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Speaking of the glossy magazine effect — who in the world is working as the official or unofficial publicist for the Darwinian literary critics? There’s another write-up of this non-phenomenon, this time in Newsweek. The writer, Jeremy McCarty, is appropriately critical, which is why I’m linking to it.

But let me reiterate — this stuff is nonsense, bad science and bad aesthetics. Only about ten relatively marginal people care about it, even if one of them happens to be Arts & Letters Daily /Philosophy and Literature editor Denis Dutton. Serious research on the relationship between psychology and aesthetics could be so good. This is not serious.

Why this half-baked not-quite-research program commands so much attention in academic and popular journalism instead of any one of a dozen honestly legitimate movements in contemporary literature and language studies will forever elude me.

Paul Krugman on “the magazine cover effect“:

[W]hen you see a corporate chieftain on the cover of a glossy magazine, short the stock. Or as I once put it (I

Rents in New York are falling, and credit and other requirements are becoming less strict, even for desirable neighborhoods in Manhattan. The Times even uses the word “bubble” to describe the old world order, which suggests that it’s not just the economic downturn but a realistic reevaluation of inflated prices. We’ve noticed something similar in Philadelphia; people are offering more for less. We might even be able to live somewhere where cabs come, and good restaurants will deliver! Yay.

The story about NYC also includes what I’m pegging as a very artful non-description of a Manhattan brothel: “an acupuncture parlor down the hall that stayed open very, very late and served a male clientele.”

“The Craziest Space Racists Of All Time” at io9.com offers a decent overview of allegories of race and racism in science fiction — although apparently racism magically enters sci fi only when it’s conscious, explicit, and denounced — but its real value is its citation of the great Mr Show sketch “Racist in the Year 3000”:

I love Cindy Sherman, so I’m fascinated by this film; my wife thinks the whole thing is creepy. What do you think?

Why can’t we buy (and enterprising girls sell) Girl Scout cookies online?

Guess what it is!

Blogging for the NYT is a little like writing/directing your own movie:

Via Mark Thoma, Anatole Kaletsky writes:

Smith, Ricardo and Keynes produced no mathematical models.

Now, I have Marshall McLuhan John Maynard Keynes right here. Let

Roger Ebert calls Ramin Bahrani (Man Push Cart, Chop Shop, Goodbye Solo) “the new great American director.” He also tells a great story about Goodbye Solo star Red West:

Souleymane Sy Savan

Historian of Europe Karl Schl