| What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Inland North
You may think you speak "Standard English straight out of the dictionary" but when you step away from the Great Lakes you get asked annoying questions like "Are you from Wisconsin?" or "Are you from Chicago?" Chances are you call carbonated drinks "pop."
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| The Midland |
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What American accent do you have?
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[Via Jane Galt.]
I would have had different results 30 years ago--and wildly different if the quiz captured just how different Southern vowels are.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on November 27, 2006 • Comments
My latest Atlantic column (link good for three days) defends the virtues of chain stores and restaurants against critics who complain that "every place looks the same."
Posted by Virginia Postrel on November 27, 2006 • Comments
I discuss the economics of style with Russ Roberts on his latest EconTalk podcast. We also talk a bit about organ markets.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on November 27, 2006 • Comments
Megan McArdle publishes her annual list of suggestions.
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Posted by Virginia Postrel on November 26, 2006 • Comments
In Saturday's NYT business section, Claudia Deutsch had an even-toned, solidly reported article on why new CEOs demand, and get, so much money and such generous "prenups" in case they're fired.
"Two years ago, people might have accepted the C.E.O. job with a one-page term sheet," said Thomas J. Neff, chairman of United States operations at the recruiter Spencer Stuart & Associates. "Today, depending on the lawyer, the contracts can be 30 pages long."
In the end, lawyers and management experts say, executives are still getting what they want. "The process has become grueling, with everyone fretting over every provision and every clause, but the result is pretty much the same," said Robert J. Stucker, chairman of the Chicago law firm of Vedder Price.
The reason the directors are still granting sweet deals rests, quite simply, with the law of supply and demand. The corporate seat of power is not only getting hotter, but is increasingly equipped with an ejector button that directors are ever quicker to press. In fact, turnover in the corner office is heading toward a record high this year....
That means the supply of untainted superstar executives--or "gold medal winners," as Mr. Stucker calls them--is dwindling.
And private equity firms often get first crack at those who are left....
"Private equity is sucking up a huge amount of top management talent, because they offer the opportunity to make a bundle without reporting to a board," said Gerard R. Roche, senior chairman of Heidrick & Struggles.
Now if only Gretchen Morgenstern would stop crusading against CEO pay long enough to do similar reporting--or at least read her colleague's work.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on November 26, 2006 • Comments
From Texas A&M to the CIA (or vice versa), that seems to be the question surrounding Robert Gates. Michael Barone has read Gates's memoir, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider's Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War
, and posts an interesting report. Barone's conclusion: "The picture I get of Robert Gates from his book is that of a careful analyst, one who sees American foreign policy as generally and rightly characterized by continuity but one who sees the need for bold changes in response to rapid changes in the world--and doesn't look for answers from the government bureaucracies. He is very much aware that we have dangerous enemies in the world, and he was willing over many years to confront them and try to check their advance." (A new edition of the book is due in January.)
Posted by Virginia Postrel on November 26, 2006 • Comments
One day two samples of something called Roger von Oech's Ball of Whacks
showed up in my mail. There was no press release in the package, and no explanatory letter--just two samples. Each ball contains 30 magnetic prisms--a review on the ball's Amazon page says they're rhombic triacontahedrons (I wouldn't know)--which you can reconfigure into all sorts of fun shapes, many resembly Manga spaceships or strange alien creatures. Whether playing with these stimulates productive innovation, I can't say for sure. But the Ball of Whacks does seem to illustrate the power of play, as I explored in TFAIE and related work. And it would make a great present for anyone old enough not to swallow the pieces. Here are some sample creations from Professor Postrel.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on November 26, 2006 • Comments
Last week, David Brooks used the occasion of Milton Friedman's death to lament the disappearance of important books like Capitalism and Freedom: "Then in the 1990s, those big books stopped coming. Now instead of books, we have blogs." That's nonsense, as Dan Drezner conclusively demonstrated without so much as a glance at his bookshelf. "Oh, please, spare me the crap about how today's deep thoughts fail to rival those of the past," said Dan.
Now Nick Schulz at TCS Daily has composed an even longer list than Dan's, concentrated almost entirely on big-picture economics. (Both Nick and Dan kindly include The Future and Its Enemies on their lists.) Nick's list inadvertently demonstrates what's really going on: There isn't a middle-brow consensus what books are important. As best I can tell from the NYTBR's semi-reliable archives, none of the first seven books (including mine) on Nick's list rated a review in the New York Times Book Review, and I'm not too sure about the eighth. (My search failed to turn up William Easterly's subsequent book, The White Man's Burden. which was reviewed--by me--in the NYTBR.) A book is not "big" because it addresses important ideas in a serious and significant way. A book is "big" because the right people talk about it. If there's less agreement on who the right people are--or if the right people, traditionally defined, ignore important books until they're old important books--you get laments like Brooks's.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on November 26, 2006 • Comments
On the new issue of Texas Monthly, I revisit a debate from July, looking once again at The Truth About Plano, with real reporting this time. (Access password for the issue is, yes, PLANO.)
Earlier posts: here, here, and here.
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Posted by Virginia Postrel on November 25, 2006 • Comments
That medical journal headline is a typo--it's supposed to read "action"--but we can hope. An excellent editorial in The Economist makes the case for organ markets. And in an article in the new American magazine edited by Jim Glassman, Sally Satel looks at some possible market structures (skip to the numbered points--unless you're a new reader, you've seen the rest before).
Although the law theoretically allows for payment of lost wages and other direct expenses, under current policy living donors almost always wind up taking a financial hit even if all goes well. Here's a story about Rick Gardner, a Wisconsin nurse who gave a kidney to a stranger, inspired by what he'd witnessed on his job.
"I was attending a seminar and a presenter talked about donating while still alive," Gardner said. "I put it in the back of mind to talk about it with my wife." Gardner who worked for an Intensive Care Unit, also spent time caring for people in a dialysis unit.
"If you ever go see people in a dialysis unit they are alive but not living," he said. "They can be going there two to three times a week at five hours a shot." Being a living donor requires sacrifice. Gardner had to take six weeks off from his job for recovery. The lost time at work cost Gardner roughly $3,000. [Emphasis added.]
Or consider Wendy Lake, a Montana woman who recently gave a kidney to her ex-husband, from whom she's been divorced for 21 years, and wasn't able to her Wal-Mart job as quickly as she expected. As reported here, her daughters and friends organized a fundraiser to help her with the bills. If you'd like to help, you can make a donation to the Wendy Lake Benefit Fund, Mountain West Bank, 12 3rd St. N.W., Great Falls, MT 59404-2869, (406) 727-2265.
Most kidney patients--and the friends and relatives from whom they're likely to get organs--are of relatively modest means. Prohibiting organ sales doesn't "help the poor." It hurts poor kidney patients, by keeping them on dialysis and shortening their lives. It hurts poor relatives of kidney patients, by forcing them to choose between saving their loved ones and taking financial and health hits. It hurts poor, healthy would-be donors by depriving them of economic opportunity. If you don't want poor people to sell their kidneys, give donors with big income tax breaks or college-loan forgiveness, so that only the affluent will get the money. Let Ivy League grads sell their kidneys instead of their eggs. But don't just prohibit compensation.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on November 21, 2006 • Comments