Sunday

Friday was a write-off so needed to catch up a bit over the weekend. Cleared much of inbox which included lengthy message form the student who lost his iPhone, bemoaning a mark of 57% in his first assignment on the Academic English module. He lost marks for poor referencing and using Wikipedia. Took the opportunity to explain to him about the authority of sources and why referencing is important: we tend to emphasise the plagiarism aspect without explaining to students that references in what they read are very important too and they should follow them up. Perhaps I should make a podcast on this. Also request from friend to act as referee for a promotion application. I'm happy to do this but the CV enclosed was not very well put together and doesn't really do justice to the application. I've read a lot of CVs lately - I think there is a great art to producing a good one.

Finished reading "Economics of Good and Evil". A very interesting book surveying the history of economics to show how it began with a moral aspect which has been lost in our modern rational and mathematical approach. Starting with the Gilgamesh and Bible (I don't like the rather modern English translation of the verses he cites but he certainly knows it some detail, both Old and New Testaments) and sailing through many great economic philosophers, with footnotes on Terry Pratchett, Stephen Leacock, the Matrix and other modern cultural icons. a very well read individual.

 His glancing reference to economics as helmsmanship (p61) resonated with the paper on the ICAEW logo, Economia, that Mike and I wrote. He also makes the point that Smith only referred to "the invisible hand" three times in his work and never developed the idea as it has been subsequently, and the same applied to Keynes' notion of "animal spirits". It seems to me that these are quite startling metaphors and that is why they have become central to debate about economics. He suggests that although economics is presented as scientific and rational  "a religious and emotional zeal .. accompanies many schools of economic thought". "We also have a magical incantation for predicting the future; we say ceteris paribus every time....Aside from it sounding like "abracadabra", we must admit that reality tends not to be ceteris paribus." (p307) All of which appeals to my own prejudices!

Can't imagine how a play was made out of the book but that's what it says on the cover. Found him on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_YIKK6taIE His presentation style is very much how the book reads.

Also read an interesting paper by an Israeli academic who analysed meeting minutes for insights into board behaviour. I find this worrying as there is no recognition that minutes are not necessarily an objective record: someone authored them but content analysis does not recognise this contextual issue. (The same applies to analysis of narrative reports in my view. The only people who seem to acknowledge this are those using a visual approach.) She presents minutes analysis as more objective than interviews. Maybe I'll write to her about this.