Category Archives: Not economics

Does Robert Parker’s ego know no bounds?

I’m reading Elin McCoy’s book The Emperor of Wine, on Robert Parker. Here’s a chunk of page 153, as grabbed from Amazon: I like that “Parker interpreted”. Remember that this is the 1990s we’re talking about here: How much of … Continue reading

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The Frankfurter Allgemeine’s overwhelming beauty

What’s the most boring newspaper in the world? There are many, I’m sure, but I know a lot of people who would put the Frankfurter Allgemeine at the top of the list. Well, the Society for News Design has some … Continue reading

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How much of Harvard’s black population is descended from slaves?

Aditi Balakrishna, in the Harvard Crimson, looks at the reasons why recent immigrants are overrepresented among black Harvard students: “In practical terms, immigrants, no matter what color they are, are a highly selective group of people,” [said Camille Z Charles, … Continue reading

Posted in Econoblog, Not economics | 3 Comments

Barnes on England vs France

Julian Barnes on That Sweet Enemy, a book about Anglo-French relations over the centuries: Although public opposition to the Iraq war in Britain is high, it would take a lot more fair-mindedness than most British (or Americans) are capable of … Continue reading

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Adventures in real-estate terminology

If you got the hard-copy version of the New York Times Magazine last weekend, you almost certainly skipped past the advertising sections at the end: an eight-pager on El Salvador from our old friends Summit Communications, followed by a “Best … Continue reading

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Listing to port

Steve Cuozzo is so fed up with wine lists in New York he hankers for BYOB. Which I do, too — but since BYOB is technically illegal here, we have to all pay corkage, which is often unpleasantly expensive. (I’d … Continue reading

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I’m feeling lucky

The word for happiness is, often, the same as the word for luck. Today, I learned something about my own name, which I was always told meant “happiness” in Latin: In every Indo-European language, the modern words for happiness, as … Continue reading

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Jean Baudrillard, RIP

“The sad thing about artificial intelligence is that it lacks artifice and therefore intelligence.” —Jean Baudrillard, June 20, 1929 — March 6, 2007

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Top women artists

I’m a little late to this game, but I just found the New Economist blog entry on David Galenson’s paper on the subject of women artists. Galenson added up the number of times that women artists’ work appeared in textbooks … Continue reading

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And to think that Thomas Aquinas had to make do with figs

I am an atheist, and I don’t have nightmares. Obviously I’ve been laying off the bananas. (Via)

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The Greenmarket loses a couple of customers

A special guest post from Michelle Vaughan: It’s a beautiful pre-spring day in Manhattan and we’re having guests for dinner tonight. I dust off my bicycle and make my way over to the Green Market in Union Square. I needed … Continue reading

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Antarctica in the New York Post

If you’re in New York (or LA, I think), you might be interested in a 2-page article on Antarctic cruises in the New York Post today, which was written by, er, me. It’s online too, though not nearly as pretty: … Continue reading

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Explaining Zagat grade inflation

New York magazine’s Grub Street blog points me to a piece at smartmoney.com about the Zagat guides, which has some interesting datapoints: When the Zagats started selling their 1983 New York restaurant guide, it was no mean feat for a … Continue reading

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Armory

Sorry about the lack of posts today – I spent the morning working on a long piece about vulture funds (coming soon!) and the afternoon at the Armory Show. The fact that it’s all in one place now, rather than … Continue reading

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Even the World Bank doesn’t like Summit Communications

Christine Bowers: Let’s cut to the chase. What are the absolute worst things countries can do as they build their image? Blow your budget on a fancy, one-time insert in a big newspaper for $250,000. On which subject, the comments … Continue reading

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Radio silence

Blogs are ridiculously addictive things. But I have a big story I have to write, like, now. And it seems the only way I can get it done is by closing my RSS reader and promising myself no blogging until … Continue reading

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RSS update

One of the rather annoying things about the old Economonitor blog was that people who subscribed to it in FeedDemon or NetNewsWire or NewsGator kept on seeing the entries duplicate themselves, for reasons I never managed to understand. When I … Continue reading

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Del Posto

What’s happened to Del Posto? Back in March last year, I really, really wanted to go, tantalized by the prospect of dishes like this: Pici, a sort of fat Tuscan spaghetti, with coxcombs, chicken livers, duck testicles and, for conventional … Continue reading

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Must-reads: Michael Pollan and Daniel Gilbert

Do you have a minute? Go read Michael Pollan on nutritionism in the New York Times. It’ll change the way you think about food, and how you eat. All that mumbo-jumbo about vitamins and minerals and nutrients and good fats … Continue reading

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Zipcar insurance, part 2

Last August, I sent an email asking Zipcar to clarify their insurance situation, and received no reply. In September, I blogged the issue, and still got no response. Then, yesterday, I got a comment on that blog which seemed to … Continue reading

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Felixsalmon.com redesigned

You might have noticed that felixsalmon.com looks a little different to how it looked before. It’s still a work in progress, so do let me know if there’s anything you want added or changed. The main new development is that … Continue reading

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Decasia, Decasia, Decasia!

The good thing about blogs is that you can correct yourself at any point. Normally, when I make a mistake, I correct myself very quickly. But in this case, I’d like to correct something I wrote over four years ago, … Continue reading

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Biking in NYC

I’ve been meaning to write a post about biking in New York for some time, but this little film says so much of what I wanted to say that you should watch it instead. At the moment, everybody in New … Continue reading

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Felix update

So it looks as though posting on felixsalmon.com is going to be light to nonexistent for the foreseeable future: my day job, blogging ten times a day at economonitor.com, seems to take all the blog right out of me. For … Continue reading

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Josh Phillips

No Antarctica stories quite yet, I’m afraid. When I got back to Ushuaia, it was to the truly dreadful news that the most wonderful boy in my school, Josh Phillips, had died in a bike accident in Manchester. He collided … Continue reading

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