December 2009
58 posts
How Did I Miss This? →
(500) Days of Summer director Marc Webb discusses the film’s best scene with the NYT in an attractive interactive feature most usually squandered with ephemeral films. Not the case with this one.
WatchOne of Neruda’s finest poems, by my favourite songwriter, and with some fitting imagery.
And here is a translation, just in case.
Walking Around
by Pablo Neruda
It so happens I am sick of being a man. And it happens that I walk into tailorshops and movie houses dried up, waterproof, like a swan made of felt steering my way in a water of wombs and ashes. The smell of barbershops makes me...
“they are still economists, with worldviews that are still excessively...”
– David Brooks with an interesting NYT column on ‘The Protocol Society.’ Variation of the social and human capital theme if you ask me, but still persuasively put.
In the land of the blind... →
“Mr. Obama promised a new era of transparent good government, yet on Saturday...”
– From The Wall Street Journal’s editorial, ‘Change No One Can Believe In.’ is it me or Murdoch’s WSJ (which happens to be America’s best selling newspaper) is printing ever more vitriolic rhetoric? Not that I fundamentally disagree, but all the same, it remains an...
“Lehman Brothers, the collapsed Wall Street investment bank, is hiring bankers...”
– Bonus from the grave - literally.
Fail. Major Fail. →
Notice the telling empty space on the two-page long “Quantified economy-wide emissions targets for 2020.” And all in that obnoxious UN lingo: “having agreed”, “in pursuit”, “endorsing”, etc.
“On the baggage scandal, [Thai] said the charges in question could amount to at...”
– Thai Air, one of the best airlines in the world, is set to investigate its chairman for avoiding extra baggage fees. He may not be a banker, but he’s not exempt of excess hatred. Then again, forty suitcases filled with fruit do seem to be worth some extra cost.
“For men accept what they hear from one another about past events without putting...”
– Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War, 1.20.1-3
Plan B. →
Courtesy of AT.
WatchA Day In the Life of the NYT.com. Brilliant graph…
“But let’s not dwell on the sentimentality of Cameron’s notion of aboriginal...”
– Despite the New Yorker wit above, Denby liked Avatar too. That makes literally everyone that seems to matter; so, without even having watched it myself (Argentina has ridiculous release dates even for “global” releases), I guess this means Cameron has really pulled it off.
Careful With What Your New Year Resolution Is... →
… or How I Learnt to Stop Worrying and Love Retarded Tax Incentives (in this case for rich parents to die… before the end of 2010!).
Greek Finance Minister Meets Wolf (Martin, But The... →
Martin Wolf: “You have quite an extraordinary fiscal situation; you take over at a very interesting time.”
Greek Finance Minister: “Extraordinary is one way of putting it.”
Yeah, it’s Wolf code for bankrupt, but he was just trying to be polite. In a rare video interview, the FT’s head economic commentator meets an embattled (and rather new) Greek Finance...
Regardless of Ideology, An Interesting View →
DL 101 →
Up, Up in the Air
I thought it would be fitting to write something about Jason Reitman’s fittingly fast-paced ‘Up in the Air’ from an airport. So it is only courtesy of ATL’s characteristically overpriced WiFi that I am able to post this.
On the day when the movie emerged as a clear Academy Awards favorite after sweeping the Golden Globe nominations (usually the most reliable, if at times...
And This Is Surprising Because...? →
Economics is not that complicated. It is also oftentimes hardly surprising. (Someone once told me in relation to Argentina that the saddest thing about the country was that its politics and economics were so interesting, so interesting that they showed signs of why they were tragic.)
Despite the derecession, which has greatly affected production, employment, and overall economic capacity...
Forget About The UK's Bonus Tax... →
… now ‘How to Spend It’ is online!
“Rothschild was the epitome of the French aristocrat. Tall and slender, always...”
– Quite a description, from son to father. From Liaquat Ahamed’s timely and truly entertaining - even though rarely novel - Lords of Finance, Chapter 13.
“It may not seem obvious at first, but Clint Eastwood’s “Invictus,” a rousing...”
– NYT’s AO Scott on Invictus, Clint Eastwood’s latest (masterpiece?).
The First Step Toward PR Redemption? →
But the road is long. Very long.
Yeah, Right. →
A Question of (Statistical) Credibility? →
DL 2 →
WatchNot only an outstanding track, but also a suggestive video. Picture-perfect, in a way.
“Then he said brightly, “How about ever?,” and she laughed pleasantly, genuinely...”
– The Use of Poetry? Women. Of course. What else?
The New Yorker printed this week some of the best short fiction I have read recently, by Ian McEwan, no less. There are truly few acute observers of European reality like him (read the suggestive linked essay by Kirsch for more on that). Specifically,...
“Kuwait’s sovereign wealth fund on Sunday said it has sold a $4.1 billion...”
– Following Kindleberger’s famous model of bubbles and manias, does this make KIA a sucker or an insider?
Skimmer →
An interesting new product by a The New York Times eager to reinvent itself. Maybe it’s just me, but seems very much geared - like a lot of other things we have seen this week - to an (iTablet?) touchscreen format. And an ADD society, of course.
Of 'Imagined Communities' and All That Jazz →
“Responding to American entreaties for more soldiers in Afghanistan, Anders Fogh...”
– Freaking finally. Far less than would be needed, far less than particularly Europe should be ready and able to commit to such an important mission, but this is still good news - considering how much nonsensical yet powerful opposition exists in the EU.
The only thing to mourn is Hillary’s...
To-Do NYC (Part 1)
Someone rather wise once said: “Going to Starbucks for coffee is like going to prison for sex. You know you’re going to get it, but it’s going to be rough.”
With that in mind, and considering Peet’s is still not in NYC (except for Terminal 4, JFK), I’ve heard there is a very good alternative to Financier: Zibetto Expresso Bar.
Such promise is worth a to-do.
“Some 60m adult Americans live without a bank account or rely on pawn shops and...”
– All these sub-prime-Alt-A-securitized-crap-mortgages, all this debate about government intervention, bad banks, good banks, giant squids, all this “too big to fail” or “too big to save” (not an ‘either-or’, really), and yet according to an unprecedented FDIC...