Tomorrow Museum » Silvio Berlusconi

“ITEM 100237099149 was a bargain. Offered for sale on eBay on May 5th, it was a CD of the “income-tax returns for 2005 of the entire Italian people”. Until it was removed after a few hours, it could have been bought for around $75…” - The Economist

Posted by Joanne on May 10, 2008 | Comments | Link

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- The sky isn't falling but it sure is scary right now! Three Things I’d Like to See #2: PUBLISHERS LEAVING NEW YORK at Holt Uncensored (via.) What does the Random House reorg. mean? from Maud Newton. And Harper Studio's wonderful 26th Story explains How to Acquire A Book Publishing Company.
- Paige Phelps (who also wrote the piece on grey in fashion, I linked to the other day) blogs about Shu Uemura false lashes, while referencing the science of crypts "the squiggly lines radiating out from the pupil," Anime, and Egyptian art. There's no reason fashion writing can't be as good as any other art criticism. Deep Glamour is a step in the right direction.
- Glossing over Roman Polanski's crime "remains a case study in how the bad journalism of that documentary begets more bad journalism."
- Banksy is the Ty Pennington of graffiti artists. He can turn a £495,000 pub into a £1 million pub overnight! The auction house should consider a siloxane polymer shield, as the last time Banksy was up for sale in a real estate transation, it didn't go so well. (Previously: Urban Safaris: Graffiti Sites Considered for Heritage Protection.)
- "A 1:1 ratio of experience to writing means that you've become an efficient journalistic machine: nothing you do ever goes to waste. Every single thing you experience gets written about somewhere. It doesn't have to be experience in the real world; it almost seems like I write, now, about every website I visit too." - Momus
- There is so much about real estate I don't understand. How can there be entire neighborhoods of empty houses? Shouldn't they be sold at the market price, no matter how low? Or rented out, even if it's like, for $200 a month? Renting/selling = money. Leaving empty=no money. Also, why aren't regulations revised? -- make commercial space legal as residential or offer to waive back taxes, etc. At least one municipality is considering buying up foreclosed properties for shelters for the needy. They are already home to squatters. Today the WSJ predict we won't see a bottom in the market until 2011 or 2012. Generally, "home prices tend to increase on average at an inflation-adjusted rate of 2.5% to 3% a year, about the same as per capita income." So if anyone would like to sell me a boarded-up metro-Boston house now for under $50,000, send me an email.
- "This Mickey Mouse operation is the future of news? That's not the most frightening prospect. Even if Twitter were competently run and profitable, the end result is an unreadable jumble. Look closely at the coverage, if you can call it that, of the Mumbai attacks on Twitter. Sitting at their desks in the U.S., most people had nothing to add except to observe that Mumbai used to be called Bombay — the kind of message that makes you wish Twitter's length limit was zero characters, not 140." - Owen Thomas. Like most of you with access to a television/computer Wednesday afternoon, I was glued to the news. But soon, #Mumbai was crowded with far too cut+pastes to be of much relevance (unless one was searching by location.) It's like how everyone will join a Facebook group for a good cause -- it takes 5 seconds to "retweet" breaking news. Then, there was the bizarre back and forth over whether the Indian government was asking for people to stop tweeting "sensitive information." If anything impressed me that night, it was the network evening news, who appeared to be the first to put it all in context.
- The Register slams Malcolm Gladwell: "For want of a snappy description, and because it traverses the public and private sectors in a kind of League of the Clueless, I'll call this new class the vertical marketing bureaucracy, or VMB). These are people whose ambition is to speak at, or at least attend, New Media Conferences. Gladwell is their passport." (via.) True -- somewhat -- of the first two books, but I still find myself referring to Outliers, although my review was lukewarm. It would be wonderful were the middle part (on poverty and affirmative action) the entire book and expanded with possible solutions.
- "I have an idea that simple black marks on white paper penetrate the mind deeply & quickly. If this is correct, a humble paperback book has great power, beyond its traditional use as a container for words." - Tim Gaze, author of Noology, on asemic writing. (via.)
- "A good question to ask before you start a career in corporate business is, are you lonely in hotel rooms?" - gone to croatoan
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