From a reader named Eric Robinson comes this interesting bleg. (Click here for blegging information, and send your own requests here.) Photo: Uriba When I’m at a party and get asked what I do (I am an architect), I always hear one of the same five responses: + What kind of architecture do you do? + Hey, you can design . . .
So the bailout proposal before Congress seems to have been rejected because legislators were worried that voters back home saw it as a bailout of Wall Street at the expense of Main Street. Is such a fear rational? It may be that voters simply don’t understand or believe that a broader Wall Street failure could quickly trickle down and harm . . .
I’ve known several doctors who refused to read e-mail from patients. They said it was simply a bad use of their time. I also used to have a doctor who hated it whenever you came in and asked questions about some article you’d read in The Times about Lyme disease or some such. He’d get a pained look on his . . .
Wall Street has always been a legendary joke generator — with a specialty in gallows humor. So I ask our readers: in this very unfunny time, what are the Wall Street jokes of the moment? To prime the pump, I offer up something a wise gentleman told me the other night, prescribed to make all Americans feel a bit better: . . .
Photo: Odalaigh Whenever I travel in other wealthy countries, I am a bit embarrassed about the dollar bill’s insignificance compared to other countries’ smallest bills: a 5-pound note is worth $9; a 5-euro note is worth $7; a 1,000-yen note is worth $9. At the same time, no rich country has a coin as worthless as the U.S. penny. Imagine . . .
Suze Orman Earlier this week, we solicited your questions for Suze Orman. You asked about paying college debt, choosing a good retirement plan, and — especially with a week like this — how safe your money is. In her answers below, Orman also offers a question to ask whenever deciding what to do with your money: Is that normal? And . . .
Photo: procsilas A coalition of college presidents has been pushing states to lower the drinking age as a way to discourage problem drinking on campuses. But here’s one unintended consequence of teaching young people responsible drinking habits: it could make Social Security bankrupt faster. A 2004 study by Frank Sloan and Jan Ostermann at Duke University found that heavy drinkers . . .
Not long ago, I wrote about the sad state of financial literacy in the U.S., and how some people, like Annamaria Lusardi of Dartmouth, are proposing widespread education to fix the problem. But in a brief Money magazine Q&A, Lauren Willis, who teaches financial-products regulation at Loyola Law School, says that’s a waste of time. Excerpts: Q: What’s so bad . . .
Suze Orman If you’ve ever tried to give yourself a bit of financial literacy, you’ve probably come across something on the subject by Suze Orman. And if you’ve read some of Orman’s books, you may know about her first job as a waitress in Berkeley and how she got swindled out of an early investment, which made her want to . . .
David Zetland David Zetland, the S.V. Ciriacy-Wantrup Postdoctoral Fellow in Natural Resource Economics and Political Economy at U.C. Berkeley, blogged here earlier this week about the economics of water. This is his second of two posts on the subject. Oil and Water By David Zetland A Guest Post Over the past few months, newspapers, blogs, and television screens have been . . .
It is always fun to see language grow. (No, I don’t mean menu language.) One of my favorite rising words is “kindergarchy,” described here by Joseph Epstein as “rule by children,” a condition whereby “children have gone from background to foreground figures in domestic life, with more and more attention centered on them, their upbringing, their small accomplishments, their right . . .
It has been argued previously here that John McCain, among others, seems to harbor a pronounced dislike for economists. Well, you don’t even have to be a politician to hate economists. Via Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing, here’s a fascinating bit from an old paper by Robert Frank, Tom Gilovich (best known for his hot-hand refutation, and this fun book), and . . .
Dan Glickman We recently solicited your questions for Dan Glickman, C.E.O. of the Motion Picture Association of America. In his answers below, he discusses, among other topics, the source of his piracy figures and why the ratings board isn’t the “morality police.” He also tells us what he thinks of the documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated, which critiqued . . .
It is amazing to me that in the several days after it was announced that the second-ever woman was nominated for a major-party vice-president slot, so much of the news has concerned her and her daughter’s reproductive activities. Part of the reason to have a female candidate in the first place is presumably to be an advocate for women’s rights, . . .
Photo: Secretly Ironic Are there more guns in the U.S. or more opinions about guns? Hard to say. This blog has featured a variety of posts about guns in the past; today we present a quorum with a very narrow focus: what are some good ideas to cut gun deaths? Let’s put aside for a moment the standard discussions about . . .
