostracize them. Their clients and investors might part with them. In order to be honest sometimes you have to transform yourself. You have to let the sun come down, survive the 12 hours of darkness in the middle of a hurricane, and then let the new day begin. I’m not a political guy at all. I don’t watch debates. I don’t vote. I don’t even think there should be a Presidency. But I like guys like Ron Paul. Why do people listen to a simple congressman whenever he speaks? Regardless of what you think of him I feel like he’s the only one not carefully scripted. He’s honest. So people hate him. The only way you can become truly wealthy and prosperous, inside and out, is through the disobedience of honesty.
My next book is on this topic. This transformation that honesty brings. It should be on Amazon (paperback) by Friday (or the following Monday) and kindle a week or two later. Here’s the cover:

(signed paperback to the first person who tells me the cover I blatantly stole this design from)

- Persistence. There are consequences to disobedience. Jesus got crucified. Thomas Edison had to try 1000 times before he lit up his lab. Oscar Wilde got jailed. Mohammed Ali got sentenced to jail for draft evasion and had to fight all the way to the Supreme Court. Andy Warhol got shot. Bukowski worked thirty years of factory jobs before he was hit with literary financial success. Conrad Hilton went bankrupt on his first hotel chain. Mark Zuckerberg has everyone suing him. These are the guys who survived. Maybe you won’t survive if you’re disobedient. But…
Disobedience + Persistence = Enormous success.
If my parents, friends, colleagues, partners and others only knew the number of times I’ve disobeyed them (but always following the rule: do no harm). Maybe one day I can be totally honest without boundaries. That day the ambient stench of obedience will no longer be in my home. I’ll breathe deeply and know that I’m alive.
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Visões lulistas

O ex-presidente na UFBA: "Nós fizemos 14 universidades federais novas, 126 extensões universitárias, 214 escolas técnicas, um Reuni e ainda o Prouni", enumerou. "Ainda é preciso fazer muito para a educação chegar aonde a gente quer. Nós não queremos continuar sendo apenas exportadores de produtos in natura ou de commodities. Nós queremos ser exportadores de conhecimento, de inteligência."
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América e a segunda guerra mundial

Rockefeller, Morgan, and War

Mises Daily: Tuesday, September 20, 2011 by Murray N. Rothbard

[Wall Street, Banks, and American Foreign Policy (1984)]

During the 1930s, the Rockefellers pushed hard for war against Japan, which they saw as competing with them vigorously for oil and rubber resources in Southeast Asia and as endangering the Rockefellers' cherished dreams of a mass "China market" for petroleum products. On the other hand, the Rockefellers took a noninterventionist position in Europe, where they had close financial ties with German firms such as I.G. Farben and Co., and very few close relations with Britain and France.
The Morgans, in contrast, as usual deeply committed to their financial ties with Britain and France, once again plumped early for war with Germany, while their interest in the Far East had become minimal. Indeed, US ambassador to Japan Joseph C. Grew, former Morgan partner, was one of the few officials in the Roosevelt administration genuinely interested in peace with Japan.
World War II might therefore be considered, from one point of view, as a coalition war: the Morgans got their war in Europe, the Rockefellers theirs in Asia.
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Leia também

Como os EUA planejaram guerra contra Britânia em 1930

War on the 'Red Empire': How America planned for an attack on BRITAIN in 1930 with bombing raids and chemical weapons

• Emerging world power feared British reaction to its ambitions
• Plan Red was code for massive war with British Empire
• Top-secret document once regarded as 'most sensitive on Earth'
• $57m allocated for building secret airfields on Canadian border - to launch attack on British land forces based there

By David Gerrie
Last updated at 5:21 PM on 20th September 2011
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Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2039453/How-America-planned-destroy-BRITAIN-1930-bombing-raids-chemical-weapons.html#ixzz1YXZ9D4LO

