How many economists are there?

why none of them saw the biggest recession on record coming!  :D

Political Economy Notebooks, Editorial

The History of Everything 4

Macroevolution

Evolutionary biology, the study of the processes that gave rise to the diversity of life, has developed an interdisciplinary approach that considers biological and social evolution, giving new possibilities to understand macroevolution.

Eusociality, the most extreme form of kin selection, has played a key role in the development of new theories in sociobiology. Despite the fact that social animals  may not posses moral behavior, they have had to modify theirs for group living to be worthwhile.

Societies of ants, bees, termites and humans are made of millions of individuals and what leads to the success of these colonies is the existence of individuals that restrict competition and foster cooperation within the colony.  Cooperation is vital. A solitary individual has an improbable chance of long term survival and reproduction, but colonies can thrive for decades.

The History of Everything 3

Life is what it's all about

The divine characteristic that distinguishes objects from self-sustaining processes,  sums up the natural tendency in the Universe towards successive generations of more complex organisms in an more interconnected array. 

Life is an evolutionary result of the Law of Chemical Affinity by which dissimilar chemical species are capable of forming chemical compounds. The tendency of an atom or compound to combine by chemical reaction with atoms or compounds of unlike composition, due to the unquestionable homogeneity of the elementary particles of the matter.

It is the same principle that lies beneath love, friendship, sympathy, empathy and altruism. The beginning of life itself, and the most important evolutionary steps have been marked by collaborative union, the bests answer to any given paradigmatic change.  

The History of Everything 2

During the last century, the study of the origin and evolution of the Universe has come closer than ever to provide consistent answers to the quintessential questions common to all Homo Sapiens and as the immediate consequence of self-awareness: existence, death, time flow, the motion of the heavens, and so on... Science have reached so far away that the answers are becoming more puzzling.

Since Aristarchus of Samos, the best of human intellect has proposed their cosmological theories. Isaac Newton in "Principia Mathematica" laid the physical foundations to support Kepler's Laws, and his Law of Universal Gravitation confirmed the Copernican principle that the bodies on earth obey the same physical laws as all the celestial bodies. Albert Einstein's final modification of General Relativity prompted Willem de Sitter and Arthur Eddington to explore its astronomical consequences, enhancing our ability to study very distant objects in an Universe that was thought to be static and unchanging, even for the ultimate relativist, Einstein himself.

In fact, still during the 1920's, leading astronomers considered a cosmos made up of the Milky Way star system only! In 1924, Edwin Hubble established the distance of a novae in the Andromeda galaxy well beyond the edge of the Milky Way and his discovery of the red shift in 1929, opened our Universe to have galaxies of their own that were drifting apart. The Big Band model proposed by Belgian priest Georges Lemaitre in 1927 was confirmed in 1964 by the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation by Arno Penzias and R.W. Wilson.

The Universe has become bigger and bigger and space itself seems to be moving beyond light speed. Science has reached so far, but probably the answers remain closer to the human condition, where it all started.

The History of Everything

Teleology,  a philosophical account of the final causes that exist in nature, is missing. The purpose of this comic strips is to look for a meaning and purpose in nature. We will be looking for final causes following closely evolutionary biology and anthropology while describing (not judging) natural tendencies towards certain end conditions. Keeping in mind that this is a very sensitive issue among scientists, I'll try to make you laugh (the most difficult part). I'd like you to think and I'll try to communicate my arguments, in non-teleological forms. :D

Political Economy Notebooks, No. 3 Cover Page

Newspapers and New Media

The newspaper industry does not follow a linear pattern. Newsprint lower prices in Canada and excessive media ownership concentration in Mexico, makes it difficult just to come up with a clean cut regional analysis for a North American industry. 

During the last two decades, many mainstream newspapers downsized, went paperless and the circulation of "one size fits all" type of journalism (e.g. USA Today) widened. Certainly the industry  has been challenged by the new media (lower cost, proliferation of self-generated content and wider penetration caused an excess supply of informative goods and  subsequent exchange value depreciation) the consequence, an outrageous decline in advertising revenue and receding circulation. In fact, total newspaper advertising revenue in the United States in 2011 fell by 7.3% compared to 2010, print advertising was off by 9.2% and the industry suffered a decline of $1.9 billion from the previous year. Google alone have got more advertising revenue than the whole newspaper industry combined.

At the same time, all newspapers had to go more local, more open to community generated content and community newspapers are thriving.  As a result of the late 2000's crisis,  more and more readers in  the United States are getting their news from local and community newspapers. The year-end report from the National Newspaper Association (NNA), shows growing readership patterns in smaller communities served by local newspapers. These are great news, because the U.S.A. is a country that does not like to read. Tthe bad news is that their main source of income is shrinking at a very fast pace.

On the other side of the spectrum, main stream printed media in the East has grown so steadily during the second half of the 20th century that media concentration did not have an impact. Japan counts with a widespread base of readers (at all ages,  not only for newspapers but for all printed media in general) and accounts for five of the more read newspapers in the world, followed by Chinese, Indian and South Korean newspapers. The German "Bild" (6th), UK based "The Sun" (9th), "U.S.A. Today" (13th), "The Wall Street Journal (19th), "The New York Times" (46th) and "The Washington Post" (94th). 

Worldwide wages for mass media workers have been decreasing steadily during the past 30 years at all levels, but if you are in printed journalism in English language, to own or to work for an Indian newspaper could be worth the move.  English is the subsidiary official language of the most populated democracy in the world, it is used extensively in business  and as a medium of higher education. Indian newspapers will continue to grow for the next 10-15 years (base readers, revenue and circulation) because it counts with a young and better prepared population (half of it is less than 24), and because the Indian industry has been developing for the last 30 years cheaper web-presses and post-press machines. Probably not as consistent as its German counterparts, but these are brand new, already in the country and maintenance, inks and solutions are locally provided as well.