The economic crisis in Europe is already hard enough to understand. Journalists should inform us if we’re screwed, and how screwed we are. Thing unravels when they start substituting literary fiction and an extended scatological metaphor for fact.
Silvio Berlusconi watched the recent economic volatility from his Sardinian villa. He is taking a seaside view of the crisis, says the Financial Times, noting that Italian economic policy is “in effect being dictated from outside as Italy becomes the latest front line in the battle to save the euro
The USDA recently replaced the almighty food pyramid with a color-coded pie chart. To celebrate our nation’s mixed metaphors about healthy eating, one man decides to spend a month attempting to follow every government recommendation he can find. Nowhere is pie advised.
“We now return to your regularly scheduled programming, namely [the] collapse of the Eurozone,” remarked economist Tyler Cowen on Twitter, as a debt ceiling deal seemed in sight. While Cowen is flippant, the European rescue package announced last month hasn’t calmed investors. Italian and Spanish bond yields hit an
Crisis averted, Europe is forever saved, and Eurozonia is back on the path to glory. Following an emergency meeting of Eurozone countries on July 21, a “Marshall Plan” for Europe was announced and a virtual European International Monetary Fund created. A Marshall Plan for a peacetime crisis of Europe’s
“Uhhhh, what’s happening in Greeeeeece?” asked an apathetic Australian friend recently, as we saw riots in Athens on television, sitting in a Berlin bar. My explanation was pathetic. Being so close to Europe in my heart and so heavily invested in all of it in my relationship, my work,
Seeking greater self-discipline and new adventures, our writer moves to Berlin to play tennis—the sport that’s equal parts therapy and sadism—and winds up on Nabokov’s old courts.
Does your minor want to be a miner? How about a McNugget cook? Welcome to KidZania, a revolutionary theme park coming soon to the U.S. that lets kids play at corporate-sponsored employment.
If you read “Outside,” stay home. When we celebrate a hiker who sawed off his hand, we pay tribute to an idiot and ignore countless smarter climbers.
Overly dramatic portrayals of drowning in movies and TV spread deadly disinformation. This and other tropes show that if you believe everything you see, it could kill you.
