ipo via art? (standard)
this is almost interesting, though bruce nauman sold shares in himself, which is interesting.
(Saturday, December 30, 2000)

yves of destruction (nyt magazine)
"Saint Laurent is 64 now. He was 21 when he achieved fame, as Christian Dior's successor. Since then, he has lived in a kind of permanent adolescence, surrounded by the same friends he has known for 30 or 40 years, protected by the same man, even adored by a series of small dogs that are only technically different dogs since each was given the same name. 'It doesn't matter at all what is real or not,' Bergé says, laughing a little. 'Everything must be the same, and that may be because Yves is frightened everything will be replaced.' This refusal to admit life's normal regrets has, of course, marked Saint Laurent with a permanent innocence. It explains why people describe him in mystical-artist terms -- Yves lives in the clouds," his friend Betty Catroux says; 'Yves is like Proust,' Bergé says -- but it doesn't account for how a skinny kid from Oran, Algeria, also managed to be a star at 21 and have his own fashion house by 25. 'Ambition, ambition, ambition -- from the beginning,' Sanchez says."
(Saturday, December 30, 2000)

frankfurt (nyt)
"Recent surveys suggest that a conservative-nationalist mood may be ascendant in Germany. Over the past year, the number of Germans who believe defense of the nation state is important has risen to 56 percent from 48 percent, according to surveys conducted for the European Union. Other polls suggest that as many as 67 percent of Germans feel there are too many foreigners in the country.

"But Frankfurt has not experienced the xenophobic attacks of some other smaller German towns, suggesting that anti-immigrant violence may often exist in inverse proportion to the number of foreigners actually present.

"'We have few problems in Frankfurt and many in Dessau, where immigrants are one percent of the population,' Otto Schily, Germany's interior minister, said in an interview. 'Fears of foreigners are often wild fantasies.'"
(Saturday, December 30, 2000)

earth at night
this is beautiful and strangely moving. this image makes the human experiment look awfully lonely. but maybe that's just my association from cross-country red-eye flights.
(Thursday, December 28, 2000)

california's electricity disaster (nyt)
"Whatever steps are taken to solve the financial crisis in the short-term, everyone agrees that more power plants and stringent conservation are needed. 'We've got a ton of power plants in the pipeline and all of them are good,' said Daniel Kirshner, an environmentalist who is on the board of the System Operator. 'But we have to get the religion that energy conservation is even better.'"

Amen, brother.
(Saturday, December 23, 2000)

ping pong bravado (onion)
"You should see him when he gets going. You'd think ping-pong was some kind of ESPN2 extreme sport," Hersh said. "He's all like, 'Time for a serious ass-kicking, Jason. Think you can take it when I bring the hammer down on you? Think you can handle the humiliation of another devastating defeat at the hands of the master?' Then, whenever he scores a point, he shouts, 'Boo-Ya!' and does this gloating victory dance, strutting back and forth and waving his arms in the air. I mean, it's ping-pong, for Christ's sake."

um, this sounds like the games at viant.
(Wednesday, December 20, 2000)

night before xmas 1998 (suck)
"Trudging through mud, jolly St. Nicholas came,
"And squawked, squalled, and called them all by the same name.
"'Now, Bitch! Now, Bitch! Now, Bitch! I said Now!
On Bitch! On Bitch! Don't ask which, why, or how!'"
(Wednesday, December 20, 2000)

dot coms aren't cool!?! (standard)
"For many, of course, big bucks, not creative freedom, was the thing that made dot-coms cool. Just as it had for artists-turned-entrepreneurs, the boom promised coolness – albeit a variety pegged entirely to the bottom line – to this assortment of Wall Street transplants, wanderlust-afflicted lawyers, MBAs sprung from McKinsey and frustrated hackers who might otherwise be making ends meet as bike messengers. But again, when the bubble burst, the hip factor disappeared quickly, too. At the height of the Internet boom, say current and former dot-commers, telling a stranger about their place of employment elicited envy. Recently, though, the typical reaction has been pity. "You used to hear, 'Oh! Can you get me friends-and-family shares?'" recalls one Silicon Alley refugee. "Now it's more like, 'Oh ... are you all right?'""
(Tuesday, December 19, 2000)

