[Mary Magdalene after spin class]
This is a complex weekend. Passover for some, Easter for others. Good Friday was a holiday and yet plenty are working and many are taking Monday off. Accountants are working straight through. For an expatriate under-employed lapsed Catholic, however, this weekend is not much different than all others. Nothing applies, as [...]
by Edward Wilkinson-Latham
The first thing I notice after disembarking the plane in West Palm is the herd of wheelchairs and electric buggies gathered like an assembled posse. Polyester-clad blue rinses and vintage toupées battle in slow motion to be the first to climb slowly upon these complimentary electric chariots, as the nonchalant airport employees dressed [...]
[Photo: Brokers With Hands On Their Faces Blog]
The fine folks over at NPR’s This American Life just won a Peabody Award for “The Giant Pool of Money,” an impressive, easy-to-follow report explaining how the subprime mortgage crisis came to be. They’ve also put out similarly excellent episodes covering the crises in banking and credit markets. [...]
When Lenny Dykstra is being held up a as a financial genius and no one is questioning it, well, you’re probably in for a bumpy ride. Michael Takasaki considers just one of the more dubious signs on the way to a financial crisis.
[Photo: Financial Post]
Every crisis needs a pithy slogan or defining epigram, as Kat referenced in the previous post about the revival of “Keep Calm and Carry On” posters from WWII Britain. Thankfully, we may have one already for the global mess we now find ourselves in, courtesy of Latvia’s finance minister.
From The Economist:
Amid the wreckage [...]
New contributor Kat Kensington will be blogging from her lofty perch in New York for as long as she can afford the rent.
Counting our blessings, we have our health. We have our friends. We still have our ability to see a world in a grain of sand. (No? Well, maybe some of us.) And yet [...]
(Photo: Heidelberg Project, Michael Takasaki)
Following up on last post: In Detroit, at least, there’s already a number of projects underway that are designed to staunch the bleeding in neighborhoods struggling with urban decay and foreclosure. Boing Boing led me to James Griffioen’s marvelous set of photos of the abandoned Detroit Public School Book Depository, which [...]
[Photo: Heidelberg Project]
While staying in Detroit, we head out toward 8 Mile and stop at the Heidelberg Project. It’s a two-block public art exercise that consumes the sides of houses, empty lots, the sidewalk, and even the trees of a long depressed, black (but once racially integrated) Eastside Detroit neighborhood. Tyree Guyton, who grew up [...]
More scribblings from recent trip to New York City, in part for book-related research. & in part to confirm that what happened on November 4 actually did happen. (Pics from Lisa K.)
November 10, 2008
Paying sporadic attention to the news one item stands out: Gun and ammo sales are booming surging (insert your own punning headline [...]
Scribblings from recent trip to New York City, in part for book-related research. & in part to confirm that what happened on November 4 actually did happen. balloon alley image by Lisa K.
Thursday, November 6
Two days after Obama’s election and there remains a palpable cloud of euphoria that glides above Manhattan streets like a giant [...]
This won’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s followed the rise of K’naan, M.I.A. and grime MCs like Tinchy Stryder, but there’s been some pretty exciting, forward-looking music coming out of the developing world and its diasporas over the past few years. Stuff like eight-bit Afrikaaner rave-rappers Die Antwoord.
Check out BA contributor Tyler Stiem’s awesome essay on Liberia, “Goodbye, Babylon King”, in the current issue of the Virginia Quarterly Review.
A Chinese robber threatened to blow up a restaurant with sausages, disguised as explosives, strapped to his body.
