nice readings

This morning Tommi bookmarked two interesting articles; both were excellent and very invigorating reading.

1/ Stratfor on The Geopolitics of $130 Oil on the actual global economical and political situation to high rise of oil barel
Oil prices have risen dramatically over the past year. When they passed $100 a barrel, they hit new heights, expressed in dollars adjusted for inflation. As they passed $120 a barrel, they clearly began to have global impact. Recently, we have seen startling rises in the price of food, particularly grains. Apart from higher prices, there have been disruptions in the availability of food as governments limit food exports and as hoarding increases in anticipation of even higher prices.

2/ Andrew Hargadon writing about the causal confusion when one observes outputs and imagine rules without taking into consideration a wider picture.
The problem of causality plagues a lot of variance-driven research. Causality is, as it sounds, an attempt to clarify whether one action actually causes another. How scientists study this causal relationship is by looking at how variation in one action (the independent variable) causes variation in another (the dependent variable). Sounds simple. Until you want to study something interesting, like people.