kibu kool-aid (standard)
"So I was surprised when the editorial meeting I called the next day turned out to be not another chummy lovefest, but the most frustrating meeting I'd ever run – and this includes the time I volunteered to lead a group of troubled teens in prison. After some witty introductory remarks, I handed out proposed deadlines and production schedules for each channel, which were met not with appreciation or relief ('We need structure!' the Faces had beseeched at the prelaunch party), but with dead silence and blank stares. The only noise in the room came from a dropped metal hair clip that the Face of Hair was using to style the Face of Books' hair."
(Tuesday, December 19, 2000)

wireless for the world's poor (nyt)
"'The advantage is that the existing infrastructure in these countries is often terrible,' said Kent Lupberger, manager of communications investments at the International Finance Corporation, the investment banking arm of the World Bank. 'And even in the worst places, there are people with money that are desperate for a viable communications network.'"
(Tuesday, December 19, 2000)

mayan suburbs (nyt)
"A few of the main roads extended beyond to another distinct band of suburbs, between three and five miles out. Here the Chases found several clusters of nonresidential buildings — the strip malls of antiquity. In at least two cases, they said, the roads seemed to end at plazas centered around pre-existing settlements, perhaps early examples of urban sprawl engulfing once independent communities.

"Dr. Diane Chase saw in this pattern an ancient corollary to the modern phenomenon described by Joel Garreau, an urban theorist, in his 1991 book, 'Edge City.'

"Edge cities are suburban communities where people not only live in the shadow of a larger city but also have developed additional means of creating wealth outside the direct influence of the central city. These places build their own retail, corporate and administrative infrastructure, becoming smaller epicenters within a larger megalopolis."

Who would have thought that suburbia was a part of the landscape that long ago? It must be (shudder) in our DNA somewhere.
(Tuesday, December 19, 2000)

how to avoid a hangover
"When the man in the jacket offers to buy you a drink, tell him no thanks, you can't stay. Ask him how he keeps his steel-toed boots looking so new, his fingernails so clean, his hands so smooth. Instead, you say, bourbon. You don't have to talk to him. You owe him nothing. But that would be impolite."
(Monday, December 18, 2000)

as dotcoms go, so go dotcom consultants (nyt)
"But even before the announcements of troubles at Viant, Scient, MarchFirst and others, the prices of their shares started to plummet. In the last year, Scient's stock has fallen from a high of $133.75 to $3.03; Viant, from $63.56 to $3.88; and MarchFirst, from more than $60 to $1.88. The companies' trajectories have mirrored those of the dot-coms that were their early clients."

As I've said before, big overhead necessitates having to go after bigger clients for bigger projects. There aren't enough of those around to justify a dozen huge e-consulting firms. Which is why their stock prices have tanked, their cash reserves are dwindling, and their employees are being handed severance checks.

Small niche shops can survive on a much more modest deal flow. Which is why I'm quite happy that we have fewer than fifteen people on staff in our office.
(Saturday, December 16, 2000)

incentivized
this more or less describes the model i'm working within right now. hopefully it stays intact.
(Saturday, December 16, 2000)

more of the same (nyt)
"George W. Bush said today that he was concerned about a "possible slowdown" in the economy and called the change in the economic outlook an argument for going forward next year with his campaign proposal for a sweeping, $1.3 trillion tax cut across a decade."

Okay, let's review. Twelve years of trickle-down, supply-side economics did not work. Cutting taxes in a huge way right as we're entering a recession (or a "slowdown") is a good way to put the government back into debt. Looks like we're going to have a replay of 1989-1992. Oh joy.
(Saturday, December 16, 2000)

fuse goes away after just one issue (mediaweek)
"Looking out the window, she started thinking about an article from the Financial Times that declared, 'Jobs are no longer just jobs, they're lifestyle choices.' And then, she says, 'it hit me: what would happen if you married a magazine like Fortune with a magazine like InStyle, and created a younger, hipper business-oriented lifestyle magazine?'"

