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Category Archives: Words

The World’s Most Perfect Script

Typographically, the Republic of Korea has much to celebrate.

A HAPPY ENDING IN PUERTO VALLARTA

A handsome hombre Mexicano appears and asks if I would like breakfast. I say yes and settle back against the voluminous white cushions on the day-bed, half-in, half-out of the sun. I look out at the ocean. I look at my computer. I look backwards toward the mountains and think, this sure was a good [...]

Victor Victoria

To listen to John McCain in debate and on the stump, you would think that he was refighting his war, which ended in a hasty, unseemly retreat as the enemy circled and stormed the last outposts.

That is not, militarily, the position we find ourselves facing in Iraq. We can withdraw at the time and pace [...]

SHAKESPEARE WOULD HAVE HAD A BLOG

anyone who can criticise ‘the eminently resistible prose style of [Wood's] donnish, finicky persona’, and then write phrases like ‘Wood’s study must be vast, with well-stocked shelves, judging by the inarguable erudition displayed in his compact vade mecum’, must be pretty immune to irony.”

Arts and Letters: Freeing the Elephants: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker


FT.com / In depth - Panic grips credit markets

Barometers of financial stress hit record peaks across the world. Yields on short-term US Treasuries hit their lowest level since the London Blitz, while gold had its biggest one-day gain ever in dollar terms. Lending between banks, in effect, stopped.”

Steve Clemons: What Books on America Has Sarah Palin Read?

Bush would have read Plutarch, Cicero and Machiavelli.”

Reputation

Older than Argus by far, he dogs my steps
He runs behind and runs around, he runs ahead
They say, who say they know, they say, they say
He’s me, been where I’ve been, growled what I have
Eaten my vomit, sniffed where I’ve stepped in it
Paws up or at the throat, slinking away or baying
They know me, they [...]

The first law of mass media

Organizations will work tirelessly to de-personalize every communication medium they encounter.

Real Time Economics : Bernanke: Fed to ‘Act as Necessary’ on Inflation

A yet more ambitious approach to macroprudential regulation would involve an attempt by regulators to develop a more fully integrated overview of the entire financial system. In principle, such an approach would appear well justified, as our financial system has become less bank-centered and because activities or risk-taking not permitted to regulated institutions have a [...]