Bring Your Questions For New York Congressman Anthony Weiner
New York Congressman Anthony Weiner takes your questions.
New York Congressman Anthony Weiner takes your questions.
New Zealand native Phil Keoghan is best known as the host of CBS’s reality show The Amazing Race, each episode ending with Phil at some exotic international finish line, solemnly informing each team where it has placed in the day’s contest.
The iconic libertarian Milton Friedman once said “The great advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science or literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government.” Michael Strong, founder of innovative charter schools, and John Mackey, C.E.O. of Whole Foods, agree with Friedman, and have their own libertarian vision. They believe that entrepreneurs and “conscious . . .
There are three TV shows I have come to love even though I’ve never watched them on TV. Or on DVD. Or via iTunes. They are: Arrested Development, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and Rescue Me. And they are all available — the complete catalog, whenever you want, in high-quality video, with a beautiful user interface — on my computer, for free, thanks to Hulu.com.
It’s safe to say that macroeconomists haven’t been very popular lately. In fact, many people blame the profession for such sins as failing to predict the housing bubble and encouraging the deregulation of the financial industry. In their new book Animal Spirits, the economists George Akerlof and Robert Shiller propose a new macroeconomic framework — one that incorporates real human . . .
The crew of the Maersk Alabama, having survived an attack by pirates in Somalia last week, has returned home for a much-deserved rest. But with tensions ratcheting up between the U.S. and the rag-tag confederation of Somali pirates, it’s worth looking to the past for clues on how to tame the outlaw seas.
Stuart Brown Whether he’s playing tennis with “a convivial group of codgers” or hanging out with his grandkids, Stuart Brown, the author of Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul, plays as often as he can. With a background in neuroscience and behavioral medicine, Brown has studied play globally, both in civilization and in . . .
Last week, we solicited your questions for Aravind Adiga, author of The White Tiger, a rambunctious tragicomic novel about modern India.
Please welcome to our corps of in-house bloggers Dwyer Gunn, a young writer who has studied economics at Wellesley, worked in finance, and been a research assistant at the Becker Center on Chicago Price Theory. “The biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression,” as described by Richard Posner, began in December of 2007 amidst plunging housing prices and reached its . . .
I recently had occasion to visit India for the first time to speak at a conference put on by the media conglomerate India Today. Sadly my visit was very short, just a toe-touch. Still, it was fascinating from start to finish. On the way over, one of the flight attendants told me she was using her down time in New . . .
Paul Collier Last week, we solicited your questions for award-winning Oxford University economist Paul Collier, author of The Bottom Billion and the just-published Wars, Guns, and Votes: Democracy in Dangerous Places. In his answers below, Collier talks about why the impact of colonialism on Africa is exaggerated, how African countries are “too big to be nations, yet too small to . . .
Matt Miller It isn’t hard to think of ideas that were once considered conventional wisdom — “Women shouldn’t vote,” “People should be segregated by race” — but were eventually laid to rest. In his book The Tyranny of Dead Ideas: Letting Go of the Old Ways of Thinking to Unleash A New Prosperity, Matt Miller writes that the country’s biggest . . .
Paul Collier, an award-winning Oxford University economist, is a self-described Africanist who researches the effects of civil war, aid, and the “problems of democracy” in societies that have lots of resources but low incomes.
Last week we solicited your questions for Penn Jillette, the prolific (and, yes, libertarian) entertainer.
Among other interesting topics, your questions covered magic, politics, Scientology, and Jillette’s red fingernail.
Penn Jillette is a magician, comedian, actor, producer and, generally, a curator of interesting and intelligent things. But he is best known as the self-described “larger, louder” half of Penn & Teller, a stage show that Penn and his magician partner Teller Jillette have put on since 1975. It currently plays at the Rio in Vegas. I saw it there not long ago, and it was phenomenal.
Last week we solicited your questions for Stanford Law School Professor (and open-source hero, and anti-corruption leader) Lawrence Lessig. (Past Q&A’s can be found here.)
You asked good questions about copyright, corruption, and other topics, and Lessig responded with equally thoughtful answers, including such tasty pieces of advice as:
Since the first trucks began carrying freight in the early 1900’s, the U.S. trucking industry has had an influence on politics, food prices, and even music.
