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1. Christmas traditions and Hayek’s wisdom

   One of my favourite moments in Terry Pratchett’s great Discworld fantasy series comes from his holiday novel, Hogfather. The novel is about the kidnapping of the Hogfather—the Discworld’s combined analogue for Santa and various solstice ...

2. The nature of money—and Thanksgiving—depends on tradition and tacit agreement

   My friend Janet calls it Yanksgiving. She’s referring to today—the third Thursday after the first Monday in November, when Canada’s neighbours to the south traditionally sit down to a big feast of turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, green ...

3. Algorithmic observation—we eagerly buy books about other people doing their jobs

   An article in Popular Science this week details the success of a computer algorithm designed to predict which novels are—and are not—bestsellers. Given a pile of 5,000 hits and misses to sort, the algorithm was able to tell bestsellers ...

4. Lawn Boy makes business and economics fun

   I just finished reading a pair of books with chapter titles like, “The Principles of Economic Expansion,” and “The Law of Increasing Product Demand Versus Flat Production Capacity” and “The Methodology of Team Development.” They’re for ...

5. ’80s movie taps timeless entrepreneurial spirit

   Last night I watched Coppola’s 1988 movie Tucker: The Man and His Dream for the first time since high school. I remembered the film as the story of one of the great American entrepreneurial dreams and its demise at the hands of the ...

6. 'Untitled' painting sells for $46.5 million—good buy?

   Business Insider recently reported on an art auction at Sotheby’s. Art auctions always make good copy because readers can gasp at the prices that wealthy collectors are willing and able to pay while simultaneously critiquing the rotten ...

7. Bad guys in Netflix's 'Stranger Things' work for the government

   Over at FEE.org, I recently wrote about the new Netflix show Stranger Things and the nostalgia it inspired in me for certain cultural touchstones of the 1980s. From the soundtrack, to the fashion, to the school supplies and the hairdos, ...

8. Operatic discounts incentivized attendants

   I saw my first opera when I was eight. It was rapidly followed by a string of other operas. I became, from a very young age, such a fan that when I was in Chicago for six years as a broke graduate student I always found a way to pay for ...

9. Novel hits all the tropes of economic crisis

   Towards the end of Lionel Shriver’s new novel, The Mandibles, Willing Mandible tells his novelist aunt that her books feel “like ancient history. It was hard to identify with the characters… They make decisions because they’re in love, ...

10. Knitting—the joys of producing and consuming

    Julian Baggini’s recent review in The Guardian of Darian Leader’s new book Hands: What We do with Them and Why closes with a discussion of Leader’s observations on knitting. Baggini observes that Leader, “notes the irony that while ...