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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DISPATCHES
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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