Stanford Law School professor Lawrence Lessig has spent much of his career focused on technology and the law, and how the two affect copyright. He represented internet publisher Eric Eldred in Eldred v. Ashcroft, wherein Eldred and others challenged the constitutionality of the Copyright Term Extension Act, which extended terms of copyright protection in the United States by 20 years. Eldred lost the case.
Last week, we solicited your questions for Simon Rogers, the owner of the talent and modeling agency UglyNY. In his answers below, Rogers discusses, among other topics, why George Clooney probably earns more than William H. Macy and why finding ugly talent is harder than it seems. You’ll find more photos of his clients throughout this post. (You will be . . .
Simon Rogers moved to New York from London when he was 28 to begin his modeling career. About two years ago, he created UglyNY, a talent and modeling agency affiliated with Ugly in London, which is run by a friend. You’ll see photos of his clients throughout the rest of this post.
As Rogers once told The New York Times, UglyNY serves the market for “great-looking people, people who’ve really been hit with the ugly stick, and everything in between.” UglyNY’s recent clients include Clairol, Walmart, and Vanity Fair. Demand for “real people,” Rogers says, is growing — in part because of the influences of reality TV, MySpace, etc. Plus they are often cheaper.
Last week, we solicited your questions for Keith Hennessey, the outgoing White House chief economic adviser and director of the National Economic Council.
In his answers below, Hennessey explains (among other things) what he thinks are some of the “most absurd economic assumptions” by Washington politicians; where, exactly, the first few hundred billion dollars of the TARP money has gone; and why he had “the coolest job ever.” Thanks to all of you for the good questions and to Hennessey for his candid and thorough answers.
Keith Hennessey Keith Hennessey is the outgoing chief economic adviser to President Bush and director of the National Economic Council. When Obama takes office, Lawrence Summers will take his place. “Our assumptions are that the economy will begin to recover early in the next president’s term,” Hennessey recently told CNBC, “but it’s too early to say exactly when.” (I can . . .
Last month we solicited your questions for Alex Rigopulos, co-founder of Harmonix, the video-game development company best known for its Guitar Hero and Rock Band games. Alex Rigopulos One of the most-asked questions was whether his games discourage players from learning to play real music. Rigopulos doesn’t think so; the games, he says, give people “a taste of what lies . . .
Alex Rigopulos started playing video games at 3 years old on a Magnavox Odyssey console, and has been an avid gamer ever since. He earned his B.S. in music from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his M.S. from the computer music group of the M.I.T. Media Laboratory. In 1995, he co-founded the video-game development company Harmonix with the goal . . .
Chinese cities today have more than 130 million migrant workers, most of whom have relocated from more rural parts of China, writes Leslie Chang in her recent book Factory Girls: “Together they represent the largest migration in human history — three times the number of people who emigrated to America from Europe over a century.”
Julian Zelizer Last week we solicited your questions for political historian Julian Zelizer. In the aftermath of an historic election and in the midst of strange and shocking political events, many of your questions had the zing of the moment about them — including whether any other president has had a shoe thrown at him. (Unfortunately, the answer isn’t yet . . .
Julian Zelizer With all the strange political doings these days — a wild campaign season, Republican senators falling from grace in Alaska and in airport men’s rooms, Democratic governors engaged in shakedowns and ‘ho-downs — wouldn’t you like to have a political historian stashed in the next room so you could whip him out, the way Woody Allen did with . . .
Ross Perot We recently solicited your questions for Ross Perot. You asked him about third-party candidates, the national debt, what kind of car he drives, and “why do guys from Texas with the initials R.P. have so much integrity?” (We’re pretty sure that last one was a reference to our earlier Q&A with Ron Paul.) Perot doesn’t have an answer . . .
No, you are not imagining things. This is the Q&A-with-elder-statesmen-who’ve-made-unorthodox-but-splashy-runs-for- president season. Ross Perot We just finished up with Ron Paul. Now it’s Ross Perot‘s turn. Perot ran for president in 1992 as an independent candidate, winning 19 percent of the vote; he ran in 1996 on the Reform Party ticket, winning 8 percent of the vote. These days, he . . .