I am a force of motherfucking nature and I will not rest until every uptight armchair typographer cock-hat like you is surrounded by my lovable, comic-book inspired, sans-serif badassery

Rock on, Comic Sans.


I feel like this sometimes


Filed away for future use: Facebook’s findings on user use/retention

From the Dataspora Blog, ostensibly on the use and abuse of R, comes this gem about Facebook: Itamar Rosenn, Facebook Itamar conveyed how Facebook’s Data Team used R in 2007 to answer two questions about new users: (i) which data points predict whether a user will stay? and (ii) if they stay, which data points


What I’m reading, and what I’m going to be reading

Aside from non-fiction related to work, I’m reading some fiction. Currently, I am (like a gajillion others) loving The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and I am now on the second in the series. The original title of the first one is Men who Hate Women, and that sure applies. I’m also looking forward to


DADT and ROTC – it’s Alinsky

I know, the combination of these two acronyms and Alinsky will end up making me a target for right-wing nutjobs. I should add ACORN for the fun of it, but I don’t even think that organization exists anymore… With the seemingly impending end of ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ (which, incidentally, was conceived of in large


Taking Back

I haven’t published much on the blog of late, and since the semester is over, I am taking it back. You’ll hear from me, not my students, and the pace of things should pick up quite soon. Although the pace of things could not slow down much more than it has already, so it’s a


Dealers As Guardians

(by Ana T.) This article touches on a lot of the topics we’ve been discussing in class. Protection of artists, embeddedness and Art speculation. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/17/arts/design/17blacklisting.html?ref=design


Auction claiming – to add to the database

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!


Are Art Auctions any Different from other Markets?

(by Sebastian B) As far as I got acquainted to Pr. Levin’s research project, I wanted to stress the need for not overstating the singularity of art auctions relative to author forms of commodities and selling. What happens in an art auction is probably not very different from any other marketing process.  We usually grant


Commoditization, or something like it

Can performance art and other ‘hard to monetize’ art be included in our study? Some thoughts on commoditization.


Contours of the project

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 participants.


Adjust your feed readers

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 love


Howard Zinn

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 A


New semester, new purposes

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, you


HP computers are racist

Don’t be afraid of black people, HP. (via Waxy)


Now that’s a lurker

Congratulations, Jessie and Buck. More evidence that this column will persist even as the American Era comes to a sweet, languorous end.


The downgrading of UPS

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


Thanksgiving Wrap-up – the good, the bad, and the prison toilet

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


Moral hazard, via dumb commercials

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,


Selfishness, finance, and the ‘greatest trade ever’

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 assets