Monthly Archives: October 2008

GYWO

I remember when Get your War On was a comic, but now it’s a Cartoon!.

Just a little more politics

I’m a sucker for this kind of stuff. I would add that if you’re not reading five thirty-eight’s on the road series, you are missing out.

I don’t usually like Halloweeny things, but I do usually like 80s things

Whoa.

What to do with a Republican family?

My politics are my late grandmother’s, who was born in 1917, saw her father lose most everything in the Depression, saw most of her extended relatives get killed in the Holocaust, and who obsessively watched TV news, shouting at the insanity of the world. That is, pretty Democratic. My siblings, on the other hand, are

public baselining – stock market and CAPM

One of the truly underappreciated effects of the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) is that it created a “whole market” baseline against which really large numbers of people began benchmarking returns. And the historical returns of the US stock market has been around 10% since 1929. So there is a massive amount of expectations-generation around

Local sociologist makes good

When Duncan Watts headed off to Yahoo!, I thought, well sure, that makes sense. But now I read that Joel Podolny is heading off from Yale management school to head up Apple University, and I’m wondering if we’ll be seeing a shift from sociologists heading off to management schools to sociologists heading off to corporate

This is only going to be funny to someone of a particular generation

Mine.

What I like most are…

the keywords: Undecided Voters; Presidential Campaigns; 2008 Election; Airplane Food; Mothers; Presidents; Humphrey, Hubert

Impatience with the morons

Say what you will about Nassim Nicholas Taleb, he has little patience for economists. I like how the interviewer keeps trying to be evenhanded, even as he kind of hijacks the interview. He has a personality about which it is hard to be indifferent. My uncle told me that while reading his book (The Black

Bose knows customer service

There’s an organizational story about how one little screw makes or breaks the machine, but this is not that. Instead, this post is a shout-out to Bose. Last year, darling partner went hog-wild and got me a pair of noise-canceling headphones. And the cord that connects the headphones to my music device of choice (classic

We need to talk

Yes, we. You. You and me. We need to talk. First, thank you to those kind souls who donated to my donorschoose challenge. I’d still love for you to give if you have the resources to do so. But I really appreciate those who did, and I’m going to match the current donations up to

Liveblogging America’s Next Top Model

9:02: I’ve been wanting to do this for a while. Tonight I’m live-blogging America’s Next Top Model. As Tyra croons through the opening, ‘Wanna be on top?’ You bet I do. 9:04: breakfast with the models, pancakes, tofu with salad, a discussion of how controlling their parents are. Elina’s mom is Russian, and mom never

A little perspective

(As an aside to this post, I’m more than a little annoyed that not one dollar has been donated to donorschoose.org on my behalf, which I wrote about here. And this is likely the last post until something happens on that front, which may mean that I’m done blogging altogether.) I was too young in

Rethinking donations

I am running a ‘challenge’ at Donors Choose, which is a non-profit devoted to providing public school teachers with resources. My challenge is here. I’m asking people to donate $5, $10, more, whatever you can manage; and I’ve chosen projects that are about markets, art, and finance – well, to the extent that it’s possible

Is there an underlying sociology to current financial markets?

There was a time when capital, financial, housing markets were distinct-but-related. Housing prices changed with changes in interest rates; the dot-com boom and bust created and lost jobs; the stock and bond markets moved in conjunction with these changes. But while related, they were pretty much distinct kinds of markets. This was true for a

getting the love

I’m watching the vp debate, and damn if we jews aren’t getting the bipartisan love.

OK, Freese…

…which one are you?