TIMES SQUARE, SEPTEMBER 29TH, 6:50 PM
Killing time between screenings of Casino Jack and Gerrymandering at Magno Screening Room.
ELIMINATION CONTEST
Cara and I spent the weekend in New England, visiting the University of New Hampshire and the University of Vermont (left), mostly for the purpose of affirming that she really hopes to be attending the University of Kentucky or Texas A&M this time next year. The ride up Friday night was stressful, taking place in …
CONNECTION!
Allow me to join the chorus praising The Social Network, the new film directed by David Fincher from Aaron Sorkin‘s exceptional screenplay, loosely based on the creation of Facebook. I’m not sure if Mark Zuckerberg is exactly like the character depicted on screen, but as he has been written, and as he has been portrayed …
THE EQUALITY MYTH
The above chart is from a paper by Michael Norton of Harvard and Dan Ariely of Duke (the author of Predictably Irrational whom I had the privilege of interviewing in January 2009). Ariely does incredible work showing the difference between the way things are and the way we perceive them to be, and he and …
MORE, MORE, MORE!
Reading in The Washington Post the excerpt from Obama’s Wars, Bob Woodward‘s new book, I was reminded of nothing so much as –me! In The Coup, I described the people Vice President Godwin Pope saw gathered on the floor of the House of Representatives as he sat on the dais awaiting the president’s State of …
A MODEST PROPOSAL: LET’S BUY AND SELL VOTES
Dan Eggen and T.W. Farnam in The Washington Post today tell us about Super PACs, “a new political weapon. . . [that] has emerged in recent weeks, allowing independent groups to both raise and spend money at a pace that threatens to eclipse the efforts of political parties.” The report says that these committies spent …
GEORGE BLANDA
George Blanda began playing pro football before I was born and concluded his career when I was 23, far too young and immature to understand him as anything but an anachronistic and vaguely humorous figure. Now I am trying to continue a career at an age far beyond that which Blanda had attained when he …
CCTV PROTECTED. . . TRASH CANS?
Friends of this blog know of my interest in the widespread use of CCTV in the UK. This past week, CCTV was very much in the news when a running camera captured a woman in Coventry named Mary Bale strolling down an ordinary suburban street and picking up an ordinary tabby cat, which she proceeded …
RADIO GOD
Thanks to my friend Rebecca Lavoie, one of my discoveries at Playboy (and yes, it’s LaVOY, not LaVWA), I was a guest today on Word of Mouth, a program on New Hampshire Public Radio, where Rebecca is a producer. I spoke to host Virginia Prescott (left) about my piece on lying in Details. Look out, …