Monday, March 16, 2009

Cri de Coeur

I respect someone who does this;

I left academia for a variety of reasons, but one of them was the fact that more people read my shitty blog in about the first 3 weeks than would ever read any of my academic papers. And a related reason was that I thought the culture of the profession, at least in this country, worked against outspoken liberals. In my experience (this is anecdote, not survey), the majority of economists I knew were Democrats, if not especially liberal ones, but still they were generally more comfortable with economist public intellectuals who were right wing cranks than they were with left wing public intellectuals. Paul Krugman is shrill and whatnot.


Anyway, the point is... The Left needs more "respectable" economists who are willing to put themselves out there in public discourse space. You know, blogging, op-ed pieces, radio, teevee, etc. I was asked recently to list them and I didn't come up with many. Stand up and be heard!*


Odds are he will be ignored.

C

*I copied the entire post.

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Arch and Oblique

Being a regular reader of both his blog and his work at the Village Voice, I am always impressed and often stunned by Roy's facility in pop culture (among many other topics). In comments, perhaps less guarded, he is the man that puts fish hooks into your brain.

Starting with a classic Sadly No! post by Gavin he sparingly riffs. If you don't know Capra or the running faux-controversy of Barry's birth certirficate or the beautiful music reference that I can't pin down it may not seem so amazing. But for fuck's sake, I only get two out of three and it is art.

Jazz is to music what this is to writing.

Nadržený!

C