Month: November 2009

Songwriters as innovators

Irving Berlin and Cole Porter were two of the great experimental songwriters of the Golden Era. They aimed to create songs that were clear and universal. Their ability to do this improved throughout much of their careers, as their skill in using language to create simple and poignant images improved with experience, and their greatest achievements came in their 40s and 50s.

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Top Gear in Romania. Or: keep up with the Sandero!

If you’re not going to die of laughter before that, you will when the Dacia Sandero appears (and overtakes them) :-). Oh, and this gem from Clarkson is to save for further reference: “If Simon Cowell came here [Mamaia, Romania], they’d put him on income support“.
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Sunday econlinks

  • One of the reasons I just love reading Landsburg: he is acid and funny. Here’s something that hopefully will open a longer exchange between him and Krugman: I really think Steve Landsburg is the proper counterpart to Paul Krugman in any debate (NB: Mankiw is great, but too serious and not engaging–understandably– enough in the type of debate Krugman seems to love).
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On Noncommutative Geometry, String Theory, and the EU vs. US academe

All this in a 2005 interview with Alain Connes, in Iran (initial link to the PDF of the interview via Tyler Cowen, on MR).

First, I think this is a very welcome, very open interview (several questions/comments are just great, congrats to the interviewers!)  → Read more