July 6, 2009
In the New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell takes a skeptical look at Chris Anderson’s new book, Free: The Future of a Radical Price. Anderson is the editor of Wired and the author of the 2006 best-seller “The Long Tail.” The digital age, Anderson argues, is exerting an inexorable downward pressure on the prices of all things “made of ideas.” Which is why bloggers, working for free, are putting newspapers out of business. And why YouTube, despite its multi-millions of viewers, will lose close to half a billion dollars this year. Anderson may view all this through rose-colored monitors. But Gladwell pokes holes in Anderson’s theory, calling him a technological utopian. Just because something is cheap, that doesn’t mean it’s part of a sound business model. Remember how online stores were going to sell everything from pet food to groceries and destroy the brick-and-mortor economy? It was called the tech bubble, and it popped.
July 6, 2009
The Mermen, the world’s most psychedelic surf rock band, have not paid a visit to Southern California in about five years. (The Mermen are based in San Francisco). The trio returns Thursday, July 9th, at Brixton, a club at the Redondo Beach pier. It’s hard to verbalize the effect of this powerful, all-instrumental band, but here’s how Rick Reger of the Chicago Tribune put it: “Jim Thomas’s dazzling guitar work steals the show. Informed by both Dick Dale’s staccato precision and Hendrix’s molten psychedelia, Thomas possesses a flawless technique and a highly personal sound. Moving from deftly controlled feedback to breakneck accuracy to hushed crystalline passages, Thomas proves that he is one of rock’s premier ax wielders.”
July 2, 2009
The Agency Spy site (from Media Bistro) picks up yet another story of (alleged) employee abuse by trendy clothier Abercrombie & Fitch. The store hires “hot people to mope around their ear-drum-destroying stores to ‘fold clothes’ (read: look sexy).” You’ve seen them: they stand there in tight t-shirts and low-slung jeans like sexy mannequins. So why was a young, attractive woman with a prosthetic arm banished to the stock room? She is suing Abercrombie, contending that the store felt her plastic arm violated its “Look Policy.” Look hot, but don’t have an imperfection. It’s not the first employee discrimination suit against Abercrombie. A 2004 complaint alleged minorities were discriminated against for not adhering to the company’s look.
