Title-less as in speech-less

You won't believe this. Attended a presentation held by the Bappenas on strategic plan of Indonesian mining industry. That presenter, a professor from a good private university, goes: "We have to improve how the state manages the natural resources. The governnment... as THE OWNER of the natural resources..." Oh, my God.

Wedding gift for a brother

I have tried not to be sentimental.

Daniel is travelling tonight on a plane
I can see the red tail lights heading for spain
Oh and I can see Daniel waving goodbye
God it looks like Daniel, must be the clouds in my eyes

They say Spain is pretty though I've never been
Well Daniel says it's the best place that he's ever seen
Oh and he should know, he's been there enough
Lord I miss Daniel, oh I miss him so much

Daniel my brother you are older than me
Do you still feel the pain of the scars that won't heal
Your eyes have died but you see more than I
Daniel you’re a star in the face of the sky

Daniel is travelling tonight on a plane
I can see the red tail lights heading for spain
Oh and I can see Daniel waving goodbye
God it looks like daniel, must be the clouds in my eyes
Oh God it looks like Daniel, must be the clouds in my eyes *

You are not Daniel. You are not older than me. But you're leaving. To your "Spain". Goodbye, Brother. Best of luck.

* Bernie Taupin and Elton John, 1973. When my brother was -5 years old.

More econoblogs added

Just added three blogs on the sidebar: Agoraphilia (Glen Whitman), WinterSpeak (Zimran Ahmed), and Asymmetrical Information (Jane Galt and "Mindles Dreck"). Enjoy.

25/8

Lessons from last two weeks : 1) Never say yes to teaching 3 individual courses in the same semester, 2) Try to avoid revising grant proposals in a day -- even if they told you everything is near done, 3) Do not get anxious when journal editor gives you an extra one year for revising your paper, 4) When you're little brother is getting married, devote some time for him.

Misinterpreting Ricardo

Attended a roundtable on Indonesian investment and industrial policy yesterday. One speaker, a professor from Keio University offered a disturbing claim: comparative advantage and factor proportions paradigm are "old theories", "static", and therefore irrelevant for today's world. He went on offering "the new" approaches: fragmentation and agglomeration. I was wondering, where he had been so far? Fragmentation is another word for division of labor! And it all goes back to 1776 Adam Smith. And, urgh, agglomeration is "new"? Even worse, is his misunderstanding of Ricardo's comparative advantage. He basically said CA is old and static, so change it to networking based on fragmentation and agglomeration. As a discussant pointed out, there was nothing new in his talk. He was simply applying Ricardo's CA from country-level aggregates into (networks of) firms. He surely had not updated. Or, he simply didn't understand what Ricardo meant.