Inflatio, ooo, ooo, n

Here is the link to a slide share on using cartoon to teach inflation by Mike Fladlien. 

Image credit - Mike Fladlien/Slideshare

Digital is the Future of F&B

 Top 10 Food & Technology Trends and Innovations 2022. 

Image credit - StartUsInsights

Shipping Costs the Driver of Inflation

Excerpt from a recent article in the IMF Blog (28 March 2022). 

"While the pass-through to inflation is less than that associated with fuel or food prices—which account for a larger share of consumer purchases—shipping costs are much more volatile. As a result, the contribution in the variation of inflation due to global shipping price changes is quantitatively similar to the variation generated by shocks to global oil and food prices."

Image credit - IMF Blog.

Note: My PhD dissertation is on pass-through to inflation. 

What Ever Given Has Taught the World

The ultra-large container vessels (ULCVs) of Ever Given has taught us one lesson: 'Don't take the constant supply of goods for granted, if you depend on shipping' (Elisabeth Braw, Nov. 21, 2021).

Source: Econlife

Managing Crises is the New Normal

Remember the huge ship Ever Given that got stuck in the Suez Canal in March 2021 & held up $60 billion of trade? The full story here.

Here is the update, posted in March 2022.

Image credit - Lancashire Evening Post

15 Books to Read

The List of Book Elon Musk Thinks Everyone Should Read (thanks Dawn Clark for the compilation). Watch the video below (15.41 min).

1. The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams

2. Structures: Or Why Things Don't Fall Down by J.E. Gordon

3. Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson

4. Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies by Nick Bostrom

5. Our Final Invention by James Barrat

6. Ignition: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants by John D. Clark

7. The "Foundation" trilogy by Issac Asimov

8. Life 3.0 : Being Human in The Age of Artificial  Intelligence by Max Tegmark

9. The Lord Of The Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien

10. Zero to One: Notes on StartUps,  Or How To Build The Future by Peter Thiel

11. The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein

12. Merchants Of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes & Erik M. Conway

13. Einstein: His Life & Universe by Walter Isaacson

14. Howard Hughes: His Life & Madness by Donald L. Bartlett & James B. Steele

15. The Culture Series by Iain M. Banks (10 book compilation)

Source: Youtube

Taming Inflation

Interesting recent article from the IsDB Blog. An Excerpt below:

"Inflation is a major problem for modern economies. Over the years, the problem shifted from one extreme to the other: from “the great inflation” in the 1960s and 1970s, to “the death of inflation”  and “inflation myth” in the 1990s and 2000s, to the “deflation monster” in 2010s,  and most recently, to “the biggest inflation surge in more than 30 years”. Despite the remarkable advances in monetary theory and policy, we are still unable to control inflation.

Many studies of inflation tend to miss the forest for the trees. They mostly focus on technical details and lose sight of the big picture. Here, we want to look at the big picture."

'Inflation Shark' |  Image Credit - HedgeEye

Top 15 Best Global Brand Ranking

 In 2020. Apple. Watch the 8-minutes video below.

Source: Youtube

Cartooning for Peace

Peace. Gender Equality. And the Looming War.

Image credit: Cartooning for Peace

"I Will Fly" by Elena Ospina. Image credit - Cartoon Movement.

The Cost of War

Excerpt from the IMF Blog:

"Russia and Ukraine are major commodities producers, and disruptions have caused global prices to soar, especially for oil and natural gas. Food costs have jumped, with wheat, for which Ukraine and Russia make up 30 percent of global exports, reaching a record."

Source: IMF Blog

Punitive Tax on Russian Oil

Here is an interesting article on the tax incidence analysis (taught in basic Microeconomics classes).  It is demand and supply elasticity of Russian oil. The scenario is a punitive tax on Russian oil, high demand elasticity and short-term supply elasticity.

Mike Luckovich | Copyright 2022 Creators Syndicate.

The Semiconductor Crisis and Chip Woes

The global chip and semiconductor shortage is alarming due to pandemic supply chain disruption. Full story here. 

Excerpt:

"The country accounts for 13% of global chip assembly testing and packaging, and 7% of the world's semiconductor trade passes through Malaysia, undergoing some added value at local factories or getting combined with other parts before being shipped."

