Archives for September 2003

More rabid than Kim’s mountain lion

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The Washington Post today has a review of the “24″ season 2 box set and it says it’s much better than the first one because it has lots of extras. “Some of this extra material, including much of the audio commentary, is extraneous,” the reviewer says, “But ‘24′ fans — who are more rabid than the mountain lion that stalked Kim in episode 11 — will likely love the behind-the-scenes documentary and some of the deleted scenes, including two that show alternate versions of the season’s cliffhanger.” Here here to that!

Sep 18, 2003 | Comment

Thanks

Thanks to the stranger who got me a bunch of stuff from my Amazon wish list. I assume it’s for putting up my first year notes online. I said that if anyone really wanted to thank me, they could get me something from my wishlist. If it’s not because of that, thanks anyway. I’d love to know why, though. I can’t believe people just like this site so much they want to give me free stuff. But hey, let me not discourage you. My wish list is here.

Sep 10, 2003 | Comment

The substance of Postrel

th substance of styleJust came back from seeing Virginia Postrel speak at AEI about her new book, The Substance of Style. The talk was good and summarized all that I’ve read of it, the first 50 pages, which makes me wonder what the other 200 pages are about. Her thesis seems to be an obvious observation studied in detail: that on the margin humans have always valued aesthetics, but we want big amounts of it on the margin now because we’re at a stage of development were function, quality, and low price are givens. This leads to mass differentiation of products (i.e. 100 different kinds of toothbrush at any drug store), which is made possible by advances in manufacturing, logistics, and credit.

Kudos to Postrel for an almost impossible feat: a PowerPoint presentation that didn’t suck. Her slides actually complemented her talk and were never obstructive or distracting. People who understand design–especially graphic design–will know that this is quite an accomplishment.

Kudos to Johan Norberg for asking the question I didn’t have the guts to ask, and for asking it in the most polite way possible. He asked, “Who designed your book cover, and are you happy with it?” The bottom line is that it’s an ugly cover, but for a book about style and aesthetics, it’s terrible. She said the designer at Harper Collins designed it and that she was happy with it. But I don’t know. I think she was biting her tongue or at least not happy that question was asked.

So far I’m really enjoying the book. I’ll write a review about it and tell you more. I’ll probably do so after we discuss it in what has now been dubbed ‘the blogger book club.’

Sep 9, 2003 | Comment

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