“A blizzard of bargains and a new generation of video-game consoles helped kick-start the Christmas retail season,” quoth a worried Wall Street Journal the Monday after Thanksgiving. “But shoppers didn’t show up in overwhelming numbers, and their purchases were sensible and selective.” What’s more, other auguries have turned adverse, according to The Journal –lipstick sales Read More
Imagine that you set out to drive from Manhattan to Southampton, a distance of roughly 100 miles, and that you fill up your Land Rover’s gas tank at $1.90 a gallon before leaving.
Next, imagine that when you pull off Route 27 by the Lobster Inn-having suffered the hour it takes to negotiate the Read More
Lies We Live By: Defeating Double-Talk and Deception in Advertising, Politics and the Media , by Carl Hausman. Routledge, 229 pages, $24.95.
Not long ago, traveling abroad, I spent many fruitless, expensive minutes trying to log on to my AT&T Internet provider to retrieve important e-mail. Over and over, the connection failed, each shutdown accompanied Read More
Among the gushy house tours featured in the December issue of Architectural Digest is an eight-page spread entitled, “On Top of the World in New York.” The home in question is an “11,000-square-foot penthouse duplex,” characterized as being “fit for a king.” The article does not name the king, but coyly describes the owner of Read More
It does seem hotter than it used to be, but maybe there is no such thing as global warming. Maybe the burning of fossil fuels at an ever greater rate over a few centuries by industrial nations (and in the future by industrializing nations) will have no lasting effect on the earth’s climate. Maybe the Read More
