Is the message of this Barclay’s ad: “The banking industry is going down the tubes anyway, bringing all aspects of society with it, so you might as well have fun on the way down”? (HT: Andrew Sullivan)
The total number of hate groups operating in the U.S. has increased by more than half since 2000, according to a new report by the Southern Poverty Law Center (S.P.L.C.). Photo: upload The report, and subsequent news coverage of it, blames this distressing trend on the deteriorating economy and the election of Barack Obama. But economic downturns don’t necessarily stoke . . .
Some things — Terminator, Elvis — were better in their original incarnations. Forbes‘s Andy Greenberg thinks the Kindle was too. The Kindle2, which came out this week, doesn’t “feel as natural for reading” as the original Kindle, Greenberg writes. Its “cold and slippery” aluminum back and smaller page-turning buttons, he says, make the Kindle2 seem “more interested in wowing customers . . .
Undergraduates are turning to the study of economics in droves. They’re all Facebook friends with Paul Krugman. Myths about marriage that won’t die (but should). (Earlier) If you want to expand your fantasy-baseball vocabulary, or just need the definition of “bean up,” the third edition of the Dickson Baseball Dictionary came out this month. (Earlier) Carry-on potties: a consequence Ryanair . . .
If cigars were the big-money culture item of the booming 1990’s, and ever-larger SUVs and McMansions were the status symbols of the mid-2000’s, maybe it makes sense that we’re wrapping ourselves in Snuggies as the recession sets in.
In middle school I was taught that in order to be president of the United States, you had to be native-born and at least 35 years of age. My teachers left out the requirement that you be left handed. While not formally a requirement, lately being a lefty has been pretty helpful for becoming president: five of the last seven presidents have been left handed.
Ants invented farming millions of years before we did. They perfected traffic control, too. Thanks, ants. Everything you know about Darwin is wrong. (Earlier) What does oil sand mining look like? National Geographic finds out. Six-word stories: in several genres. For those who thought books like Freakonomics were too scattered — a list of single-subject nonfiction.
Just one, as we learned a few weeks ago in Congressional Quarterly, which reported that Rep. Peter Hoekstra, Michigan Republican and ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, regularly Twittered details of his congressional delegation’s visit to Iraq, details that were supposed to be kept secret. With Twittering politicians on the rise, should we be worried about more national-security threats? . . .
Eric Morris has been busting L.A. transportation myths lately with his Fact and Fiction posts. For yet another unusual view of Los Angeles, check out this beautiful set of photos in Good magazine by Mathieu Young, who set out on a 20-mile walk across the city, taking photos of everyone he met along the way. A few examples: Mathieu Young . . .
As the stock market continues to search for a bottom, it’s worth another look back at how we got here. Back in September, University of Chicago professors Douglas W. Diamond and Anil K. Kashyap explained for our readers the trouble with Lehman Brothers and A.I.G. Lehman’s trouble began with the collapse of the housing bubble. But where did that come . . .
When President Obama told Congress this week that his stimulus package wasn’t about helping banks but about helping people, he could have been talking about a former sound designer in Hollywood named Bob. Bob is bankrupt. He went bust in September, and this month he began a blog chronicling his own economic recovery. The U.S. might be too big to . . .
The Wall Street Journal asks economists: what’s the most economy-conscious way to spend an extra $8 a week? (Earlier) International Oscar winners are good for Hollywood. Nuclear energy is in vogue in Latin America. (Earlier) Can kids get better at math by mimicking Italians?
While activism is virtually synonymous with “not-for-profit,” a San Francisco startup called Virgance has begun a slew of campaigns that aim to make money off of activism. As reported in The Economist, one campaign is a “green venture fund” on Facebook where users can invest their money (as little as $100), with Virgance getting a portion of the returns. But . . .
The marketing hook for the suddenly-everywhere Snuggie is that its form-fitting coziness helps you keep down your home-heating bills. (O.K., that’s only one hook: the ads also claim that ordinary blankets are too cumbersome and may, tragically, entrap your hands.)
Thanks to The Times‘s nice writeup (“Dieting? Put Your Money Where Your Fat Is”), an Internet company that I helped found, www.stickK.com, has been getting a spike in commitment contracts. As readers of this blog know, stickK (shameless plug) is a commitment store that helps you stick to your goals. We’ll elicit support from your friends. We’ll nag you if . . .
One effect of President Obama‘s $500,000 salary cap on the executives of bailed out firms (if it has any effect at all; Gary Becker thinks it won’t) could be an exodus of human capital from the top echelons of the finance industry. A new paper suggests that talented people are likely to leave finance in droves anyway, once tighter regulations . . .
