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divabat (2)

After receiving a $20,000 grant from the Australia Council, Denis Beaubois set about creating his artwork, Currency, 2011, by withdrawing $20,000 from a teller at the Reserve Bank of Australia and writing down the serial numbers. The artwork sold at auction yesterday for $17,500. [more inside]
posted by robcorr on Aug 31, 2011 - 75 comments

You can learn a fair bit about a person by asking them what they'd attempt to save if their house was on fire. [more inside]
posted by gman on May 14, 2011 - 179 comments

The ten strangest sentences in David Brooks' latest book "The Social Animal"
posted by The Whelk on May 4, 2011 - 64 comments

Out of thin air? "Have you ever said something like 'Let me buy you a beer next week'? I'm sure you have. We all issue promises of this sort. And we frequently use such promises as a form of currency... I have just described a simple credit exchange. Societies rely heavily on promising-making and promise-keeping. It is the foundation of all financial markets. I'd like to point out something about the promises you make. They are made 'out of thin air.' " [more inside]
posted by kliuless on Apr 14, 2011 - 47 comments

The New Economics Foundation, also responsible for the Happy Planet Index and Jubilee 2000 campaign, has released a study (full text here) about the values and costs of different professions to society.
posted by emjaybee on Jan 10, 2010 - 16 comments

STEP 1 Buy 100 pieces of crap from thrift stores and garage sales.
STEP 2 Get 100 authors to write a fiction about pieces of crap.
STEP 3 ???
STEP 4 Profit!
Significant Objects hosts the stories for all 100 pieces of crap/art, but the last six are still available for bidding: Blue Vase by Lauren Mechling, Umbrella Trinket by Bruce Holland Rogers, Lighter Shaped Like a Small Pool Ball by Rob Agredo, Bar Mitzvah Bookends by Stacey Levine, Geisha Bobblehead by Edward "ed" Champion, and Missouri Shotglass by Jonathan Lethem.
posted by carsonb on Nov 14, 2009 - 12 comments

The recession has hit the theatre world (and the arts scene in general) very hard - but some argue that theatre practitioners aren't doing themselves any favours when seeking funding. The main question insufficiently addressed is "who is the funding for?" - hint: it's not about you. Approaching theatre as a product isn't working, not when MFA acting programs don't often allow its graduates to earn enough to earn back their debt. So now the question is: how can the economics of theatre be changed?
posted by divabat on Mar 29, 2009 - 60 comments

Why are these companies free? In which we learn about "negative enterprise value" and an interesting prospect of using a market collapse to get free money. "Seemingly, a buyer who can afford all of the shares can end up being paid to own these companies."
posted by Cool Papa Bell on Mar 12, 2009 - 28 comments

The Delta Project recently released a new report on Trends in College Spending. The NYTimes summarizes.
posted by SeizeTheDay on Jan 15, 2009 - 14 comments

Fortunes are rarely won by playing it safe. On the contrary, the biggest fortunes have been won by those willing to step outside the box and change the way the game is played. Following are twenty-five business innovators of the past, present, and future whose stories are different in many respects, but all point to the same truth: Ingenuity, improvisation, and daring are more important than following the rules (even though you might find yourself on the wrong side of the law once in a while). Via Fortune. [more inside]
posted by infini on Aug 2, 2008 - 31 comments

Teams of student entrepreneurs around the world had six days to add value to a stack of Post-It notes as part of Global Entrepreneurship Week. The results are documented in Imagine It!, which aims to promote creative thinking. [more inside]
posted by divabat on May 7, 2008 - 20 comments

Valiant Comics are Back! After a brief surge in popularity and value at the start of 1991, Valiant comics soon died during the great comic crash of the mid nineties. Now it seems that valiant comics are worth their weight in gold with comics worth only a few dollars (or less) a few years ago, now bringing in 200 dollars. Is this surge in price a sign of a new comic book crash or are collectors finally finding value in Turock and Man-O-War?
posted by drpartypoopercrankypantsesquire on Apr 9, 2004 - 17 comments

Does an appearance in the 1997 Disney flop "Flubber" make a classic T-bird worth more? Or less?
posted by kcmoryan on Nov 23, 2001 - 3 comments

Reed's Law is about how, under certain conditions ("Group Forming Networks") the value created by a network, rather than being quadratic as predicted by Metcalfe's Law, becomes exponential. What's interesting is his discussion of the kind of networks he's talking about (chat rooms, eBay and … MetaFilter?) and what happens in them. Trouble is, I can't quite follow him! Can you?
posted by rodii on Jan 29, 2001 - 1 comment