Rubrics » Bridging News
COVID-19: Counting the Cost
Fighting epidemics, or stopping them from spreading, has a cost. The direct costs of the COVID-19 pandemic are, of course, deaths and the sickness that prevents people from working. However, the indirect effect or Economic Cost include the labor supply of the people who die, the hours lost due to sickness, and the hours lost due to people caring for family members who are sick, and the hours lost due to preventative measures. This will lead to rising costs of doing business in each sector, due to disruptions of production networks, and shifts in consumption as a result of changes in household preferences. More
The Million Dollar Pixels: How a Student’s Idea Changed the Internet for the Better
The internet. A place where (almost) everybody can see (almost) everything (almost) for free. An incredible technological asset of humanity as a whole. But how can we find everything? Do we pay these people? How many people would agree to make the internet a bigger and better place for free? The answer is simple: a few. The main source of online income comes from advertising. We got used to them on television, radio and even on the streets but who came with the idea of implementing them online? In this article, I will uncover the story behind internet advertisements and the minds behind it. More
Kurt Lewin’s 3-Phase Change Model in the Covid-19 Pandemic
Throughout 2020, the question of how the world would look like after the Coronavirus pandemic has been constantly repeated. The “status quo” has been challenged: our usual lives have been suddenly torn apart and life during Covid-19 has been described as “another normal” or as a “new normal”. Such a massive, transformational change is not commonplace, so the attempts of humanity to regain its balance are understandable. The Covid-19 pandemic ends up being a real case scenario for Kurt Lewin’s famous 3-phase change model, meant as a tool to resolve major social conflicts. More
ICESS 2018 – Challenges and Trends in Economic and Social Sciences Research
Preparing to celebrate the 105th anniversary, the Bucharest University of Economic Studies (BUES) will host on April 16-17 the first edition of the International Conference on Economics and Social Sciences, under the following aegis: “Challenges and Trends in Economic and Social Sciences Research”. The conference is a great opportunity for participants to enhance their professional networks, by connecting and sharing own research topics with very influential researchers in the field, as well as with practitioners from leading companies from Romania and abroad. More
Politics and Policy
In the vernacular language (even, in some cases, the specialized one) some confusions or, at least, some un-intentioned substitutions occur between two terms (and, consequently, between two concepts which belong to them), namely politics and policy. Of course, etymologically the two terms (and concepts) are cognate, based on the Greek term πόλης, polis (castle, home, town, country) but, in the modern and contemporary language and habits of usage, they hold different meanings, and so address different referentials (denotations). Below I would try to identify both the similarities and differences between politics and policy and, consequently, to suggest some precautions in using them in different situations, either cognitive or pragmatic. More
Nigeria’s Senators and Their Jumbo Pay
Pursuant the revelations of Senator Shehu Sani on BBC, Nigerian senators are entitled to monthly expenses of N13.5 million ($37,500), in addition to their monthly salaries of N750,000 ($2,088). With a minimum wage of N18,000 ($50), it would take the average Nigerian worker 792 years to earn the annual salary of a Nigerian senator. More
The Structural Incompleteness of Economics
As I understand it, in the economic discipline there are two major paradigms in the sense that Thomas Kuhn employed the word, to mean modes of thought:a) the neoclassical paradigm (the still current mainstream);
b) the behavioural paradigm (the dissident current).
Keynesianism and its avatars (new and post-Keynesianism) could be considered as properly fitting with the neoclassical model although, as it is well-known, Keynes anticipated the so-called behavioural economics (see, for example, the concept of “animal spirits”, also approached by Akerlof and Schiller). In my opinion, both paradigms are incomplete regarding some crucial, structural issues. The examination of this heretical assertion is the goal of this article. More
A Short History of Venezuela’s Liberators
“The devil came here yesterday, and it smells of sulfur still. Yesterday Mr. President of the United States (George W. Bush), whom I call “The Devil”, came here and spoke as if he was the owner of the world…”This was the late President Chavez’s introductory statement at the UN congress held in 2006 in the heart of “Hell” (the UN Headquarters is in New York). During the speech, Chavez also rallied the other political leaders who were present to rise against the hegemonic aspirations of the US which he declared to be an impending danger to the survival of the human species, and all life as we know it.I believe that this statement is an instance of the charisma which Chavez wielded, along with his talent for oratory which inspired not only the Venezuelan people but also a large number of outside entities.To correctly understand the influence of Chavez upon Venezuela, we firstly have to review some pages of history. More
(Corpo)Rational Person(ality)
It is perhaps characteristic of modern times to gather large groups of people who share the same perpetual quest for what is called freedom of expression and action within a free world, to make use of it with every single opportunity they might have. As such, and also due to the possibilities of assembly offered by the Internet, there arises the “popular” attitude that seeks righteousness and pretends a just and fair treatment from each of its components and especially from the big players on the world-wide stage. Over the last few decades, an antagonistic reaction has been artificially maintained against this borderless notion of “the People” and its supposed deadly foe that is conspiring against it – “the Corporation”. More
Power Through Play: Thinking Energy Outside the Box
According to the World Bank (2019), roughly 1 billion people have no access to electricity whatsoever, but a Nigerian-American entrepreneur thinks football might be the solution. How is it possible? The story begins with Harvard graduate Jessica O. Matthews. While in her junior year of college, Matthews co-created the Soccket, a soccer ball that can transform the kinetic energy created from being played with into electricity. Half an hour of motion will create about 3 hours of energy and this could be just the sustainable solution needed to end personal energy poverty. Now the founder and CEO of Uncharted Power, the company named by Forbes “The Anti-Silicon Valley Energy Startup”, Matthews aims to help developing countries achieve sustainability through play. More
Engines of Liberty: American Experiment in Self-Government
Brague’s Challenge. In an American Spectator blog post, “Sin No More,” dated May 1, 2008, Rémi Brague stated a thesis worth exploring: “What cultures that were influenced by the Jewish and Christian religions made of the ideal of liberty that I have been finding in both Testaments is a task for historians. Impartial historians will observe how miserably the ideal and its realization often jarred with one another. On the other hand, they will have to acknowledge that free institutions hardly ever developed in places that were not influenced by Jewish and Christian ideas. Outside the Judeo-Christian tradition, it has been rare for thinkers to suppose that God endowed us with a nature of our own, that freedom is part of that nature, and that it is through the exercise of freedom, and the errors that inevitably stem from it, that we fulfill God’s plan… And when Lord Acton tells us that ‘liberty is not a means to a higher political end; it is the highest political end’, he is echoing voices that can be heard in all the sacred books of our tradition, from the Torah to the epistles of St. Paul”. What follows is a lightly edited excerpt from this writer’s Crossed Swords: Entanglements Between Church and State in America (1984), chapter 5, “The American Commonwealth”. It illustrates the practical ways the ideal and its realization have been imaginatively developed even as they “jarred” with each other. More
Photon(e)s 3.0
Zenobia, by Gelllu Naum – a coloured and fascinating book like a surrealist tableaux. A passage from it inspired me, more precisely the description that Zenobia makes about the narrator. I transferred the description visually, so that the drawing would afterwards born questions, assumptions, and translations of the same text. A sort of snake who swallows its tails, forever, around some enigmatic characters. More
