Starting a charity

Charity entrepreneurship has great sources on this.

A book and a course

Plath, Lazarus, and suicide.

I found a recording of Ariel (the collection) read by the lady herself, Sylvia Plath. My favorite is Lady Lazarus, which I thought referred to Emily Lazarus (give me your tired, your poor, you huddled masses) but it actually refers to Lazarus of Bethany, whom Jesus resurrected after his death. Resurrection is a prominent theme in the poem and it refers to her failed suicide attempts. 

Lady Lazarus

I have done it again.   

One year in every ten   

I manage it——

A sort of walking miracle, my skin   

Bright as a Nazi lampshade,   

My right foot

A paperweight,

My face a featureless, fine   

Jew linen.

Peel off the napkin   

O my enemy.   

Do I terrify?——

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?   

The sour breath

Will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh

The grave cave ate will be   

At home on me

And I a smiling woman.   

I am only thirty.

And like the cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.   

What a trash

To annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.   

The peanut-crunching crowd   

Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand and foot——

The big strip tease.   

Gentlemen, ladies

These are my hands   

My knees.

I may be skin and bone,

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.   

The first time it happened I was ten.   

It was an accident.

The second time I meant

To last it out and not come back at all.   

I rocked shut

As a seashell.

They had to call and call

And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying

Is an art, like everything else.   

I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.   

I do it so it feels real.

I guess you could say I’ve a call.

It’s easy enough to do it in a cell.

It’s easy enough to do it and stay put.   

It’s the theatrical

Comeback in broad day

To the same place, the same face, the same brute   

Amused shout:

‘A miracle!’

That knocks me out.   

There is a charge

For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge   

For the hearing of my heart——

It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge   

For a word or a touch   

Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.   

So, so, Herr Doktor.   

So, Herr Enemy.

I am your opus,

I am your valuable,   

The pure gold baby

That melts to a shriek.   

I turn and burn.

Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

Ash, ash—

You poke and stir.

Flesh, bone, there is nothing there——

A cake of soap,   

A wedding ring,   

A gold filling.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer   

Beware

Beware.

Out of the ash

I rise with my red hair   

And I eat men like air.

Blattman: On writing

In a blogpost, the legendary Chris Blattman wrote about the things he usually tells undergrads #2 was

Learn how to write well. Take writing seriously. Consider a course in creative, non-fiction, journalism, or business writing. Read books on writing. You won’t regret it.

 
In that spirit, I compiled a bunch of related content. Start with *

Economical Writing by Deirdre McCloskey

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/SiGY7aah56HvGXxBJ/rhetoric-for-the-good*

http://matt.might.net/articles/books-papers-materials-for-graduate-students/

http://www.columbia.edu/~drd28/Thesis%20Research.pdf

https://chrisblattman.com/2010/02/17/how-to-write-an-essay/*

https://dynamicecology.wordpress.com/2012/11/14/clear-writing/

http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2006/10/how-to-write-well.html*

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1978/03/writing-typing-and-economics/305165/*

https://courses.edx.org/courses/course-v1:WitsX+WCMx+3T2019/courseware/3307bf339d6843dbaa2e1cd32cc5e474/0fa79cad6ad24feea333fe138efd55bb/?child=first*

https://www.coursera.org/learn/academic-literacy/lecture/V2XQj/being-critical*


https://oxford.academia.edu/WilliamMacAskill/Teaching-Documents

https://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/john.cochrane/research/papers/phd_paper_writing.pdf

https://courses.edx.org/courses/course-v1:WitsX+WCMx+3T2019/course/

https://www.coursera.org/specializations/english-for-research-publication-purposes

https://www.coursera.org/learn/advanced-writing?specialization=academic-english
https://www.coursera.org/learn/introduction-to-research-for-essay-writing?specialization=academic-english

Tyler Cowen's advice to Econ PhD students

A few days ago I was listening to a conversation between Patrick Collison, Mark Zuckerberg, and Tyler Cowen.  A quote grabbed my attention as I'm an aspiring econ student myself. Transcript

I think in general, big questions are under-studied. The tenure system, I think, increasingly is broken. A lot of academics do work pretty hard, but that so much of your audience is a narrowly defined set of peers who write you reference and tenure letters, I think we need to change. And the incentive for academics to integrate with practitioners and learn from them and actually try doing things, we need more of that. I’ve often suggested for graduate school, instead of taking a class, everyone should be sent to a not-so-high-income village for two weeks. They can do whatever they want. Just go for two weeks, think about things. No one wants to do this. No one wants to experiment with it. People who do development often do it on their own. But the notion that every economist should have studied the East Asian economic miracle, the Industrial Revolution, and spent two weeks or more in a poor village — it’s just not how things are, and I’d like to change that.

So I searched for some actions based on this advice, and since I don't plan on going to a poor village any time soon. Thoughts on (going to a poor village) welcome.

I collected some sources I thought were relevant.

Books on the East Asian miracle

1. How Asia Works by Studwell
2. MITI and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of Industrial Policy by Chalmers Johnson
3. Books on Chinese history: e.g. China in World History by Paul S. Ropp

Books on the Industrial revolution

1.  The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective by Allen*
2.  The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain 1700-1850 by Mokyr
3. This paper by Crafts discuss both Allen's and Mokyr's views 
4. The Most Powerful Idea in the World William Rosen
5.  The Industrial Revolution in World History by Peter N. Stearns
6. Documentary series on the Industrial Rev (bad resolution ~240p )
7. Article by History.com on the Industrial Rev (beware auto videos ads. Mute the tab)

Poor village part

https://chrisblattman.com/2008/06/02/advice-for-working-in-a-developing-country/

More books here**

* In the EA forum link** you can find an abridged version of Allen's book.

sources:
https://historyofmassachusetts.org/best-books-about-industrial-revolution/