Reason made the Chicago Tribune's list of The 50 Best Magazines, coming in at number 21 (ten places above Harper's):
Dubbed a monthly for libertarians ("free minds and free markets"), it's not surprising that Reason has a small list of subscribers. But this magazine does everything well: culture, politics, religion, philosophy, and while other mags redesign to simplify and commercialize, Reason's redesign actually made it better.
More significant, I think, is how the surging importance of Internet publishing has finally gotten Reason into the "evoked set" of political journals. You no longer have to be on TV to count. You can be an active participant in the conversation led by blogs and websites. Congratulations to everyone involved.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on June 17, 2003 • Comments
With an assist from various ghosts, Chuck Freund "reads" the book Hillary Clinton "wrote." You should read his article.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on June 17, 2003 • Comments
My very own sister-in-law, Pam Postrel, contradicts me on Starbucks. (By way of backstory, she makes movie trailers.)
Must beg to differ with you on the lack of kids/strollers in Starbucks. At least here in Pasadena.
I remember remarking to friends that one weekday during my freelance life last year I found myself crowded around a Starbucks table with about five other mothers from Evie's kindergarten class planning the class Valentine's party. They came armed with dog-eared copies of Martha Stewart's Living and a bunch of other "motherhood" magazines I had never heard of, and yes, a couple of them had strollers with their younger kids in them. I, like David Frum's wife, asked in my best David Byrne voice, "How did I get here?" A far cry from studio filmmaker meetings, to be sure.
Also when freelancing, I found myself incapable of working in my office due to the distraction of the internet, and so worked in Starbucks frequently. As there's a Starbucks a stone's throw literally in every direction from my house, I found myself in a variety of them and there were often moms and babies in them, along with the Cal Tech and Fuller Seminary students.
I guess I just frequent the wrong Starbucks. But even in Plano, the moms are in the mall and the Starbucks is full of men in business attire (some of whom appear to be looking for jobs).
Posted by Virginia Postrel on June 17, 2003 • Comments
In his Sunday diary item, David Frum likened Maureen Dowd to Jayson Blair, accusing her of plagiarism.
Fresh from the scandal of being caught abusing ellipses to twist President Bush's words, she is now using other people's work to pad out a column when the deadline clock is tolling.
Yesterday, Dowd wrote one of her trademark gaseous columns about popular culture turning its back on the accomplishments of feminism, etc., etc.
As the column trudged wearily to its end, there unexpectedly appeared an unusual thought, vividly phrased: "There's even a retro trend among women toward deserting the fast track for a pleasant life of sitting around Starbucks gabbing with their girlfriends, baby strollers beside them....
Now compare Dowd's words to these, broadcast on National Public Radio's "Morning Edition" two weeks ago:
"You see them at Starbucks at two o'clock on a weekday afternoon, pushing a stroller and balancing a latte, with a slight look of bewilderment on their faces, as if to say, 'How did I end up here?'...Yet forty years after the launch of the women's movement, this is exactly what many former career women find themselves doing."
The broadcaster in question happened to be my wife, Danielle Crittenden, and the "trend" to which Dowd refers (in the late 1990s, the percentage of mothers of young children who worked dropped for the first time in a quarter century) provides the theme for Danielle's new novel.
If you hear something on the radio and then work the same idea into a column, that action may or may not be "plagairism." But it certainly isn't originality.
It's unlikely that Dowd came up with this idea herself, for a very simple reason: You hardly ever see a mother with a stroller in Starbucks.
I'm not saying it doesn't happen; the Starbucks in the Frums' neighborhood could be atypical. But Starbucks is the touchstone example in my own new book, and I've spent a fair amount of time hanging out in their stores. The typical Starbucks store is remarkably, and blessedly, child-free--the last non-alcoholic environment without the squeals of kids who haven't learned the meaning of "Use your inside voice," the last place adults (or teenagers) can have peaceful conversations without being carded.
At two o'clock on a weekday afternoon, the typical Starbucks is in fact a work environment, with business meetings in progress and free agents and students typing away on their laptops. Amanda Bright and her friends are pushing strollers through the malls, whose wide aisles and play amenities are kid-friendly. Starbucks is for the rest of us.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on June 16, 2003 • Comments
As noted below, my hard disk crashed last week. I took my computer to the Apple store on Wednesday, and they had it back to me Friday, with a new hard disk and 90% of the important data backed up. I had to spend a lot of time reinstalling software and reorganizing things, and I had to find a shareware utility to dig some "invisible files" off my backup drive, but all in all it was a fairly painless experience.
One piece of advice to Apple buyers: Always get the AppleCare. You're buying expensive hardware from a company that's best at software. Your computer almost certainly will need service. AppleCare covers advice from the store's Genius Bar and it also covers most repairs. (I did have to pay $54 for the data backup.)
