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Megan McArdle

Megan McArdle - Megan McArdle is a senior editor for The Atlantic who writes about business and economics. She has worked at three start-ups, a consulting firm, an investment bank, a disaster recovery firm at Ground Zero, and The Economist. More

Megan was born and raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and yes, she does enjoy her lattes, as well as the occasional extra-dry skim-milk cappuccino. Her checkered work history includes three start-ups, four years as a technology project manager for a boutique consulting firm, a summer as an associate at an investment bank, and a year spent as sort of an executive copy girl for one of the disaster-recovery firms at Ground Zero … all before the age of 30.

While working at Ground Zero, Megan started Live From the WTC, a blog focused on economics, business, and cooking. She may or may not have been the first major economics blogger, depending on whether we are allowed to throw outlying variables such as Brad Delong out of the set. From there it was but a few steps down the slippery slope to freelance journalism. She has worked in various capacities for The Economist, where she wrote about economics and oversaw the founding of Free Exchange, the magazine's economics blog. She has also maintained her own blog, Asymmetrical Information, which moved to The Atlantic, along with its owner, in August 2007.

Megan holds a bachelor's degree in English literature from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago. After a lifetime as a New Yorker, she now resides in northwest Washington, D.C., where she is still trying to figure out what one does with an apartment larger than 400 square feet.

Jokes that stopped being funny the first day of high school

By Megan McArdle
Mar 28 2008, 7:53 AM ET Comment

I beg everyone, for the good of the nation . . . no more book reviews, newspaper columns, or devastating web repartee that consists of taking either

1) An out of context quote
2) A piece of self-deprecating humor from the target

And adding "Why, yes, you sure are!", or some close variant of same.

If you are too big to be stuffed into a locker by the kids with muscles and social skills, you are too old for this to evoke anything except an empathetic cringe. You can do better than this. And if not, they sell books of jokes in Barnes and Noble now.

Corollary: "This is beyond self-parody" is . . . well, you know.

Second corollary: sarcasm works only if you are really good at it. The ability to stretch out the word "riiiiiiight" over most of the half-time show does not count as being really good at it.

Third corollary: copulating inanimate objects excreting onto various surfaces and kicking each other in the large muscle group are not nearly as entertaining as you think they are. They are even less entertaining in print.

Fourth corollary: Naked incredulity is an adequate compositional style only when a baby panda crawls up a flagpole to rescue Jenna Bush, or Cher books a concert tour. Otherwise . . . did you really say that? I mean, okay, that's an adequate start. But then I need something more. For example, do you know anyone in law enforcement who can stop Cher before she dies again?

C'mon guys . . . the children are watching. Don't you care about the future of your country?

Update This is culled from watching the comments, on this blog and others, that commenters direct at each other. We have many witty and intelligent people in this comment section from both sides of the aisle. It pains me to watch the discourse in the comments degenerate into "You're a big fat *loser*, moron!" I thrill to the more amusingly pointed debate, but then my heart sinks as once again, some troll wanders in from outside and calls the other commenters "a bunch of retards". Leaving aside the fact that undoubtedly a number of our readers have loved ones who are developmentally disabled, this is neither amusing nor enlightening.

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