Image credit - Faisal Khan, Open Source X

Gender Budgeting Index (GBI)

Gender Budgeting is the process where the structuring and spending of taxation helps support gender equality and close inequality gap. According to this article, Canada, Mexico , France, South Korea, and Japan score high on the GBI.

Image credit - IMF Blog

The Queen of Mathematics

Discovered this article after trying to understand what Euler jump means in figure skating. Read here.

Excerpt:

"What is special about these numbers: 6, 28, 496 and 8128?

What is the nature of the relationship between the following pairs of “amicable,” numbers, as they are rather exotically denoted: 220 and 284, 17296 and 18416, 9 363 584 and 9 437 056?

Why are the numbers 2, 3, 5, 7 drawn from a special infinite series referred to as the “atoms of arithmetic?”

These numbers, and many other kinds besides, are the subject of what Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777 – 1855) – one of the greatest Mathematicians to have ever lived – liked to call the Queen of Mathematics. An enviable position, particularly considering that many see Mathematics as the Queen of the Sciences. In specialist circles, this field is known by the more prosaic title of Number Theory."

Euler Angle. Source - Google Image

The Graduation Thesis of Yuzuru Hanyu

From Wikipedia:

Yuzuru Hanyu is a Japanese figure skater. He is a two-time Olympic champion, a two-time World champion, a four-time Grand Prix Final champion, a Four Continents champion, the 2010 World Junior champion, the 2009–10 Junior Grand Prix Final champion, and a six-time Japanese national champion. 

Here are some of Yuzuru's famous quotes (taken from Planet Hanyu, posted in 2017. Thanks Hannah):

"If you cannot do it, practice until you can do it. If you can do it, then practice till you can do it perfectly. If you can do it perfectly, then practice until you can do it perfectly every time."

"I am me. I am neither greater nor less than Hanyu Yuzuru"

"Efforts do not always result in better performance. But, I don’t want any of you to hesitate on trying harder. The mere action of trying hard will benefit your lives. By putting in effort, trying hard in practices, we, as a person and as an athlete, grow to become a better person for the society."

"Failure or not depends on perspective of people. Failure is not the opposite of success, but a part of it. If you do not fail, you might not notice a lot of things."

出る杭は打たれるけど、出過ぎると誰かが引き抜いてくれるから頑張ってね

(translation posted by AprilS: "I'm pretty sure it's a take on the old proverb "The nail/stake that sticks out will be hammered down." - which pretty much translates to "if you stand out, people will try to bring you down/If you're unique or do something unique, people will try to get you to conform to everyone else." Hanyu pretty much turns this statement around by saying that if you stick out enough, someone will take notice and pick you out from the crowd (in a good way). i.e 'pull you out.")

Below is the video (around 13 minutes) explaining how Yuzuru uses AI in his thesis to perfect his routines. 

Source: Youtube

Gruyere Cheese Made in USA?

Dispute on geographic origin of trademark.  The full story here.

Excerpt:

“This is a huge victory for common sense and for hard-working manufacturers and dairy farmers,” Krysta Harden, U.S. Dairy Export Council president and CEO, said in a statement shared by the National Milk Producers Federation. “When a word is used by multiple companies in multiple stores and restaurants every day for years, as gruyere has been, that word is generic, and no one owns the exclusive right to use it. We are gratified that Judge Ellis saw this straightforward situation so clearly and upheld the USPTO Trademark Trial and Appeal Board’s finding that gruyere is an established generic term.”

Image credit - La Gruyere, Switzerland

Data in Brief

Weekend at the beach. Writing. Data in Brief.

Ibnu Sina's Canon Book

Excerpt from the article in 1001 Inventions site below. Full story here.

"In medicine, his encyclpedic book, al-Qanun (The Canon) – Al Qanun Fi Al-Tibb (The Canon of Medicine) – was translated into Latin towards the end of the twelfth century CE, and became a reference source for medical studies in the universities of Europe until the end of the seventeenth century."

Illuminated opening of the first book of the Kitab al-Qanun fi al-tibb (The Canon on Medicine) by Ibn Sina. Undated, probably Iran, beginning of 15th century. Image credit - 1001 Inventions.