US investment bank Lehman Brothers may be toast, but their recruitment website is still going strong (suddenly amusing videos here).

It might seem odd (or purposefully ironic) that a country band would base a song on the ravages of crystal meth usage. That is until you learn — as I did in Frank Owen’s superb book No Speed Limit — that Cookesville, Tennessee is the US speed capital bar none, located right smack in the [...]

Berlin, with its heavy and heaving skies, can have a brusque way (think: shovel to face) of greeting the homecoming traveller with a gloom to put quick closure to any naive and silly thoughts of a lingering vacation. Last Monday, when Yuhang and I returned from southern France on a Lyon-Berlin easyjet flight, was no [...]

Unless you’re a professional designer that is. But if you just want an endless and random stream of wicked cool graphics and photos compiled by what appears to be predominantly other design freaks, then ffffound.com is for you. Having not heard about it before, I sort of stumbled across it, though it’s well-known enough to [...]

or rather the quants behind it, for the current unravelling of world financial markets.
It’s hard enough to understand credit-default swaps when you know what they are; if you don’t know, forget it. But since they are one of several inventions that may sink [New York], and maybe the country, into a new era of penury [...]

Expat Americans! If you’re living abroad, would like to vote in the upcoming presidential election and haven’t registered yet* you’ve got about 48 hours to go to this site, fill out the online form, print out the pdf (only page 4 necessary) and send it by mail. Actual mail, to the address given for your [...]

I’ve been devouring Paul Trynka’s bio on Jim Osterberg aka Iggy Pop, Open Up and Bleed, which just came out on paperback (and I picked up in an airport in Stockholm last month). One thing evident in Pop/Osterberg’s Jekyll and Hyde persona, is there is little middle ground to be had. If he triumphed, he [...]

Not up to the task right now of writing a worthy note to the untimely and self-inflicted passing last Friday of David Foster Wallace (46), who was pretty much my favorite living writer and someone I once, blitzed on Old Crow in New Jersey in 1998, tried to call—to no avail—I can only say you, [...]

Ciao, Berlin! Hello, Paris! And then a week in Provence! With friends! And a house and a lake. (In the meantime I’m not responsible for anything whatsoever.) Upon my return (circa 10 days) I will write on various important things that happened to me very recently, things that happened before this vacation, things that need [...]

To WordPress Version 2.6.1 package, which now has a user interface just like wordpress.com. Still fixing the Recent Comments plugin. Added fire.fm to sidebar. Very much liking the Automatic Upgrade plugin (but don’t forget to turn off “Safe Mode” on your server’s PHP Group Settings or you will get Project Mayhem.)

Illustration by Monika Aichele accompanying a review of Anna Winger’s expat-in-Berlin cultural quirkathon This Must Be The Place.
German? American? Nationality doesn’t enter into it. [Protagonists] Hope and Walter are spooked by the stranger in the mirror, not the strangers on the street, and they’ve made geography the scapegoat for their detachment. Orson gives them a [...]

Every few weeks I check the New York Review of Books website for new Long-winded Essays by Famous People disguised as book reviews. I was surprised today to see that this old dog has learned some new tricks and has been, since late June, podcasting, most recently an interview by Hugh Eakin with Michael Chabon [...]