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POPSSlow Food USA Money quote: "A gastronome who isn’t an environmentalist is just stupid, and I say an environmentalist who isn’t a gastronome is just sad."
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POPSGoogling American Values Great story -- gotta read through to the kicker. I wonder if they read about this court case and decided to write about it immediately, or only committed to the story once somebody came up with that pun.
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POPSThe Battle for Facebook A very intriguing profile of the early days of Facebook. I suppose if my college roommates started a $15 billion company I'd be going after a piece of the pie, or at least begging for crumbs. Ironically, I saw my college roommates this weekend. What did we do after the party? Post the photo on Facebook. Help this guy get richer. Claire Hoffman writes great stories. If you enjoy this read her (non-flattering) profile of Girls Gone Wild founder Joe Francis. http://www.latimes.com/features/printedition/magazine/la-tm-gonewild32aug06,1,4548814.story?page=1
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POPSWashington Post editor to step down Okay, I know a lot of people probably don't care, but I used to work there so I do. Downie is probably the best currently serving newspaper editor, and I think that no matter what anybody says this is a big blow for the Post. Downie says, "I'm ready to do this, because so much further change now needs to take place at the newspaper and Web site, and someone else should be tackling that." I dunno. Before the Internet age, when Downie became editor, the paper was barely available outside of the Washington region. It's become one of the most powerful newspaper brands on the Internet and I think a huge reason for that is because Downie was always out there insisting on the absolute highest standards of quality. Now, the Post is not a perfect place, and newspapers are definitely in a lot of trouble (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/23/business/media/23paper.html) but Downie's shoes will be extremely tough and maybe impossible to fill, imho.
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POPSRun for Office for $500 Hilarious. If I had an extra $500 I'd use it to make attack ads against all the people on my arch-nemesis list.
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POPSBehind the Chevy Volt A behind-the-scenes look at General Motor's pursuit of the first plug-in hybrid electric vehicle. For $20,000 I want one... not so sure about $35,000.
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POPSHousing TV -- Immune to Housing Crisis Ah, the golden days two years ago when a husband and wife who didn't know anything about home repair would buy a house, invite in the "Flip This House" camera crew, put in new linoleum, paint the walls, upgrade the bathroom fixtures (the realtors insisting that, this alone, raises the price of the home by $20-25,000), and sell the thing a few months later for a $125,000 in profit (if the new sink handles are fancy enough). Of course that doesn't work anymore. But happily, shows about home renovation are as popular as ever!
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POPSThe Folly of Political Investment Portfolios Daniel Gross argues that political portfolios aren't good investment strategies. I wonder if anyone has done a formal study of this. He notes that an ideal stock in a George Bush political portfolio in 2000 would have been Enron, which ended up being a disaster. Well, that's true, if you had only one stock in your "portfolio". Exxon and Halliburton would have been pretty obvious stocks for that portfolio too. They've gone to 90 from 40 and 48 from 19. You sure that's such a bad portfolio?
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POPSAfrica: Agriculture's Final Frontier Incidentally, this is why, in my opinion, the best sorts of charities are those that focus their aid around helping developing countries utilize their own tools of production. "Give a man a fish..."1
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POPSThe Oracle of $200 Oil Goldman Sachs made headlines with his prediction of oil as high as $200 a barrel. What does this mean? $6 a gallon at the pump. Is this rapidly becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy? The somewhat breathless coverage here reminds me of an old parable from the 90s. An analyst named Henry Blodget predicted in 1998 that Amazon.com stock would hit $400 (when it was currently trading at $250ish). In a frenzy, Amazon hit it within a month. Of course, it went on to collapse spectacularly in 2000. A decade later, Amazon's never returned to trading at that level...
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POPSHamburger - $175 Kobe beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, foie gras, shave black truffles, golden truffle oil on a sesame seed bun!
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POPSThe Recession-Proof Repo Man That lead paragraph just about sums it up. Another reminder that there's always a recession-proof job out there. I want to focus, however, on a claim in the middle of the story, that "No one grows up aspiring to be a repo man." Is that true? It seems that I've met a lot of people in life who kind of have a chip on their shoulder and would really love to take people's boats away. I'm not suggesting that real repo men have chips on their shoulder. I'm just saying... I knew some kids who took any opportunity to snatch away my Legos, and surely, as adults, they would love to snatch away my boat. If they could do it legally. Well, and if I had a boat.
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POPSMcCain Considers British Grillings If you've never seen it, the UK Prime Minister appears regularly before the members of parliament for a sometimes bruising round of questions from the opposition. It would be quite a change from the current model, with communication happening indirectly through statements and press conferences.
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POPSThe Importance of Computer Solitaire Question: Which is worse? Playing solitaire when you should be working? Reading a story about playing solitaire when you should be working? Or clipmarking stories about playing solitaire when you should be working? Slate has a huge and amusing package about procrastination. But I can't read the rest of it, I have to go call some airline analysts! Seriously.
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POPSThe Hottest After-College Job? I've been intrigued by Teach for America ever since I wrote about a TFA class trip a few years ago: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/14/AR2006041401806.html Hard to believe the organization is growing this fast. Their budget has grown from $40 million in 2005 to $110 million this year.
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POPSHere Come the Asteroids "The odds that a potentially devastating space rock will hit Earth this century may be as high as one in 10. So why isn’t NASA trying harder to prevent catastrophe?" Guess it sort of puts this whole credit crisis thing in perspective, huh?
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POPSAmerican housing: Map of misery The Economist looks at Ben Bernanke's new color-coded map of where the housing crisis is hitting. Looks like some regions are quite a bit less stressed than others. Hey! That reminds me of a look that somebody (wonder who?) here at Forbes.com did on America's Recession-Proof Cities: http://www.forbes.com/realestate/2008/04/29/cities-recession-places-forbeslife-cx_jz_0429realestate.html Our results line up nicely with these (think it's because of the overwhelming role housing prices are playing in the economy?) with the notable exception of San Jose.
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POPSEconomics and the Entrepreneur A lengthy look at how the recession of the 70s changed our thinking about economics. A history lesson, a primer on Joseph Schumpeter, and an argument for the importance of the entrepreneur. Well worth the read for the casual fan of economics who has nothing to do on a Friday afternoon. (If you're not an economics fan, consider yourself warned.)
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POPSHousing Crisis Helps Bankrupt a City Although it's clear the city of Vallejo, California faced a host of problems, a key factor in its bankruptcy was decreasing property tax revenues as home prices fall and homes go into foreclosure. Bankrupt homeowners is bad enough. Bankrupt cities?
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POPSDoctors Shilling for Drug Companies on Public Radio? It's no secret that many doctors have financial relationships with pharmaceutical companies. And certainly most wouldn't compromise their medical judgment for a check from big pharma. But should these doctors at least disclose the connection when doling out advice?
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POPSTxting in the Rain Is the moment finally right for the hands-free umbrella industry to take off? Apparently the patent office has been getting hands-free designs for 30 years.
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POPSRecord Year for Lobbyists Turns out that oil and agriculture aren't the only industries bringing in more money than ever before. Is lobbying the ultimate recession-proof industry?
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POPSDisney.ru: Mickey Goes to Moscow The rising cost of oil has created a growing Russian middle class, making it worthwhile to bring the magic of Disney to Russian children. Can Disney Mir, Moskva be far behind?
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