Curses, Foiled Again!

My clever plan to get lots of work done this summer--by losing my cell phone, seizing Laura D'Andrea Tyson's unused office Room 203 at BRIE's 2234 Piedmont Avenue, and hiding out there so that nobody could find me--has gone badly awry.

Yes, it is true that very few people from the Economics Department know where I am.

But my time is being absorbed by a large number of very smart and interesting people I haven't heard from in a while: people like Derek Bok, Richard Layard, Louis Gerstner, Michael Lind, Ray Kurzweil, George Soros, Gordon Brown, Frances Cairncross, John Seely Brown, Bill Emmott, and Amartya Sen.

They are all across the room clamoring for my attention, encased as they are in rows and rows of these small virtual-reality boxes.

You see, when Professor Tyson moved her base of operations back to her Business School office, she left too many of her books behind. So I am now distracted not just by my books, but by hers as well.

This is very dangerous. This is very distracting. I try to resist by repeating over and over again Rudi Dornbusch's mantra: "They don't pay me to read the literature; they pay me to write the literature."

But it is not working--not very well, at least.

Ah. Here is Sherry Gleid's Chronic Condition...

I am doomed.