We hope for better things--like bargins on designer handbags!

Has anyone noticed the recent spate of recession-themed articles in the "lifestyle" sections of the New York Times? I can't stop reading them--they're so adorably out of touch!

A story from the Home and Garden section covers (in great detail) the impact of rich New Yorkers firing their domestic help. On the global economy, that is. One employer expressed concern about her housekeeper's financial obligations, and said that she felt guilty for firing her: "It was really hard."

An article entitled "The Great Sale of ’08," simply gushes over the bargains that local department stores are putting up to entice shoppers. And who could resist such deals--$275 for a pair of Prada shoes! (My heart goes pitta pat!)

And then there are those poor people who can't shop the way they'd like, because they feel like it might be in bad taste. Good thing they've found a way to get around that problem--designer parties!


But my favorite are the "belt tightening" stories. The titles say it all.

Great Meals for Two, Under $100 (It’s Possible!)

Time to Tighten Things Up: Energy Saving Tips for Your Second Home


This is obviously hilarious, but also a little bizarre. The front section of the New York Times is full of news about the recession. Over half a million people lost their jobs in November--the largest job loss since 1974--and though it doesn't seem possible, the actual impact is probably much greater. Meanwhile, the "lifestyle" sections are whinging about the price of bluefin tuna and airline tickets.

(It's especially weird when veiwed from the perspective of suburban Detroit. Detroit used to rank 4th in population, but now hovers around 11th, having lost half of it's population since 1950. It is a city so utterly destroyed, that large parts of it are returning to the prairie* and the half mile area between the Detroit Institute of Art and downtown is known as a "Dead Zone". I mean, Detroit's city motto is "Speramus Meliora; Resurget Cineribus," which is Latin for (I shit you not) "We Hope For Better Things; It Shall Rise From the Ashes.")

On a more personal level, it would be nice to read a "lifestyle" column and find some advice that I could actually use this year. Maybe an article about handmade Christmas gifts? Or kitchen gardens? Or the reuse/renew movement? Or...something?





*If you like the blog entry I linked to, you should click here to see more of Sweet Juniper's lovely photos of Detroit. He's one of my favorite photographers.

GAMES 2008: the Revenge of Nash

Just a note to say that I'm on the road again--I'm attending a really great conference in my field, which has an almost comically megalomaniacal title--The Third World Conference of the Game Theory Society: GAMES 2008. Last week I was explaining to people why I was going out of town YET AGAIN, and had considerable trouble making myself understood. Is GAMES 2008 a variation on comic-con? Do you have to wear a wizard hat? It does sound a bit dramatic, given that we're mostly doing math..and is that the Third World-congress, or the Third-world Congress?

Anyway, the talks have been great and I've been getting some great research ideas. But there aren't many graduate students here, and try as I might I couldn't find anyone who wanted to go to a bar...so I'm kind of stuck in my room tonight.

I'm staying in one of the dorms on campus, which was apparently designed by evil trolls. The buildings are squares with a courtyard in the middle--basically one long, square hallway stacked on top of another. This would be ok (every room gets a window...albeit at the expense of a whole lot of wasted space) but the architect/troll made no effort to distinguish one side of the square from another. Every hallway is the same as every other hallway, which makes it very difficult to keep track of where exactly you are. Moreover, every door is identical to every other door--it took me 10 minutes of wandering around, trying random doors before I finally found the bathroom.

More irritating is the fact that only two of the four corners on this floor have a stairwell, and of those two corners, exactly ONE takes you to an exit. And since all four corners are FUCKING IDENTICAL...well, let's just say that Lewis Carrol couldn't have designed a better rabbit hole. This morning, I set out looking for the exit, tried a few doors, and suddenly found myself back outside my room. Creepy.

So here I am, a bit bored, but afraid that if I leave the room I'll never find my way out. So I guess I'm warning you that you might be getting more than one blog post tonight (if I can manage to make the wireless work--otherwise you might not even get this one). I'll start with the garden post that I've had completed for a week except for the pictures stuck on my camera. Then...well...we'll see how bored I am. You may get that wedding post after all.

(By the way, this is one of only two events I've been to where the line for the lady's bathroom is SHORTER than the line for the men's (the other was RAGBRAI...most cyclists are men). I had kind of gotten used to the fairly mild gender gap in economics as a whole, but economic theory is a whole different can of trout. I'm used to being in the minority, but damn...)


UPDATE Getting a connection was harder than it should have been. I braved the magical stairwells to use the wireless at the business school, but the wireless access pass they gave me at registration doesn't seem to work. I don't have an ethernet cord with me, so I'm using the cord in the lectern of one of the classrooms. But I'm pretty sure they don't want me doing this, so I probably won't get the garden post up until tomorrow. Ah well.

June just became my least favorite month...

This summer is going to be just a teeeensy bit crazy for me.

May
3rd: get married
5th - 19th: Hawaii
June
1st: Grinnell College Reunion
2nd - 4th: Talk to MAP students at Grinnell about agent-based modeling
6th - 8th: Printer's Row Book Fair (if my folks get a booth)
9th-11th: Resource Economics Conference in Toulouse
14th: High School Reunion (I wouldn't go, except my best friend is going)
21st: Wedding I'm photographing
July
13th-17th: Games 2008 conference
August
8th-?: Wedding in Czech Republic

All of this will be liberally interspersed with work (recall that I'm going on the job market next fall), gardening (R and I have rented a community garden plot this year), and house repairs/renovations (we are going to be selling 2 houses next spring).

At least it will be bookended by vacation!

In which I enter the so-called "blogo-tubes"

Hi all! Welcome to my blog.

First things first--why moot point tango? Well, it is a combination of words that is infrequently taken, and thus it is my default for many titles--including my photography "business" (so-called, because I have a tax number, not because it actually makes money). I also happen to like the way it sounds--so there.

I intended this blog as a way for my friends and family (most of whom live far from me) to find out what I'm up to. Thus, I'm probably just going to run the gambit topic-wise. Some entries will be work-related--things that I'm thinking about, research problems I'm having, and interesting bits of things that I've read. But hopefully those will be liberally interspersed with the other parts of my life. At the beginning, I'll probably write quite a lot about impending wedding items--because that has taken over my life like a bad b-movie monster--but in a month or so that will be over, and we'll be back to my regular life, full of fast cars, cat acrobatics, and secret ninja-stuff.

Or maybe I made that last part up.

I'm not particularly good at this informal writing thing--so I expect that this will be a rough start. But bear with me! Hopefully, it will get better as I go along. And if not--well, I apologize in advance. Oh--you should also be aware of my affinity for the double-dash, ellipses, and lengthy parenthetical. I'll try to rein that in, but it will be very difficult. Also, I'm not nearly as funny as certain other people we all know--so I won't try!