083111_DeAngelis_Donuts

Using Donuts as Widgets for Basic Economics

photographed in Rochester, Pennsylvania on October 18, 2009

Joshua likes donuts, jelly donuts in particular. He also likes apples, but not as much as jelly donuts. Let’s use this information as a starting point for our study of utility. Let’s also assume that the price of a jelly donut and the price of an apple are each $.50. If Joshua has just $.50 in his pocket, and had to choose between buying a jelly donut and an apple, which would he choose? Based on what you know about his tastes and preferences, you’ve probably guessed correctly—he would choose the jelly donut! In economic terms, Joshua receives higher utility from the consumption of a jelly donut than he does from an apple.

Excerpted from Basic Economic Principles: A Guide for Students by David Edward O’Connor and Christopher C. Faille. Published by Greenwood Publishing Group, Westport, Connecticut, 2000.

082911_Brooklyn_Hurricane

The Aftermath of NYC’s Hurricane Included Bagels and Coffee

photographed in Brooklyn, New York on August 28, 2011

Tropical Storm Irene’s swipe at the Big Apple proved Sunday that New Yorkers can be a tough crowd to impress.

“I slept through the whole thing,” said James Trager, a writer who watched nature’s display of fury as it took place outside the windows of his apartment in Midtown and gave a tepid review: “Nothing. It’s exaggerated.”

“I think we’re all surprised how relatively quickly the storm blew through here and the rain stopped,” said Steve Kastenbaum, a national correspondent for CNN radio, who watched the storm from the comfort of his apartment in the Boerum Hill section of Brooklyn.

He said he saw lots of local street flooding and branches in the streets, but few uprooted trees; during the height of the storm, people were walking on the street. “I even saw one or two folks taking a jog,” he said. “I kid you not. Pretty typical for Brooklyn. They’re not going to let anybody get in their way.”

Excerpted from ‘Irene fails to wow New Yorkers‘ by the CNN Wire Staff. Appearing on August 28, 2011, on CNN.com.

082311_Bluff_Fishing

Angling: The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same

photographed in Groton, Connecticut on August 19, 2011

From the earliest historical data we find the territory adjacent to Norwich, mentioned by the Mohegan Indians – as well as the early English settlers – as exceptionally good fishing territory. The conditions existing in the early days are recognized to-day.

The larger streams are known as the Yantic, Shetucket and Quinebaug Rivers, and they, uniting at Norwich, form the romantic Thames, the head of navigation, fourteen miles from Long Island Sound. One of the first proofs we have of the fishing customs of the Indians is to-day to be seen just above the fording place in the Quinebaug. Here the Indians built weirs of stones running in a V-shape down stream from either shore and at the lower point a small opening was left where a noble Mohegan would be stationed with a spear or club or such other means as the Red Man had, and thus secure a bountiful supply of shad, bass, eels, trout, or perch for their immediate needs, when the fish were driven down by the members of the tribe, who stationed side by side, waded and beat the waters for a mile or more above.

Excerpted from ‘A New England Angling Eden’ by Herbert R. Branche, originally appearing in The American Angler, September 1918. Published by The American Angler Inc., New York.

081811_Modern_Alienation

The Pet as Stand-In For Past and Modern Alienation

photographed in Williamsburg, Brooklyn on May 1, 2011

And J. H. Plumb argues that this new engagement with pets within the bourgeois household is one of the means by which “quite humble men and women, innocent of philosophical theory, [were led to accept] perhaps unconsciously, the modernity of their world.”

The pet plays a complex cultural role in this period: as commodity, companion, paragon, proxy, and even kin. The practice of pet keeping was initially an urban phenomenon and served as a response to modern alienation and commodification by creating a being who could generate a sense of connection and meaning in a world of things. In this era of dramatic increases in consumption, pets were increasingly visible as a sign of prosperity and widely bred and sold for profit. New practices of selective breeding, developed at first for livestock, were exploited to produce more desirable types of ornamental fish, canaries, and pigeons, while exotic pets like parrots and monkeys were coveted possessions.

Excerpted from Homeless Dogs & Melancholy Apes: Humans and Other Animals in the Modern Literary Imagination. Published by Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York, 2010.

081711_Daily_Habits

Daily Habits, Whether in Latin America or in New York

photographed in Manhattan, New York on April 22, 2011

Each morning when I went to the Librería de Cristal to browse I would see him sitting on a bench in the Alameda. The bookshop, as its name suggests, was glass-fronted, and whenever I looked up, there he was, sitting motionless among the trees, staring into nothingness.

I guess we got used to each other’s presence. I would arrive at eight thirty in the morning, and he would already be there, sitting on a bench, doing nothing except smoking and keeping his eyes open. I never saw him with a newspaper or a sandwich, a beer or a book. I never saw him speak to anyone. Once, noticing him there as I glanced up from the French literature shelves, I thought he must sleep in the Alameda, on a bench, or in a doorway of one of the neighboring streets, but then I realized he was too clean and tidy to be sleeping in the street and must have a room in some boardinghouse nearby. He was, I noticed, a creature of habit, like myself.

Excerpted from ‘The Grub’ by Roberto Bolaño, appearing in Last Evenings on Earth, translated by Chris Andrews. Published by New Directions, New York, 2006.

