Okay… So I just saw 28 Days Later and I only came out wondering about Rupert Murdoch’s influence in the movie. Maybe I’m just paranoid, but it seemed a bit suspicious to see that, according to the movie, those crazy liberals were the cause of worldwide destruction by trying to free the monkeys. We all know, of course, that liberals are all about freeing monkeys.

Not to mention, Frank’s utter relief over irradiated apples in the supermarket. Just how phony can you make a line like “Ahh, yes! Irradiated!”

What’s interesting, though, was what Andrew O’Hehir pointed out in his review of the movie in Salon:

Apocalypse is very much on our minds these days, yeah. But then, it’s been on our minds pretty much steadily ever since the summer of 1945.

…

Every movie I see seems to be about the end of the world these days, some literally and some less so. Next week brings us “Terminator 3,” in which Arnold Schwarzenegger tries to save two cute kids from nuclear war. Mike Figgis’ forthcoming experimental film “Hotel,” which admittedly almost no one will see (although you should, if you’re the masochistic art-film type), offers the spectacle of postmodern celebrity culture literally devouring itself. Later this year Frodo and Sam will save the world and end it at the same time, and Neo will have his climactic showdown with the agents of the Matrix. (I haven’t seen “From Justin to Kelly”; that might be the end of the world.)

This is probably the most telling political influence of releasing apocalyptic films. Somehow, some of us who are obsessed over apocalyptic stories also happen to be obsessed over winning the war on terrorism.

My dad watches Fox News, and I’m not sure why. Last night, I just happened to be in the room when he was watching (which is generally not a good idea) and it just so happened that Ann Coulter was promoting her book, “Treason.” In her book, it turns out that Coulter makes an attempt to rescue Joe McCarthy’s image, which she blames liberals for ruining. Nevermind that McCarthy ruined his image on his own very well, thankyouverymuch. Before you know it, she’s going to claim that liberals gave Hitler a bad image, too.

These statements were overheard at brunch today.

“My second kilt has a modesty snap.”
“No more bobbing for french fries in the hot tub.”
“The Velveeta of tree pulp has defeated Jennie.”
“Architecture by Frank Lloyd Weber, Music by Andrew Lloyd Wright.”

“Dolphins are a merman’s best friend.”
– Brad Hodges

I was having an argument with a friend of mine recently over the economics of the radio market. It’s kind of an interesting argument, that there are three parts to this structure.

First, there is the “public goods” side of radio. As far as radio stations try to reach out to listeners, they are essentially offering a public good. That is, the good is nonrival, nonexcludable, and indivisible.

Second, there is the “private goods” side of radio. In order to pay for the public good, advertisers purchase airtime, which is rival, excludable, and divisible.

Third, there is the market for listeners, a mixed public-private goods market. Essentially, this part of the radio market determines the value of the private good, and that is what the advertisers are ultimately paying for. This gives a whole new meaning to the term “Consumer Goods.”

Anyway, somehow the argument doesn’t hold water in my mind. It makes sense maybe from a marketing perspective, but I’m not sure that it makes sense from an economics perspective. Can anyone else (Ahem, Robert?) make sense of this argument?

From Compression Wood

Geometry and geography share the same root. Geometry came into being because we needed to measure the earth, so that we could comprehend and claim our place on it. Speaking of the arts that created civilization, Yeats said very simply what seems to me very simply true: “Measurement began our might.” From it came the pyramids, the Roman roads, the sciences of cartography, architecture, astronomy, mechanics, and so forth. And also, more obliquely, the measure of music and poetry, the power of aural, visual, and intellectual form over what Yeats called the “mere complexity” of experience. Ratio and rationality also come from a single root, suggesting that reason itself has to do with measured proportions and connects back, via geometry, to geography — the ground that is under our feet.

…

Where you’re from is never simply a matter of geography. It involves intersections of history, economics, family, and so forth, as well as the coordinates of latitude and logitude. Self-location, with or without maps, is ultimately as complicated and incomplete a process as self-knowledge. Something in us won’t keep still.

– Franklin Burroughs

“With magazines the schlock is shorter!”
– Jennie Vail

From In Search of Proust

Proust is at once the most canonical and the most uncanonical author, the most solemnly classical and the most subversive, the author in whom farce and lyricism, arrogance and humility, beauty and revulsion are indissolubly fused, and whose ultimate contradiction reflects an irreducible fact about all of us: we are driven by something as simple and as obvious as the desire to be happy, and, if that fails, by the belief that we once have been.

– Andre Acimen