Amazon offers the following advice for shipping to APO addresses:
* Enter the recipient's full name and address in the relevant fields.
* Enter "APO" or "FPO" in the City field.
* Enter "AE" in the State/Province/Region field if the recipient is stationed in Europe, Canada, Africa, or the Middle East. Enter "AA" if the recipient is stationed in the Americas. Enter "AP" if the recipient is stationed in Asia or the Pacific.
* Regardless of where the recipient is stationed, select "United States" from the Country drop-down menu.
Following these steps will ensure that you're charged the correct shipping amount and that your order will be delivered in a timely fashion. All shipments to APO/FPO addresses are sent via U.S. Priority or First Class Mail and should be delivered within 3 to 7 business days from the date of shipment.
Please note that the following items cannot be shipped to APO/FPO addresses: Apparel, camera and photo items, cell phones and service, computers, most electronics items, hardware, housewares, jewelry, kitchen items, magazines, outdoor living items, software (including games), and tools.
Contrary to what some readers have feared, there does not appear to be any problem shipping s to an APO address. But I'll see how my order goes.
Reader Mitch Berkson writes, "Amazon is having a buy-two-get-one-free sale today on s."
Posted by Virginia Postrel on September 26, 2003 • Comments
USA Today reports on Iraqis' entrepreneurial response to post-Saddam conditions:
[M]erchants such as Mazouri already are cashing in. Television sets, refrigerators and boxes of satellite receivers are stacked 10 feet high on the sidewalks of Baghdad's shopping districts. Shoppers who have waited for years to be able to spend their hoarded dollars are out in force.
"When I started in late April, I was receiving one container of DiStar goods per month," Mazouri says. "Now, I am getting five to six containers." Each container holds about 270 television sets or 3,800 satellite receiver units. He says he is grossing $20,000 a day. "All the sales are done in cash."
There was plenty of pent-up demand. Sanctions imposed by the United Nations after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990 kept a lot of goods out of the country. Before that, an eight-year war with Iran drained the life from Iraq's economy. For nearly 20 years, there was little to buy. And during three decades of rule by Saddam's Baath Party, virtually all companies were state-owned or state-controlled. In 2001, Iraq's gross domestic product was $27.9 billion, compared with $47.6 billion in 1980.
Since the collapse of Saddam's regime, police Officer Gailan Wahoudi, 31, has bought a new television, a refrigerator and an air conditioner. "It is a new freedom I never had before," he says.
TVs, refrigerators, and air conditioners--Anna Quindlen won't like this news.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on September 25, 2003 • Comments
Ben Zycher sorts out the two big myths of California tax policy.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on September 25, 2003 • Comments
Conservative students at SMU held a discriminatory bake sale to protest affirmative action. They charged white males $1/cookie, white women 75 cents, Latinos 50 cents, and blacks 25 cents. It was an obvious publicity stunt disguised as a consciousness raising protest.
And everyone followed the usual script. A black student got mad and complained to the university, which shut down the protest while hypocritically declaring its support for free speech. Press coverage followed. Here's the Dallas Morning News account. Eugene Volokh weighs in here.
D Magazine's Tim Rogers explained why everyone involved got what they wanted from the little stunt--and suggests a smarter response than squelching free speech.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on September 25, 2003 • Comments
Three earthquakes, including one that could come in at 8.0, have hit Japan's northern Hokkaido island, triggering a 7-foot tsunami. (MSNBC report, via InstaPundit.) Japan is better equipped to deal with big quakes than most countries, but nobody knows exactly what to expect from one this big.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on September 25, 2003 • Comments
I've updated the Book Tour page to include speeches at UCLA on November 4 and NYU on November 13. I'll be on the West Coast next week, with a couple of bookstore appearances in the Bay Area. (I have no public appearances in L.A.)
I'll be on NPR's "Talk of the Nation" on Monday and, for Angelenos, KPCC's Airtalk on Tuesday. Logistics willing, I'll also be visiting Hugh Hewitt in his secret studio. Stay tuned for more information.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on September 25, 2003 • Comments
Fooled by a return to Central Time, I missed the first half of the California gubernatorial debate, so I can't comment on the whole. But I'm sure of one thing: The debate would have been far more substantive without Arianna Huffington constantly changing the subject--and even better if they'd had a competent moderator. In either of those parallel universes, Bustamante would have looked much worse.
Arnold didn't offer much substance, and I certainly came away from what I saw with no confidence that he could clean up the state's fiscal mess. But the contrast between his generalities and the wonky unelectability of McClintock and Comejo suggests that perhaps substance is too scary for California voters. A smooth operator like Arnold may be just what the electorate ordered.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on September 25, 2003 • Comments
He claims to be 6'2", which happens to be Steve's height. He's not. He's significantly shorter. When you meet him, you think, "He's kinda short." Andrew Sullivan guesses he's 5'9". I'd say 5'10" max. Not really short--more like average height. But a lot shorter than he seems in the movies, and significantly shorter than Steve. He didn't tower over me, and I'm 5'5", maybe 5'8" in heels.
Why lie about his height? Because, I suspect, that's what actors do. It's too petty to make much difference vis a vis gubernatorial qualifications, but it does make him look silly and insecure.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on September 24, 2003 • Comments
Since I mentioned that my hotel had free Wi-Fi in the rooms, everal readers have asked where I stayed in NYC. The hotel was the Omni Berkshire Place, part of a chain that is installing free Wi-Fi in all its rooms.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on September 24, 2003 • Comments
Why not beautify downtown Dallas by tightening regulation on ugly parking lots? My latest D Magazine column looks at that question, focusing on the experiences of a downtown fanatic who happens to own a lot of lots. (I have no idea what the bizarre stray line at the end of my author credit is supposed to mean. But it has nothing to do with me, or with parking lots.)
Posted by Virginia Postrel on September 24, 2003 • Comments