Crescimento econômico nos paises em desenvolvimento

"Every college student who protests against free trade and every young economist who builds models of development should read this extraordinary book. Easterly presents both the power of simple economic models of the development process and the painfully disappointing track record of official development assistance. He writes beautifully and cares deeply about his subject." --Paul Romer, Graduate School of Business, Stanford University
"Curing emerging market poverty is on everyone's list of priorities along with peace on earth. Yet the success has been dismal. This powerful book may help cure the ignorance of people with pat answers, do-gooders, the Seattle-Prague crowd, and economists who have neglected to keep up with the evidence. Far from dry, the book takes you to the scene, gives you the local color, and challenges you to concede that a lot of your prejudices are just that--yet in the process does not throw economics overboard. Brilliant!"--Rudi Dornbusch, Ford Professor of Economics and International Management, MIT

Product Description Since the end of World War II, economists have tried to figure out how poor countries in the tropics could attain standards of living approaching those of countries in Europe and North America. Attempted remedies have included providing foreign aid, investing in machines, fostering education, controlling population growth, and making aid loans as well as forgiving those loans on condition of reforms. None of these solutions has delivered as promised. The problem is not the failure of economics, William Easterly argues, but the failure to apply economic principles to practical policy work.In this book Easterly shows how these solutions all violate the basic principle of economics, that people--private individuals and businesses, government officials, even aid donors--respond to incentives. Easterly first discusses the importance of growth. He then analyzes the development solutions that have failed. Finally, he suggests alternative approaches to the problem. Written in an accessible, at times irreverent, style, Easterly's book combines modern growth theory with anecdotes from his fieldwork for the World Bank.

O novo caminho da inovação

Eric Ries defines a startup as an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty. This is just as true for one person in a garage or a group of seasoned professionals in a Fortune 500 boardroom. What they have in common is a mission to penetrate that fog of uncertainty to discover a successful path to a sustainable business.
The Lean Startup approach fosters companies that are both more capital efficient and that leverage human creativity more effectively.  Inspired by lessons from lean manufacturing, it relies on “validated learning,” rapid scientific experimentation, as well as a number of counter-intuitive practices that shorten product development cycles, measure actual progress without resorting to vanity metrics, and learn what customers really want. It enables a company to shift directions with agility, altering plans inch by inch, minute by minute.
Rather than wasting time creating elaborate business plans, The Lean Startup offers entrepreneurs - in companies of all sizes - a way to test their vision continuously, to adapt and adjust before it’s too late. Ries provides a scientific approach to creating and managing successful startups in a age when companies need to innovate more than ever.
— Tim O'Reilly, CEO O'Reilly Media: "The Lean Startup isn't just about how to create a more successful entrepreneurial business, it's about what we can learn from those businesses to improve virtually everything we do. I imagine Lean Startup principles applied to government programs, to healthcare, and to solving the world's great problems.  It's ultimately an answer to the question 'How can we learn more quickly what works, and discard what doesn't?'"

O papel do governo na inovação - o caso dos EUA

Loyd E. Eskildson: 
'State of Innovation' is a collection of articles on the topic, aimed at moving past stale state-versus-market debates built on 18th-century theorizing. The authors see both government and private entrepreneurship playing central roles - the critical question is how to create positive synergies between the two.
The introduction provides a brief summary of government's role in innovation to-date, pointing out that as early as the 1820's army engineers ere building canals and lighthouses, and improving river navigation, that U.S. industrialization began behind high tariff walls from Hamilton's day through the 19th century, that Lincoln launched the building of the intercontinental railway and presided over the creation of the Department of Agriculture and the start of land grant colleges. Then there was the Manhattan Project, with Los Alamos, Lawrence Berkeley, Oak Ridge, and Sandia Labs, NASA, and DARPA - the latter being the origin of the Internet.
The book's most significant findings are based on reviews of the R&D 100 Award winners from R&D Magazine. From 1971 the number of awards given Fortune 500 firms fell from about 40 to 4 (2006), though these data exclude major computer and drug firms. (Only 2 drugs received the 'Golden Pill' award between 1997-2006, and 12 others took 2nd place nominations as clear advances over existing therapies - thus, drug inclusion would not have made much difference.) Similarly, the proportion of U.S. corporate patents by G.E., Kodak, AT&T, DuPont, G.M., Dow Chemical, 3M, United Technologies, and Ford fell from 10% in 1971 to 4.5% in 2006 - evidence that large corporations cut back on R&D, relying instead on licensing and acquisitions. Meanwhile, awards to SBIR (< 500 employees) firms increased from 0 (1971) to 1 (1982) to 22 (2006).

