Edition 11 Week 14
Science Party Foreign Aid Policy
At one of the EA meetings, someone from the Science Party asked me to help figure out their foreign aid policy. It should be interesting, because I know very little.
Ate at Lucky Tsotsi Shebeen and Bar
I went to eat at an South African restaurant. Had a nice “Bunny Chow” which was a curry in a bread roll.
Friend from Canberra came over
George Hibbard (friend from high school) came to visit. We had lunch, which turned into a bar, which turned into dinner. The bar we went to was full of old people, and the band playing was dressed in cowboy gear and singing classics like the Beatles.
UMCG’s Networking Event
The UNSW Microfinance Consulting Group asked me to attend their networking event. I arrived late, so most people were all “networked” out (I think you can only have boring networking-event-style conversations for so long before you can’t feign interest any more).
I made a budget!
That’s right, I made a 6-tab, complete budget. It has Vlookups and conditional formatting and a dashboard which gets this month’s information. It’s great.
What I’m reading/watching/hearing:
- The Economics of Sleep (podcast) – Dubner looks at how much sleep we are getting, and whether there’s any real benefit behind them. In short, yes. One of Freakonomic’s most listened to podcasts.
- Islam and the Future of Tolerance: A Dialogue (book) – A former-Islamist-now-just-a-Muslim (Maajid Nawaz) and an atheist (Sam Harris) talk about the problem of Jihadism and the threat that Islam could face both for itself and for the wider community. A great short book, and good nuanced conversation. It suggests to me that there’s too much focus on fear or tolerance, and not enough on critical thinking.
- A variety of papers about empathy and animals – I was interested in reading about why children like animals, given children can’t perspective take until their older. I’ve downloaded what I’ve been reading and I have put them at the link. No copyright infringment intended.