Sunday, December 19, 2010

The Tyler Cowen

Well, I didn't die but I've managed to come down with a helluva cold. Everything aches, including my eye-lids. Is it possible to have a headache in your eyelids?

As I sit here typing, I can hear the street vendors outside in the market hawking their wares through loud-speakers and I'm reminded of how scary this place is when you first arrive. You don't speak the language, you know there are threats of a war, and the first time you see a blue truck drive by with a grey loudspeaker on its roof bellowing something, your instinct is to think it's some sort of alarm. Or when you first see one of the huge airbuses rattle overhead and wonder if something went wrong. Or an attack helicopter.

Anyway...enough of my yammering. Good links below.

  • Another nice read from 38North, this one again featuring the mysterious Inspector O. It's funny to think of a few crappy fables cited by a world leader inciting a research craze in Pyonyang. 
  • A slightly corny but still interesting look at the bridge between China and North Korea. These simple indicators of disparity are nicely digestible. 
  • For some reason I've come across a lot of articles on marriage and compatibility today. All the articles come at the issue from different angles but my favorite is the biological importance of odor. Should I be choosing a mate based on friendship and compatibility for a happy marriage in the long-term or based on sweat glands and urine musk for stronger immune systems in my children? Should I just forgo marriage altogether? Am I really to believe that my current girlfriend, for whom I have what feels like a bottomless well of affection, will one day leave me cold? Ah to be 28 years old. 
  • Nice article on the u-bend of happiness. We're at our least happy around the age of 46 as our ambition dies but hasn't yet been replaced by acceptance. But the later years are increasingly happy again. 
  • Although perhaps redundant to our own links, the Atlantic Wire has a nice summary of some of the current thinking around the Korean peninsula.

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