Pobreza na América

(Reuters) The Census Bureau's annual report on income, poverty and health insurance coverage said the national poverty rate climbed for a third consecutive year to 15.1 percent in 2010 as the economy struggled to recover from the recession that began in December 2007 and ended in June 2009.
That marked a 0.8 percent increase from 2009, when there were 43.6 million Americans living in poverty.
The number of poor Americans in 2010 was the largest in the 52 years that the Census Bureau has been publishing poverty estimates, the report said, while the poverty rate was the highest since 1993.
The specter of economic deterioration also afflicted working Americans who saw their median income decline 2.3 percent to an annual $49,445.
About 1.5 million fewer Americans were covered by employer-sponsored health insurance plans, while the number of people covered by government health insurance increased by nearly 2 million.
All told, the number of Americans with no health insurance hovered at 49.9 million, up slightly from 49 million in 2010.
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Sem ou com sal - um exemplo da confusão "científica"

By Rachel K. Johnson, Ph.D., M.P.H., R.D.In spite of decades of advice to lower our salt intake to prevent high blood pressure, recent headlines screamed that a low-salt diet is ineffective—spurred by the results of a study published in the American Journal of Hypertension. The New York Times ran with “Cutting Salt Has Little Effect on Heart Risk” and the UK’s Daily Mail used, “Cutting back on salt ‘does not make you healthier’ (despite nanny state warnings).”In the study, researchers from the UK and the U.S. looked at seven studies with a total of 6,489 participants and the impact of lowering salt intake. The conclusion was that eating less salt did not prevent heart attacks, strokes or early death.
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sem seguro

Audience at tea party debate cheers leaving uninsured to die
By Rachel Rose Hartman | The Ticket 
If you're uninsured and on the brink of death, that's apparently a laughing matter to some audience members at last night's tea party Republican presidential debate.
Texas Rep. Ron Paul, a doctor, was asked a hypothetical question by CNN host Wolf Blitzer about how society should respond if a healthy 30-year-old man who decided against buying health insurance suddenly goes into a coma and requires intensive care for six months. Paul--a fierce limited-government advocate-- said it shouldn't be the government's responsibility. "That's what freedom is all about, taking your own risks," Paul said and was drowned out by audience applause as he added, "this whole idea that you have to prepare to take care of everybody…"
"Are you saying that society should just let him die?" Blitzer pressed Paul. And that's when the audience got involved.
Several loud cheers of "yeah!" followed by laughter could be heard in the Expo Hall at the Florida State Fairgrounds in response to Blitzer's question.
You can watch the exchange below via CNN-- the clip begins at the 23:30 mark:
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O novo mundo de emprego e desemprego

Fonte
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Tecnologia e a nova realidade do desemprego

The Economist: In the new world of work, unemployment is high yet skilled and talented people are in short supply. Leia mais  

 

Viajar: a melhor terapia contra preconceito, intolerância e uma menta fechada

"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow--mindedness." -- Mark Twain

A pretensão do conhecimento

Friedrich A Hayek explica: "... essa incapacidade dos economistas em sugerir políticas mais bem sucedidas está intimamente ligada à propensão a imitar, o mais rigorosamente possível, os procedimentos das mais brilhantemente exitosas ciências físicas — tentativa essa que, em nosso campo profissional, pode levar a erros crassos. Esta é uma abordagem que passou a ser descrita como sendo uma atitude "cientificista" — uma atitude que, como defini há cerca de trinta anos, "é decididamente não científica no verdadeiro sentido do termo, pois envolve uma aplicação mecânica e indiscriminada de hábitos de pensamento a campos diferentes daqueles em que esses hábitos foram formados" Quero hoje iniciar essa palestra explicando como alguns dos mais graves erros da atual política econômica decorrem diretamente desse erro científico..."
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Veja também: Reintroduzindo a ideia da eficiência dinâmica na teoria econômica por Domingos Crosseti Branda,

