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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.

White men can't dance

By Megan McArdle
Jul 25 2008, 2:27 PM ET Comment

So speaking of guilty pleasures, one of mine is "So You Think You Can Dance", the dance version of American Idol.  I don't watch any of the other reality shows, the ones that bloggers proudly lay claim to, like Project Runway or Top Chef.  No, I just like watching people dance, mostly because I don't Think I Can.

What's struck me about this season is that with eight contestants left, three out of the four men were black.  For the last three seasons, the show has tended to be very, very white by the time it gets down to brass tacks.  This may be because the black dancers are very disproportionately hip-hop dancers, and don't have the technical skills of other contestants.  Or it may be racism.  Or it may just have been a fluke.  But it's interesting to see this turn around, at least temporarily.


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