The Spreadsheet and the Sweet Tea
A consultant flew in to tell us our productivity was down. He had a spreadsheet. We had the tea. One of these instruments has survived three recessions and a divorce.
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DISPATCHES
What the Server Farm Doesn't Grow
They built a data center on the Hollis place, where the corn used to be. It hums all night. The corn never hummed, but it fed people.
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Thirty-Six States Are Sawing Down Cameras, and Nobody Asked the Woman Who Already Knows Everything
Across at least thirty-six states, people have taken to sawing down the poles that hold up automated license-plate cameras. Meanwhile Doris at the Cut & Curl has been running a more accurate surveillance network since 1981, for free, with better customer service.
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The Quarterly Report and the County Fair
The quarterly report is a ritual of numbers dressed as narrative. The county fair is narrative disguised as numbers on ribboned pies.
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Forecasts in the Age of Kudzu
Predictive analytics and kudzu both forecast where we are headed. One is a spreadsheet, the other is already on your porch.
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The Economist Got It Wrong Again, But So Did My Uncle Leroy
There's a particular brand of confidence that comes from reading The Economist cover to cover and another from having survived sixty years in Chatham County. Both are insufferable. Both are occasionally right.
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Letters from a Reluctant Globalist
I've been to forty-seven countries and the thing I've learned is that everywhere has a version of my neighbor Clyde.
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What Davos Could Learn from the Siler City Flea Market
At the World Economic Forum they talk about stakeholder capitalism. At the Siler City flea market, Miss Delores has been practicing it since 1978.
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The Currency of Nonsense
The Economist devoted four pages to cryptocurrency. My mechanic asked a better question: If you can't hold it, is it real?
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