Malinovski taped a walk with Self. That was the interview. The first place the pair walked to was the airport’s Ground Transportation desk. There, Self asked the woman at the counter for the best route to take in order to reach Manhattan on foot.

“You want to . . . walk . . . out of the airport?” It was as much a statement as a question–or as much a question as a statement.

“Yes,” Self replied.

“You want to walk,” she repeated, just to make sure she’d heard right. “You mean, like . . . walk.”

“Yes,” Self repeated.

After she recovered, the Ground Transportation representative pointed Self and Malinovski in the right direction. And soon, after some highway-hopping–and an impromptu cemetery tour–they were walking the streets of residential Queens, Manhattan-bound.

For Self, this airport-walking is nothing new. He has walked from his home in London all the way to Heathrow; and trekked the 18 miles from O’Hare to Chicago’s Loop. “Walking after flying grounds one, literally,” says Self. “It reconnects you with the earth.”

Self began walking for fitness, but he has come to see it as much more, as “an insurgency against the contemporary world, an act of refusal, of dissent.”” (Walking Is Transportation)

“At a Harvard panel discussion…, Gregory Mankiw–Harvard economist and Chair of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers 2003-2005, made an interesting point: The liquidity crisis isn’t real. Or, to restate it: Any liquidity crisis is caused by the promise of a government bailout. Greg said that his many friends in investment banking said that there is plenty of money to invest in financial services, but right now it is ‘sitting on the sidelines.’ Why? Because the financial services industry does not want to pay the terms required to get that money back in circulation (e.g., give up equity). As he put it, why do business with Warren Buffett who will negotiate a tough deal, if you believe that the government will ride in soon with cheaper cash?” (Credit Slips)

Arnold Kling: “For a different and important perspective on the financial crisis, I want to draw your attention to Robert Merton’s remarks at Thursday’s Harvard forum, linked to here. The Nobel Laureate begins with a back-of-the-envelope calculation. Data suggest that between June of 2007 and June of 2008, average home prices in the U.S. fell by 16 to 18 percent. Near the peak of the housing market, total housing wealth was between $20 and $23 trillion.

Simple multiplication says that we have lost somewhere around $3.5 to $4 trillion. As Merton says,

When you have this wealth loss, nothing that’s done here will resurrect it.

On top of that, not mentioned by Merton but alluded to by Rogoff, there is the drop in wealth represented by the decline in the dollar. Marking our assets to world prices, a lower dollar lowers our wealth. Furthermore, Rogoff and other economists believe that the dollar decline has further to go.” (econlib)

Theodore Dalrymple: “There is a fashion these days for apologies: not apologies for the things that one has actually done oneself (that kind of apology is as difficult to make and as unfashionable as ever), but for public apologies by politicians for the crimes and misdemeanours of their ancestors, or at least of their predecessors. I think it is reasonable to call this pattern of political breast-beating the False Apology Syndrome.” (InCharacter)

Believing You Are Right Even When You’re Not by Robert Burton — “What do we do when we recognize that a false certainty feels the same as certainty about the sky being blue?

…In his brilliant new book, Burton systematically and convincingly shows that certainty is a mental state, a feeling like anger or pride that can help guide us, but that doesn’t dependably reflect objective truth… In the polarizing atmosphere of the 2008 election, On Being Certain ought to be required reading for every candidate — and for every citizen.” — ForbesLife (Amazon)