Author Archive

This post is a marker post for the 3910 class to ‘claim’ 2 auctions to add to the database. Pick what you like, but leave what you want in comments please!
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Can performance art and other 'hard to monetize' art be included in our study? Some thoughts on commoditization.
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Pulling back the curtain here a bit on what sociologists do, rather than what sociology is. Students are participants in the project, not as research assistants (it would be more efficient and more sane for me to actually hire a couple grad students if this was the route I wanted to go), but as...
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Apologies to those who follow my feed on the spurt of student activity around these parts. As I mentioned earlier, I am running a class research seminar on Art and pricing. So there may be some guest authors for a while. If you like, you can exit – or you can comment. I’d obviously...
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I always liked Howard Zinn. Along with Studs Turkel, he defined for me an old-school commitment to listening to people and caring about what they said and did, without great self-promotion. Hearing about his passing today, I wonder where the Zinn’s of today and tomorrow are. Time for a drink and another pass through...
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I’ve been pretty lax about keeping up with the blog, and I am teaching a research seminar this semester on pricing in art markets. I’m likely to turn the blog over to that purpose for awhile, so if there are dramatic changes that you find unappealing, you could wander away if you like. Or,...
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Don’t be afraid of black people, HP. (via Waxy)
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Congratulations, Jessie and Buck. More evidence that this column will persist even as the American Era comes to a sweet, languorous end.
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We love our UPS driver, Frank. Since we moved to NYC, while most services that we dealt with were kind of a hassle, our UPS service was wonderful. I was thinking this all week, especially with the extra holiday traffic. UPS does its shit well. But this past week I went to change a delivery...
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Another Thanksgiving in the books, and this year there is lots to be thankful for. And not: The flights. Generally ok, though we got caught by Thanksgiving rush/weather craziness over Charlotte, NC (we left on Thurs at dawn, due to insane price-gouging on Wed-Sun airline ticket pricing). Apparently, it was nice up the entire Eastern...
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Another commercial which I’ve always wondered about is this one for Traveler’s insurance: The trouble with the commercial is that the dog, after seeking out ways to protect his most prized possession, finds a solution in purchasing insurance. Keep it on your person? Too hard. Put it in a bank? Too risky. But with insurance,...
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I just finished reading Gregory Zuckerman’s new book The Greatest Trade Ever: The behind the scenes story of how John Paulson defied Wall Street and made financial history. The story is about how JP, a relatively staid merger expert, became intensely bearish on the housing market in 2004. He took a $2 billion in...
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I have a sort of interesting question, though perhaps it’s less interesting than I imagine it to be. Given the following two scenarios, which is more likely and why? Scenario 1: In the first case, we have a series of attributes attached to a person, and then we can make arguments (empirical, theoretical) about how...
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I want to talk about dark pools of liquidity, but to do so, I need to first talk about financial markets and how prices work. Bear with me for the background. The dark pools post is coming. Prices in financial markets are not like prices in other kinds of markets. When you buy gas, you...
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I don’t always love 30 Rock, but this week’s episode hit exactly the perfect New York spot (apologies in advance for the advertisement): For people who don’t live in NYC, the joke is about Alec Baldwin having bedbugs and finding himself an outcast, finally reduced to asking for...
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Awesome tribute to our first Secretary of the Treasury. Compares favorably to 99 Problems but a Bitch ain’t One: Geek rap is so sexy. h/t James Fallows.
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The Stoakes-Whibley Natural Index of Supernatural Collective Nouns. I can’t decide if I like better a vexation of zombies or an itself of Yahwehs. Or a percussion of giants. Or a nervousness of AIs. Delightful, delightful, delightful.
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First of all, kudos to McClatchy’s news service for running a slew of articles critical of Goldman Sachs during this financial crisis. The firm displays a disastrous combination of connectedness and high prestige on the one hand, and unconscionable financial practices on the other. They are not at all alone, or even the worst,...
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Gabriel had a thoughtful post about Jay Leno, comparing his programming to NPR and classical music over the past couple decades. I’m much more sympathetic to Grant McCracken’s view of Leno as a failure because he misses the contemporary moment’s desire for specificity and instead provides the blandest of something-for-everyone variety. Though McCracken and...
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Ok, this is impressive. And I’ve seen Primer three times and still don’t 100% have the timeline worked out.
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