And So It Goes

Marinating Myself in Media

This week, I've gone on another of my media buying sprees, courtesy of the Internet. Three separate orders, and one of them just arrived the day before yesterday from Amazon Japan. This particular shipment can be lumped under two categories:

Category 1: The Movies
The movie version of The Hours (starring Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, Nicole Kidman, and a large latex nose) has just been released in Japan. My personal preference is to read a book before seeing the movie version, because 1) I tend to think of the book as the detailed original work of art, and enjoy the movie version as an exercise in adaptation. What do the moviemakers keep, what do they leave out, how do they handle tricky storytelling challenges, and how do they visualize certain elements? 2) I can be free of moviemaker's imagery being stuck in my head. For example, I read Nick Hornby's High Fidelity after I seeing the movie version, and it took awhile for my mental image of the characters to morph from being Chicagoans like John Cusack (the movie's version) to being Londoners (the book's). In fact, for Barry, it never did, with the book version of the character remaining firmly as actor Jack Black in my mind's eye. Damn, Jack Black was too vivid in the part, leaving no room for a British version in my imagination.

So I before I go see the movie, I'd like to read the book. So I bought Michael Cunningham's The Hours, but since the novel itself spins off from Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, I felt obligated to buy and read that, too. The movie's still playing in theaters, so I still have time to read them.

Category 2: Popular Economics wih Paul Krugman:
Being pig-ignorant about economics, I thought I'd broaden my knowledge of the subject by picking up a couple of Paul Krugman's recent books. Krugman is an economist -- a real one, teaching at Princeton -- who has a twice-weekly side gig as my favorite op-ed columnist for the New York Times. Lately, he's spent a fair amount of ink skewering the Bush administration, expanding his focus from their prevarications about economics (the Bush tax cut plan is being sold as an economic stimulus package -- which it isn't, and Krugman is speaking as a mainstream economist when he says this) to writing about the administration's prevarications in general (admittedly, the war in Iraq has provided a lot of material for Krugman to work with).

But these are tangents for Krugman: his real strength is in explaining economics in (more-or-less) plain English. I've been working my way forward in time through his laymen's works describing facts and myths surrounding recent global economic history, including:

(The last two titles are the ones that just came in the mail.)

Krugman takes no prisoners, puncturing the economic myths and gasbags of the right and the left (supply-side economics. the evils of globalization. Robert Bartley, William Greider, etc.), doing his best to explain in clear terms what economics really is. Long may he wave.

Links of the day

Paul Krugman on Japan. So why is the world's second-biggest economy still in an economic slump after ten years? Find out about liquidity traps, why cutting interest rates to zero still doesn't help, and what the Bank of Japan should really do.
"Fear of a Quaqmire?" Krugman's most recent New York Times column discussing Japan's economic woes -- and how the US might wind up in the same boat.
The Official Paul Krugman Webpage contains the basic info, with links to recent writings (including back numbers of the New York Times columns.
The Unfficial Paul Krugman Webpage is a fan page (approved, or at the very least condoned, by the man himself, since he links to it from his own page). A wealth of information on Krugman's life and works.