<< January 10, 2008 >>
the shame of 150 glares

after almost a two year hiatus, i have finally gotten back to reading a jane jacobs book. some of my friends, likely more intelligent than i, seem to not think so highly of some of her conclusions, so i try to take these with a grain of salt, but it is perhaps her writing style that i enjoy most of all. i will not attempt to describe it. in lieu, i will note the following passage, which has caught my eye:

The point is that when new work is added to older work, the addition often cuts ruthlessly across categories of work, no matter how one may analyze the categories. Only in stagnant economies does work stay docilely within given categories. And wherever it is forced to stay within prearranged categories -- whether by zoning, by economic planning, or by guilds, associations or unions -- the process of adding new work to old can occur little if at all.

-- jane jacobs, "the economy of cities", p. 62

this certainly describes the invasion of the music industry by apple's itunes store. i will leave, as another exercise for the reader, the task of drawing parallels with the WGA strike.

i barely made my flight this morning; it was my turn to be that guy that the steward makes fun of. i didn't feel too bad; usually i'm the one waiting for 45 minutes, and anyway, the positive karma from arriving at the airport via public transportation probably makes up for it. and kudos to the mbta for the outstanding (and free) service this morning; i'd estimate a full 25% of my door-to-gate time was spent navigating the 18 feet administered by our friends at TSA.

jeers also to jetblue; they give out water in individual, 8.5-ounce bottles. never again.

one disadvantage of the kindle is that it affords no opportunity for peer verification of my excellent reading material by like-minded travelers; no doubt, this may be interpreted as a feature by my culturally-void neighbor in seat D reading "the secret."

ok, leopard's dictionary app is awesome; every word in a definition is clickable. my mind staggers at what puerile tasks our nation's third graders are forced to do now that definitions are mere seconds away.