Freakonomics: A Lighthearted Romantic Comedy Starring Drew Barrymore
New York magazine, riffing on Drew Barrymore‘s starring role in the film adaptation of He’s Just Not That Into You, suggests 10 other self-help books that should be Barrymore vehicles, including Freakonomics: Drew Barrymore stars as a free-spirited Northwestern economics grad student who ventures into the Cabrini Green projects on the south side of Chicago Read More »
How Far Should Your Sympathies Go?
Over the past few months, the press has deluged Americans with weepy stories about people who are in danger of losing their houses because their sub-prime mortgages now exceed the value of their houses, which the recession and the popping of housing bubbles have caused to drop. I am sympathetic; and I, and other taxpayers, Read More »
Los Angeles Transportation: Facts and Fiction
We at U.C.L.A. hear from reporters a lot, and they are often looking for a few quotes to help write a familiar script. In it, Los Angeles is cast in the role of the nation’s transportation dystopia: a sprawling, smog-choked, auto-obsessed spaghetti bowl of freeways which meander from one bland suburban destination to the next. The heroes of the picture are cities like San Francisco, or especially New York, which are said to have created vastly more livable urban forms based on density and mass transit. Read More »
Is a Down Economy Good for Grandparents?
A reader named Joel Margolese of Andover, Mass., while on holiday vacation in Boca Raton, Fla., wrote the following:
Read More »Doing the annual pilgrimage to South Florida this holiday season, we’ve all been struck by how
everywhere seems to be more crowded than usual. Parks, beaches, even stores are jammed. We could barely find a parking space at our favorite park, which is usually empty.
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