The current issue of The Economist has a leader supporting the Google settlement and an article in the business section that quotes me in the course of discussing the issue. I am described, with my enthusiastic consent, as running an orphanage. The more I think of it the better the orphan metaphor works. Orphan works are orphans of a particular type — foundlings. They are not orphaned by a premature loss of their parents. They are left on the doorstep, taken in (by the library, of course, in the role of the tough but kind orphanage staff), nurtured and kept for as long as care is needed. They may have parents out there and they may not, no one knows. And now there is some hope that they will be invited to the dance, and we shall see how the story plays out.

The Economist interviewed me about the settlement at some length, and made a podcast that I quite like. It recapitulates fairly painlessly (it’s 13 minutes) some of things that I’ve been saying about the Google lawsuit and settlement for some time.

And, for something completely different and arguably more important, Paul Krugman has a superb piece entitled “How Did Economists Get It So Wrong” in the New York Times Magazine of September 6. What’s remarkable is how economists got it so wrong 70 years after Keynes got it so right. Anyhow, this is a testimonial for Krugman’s piece from an admiring economist.