Posted by Virginia Postrel on June 16, 2003 • Comments
A few years ago, I had the fun of speaking at the annual Pop!Tech conference, a wide-ranging confab on popular culture in the digital age. The conference is in Camden, Maine, a charming town full of Tocquevillian volunteers and semi-retired high-tech moguls (i.e., active investors)--just the combination you need to pull off a gathering like this. My friend Andrew Zolli is shepherding this year's program--the theme is "Sea Change"--and I'll be speaking on The Substance of Style. (And I've promised Bob Metcalfe that I won't read my speech.)
The conference is extending a special discount to Dynamist.com readers--$400 off the early-bird price of $1495. The catch is that you have to register by June 30. Here's Andrew's pitch:
The PopTech conference program is shaping up, and we have an opportunity to offer a special rate to readers of Dynamist.com! The discount is *substantial* - $400 off the $1495 admission fee. For the experience participants are going to have, this is a steal.
To be fair to everyone else, the offer is good only until June 30, at which time the rates will increase. That's why we want to get the word out right away.
Who is going to be there? Folks like...
* Geoffrey Ballard, the 'father' of the hydrogen fuel cell
* Constance Adams, the first architect to be hired by NASA to build 'liveable' spacecraft.
* Larry Lessig, head of the Stanford Center for Internet & Society
* Thomas Barnett, Leading theorist on the future of warfare at the Pentagon
* Juan Enriquez, author of As The Future Catches You and head of the HBS Life Sciences Program
* Golan Levin, digital artist extraordinaire
* Aubrey de Grey, pioneering Cambridge University anti-aging researcher
... and most importantly: Virginia Postrel! The final program will have more than 30 amazing speakers that I know will be mind-blowing.
To register, go here, where you'll see a special $1095 rate. If you run into any problems, email Andrew at andrew-at-zpluspartners.com. The current list of speakers is here.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on June 14, 2003 • Comments
I'm not doing a lot of blogging, because other technological marvels are soaking up all my time. First, my hard disk started to make disturbing noises, prompting a quick backup, followed by a system crash, followed by a trip to the Apple store. My computer has now gone home to Cupertino to have its hard disk replaced. I'm blogging from Steve's machine. I spent half of Thursday afternoon figuring out how to make it get my mail and let me into Movable Type. (This is what happens when you write down some, but not all, of the information you have automated on your crashed hard disk.)
I spent the rest of Thursday on my latest follow-up visit to the infamous Boothe Eye Care and Laser Center, where they take your money, fix your eyes, and waste your time. Lots and lots and lots of your time. I was lucky. I got out in four hours. Others were not so fortunate. The patients are a good-humored but aggravated lot. Dr. Boothe is careful to keep the new patients in a different suite from the returning ones, who might scare new people away with their tales of multiple four- and five-hour post-op visits.
At the end of July, I will be having a second procedure--an "enhancement," they call it--on my right eye, which is currently at 20/50. My left eye isn't quite 20/20, but it's close; with improvement in my right eye, my binocular vision should be 20/20 or very close. My appointment is for 5:30 a.m., which means I have to be there by 4:30 a.m. They wouldn't want me to make them late, after all.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on June 12, 2003 • Comments
I've never watched more than 15 seconds of Fox News's Hannity & Colmes, a show calculated to make me hit that remote ASAP. But there may soon be a reason to watch. Reportedly Dennis Miller is joining the show in a once-a-week slot.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on June 12, 2003 • Comments
In response to my post below, Brink Lindsey has added brief comments to his list of books he's read in the past 12 months.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on June 12, 2003 • Comments
A comment on the BBC2 documentary referred to below, from Dave Farber's Interesting-People listserve:
It really was a *truly remarkable* programme, and I strongly urge you and your IPers to see if you can get to see it somehow, perhaps via PBS.
It was called "Dan Cruickshank and the Raiders of the Lost Art", and was screened on BBC2 at 9pm on Sunday, 8 June. Don't let the cute title put you off. This was a one hour long documentary, by a serious historian, well-experienced in TV presentation, showing day by day during a return trip to Baghdad just after the war (he'd also made a trip there a few months before the war) how he gradually came to understand what must have happened at the Museum, and what sort of people were (and I fear still are) running it.
Unfortunately I cannot find the programme, or (at least yet) anything based on it, in the BBC's very comprehensive web-site - though I did come across a series of articles, by Cruickshank, based on one of his earlier programs about Afghanistan:
Afghanistan: At the Crossroads of Ancient Civilisations Once a cultural crossroads, Afghanistan has been ravaged by 22 years of war and the Taliban regime whose systematic destruction of the country's cultural heritage culminated in the blowing up of the Bamiyan Buddhas. Early in 2002, Dan Cruickshank travelled to Kabul to investigate what treasures remain and find out how Afghanistan's people have dealt with attempts to destroy their culture and national identity.
This will give you some idea of Cruickshank's talents.
Cheers
Brian Randell
School of Computing Science, University of Newcastle
Posted by Virginia Postrel on June 11, 2003 • Comments