Links for Week Ending 16th March

Apologies for the weekly links being late. I have been preoccupied reading U.K. flood-related reports, so I have not had time to read much else.

• On my ‘to do’ list is to report a global monthly oil production statistic. In the meantime, Stuart Staniford at the Early Warning blog reports regularly on this topic. His latest post with the February numbers is here. 
• A week late, nonetheless, look at Calculated Risk’s monthly comments and graph on the U.S. employment report. Another thing on my ‘to do’ list.
• You know that there is some great writing out there on the internet, but how to find it? I strongly recommend “The Browser“. I don’t quite know how to describe it: an aggregator and filter of intelligent writing? It brings serendipity to the internet (one of the virtues of print journalism). Warning. The Browser will severely impair your social interactions with the rest of humanity. Just too damn addictive.
• And via The Browser, I found an interesting series of reports by Tim Morgan on the death of growth here.
• While Tim Morgan’s reports give a pretty bleak outlook for growth, The Economist argues that that there is a lot of new economic value being created within the internet that is not being captured by GDP statistics (here).
• I flagged in a previous ‘links’ a new study of the ‘hockey stick’ analysis of global temperatures going back to the end of the last ice age. The New Scientist has a good article covering this paper.
• For those interested in Japan, post-growth economies, or both, then I recommend looking at some of the posts of Spike Japan. Unfortunately, Richard Hendy, the man behind Spike Japan, has just put up his last post. One of my favourites of his from the past is this one on Kinugawa Onsen, since I knew it in its heyday and have also witnessed its decline over the years. The Guardian did a lovely article on Japan’s provincial decay and Spike Japan a few years back. While Hendy’s postings have recently become rather random in topic, at their best in the past they showed that a blog post combining photos and prose could be a sophisticated—and refreshingly new—literary vehicle in its own right. However, I still hanker for a book, so here is hoping he hasn’t disappeared off the literary landscape forever.