081511_Summer_Concert

Enjoying the Waterfront Summer-Concert Series

photographed in Brooklyn, New York on July 25, 2011

The many who enjoy the elaborate symphony concerts of the winter, find among the multifarious pleasures of the warm weather not the least enjoyment in the summer-night music of the Thomas orchestra. It is natural to associate music with abandon, freedom of movement, and unrestraint. This is indeed the case, to a large extent, with all the arts. Were the lover of pictures obliged, in frequenting the galleries, to sit in stolid silence and admire without the privilege of a sympathetic under-current of talk, and moving about from spot to spot, his sense of appreciate would lose much of its edge. It is true that the conditions are not altogether the same in those arts that find their avenue to thought through the ear instead of the eye. But, even in the former the pleasure is not a little heightened by a sort of social déshabillé. To the enthusiastic and cultivated musician perhaps there are no necessities of restraint, for which compensation is not amply furnished by intense and uninterrupted attention to the music. But the majority of those that enjoy music are of a different caliber of culture. For them one of the chiefest pleasures of music is its ability to furnish a charming accompaniment to their own thoughts, and blend its own subtile [sic] harmony into their inner sense, without demanding the tax of concentration.

Excerpted from ‘Music and the Drama,’ appearing in Appleton’s Journal of Literature, Science, and Art, volume XI. Published from January 3 through June 27, 1874, by D. Appleton and Company, New York.

081111_Lonely_Desk

A Lonely Desk at the ‘City’s Most Amazing Art Studio’

photographed at 7 World Trade Center in Manhattan, New York on August 10, 2011

NEW YORK — Anyone looking to find this city’s most amazing art studio can stop right now.

It is, without a doubt, the 48th floor of 7 World Trade Center. Here, near the top of this 52-story office building, with sweeping views of the former site of the Twin Towers, the construction of 1 World Trade Center and all of the rest of Manhattan, the developer Larry Silverstein has allowed a group of artists to work free of charge until the space is leased to a tenant.

The bare-floored studio, completely empty and open, with fireproofed beams still visible and floor-to-ceiling windows, has been something of a home to Todd Stone and the other artists who have worked there. Now Stone’s paintings are the subject of an exhibition, “Witness || Downtown Rising,” on view until September 12 but open by invitation only.

Excerpted from ‘Todd Stone Paintings Show World Trade Center Burning And Rising‘ by Paul Needham. Published in The Huffington Post on July 29, 2011.

080311_London_Homeless

‘But It Was Only a Temporary Relief’

photographed in London, England on October 3, 2009

Seventy-five years ago a poor beggar boy stood on London Bridge. With an old violin, on which he played wretchedly, he tried to draw a few pennies from the charitably disposed listeners. A stranger who was passing asked the lad for his fiddle and after doing some “tuning,” he began to play a low plaintive melody. A man paused to listen and threw some pennies in the boy’s cap. Then another, and another stopped, and instead of pennies, sixpences and shillings, crowns and a few sovereigns were thrown to the boy. In a few minutes there were thousands of people crowding the bridge and the boy’s hat was filled with coins. At the last the police had to command the musician to stop in order that the street might be cleared. It was the great Paganini who had thus charmed the multitude and filled the pockets of the beggar. But it was only a temporary relief for in a few months the money would be gone and the beggar as poor as before.

Excerpted from ‘Ways of Helping Others’ by T. M. Fothergill, appearing in Current Anecdotes, A Preacher’s Magazine of Illustrations, Homiletics, Sermons and Methods of Church Work, volume V, number 11. Published by F. M. Barton, Cleveland, August 1904.

080211_Chainsaw_Day

And For the Reasons Found Below, I Found an Electric-Chainsaw Demonstration in My Office Conference Room This Morning

photographed in Manhattan, New York on August 2, 2011

And every year these professionals would say the same thing, just keep making the saws as durable as possible and they will keep buying them. Keep in mind there was no such thing as an electric chainsaw back then. Every saw was built around a crude two-stroke gasoline engine that belched smoke and screamed like a wild banshee, neither of which mattered one iota to professional lumberjacks.

The problem, as Mr. Power saw it, wasn’t that McCulloch lost contact with its customers. Instead, the problem was who the company defined as a customer in the first place. Mr. Power and his contemporaries inside McCulloch’s research department understood there was another market for their chainsaws just sitting there ripe for the picking. By completely ignoring the growing segment of residential chainsaw owners, McCulloch not only failed to understand the needs of residential users, it never fully realized the potential size of the residential market. Unlike the professional lumbermen of the Northwest, residential users cared about things such as weight and noise. While their professional counterparts used these saws to clear entire forests, private homeowners were more concerned with pruning a few branches and cutting firewood, a fact that gave them an entirely different set of needs.

Excerpted from Satisfaction: How Every Great Company Listens to the Voice of the Customer by Chris Denove and James D. Power IV. Published by the Penguin Group, New York, 2006.

080111_Standing_Man

The Standing Man, Waiting For Things Now Arbitrary and Accidental

photographed in Chinatown, Manhattan, New York on June 19, 2011

The cab left him at number four thousand four on that street in the northwest part of Buenos Aires. It was not yet nine in the morning; the man noted with approval the spotted plane trees, the square plot of earth at the foot of each, the respectable houses with their little balconies, the pharmacy alongside, the dull lozenges of the paint and hardware store. A long windowless hospital wall backed the sidewalk on the other side of the street; the sun reverberated, farther down, from some greenhouses. The man thought that these things (now arbitrary and accidental and in no special order, like the things one sees in dreams) would in time, if God willed, become invariable, necessary and familiar. In the pharmacy window porcelain letters spelled out the name “Breslauer”; the Jews were displacing the Italians, who had displaced the Creoles. It was better that way; the man preferred not to mingle with people of his kind.

Excerpted from “The Waiting” by Jorge Luis Borges, appearing in Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings. Translated by James E. Irby, published by New Directions, New York, 1962.