Category: Culture

Anna Christie

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The Madison Rep:

Following the success of 2005’s A Moon for the Misbegotten, Artistic Director Richard Corley returns to America’s greatest playwright. Winner of the 1922 Pulitzer Prize, Anna Christie is the tale of a mid-western girl who loses and finds her way amid New York’s waterfront bars and barges, and the two men who fight for her body and soul. One of the finest female roles ever written, Anna Christie has been played by actresses as diverse as Greta Garbo, Natasha Richardson, Liv Ullman, and Celeste Holm.

We enjoyed the Rep’s production of Annie Christie. I’m always amazed at how well the actors adopt their character’s language, in this case Swedish and Irish influenced English. Carrie Coon, Lea Coco and Craig Spidle were great. Go.

Gasoline and the American People

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Cambridge Energy Research Associates:

America’s “love affair with the automobile” is being transformed — but not broken up — by forces that are redrawing the global gasoline and oil market, including higher gasoline prices, tightening environmental requirements, changing demographics, growing world oil demand and expanding fuel options, according to the new 2007 edition of Gasoline and the American People, by Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA).

Americans have been driving further — 40% more than 25 years ago — and using more gasoline in bigger, more powerful cars and other light duty vehicles. But higher gasoline prices have had a significant impact. The rate of growth in gasoline demand slowed sharply from its 1.6% per year pace (1990-2004) to 0.3% in 2005, and continued to grow slowly in 2006, at 1.0%. And for the first time in 25 years, motorists’ average mileage went down. Overall, though, according to the CERA report, improved automotive efficiencies and one of the lowest fuel tax rates among Western countries have kept gasoline and oil’s share of average U.S. household budgets at 3.8% in 2006, slightly above the 1960s’ 3.4% to 3.6% level despite rising world oil prices.

Media coverage.

Ed Wallace has more.

Give Away the Music and Sell the Show

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Chris Anderson:

The major labels are freaked out: CD sales are continuing their inexorable decline and iTunes sales aren’t making up the difference. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of artists are giving away their music for free on MySpace, their own websites and independent MP3 blogs. This puzzles the labels. Don’t these bands want to make money from their art?

Many do, but they’re just smarter than most music industry execs. They understand the difference between abundance and scarcity economics. Music as a digital product enjoys near-zero costs of production and distribution–classic abundance economics. When costs are near zero, you might as well make the price zero, too, something thousands of bands have figured out.

Lucinda Williams’ Playlist

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Winter Miller:

IMAGINE a time before alternative country. Before Americana and roots rock. Picture a corner office, sometime in the early ’80s, with record executives scratching their heads over how to market a talented singer, songwriter and guitarist from Louisiana named Lucinda Williams. Was she country? Folk? Blues? The answer of course was (and is) all of the above. A three-time Grammy winner, Ms. Williams will release “West,” her eighth studio album, on Feb. 13. A tour is scheduled to begin soon after, including a stop at Radio City Music Hall on March 23. Ms. Williams, 54, shows no signs of getting any less sexy with her lyrics or her taste in music. She recently spoke by phone with Winter Miller about what she’s listening to now.

Michael Lewis on the Hidden Economics of Baseball and Football

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Russ Roberts:

Michael Lewis talks about the economics of sports–the financial and decision-making side of baseball and football–using the insights from his bestselling books on baseball and football: Moneyball and The Blind Side. Along the way he discusses the implications of Moneyball for the movie business and other industries, the peculiar ways that Moneyball influenced the strategies of baseball teams, the corruption of college football, and the challenge and tragedy of kids who live on the streets with little education or prospects for success.

audio.

The Sarajevo Moment

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The Economist:

A PROPOS the Sarajevo moment, which might bring to an end this latest of age of globalisation.


It wouldn’t be a political killing, I imagine, since there is no one figure whose death at the hands of a deranged assassin would turn the great powers against one another. But a terrorist strike against a cluster of essential Saudi oil installations might have the necessary economic and geopolitical repercussions.


Whatever the Sarajevo moment might be, everyone seems to be talking about it. As if we know in our hearts that these asset prices are too good.

The Etiquette of Bribery

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The Economist:

GIVE people power and discretion, and whether they are grand viziers or border guards, some will use their position to enrich themselves. The problem can be big enough to hold back a country’s development. One study has shown that bribes account for 8% of the total cost of running a business in Uganda. Another found that corruption boosted the price of hospital supplies in Buenos Aires by 15%. Paul Wolfowitz, the head of the World Bank, is devoting special efforts during his presidency there to a drive against corruption.

For most people in the world, though, the worry is not that corruption may slow down their country’s GDP growth. It is that their daily lives are pervaded by endless hassles, big and small. And for all the evidence that some cultures suffer endemic corruption while others are relatively clean, attitudes towards corruption, and even the language describing bribery, is remarkably similar around the world.


Rich Westerners may not think of their societies as plagued by corruption. But the definition of bribery clearly differs from person to person. A New Yorker might pity the third-world businessman who must pay bribes just to keep his shop open. But the same New Yorker would not think twice about slipping the maître d’ $50 to sneak into a nice restaurant without a reservation. Poor people the world over are most infuriated by the casual corruption of the elites rather than by the underpaid, “tip”-seeking soldier or functionary.


Indeed, in the world’s richest economy, what many see as simple bribery is an integral part of lawmaking. In Washington, DC, it is accepted that a lobbyist’s generous campaign contribution to a crucial congressman may help to steer some spending to the lobbyist’s client.

And… earmarks?

“Use the Web, Luke” – Presidential Candidates Embrace the Web

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Peter Gosselin:

In choosing the Internet to announce she intends to run for the presidency in 2008, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton bowed to the burgeoning political power of the medium and offered a preview of how she hopes to harness it to her purposes.

In declaring “I’m in” the White House race in a video clip on her new campaign website, HillaryClinton.com, the New York Democrat did considerably more than simply appear before the cameras; she invited supporters to join an almost Oprah Winfrey-like session of give and take.

“Let’s talk. Let’s chat. Let’s start a dialogue about your ideas and mine…. ” she told viewers.”With a little help from modern technology, I’ll be holding live online video chats … starting Monday.”

By doing this, Clinton signaled her intention of using the Internet to shore up one of her chief political weak points, what independent analyst Charlie Cook called the caricature of her as “this shrill, raving, partisan, liberal lunatic.”

Hilary’s video is here. Take a look through the window – I wonder when it was shot? Sam Brownback announced on the web as well.

Charles Franklin looks at the polls.