In my last post I attempted to list the things I found especially resonant last year in media, entertainment, art and journalism. I say “attempted” because I didn’t keep track of this stuff very well during 2010. In lieu of keeping track, I retroactively scoured my bookmarks in places like delicious, Instapaper and Evernote, and…
The latest highly-publicized, hotly-ridiculed move by my adopted city of San Francisco was to ban the Happy Meal. And so once again we have lobbed a softball to conservatives and libertarians across the nation, who relish any opportunity to point west and say, “See? See the nanny state? See those people who are too dumb,…
The House recently passed a major financial reform bill, and the Senate will vote on it as soon as there’s enough Republican support to push it through. By most accounts, the Republicans are mostly on board, which is probably why we’re not hearing a whole lot about it from the media. There’s not enough conflict…
Things are ugly right now. After the healthcare bill passed, we all heard how a few so-called tea baggers hurled racial slurs and other insults at Democratic lawmakers, broke windows of party offices and engaged in other such foolery. Yesterday, I saw Mitt Romney’s new book on display in Borders. It’s called “No Apology: The…
Americans, it’s well known, aren’t interested in soccer. Americans prefer the other football. We don’t like hockey either, which isn’t surprising, since it’s a lot like soccer played on skates. It’s hard to find definitive rankings of U.S. sports by popularity, but every source I’ve found lists the top three as: Football Baseball Basketball Hockey…
It’s been a while since I posted here, and I’m introducing a new category: Elimination Dance. Instructions: An elimination dance begins with a crowded dance floor. At a signal, the band stops playing and the announcer reads an elimination, say, “Any lover who has gone into a flower shop on Valentine’s Day and asked for…
In the tradition of The Giant Pool of Money, its spinoff Planet Money and this fine piece of writing by Henry Blodget in the Atlantic Monthly, here’s a nice piece of animation that explains how we blew up the economy: The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.
There are a lot of people lining up for stimulus dollars, a lot of ambitious and long-dormant projects being dusted off by governors and mayors across the country. But there’s another group of opportunists taking advantage of the debate. I’m talking about the G.O.P. who are stonewalling and stalling in the name of prudent spending.…
As I wandered through the crowded mall in Washington D.C. on Inauguration Day, chatting with people and overhearing many other conversations, a theme emerged. Or rather, two themes. Folks of older generations as well as the African-Americans on the scene seemed to see the day in largely symbolic terms. Obama is our first black president,…
Who killed the economy? Hint: call your lawyer. The witch hunt to expose the people responsible for the current financial crisis has been underway for several months, and there is no shortage of suspects. This week, however, I read a couple of articles that together lay out the best case so far. Why Wall Street…