Two exhibitions on Saturday: Calder at the Tate and Big Bang Data at Somerset House. There was something I didn’t like about both. Calder’s curators are apparently convinced that none of the motorised works can be allowed to run in case something terrible happens. Weirdly, they don’t draw the matching conclusion and weld the mobiles…
Read More Software is not a painting.Has anyone else noticed all the signs of change? Of course, it’s terrible. None of us is getting any younger. That isn’t quite what I mean, though. I mean signs, signage, graphic design in the public realm. There are a hell of a lot around that say something like X – it could be benefits,…
Read More #ischanging: the KEEP CALM of the future 2010s revivalThis BBC interview between Jeremy Paxman and David Bowie has gone viral, and with good reason. Partly this is because Bowie’s remarks about the Internet were prophetic and funny. But it is also fascinating for what it shows us about Paxman. It is only too obvious that Paxman knew nothing, literally nothing, of what he…
Read More Paxman is Ziggy Stardust.This economic paper is strange: Over the past thirty years, a great deal of business cycle research has been based on purely real models that abstract from the presence of nominal rigidities, and so (at least implicitly) assume that the Phillips curve is vertical. In this paper, I show that such models are fragile, in…
Read More when the facts change…Back in 2011 the government had been proposing to spend £190 million on a flood defence scheme for Leeds. Instead, they cancelled the scheme and only did £50m worth of the work. The scheme was based on a hypothetical worst-case flooding scenario. In 2011, the economic losses from such a flood were estimated at £500…
Read More Sound financeIf this Yorkshire Evening Post piece is at all accurate, Leeds RLFC is in the stone age and deeply irresponsible. The former Gold Coast Titans rake was knocked out twice in Rhinos’ Boxing Day defeat by Wakefield Trinity Wildcats and did not feature after the 35th minute. But the hooker insisted there is no long-lasting…
Read More Really, Leeds?