Brock Lesnar Last Friday, we solicited your questions for U.F.C. fighter Brock Lesnar. The next day he won his fight against Heath Herring — and mocked him when he was down. According to Sports Illustrated‘s Ben Fowlkes, a “pro wrestling-style heel” like Lesnar “is exactly what the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s heavyweight division needs right now. … Thanks to Lesnar, watching . . .
Photo: Peter Katz On a forum at the Chicago outpost of City-Data.com, a certain JohnDoe2008 asked suburbanites: Why do you like suburbs over [the] city? Be honest please, I never understood it, still don’t. I might have serious problems, because I hate even looking at pictures of suburbs. Respondents cited backyards, quiet and cheap living, and congestion-free commutes — the . . .
Let’s begin with two questions: 1. Do you consider yourself financially literate? 2. If so, how did you get that way? And now, a third question: 3. How important is widespread financial literacy to the health of a modern society? Before you answer the first question, take this little quiz, borrowed from the website of Annamaria Lusardi, a professor of . . .
I recently blogged about whether we form our opinions more from information than experience. The starting point was a passage in David McCullough‘s book The Great Bridge, and he was comparing modern Americans with our 19th-century counterparts. I was interested not just as a historical comparison but because the information/experience question is compelling in its own right. Consider a doctor, . . .
Last week, I learned two important things. They both happened as the result of a post I wrote about various errors, typographical and otherwise. I noted that the excellent Economist magazine dropped an “r” from the word “pastries,” inadvertently rendering it “pasties.” Well, The Economist was not wrong but I sure was. Many readers informed me that a pasty (pl.: . . .
It doesn’t seem fair that one person can be so good at so many things. Nathan Myhrvold is one such person. He is probably still best known as the former chief technology officer of Microsoft. These days, he runs an invention company and spends his free time digging up dinosaur bones, experimenting with old and new cooking methods, and taking . . .
We recently featured a Q&A with Julie Salamon, author of Hospital, and last week Julie wrote her first guest post for us. Here is her second. It touches on a subject of great interest to me, something we hope to address empirically in future writing: the cost/benefit dilemma of end-of-life medical care. End of Days A Guest Post by Julie . . .
We’ve written before about various “beauty premiums”: the advantages gained in the marketplace by people who are better looking, taller, or have better teeth than the average person. Empiricism and theory have their place, of course, but we decided to ask some real people to discuss how much looks really matter. Here are their answers; feel free to add your . . .
Our resident quote bleggar Fred Shapiro, editor of the Yale Book of Quotations, is back with another request. If you have a bleg of your own, send it along here. Thanks to all for the hundreds of responses to the movie lines bleg. I was looking for 21st-century quotes, but there was some confusion on the issue. My sense is . . .
Folio reports that Time Inc. is starting a new magazine-subscription service called Maghound that sounds a bit like Netflix’s movie model: Maghound.com allows consumers to choose titles from a variety of publishers for mix-and-match “subscriptions” where they pay one monthly fee and have the ability to switch titles at any time. Unlike traditional subscriptions, members aren’t locked in their memberships . . .
Photo: Rhett Redelings An $11 billion seasonal industry has just gotten underway: summer camp. This morning, my wife and I sent our kids off to their first-ever day of camp. They are too young for sleep-away camp, so they’re going to a day camp that’s a short bus ride away. All over the city of New York, the summer-camp rhythm . . .
Our resident quote bleggar Fred Shapiro, editor of the Yale Book of Quotations, is back with another request. If you have a bleg of your own — it needn’t have anything to do with famous quotations — send it along here. Now, before you consider Fred’s latest request below, just ask yourself: Are you having a laugh? Thanks to the . . .
Health care is an important, huge, and growing piece of our economy. But as a reader named Beth Wieder points out, the design of medical devices isn’t always as user-friendly (or, I would add, as cost-efficient or as practical) as one might like. For instance, we blogged some time back about a very cheap and portable asthma spacer. Here is . . .
We’ve written repeatedly about pay-as-you-wish commerce or honor-system payment schemes, ranging from music to bagels to coffee. A reader named Seth sent in an interesting new example, all the more so because it shows how one firm is using the pay-as-you-wish mechanism as an experiment to find a good price for a new product: I am writing to tell you . . .
The latest bout of racial consternation in our great land includes: Another Don Imus comment; will it reverberate as loudly as the last one? A white valedictorian at historically black Morehouse College; maybe the would-be black valedictorian wound up at any Ivy?
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