There’s a lot of anxiety these days about job security. Maybe it’s the oncoming recession. Maybe it’s the presidential campaigns, which keep telling us we’re anxious about job security. Maybe it’s the job evaluation I’m having later today (for a workplace that shunned evaluations for years, suddenly we’re up to one a quarter). Whatever …
Back and significantly worse for the wear
So I’m back from skiing at (downhill) and near (cross country) Gore Mountain in the Adirondacks. The photo above is taken from somewhere around the top of the mountain. I’m pretty sure I took it right after making a couple of cell phone calls, because (a) I’m a total dork and (b) the tops of mountains are the only places in the …
My final post: Farewell, dear readers!
My colleague Andrea Sachs has a story in the Global Business section of this week’s magazine about Seth Godin’s latest book.
Godin is something of a character, a marketing guy who sells a ton of books largely by feeding people recycled common sense. I met him last year and asked him about that — why people perpetually want to be …
The price of a lottery
The Associated Press had a great piece of enterprise reporting earlier this week about how much money California could get for privatizing its lottery. Governor Schwarzenegger has been throwing around the figure $37 billion — a particularly nice number considering the state faces a $14.5 billion budgetary shortfall — but the AP got its …
The real cost of the Iraq war
The Nobel-Prize-winning economist Joe Stiglitz, who is a professor up at Columbia University, swung by the office this morning for a meet-and-greet. Noble-Prize-winning… must be a nice way to be introduced.
Stiglitz was here to promote his soon-to-be-published book on the true cost of the Iraq war, which he and Linda Bilmes of Harvard …
Death of the American foreign correspondent
Who wants to graduate from J-school, toss some things in a suitcase and set off for a career covering the far reaches of the earth? Who would eschew the comforts of a desk in a midsize American city for the mountain trails of Viet Nam, the opium dens of Egypt, the crowded factories of China? Who wants to conduct interviews in another …
Stagflation is the word of the day
The other day I was told that most blogging is pretty much about linking to things other people have written. I’ve got to get to a meeting now, so I’m leaving you with these:
I am so losing my office Oscar pool
There was an Oscar pool stuck under my office door this morning. It reminded me once again that I have no life.
I have seen none of these movies. None.
I have not seen Atonement. Or Juno, Michael Clayton, No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood.
It’s not that these films don’t appeal to me. I would like little more than to pay …
Trivia Night! answer
On Monday, I asked:
What is almost always the top-selling item in any grocery store?
The answer: bananas. Way to go, comment-poster tomsteuber!
What’s really wild is that tomsteuber is also correct that bananas are the top-selling item at Wal-Mart (as measured by dollar sales). And Wal-Mart, as you may or may not realize, is not only …
$100 a barrel oil, here we go: Part II
One thing people tend to care about a lot when oil gets really expensive is what happens at the gas pump. Gas prices broadly follow the cost of crude, but there’s a lot more that goes into how much a fill-up sets you back. I called up Oil Price Information Service (OPIS), a group that follows fuel costs, and asked them to send me some …
Work at home + high-pressure career = happiness
It sounds like the arithmetic of a delusional person, right? It’s real math for a Chicago couple called the Mayvilles. They’re profiled today in the McClatchy newspapers (I read the piece in Rochester, Minn.’s Post-Bulletin), in what for me was a really uplifting, informative story about people making work work.
The Mayvilles have two …
$100 a barrel oil, here we go
Big news today in commodities: crude oil closed above $100 a barrel for the first time ever.
In the days that follow, you’re going to be hearing a lot about what OPEC will do when it meets on March 5, and maybe some more about Venezuela’s president threatening to cut off exports to the U.S.
Let’s all just remember a few things by way …