Educação é demais (se é educação falsa) - o caso dos EUA

Walter E. Williams explica: "... A recent study from The Center for College Affordability and Productivity titled "From Wall Street to Wal-Mart," by Richard Vedder, Christopher Denhart, Matthew Denhart, Christopher Matgouranis and Jonathan Robe, explains that college education for many is a waste of time and money...
The nation's college problem is far deeper than the fact that people simply are overqualified for particular jobs. Citing the research of AEI scholar Charles Murray's book Real Education (2008), Vedder says: "The number going to college exceeds the number capable of mastering higher levels of intellectual inquiry. This leads colleges to alter their mission, watering down the intellectual content of what they do."
In other words, colleges dumb down courses so that the students they admit can pass them...
Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, authors of Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses (2011), report on their analysis of more than 2,300 undergraduates at 24 institutions. Forty-five percent of these students demonstrated no significant improvement in a range of skills – including critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing – during their first two years of college...
Much of American education is in shambles. Part of a solution is for colleges to refuse to admit students who are unprepared to do real college work....
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O caminho da servidão

“Morally and philosophically, I find myself in agreement with virtually the whole of it; and not only in agreement but deeply moved agreement.” John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) sobre o livro de Hayek (1899-1992) do ano 1944.
Versão em português
Veja também:
Back on the road to serfdom
Back on the Road to Serfdom begins by considering how we got here. Brian Domitrovic leads off with a look at what happened in the twentieth century to give the federal government such broad sway over the economy. In examining this development, he shows that the historical record is clear: the more the authorities try to steer the economy, the more erratic it becomes.
Carey Roberts goes back even earlier than Domitrovic, to the era of the American Founding. He traces the present resurgence of statism to the seminal conflict between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, and sets forth a refreshingly revisionist account of Hamiltonian economic policies, which Americans are expected to revere as self-evidently sensible and wise.
Per Bylund then looks beyond America’s shores to show how the welfare state became the dominant model of government throughout the Western world. He also punctures the myths of the welfare state that Americans have been lectured about for decades. A native of Sweden working on his doctorate in the United States, Bylund reveals that the so-called Swedish model is hardly a dream for modern civilization. In so doing, he rules out the default position of so-called progressives, which is to claim that large welfare states are compatible with long-run prosperity, and that there is nothing about the American situation that higher levels of wealth confiscation cannot solve. Moreover, he demonstrates that the welfare state harms not only the economy but also individual liberty and civil society.
With Domitrovic, Roberts, and Bylund having established the broader context for the government’s accelerating intrusions into the economy, Antony Mueller looks at the more immediate causes of the recent financial crisis. His essay is a valuable corrective to the standard account of the economic downturn that has fueled so much of the recent resurgence of statism. Professor Mueller’s interpretation of the crisis, which is informed by the Austrian School of economics, also accounts for why the proposed remedies are likely to prolong the economic malaise in those countries adopting them.
Leia mais
Veja os rap "Hayek contra Keynes" Parte I, parte II

Aprenda alemão na UFS

20/09 a 02/12
Curso de Alemão Básico - Google Agenda!
LOCAL:Sala 04, Ala B, CODAP, Campus São Cristóvão
HORÁRIO:09 às 11h
Pré-requisitos :

Ter concluído o ensino médio;
No caso de servidores da UFS ou IFS, ter autorização da chefia imediata.
Linha de desenvolvimento: Interambientes.

Ambiente: todos ambientes organizacionais.