You'd have a very interesting magazine, but one that didn't have enough time to take off. Put this in the pile with Madison.
(Thursday, December 14, 2000)

gore humor (cnn)
"'[Gore] said he would be inviting all of us to holiday parties at his house and then jokingly gave directions: 'You go up Massachusetts Avenue; my house is the one with the people outside yelling, 'get out of Dick Cheney's house.''"
(Wednesday, December 13, 2000)

clinton declares self president for life (onion)
i may have linked this already. it would be better than four years of dubya, for sure.
(Wednesday, December 13, 2000)

etiquette is not dead (onion)
"When fucking your hostess doggy-style, make sure you are not forcing her face into the boeuf au poivre."
(Wednesday, December 13, 2000)

(the right to vote and the) supremes (nyt op-ed)
"All but lost in the pinched legalisms dwelled on by the Supreme Court in yesterday's oral arguments was any sign that the court has its eye on the lodestar that should guide the resolution of the presidential election. Now, as in the beginning of this matter, every ballot in which the intent of the voter can be determined should be counted. On earlier occasions when equally momentous national issues came before the Supreme Court, the sort of detailed legal and constitutional debate that unfolded yesterday over the Florida vote might merely have been the prologue to a landmark ruling that guided American society to higher ground, like the 1954 school desegregation decision. That can still be the case here, if the justices have the wisdom and vision to look beyond the tangled circumstances in Florida and shape a decision about extracting the people's verdict from the nearly six million votes cast in Florida.

"It would be Panglossian to suggest that that seems the likely outcome. The Supreme Court's handling of the Florida case thus far betrays little passion for the overarching themes of democracy. That is not surprising for a court that often takes a minimalist approach to enforcing individual rights."
(Tuesday, December 12, 2000)

all about the florida calls on election night (inside)
"At 5:30, I walked outside to have a cigarette and call Governor Bush. He answered and immediately asked: 'Is it really this close?' He already had all the new second-wave numbers and expressed disbelief at some of what he had been told. 'Yeah,' I said, 'it's really close.' 'Well, what do you think?' he asked. 'I have no idea,' I replied. And I thought to myself, Jesus Christ, it's almost 6 p.m. on Election Day and I have total access to every piece of relevant data regarding this election and I'm still not certain who's going to win. 'Well, keep in touch,' he said."
(Monday, December 11, 2000)

saudi arabia starts to open up (nyt)
"In the four years since King Fahd suffered a stroke and relinquished day-to-day management to Abdullah, barricades have slowly begun to crumble. The Saudi leadership, accustomed to rule through censorship and subsidies, may not have chosen to see them fall. But satellite television, the Internet, globalization and a stagnant job market — all the accumulating shocks that threaten the insularity of rigid regimes — have caught up with the leadership.

"'We cannot sit by ourselves and say we don't need others,' said Prince Turki bin Muhammad, the undersecretary for political affairs in the Saudi Foreign Ministry and a nephew of the crown prince. 'We are part of the international community. We have to live and work with it.'"

There was a tone of worry in the article that the Saudis might turn anti-American, but that's one of the risks of a closed country opening up. That's one of the reasons America supports so many dictatorial states around the world: close control means no public criticsm. Just as the Saudis "have to live and work with" the world, so does America.

Though not, presumably, if Dubya has anything to do with it.
(Monday, December 4, 2000)

russian healthcare deteriorates (nyt)
"Oleg V. Rutkovsky, the chief doctor and a former Russian health minister, insists that patients here do exceedingly well. 'We have a 3 percent mortality rate,' he said, 'despite the fact that the trauma unit takes some very severe cases.' The 1998 rate for American hospitals was 2.6 percent.

"'Despite great differences in technology and drugs and insurance systems between your country and ours, patients in Russia do get better,' Dr. Letvena agreed. 'Despite a lack of medicine, nurses and doctors manage to do many things and reach the same results that American doctors do.'"

Which is amazing, when you consider that Russian hospitals are underfunded, understaffed, are lacking medicine and blood, and have a broken infrastructure. It's going to take a huge international commitment to save the place, but I doubt the West will do anything about it until it's reached crisis proportions.
(Monday, December 4, 2000)

speaking of christopher alexander (see 11/00)
"a pattern language" is now online, with a horrendous interface and user experience. it's all very cutesy, with its bookshelf metaphor (patent pending) and bizarre opening sequence. it's also coded in such a way that it takes interminably long to load. i think that my favorite part, though, is the bad woodgrain on the shelf.

(courtesy memepool via ray l.)
(Saturday, December 2, 2000)

give the gift of mcsweeneys
this is great marketing. flat-out.
(Friday, December 1, 2000)

public transportation, yes! (onion)
yet more proof that the onion is actually a 'real' newspaper.
(Friday, December 1, 2000)