February 2011 Archives

Pretty Things

Posted on February 9, 2011February 9, 2011 by Sam Kornstein in Beer, Boston/Cambridge

There’s a great new “brewery” in town: Pretty Things. They’re based out of Cambridge, and have been around since February 2009. I call them new because their beer really wasn’t readily available in local liquor stores or bars until this past year. And I call them a “brewery” because they don’t actually have one. From their website: We are a gypsy brewery, without a permanent brewing home. We like it that way, we can be whatever we want to be on a shoestring budget. Essentially they rent out temporary space in local breweries, such as the Paper City brewery in Holyoke, MA. It’s a pretty interesting model, and I’m curious to see how long it works for them. But regardless,

Cockfighting Accident

Posted on February 8, 2011February 8, 2011 by Sam Kornstein in Cartoons, Current Events

Well this is ironic: A California man has died after being accidentally stabbed in the leg by a sharp blade attached to a rooster at an apparent cockfighting match, the Bakersfield Californian reports. That’s unfortunate for a lot of reasons. To quote Arrested Development: “That’s why you always leave a note.”

Soda Taxes and Corn Subsidies

Posted on February 8, 2011February 8, 2011 by Sam Kornstein in Current Events

Here’s Ezra Klein’s response to the No Food Taxes coalition commercial aired in some regions during the Superbowl: If you were watching the Superbowl in the DC area last night, one of the ads you saw came from the No Food Taxes coalition (which includes 7-Eleven, Alcoa, the Mid-Atlantic Petroleum Distributers Association, American Airlines, McDonald’s, and many more). It showed a sensible-looking woman putting soda into her shopping cart and complaining that “some politicians” are “trying to control what we eat and drink with taxes.” Pulling into the checkout lane, a deep-voiced announcer intones, “government needs to trim its budget back, and leave our grocery budgets alone.” Watch the ad here. It’s evidence of how seriously the sugared drink industry takes the threat

Various Links

Posted on February 8, 2011February 8, 2011 by Sam Kornstein in Links

I’ve been trying to convince my friend and former colleague, Colin Whooten, to start a blog. Until he does, here are some good links that he shared with me: 1. Gladwell Still Missing the Point About Social Media and Activism 2. 3 Ways Of Looking At Manufacturing In America The second one is a good follow-up to my prior post on the Boston Globe article on the state of manufacturing in America. I’ll stop bothering Colin now. I also liked this animation showing the way our solar system works, compared with the way the world used to think it worked. Occam’s Razor!

Rambo. Massage By Man.

Posted on February 7, 2011February 7, 2011 by Sam Kornstein in Travel

I can’t believe I almost forgot to post this. Taken on a side street in Phnom Penh: I believe this belongs in Tyler Cowen’s Markets in Everything series.

We Make Lots Of Stuff

Posted on February 7, 2011February 7, 2011 by Sam Kornstein in Markets

About 20% of all stuff in the world, actually. From the Boston Globe, via Colin Whooten (no blog) and Scott Sumner: Americans make more “stuff’’ than any other nation on earth, and by a wide margin. According to the United Nations’ comprehensive database of international economic data, America’s manufacturing output in 2009 (expressed in constant 2005 dollars) was $2.15 trillion. That surpassed China’s output of $1.48 trillion by nearly 46 percent. China’s industries may be booming, but the United States still accounted for 20 percent of the world’s manufacturing output in 2009 — only a hair below its 1990 share of 21 percent. “The decline, demise, and death of America’s manufacturing sector has been greatly exaggerated,’’ says economist Mark Perry, a

Hedging What?

Posted on February 6, 2011October 19, 2013 by Sam Kornstein in General, Uncategorized

A reader sent me this article about companies betting on snowfall: “With record amounts of snow blanketing even some of the warmest cities across the nation this winter, an increasing number of companies are protecting themselves by betting on …. snow. Unexpected blizzards and snowstorms can cost companies thousands of dollars in lost business each year. “People have tended to have a fatalistic view of weather,” said Tim Andriesen, managing director of Agricultural Commodities at CME Group. “Now more and more people are recognizing that while you can’t control the weather, you can at least manage the financial impact of it.” The Chicago Mercantile Exchange, which began offering snow futures in 2006, has already sold five times more contracts this

Angry Dogs

Posted on February 6, 2011February 6, 2011 by Sam Kornstein in General

Earlier today this happened on the deck outside my third-floor bedroom: I have no clue who they are or where they came from.

Food Prices

Posted on February 5, 2011February 5, 2011 by Sam Kornstein in Current Events, Markets

There’s been much talk in the media about how the initial protests in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, and Jordan were, at least partly, sparked by unrest due to rising commodity and food prices. What’s been discussed much less is the underlying cause of these price spikes. Is it speculation, or an actual increase in consumption (or a decrease in yields)? I hadn’t thought much about it until a reader sent me this article written by Joel Brinkley, a Stanford journalism professor who’s a foreign correspondent for the NYT (syndicated in my hometown’s daily newspaper): The world is heading into a food crisis again, barely three years after the last one in 2008. That, not political reform, animated the riots and demonstrations

Site Traffic…Sex!

Posted on February 4, 2011February 4, 2011 by Sam Kornstein in General

I continue to find it really interesting to track my site traffic trends using wordpress and Google analytics. I’m never really sure which posts will generate a lot of traffic, or where it comes from. So now that I’ve been at this for just over a month, I decided to take a look. Here’s what I came up with: Seeing as how I’m not going back to Cambodia, eating more tarantulas, or changing my domain name anytime soon, I’ve concluded that if I want to increase my traffic, I need to talk more about sex, and James Spector needs to keep re-tweeting my posts. But it would be strange in a circular sort of way if he re-tweets this one.