Some quick hits I've meant to blog about more extensively, but lately I've been very short on time.

1. Of light and carbon: From www.spiked.com, here is the best article I've seen summarizing the incandescent vs. flourescent craze. To reduce my carbon footprint, I henceforth resolve to boycott "carbon copy" and "blind carbon copy" emails.

2. Dani Rodrik recently posted a short paper, "Second Best Institutions," that is highly worthwhile but raises many puzzles.

3. Bob Lawson is visiting Liberty Fund today to give a talk on why we don't see countries with both high political freedoms and low economic freedoms.

4. Harvey Mansfield says economic thinking lacks virtue.

5. Alex Tabarrok says don't sweat the recession talk and reminds us (ahem!) that the real impact of economics lies less in clever applications of welfare analytics to Christmas, but more in enlightened understanding of growth and prosperity.

Amazingly, there are only about 6 million scientists and engineers in the entire world, nearly a quarter of whom are in the U.S. Poverty means that millions of potentially world-class scientists today spend their lives trying to eke out a subsistence living, rather than leading mankind’s charge into the future. But if the world as a whole were as wealthy as the U.S. and were devoting the same share of population to research and development, there would be more than five times as many scientists and engineers worldwide.

6. Finally, the January issue of W highlights the fascinating artist Thomas Nozkowski. There are some insights into originality and genius. I like the rich descriptions of his quirky, creatively-destructive methods and their beautiful results.