Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Dante and Krugman

My pleasure book selection for the week or day or month depending on other factors is one called The Dante Club. It is about the four poets who translated Dante for the new world. I have no idea if this is based in fact or completely fiction but it is definitely a topic I will be looking into. The unfortunate side effect is that I wish I were reading the beautiful copy of the Divine Comedy that I picked up over Christmas instead of Paradise Lost. Smells like book, gilded pages, beautiful navy and gold leather etched cover.

Instead of curling up with a book tonight, I wrote five pages on one of the Nobel Prize winners in the Economics category. I picked Paul Krugman, last year's winner. Turns out economics is incredibly fascinating when written about by a person with a sense of humor that lacks the cryptic gene most economists take pride in cultivating. If you have time check this guy out. He writes twice a week for the NY Times and is responsible for modern trade theory. He also coined the New New Deal phrase that Obama's economists are throwing around. I haven't yet figured out if he is helping Obama develop his economic policy or not, but if he is, I would feel a little better about the immediate economic future. I guess this class hasn't been the total wash I was expecting. On the fun side of things, I apparently picked the perfect company to do my SWOT analysis on. I seem to have sparked a lively debate by choosing Microsoft. Seems everyone has an opinion on that particular company.

1 comment:

  1. I've always been amused by "smells like a book" given what I know about making them. Thr printer I used to work for in Germany added a carnation scent to his inks, so that the books he produced wouldn't smell like a book.

    People have taken the pleasure of reading, and associate it with the smell of bleached wood pulp, clay, various glues, and oily rubber... and now it's a good smell. Strange thing, the mind...

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