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Vagas: 20 (vinte)
(sendo 15 vagas para UFS e 05 vagas para o IFS)
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PERÍODO: 12/09/2011 a 16/09/2011
PROCEDIMENTOS PARA INSCRIÇÃO

A tirania do utilitarismo

The general assumption that social policy should be utilitarian--that society should be organized to yield the greatest level of welfare--leads inexorably to increased government interventions. Historically, however, the science of economics has advocated limits to these interventions for utilitarian reasons and because of the assumption that people know what is best for themselves. But more recently, behavioral economics has focused on biases and inconsistencies in individual behavior. Based on these developments, governments now prescribe the foods we eat, the apartments we rent, and the composition of our financial portfolios. The Tyranny of Utility takes on this rise of paternalism and its dangers for individual freedoms, and examines how developments in economics and the social sciences are leading to greater government intrusion in our private lives.
Gilles Saint-Paul posits that the utilitarian foundations of individual freedom promoted by traditional economics are fundamentally flawed. When combined with developments in social science that view the individual as incapable of making rational and responsible choices, utilitarianism seems to logically call for greater governmental intervention in our lives. Arguing that this cannot be defended on purely instrumental grounds, Saint-Paul calls for individual liberty to be restored as a central value in our society.
Exploring how behavioral economics is contributing to the excessive rise of paternalistic interventions, The Tyranny of Utility presents a controversial challenge to the prevailing currents in economic and political discourse.
From the Inside Flap

"Saint-Paul stands courageously in the middle of the new road to serfdom, trying to stop the heavy traffic being nudged along on it. He alerts us to the greatest threat to liberty since communism--our good will, our paternal-maternal desire to prevent anyone, anywhere from exercising their free will mistakenly. Let us pray Saint-Paul succeeds. If the unintentional enemies of liberty are open to reason, he will."--Deirdre McCloskey, author of Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can't Explain the Modern World
"This is a fresh and original book about the fundamentals of how we approach economic policy. Saint-Paul presents a strong and powerful message about the alarming paternalism implicit in some currently fashionable approaches to economics."--Diane Coyle, author of The Soulful Science: What Economists Really Do and Why It Matters
"This accessible book provides a well-argued case against much that is currently fashionable, particularly in behavioral economics. Ranging over issues in philosophy, political science, psychology, economics, and public policy, the book deals adventurously with big issues while setting out the economic arguments intertwined with them. A very enjoyable and highly provocative book."--John Driffill, coauthor of Economics
"This book will enlighten and infuriate economists in equal measure--which is what an intelligent book should do. It makes an important contribution and is a good read."--Richard Disney, University of Nottingham

Subscrição para livros eletrônicos online

(Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc is in talks with book publishers about launching a media library service similar to Netflix Inc for tablets and other digital books, The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday. Seattle-based Amazon, which makes the popular Kindle electronic reader, is also expected to release a tablet to rival Apple Inc's iPad in coming weeks, the Journal reported.
Under the proposal for a digital media library, customers would pay an annual fee to access a library of content, the Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
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A tirania da ciência

Paul Feyerabend is one of the greatest philosophers of science of the 20th century and his book Against Method is an international bestseller. In this new book he masterfully weaves together the main elements of his mature philosophy into a gripping tale: the story of the rise of rationalism in Ancient Greece that eventually led to the entrenchment of a mythical ‘scientific worldview’. In this wide-ranging and accessible book Feyerabend challenges some modern myths about science, including the myth that ‘science is successful’. He argues that some very basic assumptions about science are simply false and that substantial parts of scientific ideology were created on the basis of superficial generalizations that led to absurd misconceptions about the nature of human life. Far from solving the pressing problems of our age, such as war and poverty, scientific theorizing glorifies ephemeral generalities, at the cost of confronting
the real particulars that make life meaningful. Objectivity and generality are based on abstraction, and as such, they come at a high price. For abstraction drives a wedge between our thoughts and our experience, resulting in the degeneration of both. Theoreticians, as opposed to practitioners, tend to impose a tyranny on the concepts they use, abstracting away from the subjective experience that makes life meaningful. Feyerabend concludes by arguing that practical experience is a better guide to reality than any theory, by itself, ever could be, and he stresses that there is no tyranny that cannot be resisted, even if it is exerted with the best possible intentions. Provocative and iconoclastic, The Tyranny of Science is one of Feyerabend’s last books and one of his best. It will be widely read by everyone interested in the role that science has played, and continues to play, in the shaping of the modern world.