Thirty percent of U.S. electricity consumption could be erased through gains in energy productivity, according to the Rocky Mountain Institute. (Related: see R.M.I. chairman Amory Lovins‘s recent guest post.) The institute’s analysis arrived at electricity productivity stats for all 50 states by dividing each state’s G.D.P. by the kilowatt hours of electricity it consumed. New York state topped its list. . . .
Dozens of proposals are floating around suggesting different ways to fix what seems to be the broken business model for newspapers. Michael Kinsley‘s Op-Ed, working backwards from the gross numbers, provides a devastating critique of the claim that micropayments on the Internet could save the industry: Micropayment advocates imagine extracting as much as $2 a month from readers. The Times . . .
The streaming music site Muxtape has returned as a free platform for musicians to promote their music.
Emerging in a time when cassette tapes had long been an anachronism, Muxtape became a go-to site for music fans to string together their favorite songs and share the virtual mix tapes with friends and internet passers-by. Founded in early 2008, the site quickly became ensnared in licensing disputes and was shut down last August.
Ian Ayers recently blegged you about boy-specific or girl-specific Happy Meal toys from McDonald’s.
But forget about toys; when was the last time your doctor asked if you’d like to choose your child’s sex?
The Los Angeles Times reports that membership at online dating sites has increased substantially this year; eHarmony, for example, was up 20 percent. In light of the economy, we wonder how many of these online daters joined up to do some gold-digging. They should be careful. As research by Gunter Hitsch, Ali Hortacsu, and Dan Ariely makes clear, income is . . .
How about a blogger stimulus? (Earlier) Being murdered by a pacemaker hacker is possible, but highly unlikely. (Earlier) The Brian Lehrer Show wants your “uncommon economic indicators.” The streets of Central America proclaim a different football champion than we do. Photo from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Newspapers are disappearing faster than alpine glaciers, and a new paper by journalist-turned-public-policy scholar Eric Pooley suggests the two may be related. Pooley’s paper argues that newspapers have failed as referees of the public debate on preventing climate change, reporting junk economics and good economics with equal weight. In these muddied waters, Pooley suggests, it’s harder for the government to . . .
New York magazine, riffing on Drew Barrymore‘s starring role in the film adaptation of He’s Just Not That Into You, suggests 10 other self-help books that should be Barrymore vehicles, including Freakonomics: Drew Barrymore stars as a free-spirited Northwestern economics grad student who ventures into the Cabrini Green projects on the south side of Chicago to research the lives of . . .
Despite NBC banning sexually explicit ad content from the Super Bowl broadcast, Comcast customers in parts of Tuscon were exposed to about 30 seconds of a pornographic film which interrupted Comcast’s Super Bowl coverage on Sunday. According to The Huffington Post, Comcast suspects the work of hackers. The company is paying each of its affected customers a $10 refund. Blog . . .
An article in The Economist reports that “the lipstick index,” the theory that women buy more lipstick in tough economic times, is probably not valid. A better index might instead be hairstyles. As The Independent reports, Japanese researchers found that women tend to have longer hairstyles when the economy is doing well, and shorter styles during harder times. Later on . . .
A panel of Chicago economists convened to discuss their views on the stimulus package recently, and video of the event is now available online. All the speakers had something interesting to say (including Nobel Laureate Robert Lucas being surprisingly sympathetic to government intervention). Of particular interest, in my opinion, is Kevin Murphy‘s discussion, which comes in the middle of the . . .
For dairy cows, just having a name makes them more productive. (HT: Karl Matulis) (Earlier) In the world of startup competition, TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington draws the line at death threats and being spat on. Out of Queens, N.Y., here’s another pay-what-you-wish cafe. (Earlier) A traffic sign warns of “Zombies Ahead.” It’s just the work of hackers, assures the local . . .
For all the good that Google Earth has brought to the world, it’s been a boon for ne’er-do-wells and mischief-makers as well. In the U.K., teenage hooligans allegedly use it to scope out private pools they can crash for impromptu parties. On a darker note, insurgents in Iraq used images from Google Maps to guide their attacks. And the terrorists who killed 170 people in Mumbai last November supposedly used Google Maps images for help navigating the city.
Not many people have a lot of money to throw around these days, so how is the recession affecting ad spending on the super-expensive Super Bowl? Even after NBC lowered its ad prices, reports the Associated Press, FedEx and General Motors pulled their TV commercials, and Playboy isn’t having its annual Super Bowl party. A 30-second Super Bowl commercial can . . .
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