Friday, August 18, 2006

They can have my Economist when they pry it from my cold dead hands 

Chad waves the white flag on the best weekly news magazine in the world.
Not that there's anything wrong with the weekly magazine. Far from it. It's an excellent source for world news, especially business and economic, and provides a perspective that you will not find in the US media. If I was limited to only being able to take one magazine on a flight (and we may be headed for such Draconian measures), it would be The Economist.

However, with my daily newspaper, bi-weekly magazine, monthly journal, and book (to say nothing of the pearls posted by Saint Paul and Atomizer every six weeks or so) reading, I find myself with no time to keep up with the weekly delivery of The Economist. I'm lucky to skim through the contents and read one or two articles before the next issue lands. Then there are two of them demanding my attention and inspiring bouts of regret and guilt.
I understand. At one time I subscribed to NR, Weekly Standard, The New Republic, Harper's and The Economist. Just before I started this blog in 2002 I finally started dropping them. Only The Economist remains. Its locus is what I politely call "the men's reading room" ("because when a man's gotta, um, read, there'd better be nobody doing their damned makeup in there.") The articles mostly are short enough so that two fit in one reading. This allows for fairly complete coverage; I have it sent to my office so that I can read the one or two long articles before taking it to its final commode.

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