Counterparties
Email 
Print
Ryan Avent defends me against DeBord: “there is a very strong correlation between living in sprawl and being obese”. — The Bellows
Time magazine does a double smackdown on the Wash Post’s super-lame Twitter policy — Poniewozik
It’s been a while since I saw a personal-finance column with the phrase “round up to the nearest quarter-million” — BNet
Matt Taibbi joins the naked-short-selling-is-a-crisis crowd — True/Slant
Vodafone pays its bike commuters £85 per month — FT
The Atlantic’s First Draft of History event later this week now has a website — Atlantic
Chittum finds explicit political partisanship in the WSJ’s lede on Merkel’s victory — CJR
Geoff Hargadon’s “Cash For Your Warhol” prank at the Rose Art Museum — Wooster Collective
Princeton sign painters must think the local geese are smart enough to read signs — Twitpic
Gay Talese on how the tape recorder killed journalism. Wonderful, wonderful stuff. — BigThink
Ben Stein has “earned acclaim as an economist and a former columnist for the New York Times”, we’re told. From whom? — BizJournals
John Cassidy starts blogging — NewYorker
Comments RSSPost Your Comment
Hey Felix
If you by any chance read this comment please do a coverage on this:
Next up, the stupid and unreasonable loss sharing agreement at OneWest, where FDIC gifted these new IndyMac owners with profits at the expense of taxpayers and Bair’s own loan modification effort?
http://www.trulia.com/blog/bob_hertzog/2 009/09/is_the_fdic_killing_short_sales
Thanks
Weirdly, the article Avent links to in your defense doesn’t actually support your original hypothesis, that cities make people thinner, you appear to have the causation exactly wrong according to this study:
(The study) tracks the data of nearly 6,000 people over a six-year study period. During this period 79% of the subjects changed addresses. These movers allowed the authors to identify the effect of sprawl on weight….
The paper concludes that people who are more likely to be obese are more likely to move to sprawling neighbourhoods. The debate over obesity is ideologically charged and these results are likely to be controversial and (in some circles) unpopular. The findings suggest that the public-health battle against obesity is better fought on ground other than the urban-planner’s drawing board.
Via Avent: http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/22 1
fwiw, fallows has been blogging about obesity lately…
http://jamesfallows.theatlantic.com/arch ives/public_health/
also btw, re: The Atlantic’s First Draft of History, it looks like a follow on to Harvard’s New Literary History of America http://newliteraryhistory.com/symposium. html :P
cheers!