It’s gift-giving season, and you’re on a budget. More than usual, even. So aren’t we all. But you also want to do the right thing - not just buy a lead-and-BPA baby rattle made by starving children in China or whatever. So, where do you ...

Papers, Please No es difícil fabricar un certificado que asegure con timbres y estampillas, que se es turco; no es fácil, en cambio, nacer en Turquía. - Manuel Rojas, Hijo de Ladrón Papers, please. Credentials, sir, and proof of worth. No exceptions, ...

Churches may be best known for clever temporary signage, but I’m partial to the quips they put up at Sav-Mor Liquors next to the Whole Foods on the Mystic Valley Parkway in Medford. “Halloween is the perfect time for spirits.” “If...

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KTM RC8 body, lithium-ion power, electronics controlled by Linux, telemetry and diagnostics transmitted by Wi-Fi. We live in the future. ...

Getting and Spending Ask the serious men who study joy and bring to bear the rigor your old profs would praise. They know what works - It’s not pretty, but spreadsheets rarely are. You’ll find a template in the better academic rags: Daily mea...

While we’re at it, let me make fun of the way Jeff Jacoby uses his latest column to insult the American Booksellers Association and defend predatory dumping. This time, he’s not quite as wrong as he usually is - the line between aggressive di...

This week’s New Yorker has an ad for Range Rover featuring a claim that it has eyes in the front, back, and side of it’s head. People have been fired for a lot less than a misplaced apostrophe in an expensive ad campaign, particularly one targ...

Mr. President: We want a public option. Olympia Snowe’s vote isn’t worth a bad bill. I’d love to see a good bill (i.e. with a public option) come to the Senate, and I’d love to see progressives dare the Republicans to filibuster. G...

I didn’t like the close on that first version. This seems cleaner, but I’m not 100% satisfied. Barnacles These are not accomplishments: Surviving a year, falling in love, making a promise, taking a loan. Granted well-timed birth, propensity t...

The Student Lending Analytics Blog has a great post about the similarities between the mortgage bubble and student lending - particularly for students at the less-scrupulous proprietary schools (Jay’s Technical Institute of Houston, I’m lookin...

Barnacles These are not accomplishments: Surviving a year, falling in love, making a promise, taking a loan. Born in the right place with an inclination to books and worry, taught in proper schools, passed by luck (and care and wealth, not mine) through t...

Don’t claim there’s nothing left for the working man not when two hours off the books at Y-Not gets you a 30-pack of Keystone for the weekend, not when Frank and the boys get off work at the house of pizza and come by with a pie and a dimebag,...

On Gratitude These thank-you cards get more sincere each time - Not that I know what to do with crystal candlesticks but that someone moved enough to give them and their motion moved me in turn to put my gratitude in ink, affix a stamp and formally thank ...

Angry Town Hall reminds us that if you catch fire, you deserve to die and/or go broke because of it. Thank god there are some ideologically pure libertarians out there? ...