One of my favorite books of recent years was Predictably Irrational by Duke behavioral economist Dan Ariely. Now Ariely is back with a new book, The Upside of Irrationality, and it’s just as good and, in some ways, even better. Where the last book focused on how poor reasoning can lead us astray, this one explores [...]
On the drive to Bradley Barbers for a cheap haircut last night, I was listening to Marketplace, when host Kai Ryssdal played a catchy, newly-released pop song about . . . Paul Krugman.The song, written and sung by Jonathan Mann, laments that Krugman isn’t involved in helping the government fix the financial mess and that too much responsibility rests on [...]
(via xkcd and Flowing Data)
The recession is horrid. And yet Americans still lead lives of staggering material abundance. That’s a point driven home in this TV clip, which everyone and her brother has sent to me this week.
Friday’s unemployment figures reveal once again the grimness of the 2009 labor market. So how are organizations responding? By taking steps that, not too long ago, would have been unthinkable.Consider IBM. According to Information Week, the company is offering its laid-off workers a fab deal: It will give them jobs . . . in emerging [...]
I’m not OK. You’re not OK. Therefore, I’m OK.Read more here.
Over at Boing Boing, Cory Doctorow (BTW, have you picked up his book, Little Brother? It’s the perfect gift for any smart, tech-savvy teen) points to the work of Berlin artist Andreas Nicholas Fischer, who has rendered financial charts as wooden sculptures.Below is a piece, fashioned from more than 150 laser-cut wood polygons, in which [...]
Knowing my love of charts and graphs, several readers have sent me the chart below, which shows just how dismally U.S. stock markets have performed this year. The chart, which comes from econo-whiz and must-read blogger Greg Mankiw, shows the percentage change in the S&P Index for the last 160 or so years.As you see, [...]
