Well, my Labor Market Economics class got entirely canceled for the semester, due to the professor having an illness. So I got placed in an independent study in the economics department at William and Mary. I’m actually pretty excited about it, because I can basically study anything I want.

If you read this blog regularly, you probably know that I’m interested in doing something related to environmental economics. I’ve come up with a few ideas of topics to focus on, but I’m not exactly sure what I’m going to decide. So I thought I’d post some of the topic ideas I had on here and see if any readers think they’d be interesting for me to study. Of course I will post what I learn on gimme-five.

1. Economics of Climate Change in General, in particular, in relation to the discount rate. (a large discount rate means environmental damage in the future doesn’t matter so much today in terms of present value, for example)

2. Comparison of Environmental incentives used to reduce CO2 emissions or improve ecosystems (i.e. Gas Tax v. Permit Trading)

3. Feasibility of international enforcement of climate regulations from an economic context.

An article by Steve Kornacki in the New York Observer thinks so. Gore has never stated that he will not run for president in 2008, only that he does not plan to. Because he has never outright denied the possibility, rumors have been swirling. In particular, some insiders are claiming he may consider entering the race in September. This article mentions the following reasons for why Gore might run (and be successful at doing so) after all:

• He has name recognition and an established financial network
• He stood against the Iraq war from the beginning
• Oscar and Nobel Prize Nominations
• Upcoming Congressional testimony on Global Warming
• Stay out of fighting between the other democratic primary candidates by entering in September

I, personally, would be excited to see Gore run for the presidency, much due to his environmental stance. But, as we know, the election cycle is long and lots of things can change…

I’m sure you’ve all stumbled upon self-help websites before. Most of them are pretty generic. But the Rirarian Project is doing a pretty good job at giving unique and useful advice regarding things like the maintenance and improvement of physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health.

Today he just published a great (and very long) entry entitled “207 Great Tips to Make 2007 Your Best Year Ever.” Many of these tips are alternative ways to look at problems (visualize what you need to learn), health advice (heat therapy, snacking throughout the day), or unusual challenges to give yourself (brush teeth with your left hand). Granted, some of the advice is generic like you’d find on the typical self-help website, but there are definitely a few gems in these tips.

Consider the concept of a minimum page requirement. Commonly, a professor will assign a term paper to a student, and that term paper will have a list of requirements. One of these will be a minimum page requirement. In other words, the term paper must be at least X pages long before the student is allowed to turn it in.

Minimum page requirements are silly. In the real world (the “working” world), the name of the game is getting an idea across clearly and succinctly. Yet students go through elementary, middle, high school, and college being taught that their ideas are not complete unless they happen to fill up at least ten pages of paper, double spaced, 12″, Times New Roman font. Better to fill pages with what we students call “BS” than to turn in a paper two pages shy of the minimum requirement.

Granted, I’m a student, so I haven’t experienced the real world. But from what I hear, in the real world, people are rewarded, not punished, for getting an idea across in one page rather than three. So perhaps more teachers and professors should consider instituting maximum page limits rather than minimum ones. Minimum page limits are fine as guidelines, but creating hard and fast rules for how long a paper must be doesn’t make anyone into a better writer.

Check out this graph of posts tagged “global-warming” on Technorati over the past thirty days. The issue was never really “quiet” on the internet, but over the days prior to the recent UN Climate Change Report, and those following, posts regarding global warming have increased dramatically. From what I’ve read, there’s a lot of posts from both sides of the debate, which I feel is the biggest change. Prior to the UN Report, there were very few posts denying the existence of man-made global warming, and now I’d say it’s 50/50 or greater split towards articles on the denial side. If you’re interested, click here to go to Technorati and read some of the posts… or just keep visiting gimme-five and I’ll keep you updated.

Tags: environment, global-warming