He writes a column and children’s books. COOL!

Also, my sister has sent me on a mission to find Leonardo Da Vinci’s last house, Clos Lucé Manor, near Amboise in Loire Valley. She wants me to find this book on cave dwellers in the bookstore of the house… I’m so down. She’s also requesting macarons. Done.

Someone asked me why I didn’t write serious things in my blog. It’s not that I’m inept at having a serious conversation or that I don’t have serious thoughts – I know, shocking.

It’s more of the perceptions that are so entwined with Fittingly and myself, developed throughout the years. After something has built itself on certain pillars and characteristics, it’s as if that existence is so engrained that acts or behaviors that deviate from that perception is just strange – neither positively or negatively – just strange.

I have a pretty clear idea of what people expect from this blog and if I can be a little presumptuous, it’s quips about culture/technology, mundane daily happenings, occasional rants about school and excess pretension or whatever. Those categories, while broad, leave little room for musings on life, God or moral righteousness.

Plus, I’d like to think those conversations are saved for close and dear friends.

The Newsweekly’s Last Stand: Good article from the Atlantic about why The Economist is thriving while Time and Newsweek struggle.

“Virtually alone among magazines, The Economist saw its advertising revenues increase last year by double digits—a remarkable 25 percent, according to the Publisher’s Information Bureau. Newsweek’s and Time’s dropped 27 percent and 14 percent, respectively. … The Economist has been growing consistently and powerfully for years, tracking in near mirror-image reverse the decline of its U.S. rivals.”

The conclusion is far from novel – “that niche is sometimes the smartest way to take over the world.” Look at really successful people and companies, like Steve Jobs and Google. They weren’t “Jacks of all Trades.” Far from it. Google’s conception was bred from one goal: to improve search.

Likewise, the Economist in its infancy in the states catered to die-hard international relations readers who wanted to know what was going on Namibia, yet was comprehensive enough to appeal to “average” people who just wanted a general summary of what was going in the world. “Where else, really, can you actually keep up with Africa?”

“The secret to The Economist’s success is not its brilliance, or its hauteur, or its typeface. The writing in Time and Newsweek may be every bit as smart, as assured, as the writing in The Economist. But neither one feels like the only magazine you need to read. You may like the new Time and Newsweek. But you must—or at least, brilliant marketing has convinced you that you must—subscribe to The Economist.” – Need being the keyword in this excerpt.

But like Google, it doesn’t stay a niche product. “Despite being positioned as a niche product, its U.S. circulation is nearing 800,000, and it will inevitably overtake Newsweek on that front soon enough.”

Another reason it’s been doing so well is that its users apparently aren’t tech savvy enough to realize that you can get the content for free – but this is where the article fails to elaborate as to why. It’s not simply that Economist readers aren’t tech savvy enough to visit the website, it’s because why would anyone choose to read their exhaustive articles and columns on a computer screen? I know the website and free content exist, but I’d take the magazine for $6.99, on most days. I mean, you could also print out the articles, but who’s going to do that? The Green Movement would frown upon that anyway.

“In the digital age, razor-sharp clarity and definition are the keys to success. Knowing what and who you are, and conveying that idea to an audience, is the only way to break through to readers ADD’ed out on an infinitude of choices.”

me: Man, I am a slave to my iPhone and Gmail

Samuel: You wouldn’t trade it for anything and you know it. I need to invest in a smartphone. This laptop is ready to die on me.

me: I would trade it for the new iPhone

Samuel: rusty chains for gilded ones? A slave is a slave is a slave.

me: If I am in chains, they better be bejeweled. Yanno.

Samuel: “Viewpoint Editor, UCLA Daily Bruin” is a pretty bejeweled chain, if I do say so myself. Sending you Daniel’s as an attachment – my edits in italics

me: K thanks Sam

Enough Already, is quite right Mr. Edmundson. I hate being tricked into reading pieces that I think will be fascinating, enlightening or at the least, understandably uninteresting. This piece is a tirade by Mark Edmunson about boring people who are prone to uninvited lengthy monologues. Little does he know, his nearly seven pager is an even more boring monologue on said subject. Pithy FAIL.

In his essay on talkativeness, Plutarch suggests that the bore, despite appearances, may often be out to win the esteem of the victim. The words are an offering. They come as something like a sacrificial tribute. Whatever the surface flow may be, the subtext reads like this: I care about your judgment; I want your esteem. I want to show you how smart I am, how learned, how good. Schopenhauer, Lord of Pessimists, seems to concur on this view: “Vain people are talkative, and proud, taciturn,” he says. “But the vain person ought to be aware that the good opinion of others, which he strives for, may be obtained much more easily and certainly by persistent silence than by speech, even though he has very good things to say.”

Words are an offering, sure, but I am not a glutton. Unless those words are delicious.

Jennifer Zhu: There is a posting to be the librarian to the 9th Circuit of Appeals!
: THAT’S MY FAV. APPEALS COURT!!!

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