To answer my largely rhetorical question (Brent, you are an asshole): four minutes. Maybe not exactly. Enough to be persuaded that a rustling transient from the 19th Ward was about to enter stage left.

And thank you Seattle for the matches.

Tomorrow I'll sit in a Honda by the Atlantic ocean in the eleven degree darkness and pretend it was summer.

I'm not sure how long the illusion will last.

   (One look at my jacket)
"Is it raining?"

(Talking too loud for a library)
"It's raining! Real rain!"

"Since when does it rain?"

"It's March. It's allowed."

Once in a while my father calls me up and says, "I need a favor." So the past two days I dodged class to ... design a laser toner box to be printed this month in Hong Kong. (I admit it, I have a weird life)

Here's the flat design.

( Read more... )

Here's a fragment of my lecture:
The next point is significant. Remember Adam Smith’s famous line? He said, people in the same trade rarely have a meeting together that doesn't end in some sort of conspiracy against the public, or to raise prices. Granovetter quotes Adam Smith's suggestion to solve this problem. He says, let’s make a phone book. He ( Read more... )

"In place of an open, honest, and serious discussion has emerged a sort of Zoroastrian soap opera...

On the one hand, Americans are told they can root for a unilateralist cowboy and his band of cronies - an earnest but imperfect band of everymen who succeed on their ideals as often as they blunder with their buffoonery. If they don't like that ( Read more... )

the storm coming ...

stock up on kitty litter, folks

"...well, there was one isolated incident in Iowa"

"I like to drink coffee before I go to sleep, so I can dream fast. You know in the Indy 500, when they put the camera in the car, they have it there and it's all whipping right by so fast, dream after dream after dream, and people ask me the next day, what did you dream about? And i say, I don't have time. I don't have time to tell you this. [he ( Read more... )

Fun. It's going lower than -17° C on Monday