The Globe’s John Doyle sums up one of the problems that plagues business television in his enjoyably tart column from Thursday: All-business television and business news segments had to create their own iconography, mainly because business news is essentially boring and difficult to illustrate. The natural, real-world imagery of business TV is footage of somecontinue reading
Fast melt
The current issues of the New Yorker and Vanity Fair both have good features on the end of Iceland’s short tenure as finance superpower. Both are worth reading, but if you only have time for one, Vanity Fair‘s piece, by Liar’s Poker author Michael Lewis, better captures the insanity that took hold: I spoke tocontinue reading
Graphological democracy
Democracy, Russia-style, from the Moscow Times: One of the most commonly used methods for eliminating undesirable candidates is to disqualify on “legal” grounds the authenticity of signatures that are required to register a candidate. “Handwriting experts” from the Interior Ministry find mistakes on lists submitted by opposition candidates, and this provides the pretext to disqualifycontinue reading
Eating and drinking in Florence
We are both fans of Italian food and wine — J. being especially addicted to good pastas — so we tried to eat well when we were in Florence, without entirely breaking the bank. Depending on where we went and how much wine we ordered, we were generally able to sit down to leisurely dinnerscontinue reading
Florence
We arrived back from Florence Sunday afternoon after 8 days of art, architecture, and good food. It was my first time in Florence, J.’s third, but with her last trip 15 years ago and with a school group a lot of it was like a new experience for both of us. Practical details. We flewcontinue reading
Patronize your charming neighbourhood coffee shops while ye may
What neighbourhood is this? The neighborhood of 35,000 or so has attracted screenwriters and composers, Web designers and animators, who labor on their laptops in cafes, discuss film projects at Friday night wine tastings, and let their children play with the handmade wooden toys in a Scandinavian-style coffee shop, Swork. No, not Leslieville — it’scontinue reading
Bees
Re the link to the new beekeeping site: You might find this interesting — David Yassky, an up-and-coming Brooklyn city councillor, has taken up the crusade to legalize urban beekeeping. Apparently there are quite a few underground (or more precisely rooftop) apiculturists operating in the shadows of the city. Two links below — the secondcontinue reading
Toronto real estate gets real
Local real estate agents have assured would-be sellers that the real estate market will pick up in the spring, and judging by the number of new listings on MLS, many gullible (and/or cash-strapped) homeowners are taking them at their word. Guava.ca tracks the actual reduction in listing prices in Toronto (for single-family houses only) bycontinue reading
Return of the Pipe Club!
Who knew we were actually ahead of our time at Trinity? http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123509294170728733.html
The kids are alright
Another day, another study showing that, all things considered, the kids are OK. Guess what? When kids play around with each other at school, they occasionally get hurt. Amazing, according to researcher Alison MacPherson: “When a mom or a dad sends their child off to school in the morning, they kind of expect them tocontinue reading