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Why Elite Shoppers Eschew Logos

~ Mark

It’s signaling, folks. Really interesting stuff. Geoffrey Miller talks about this in Spent: Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior, which I recommend highly. In my review I summarized Miller on the three basic ways we signal through our purchases: conspicuous waste (in this context, perhaps fine fabrics, oversized garments, layering, duplicated accessories), conspicuous precision (luxury watches, perfect cut & fit, subtle hand-stitched details), or conspicuous reputation (recognizable logos, patterns, etc.). Few books have affected my everyday thinking so much. (via putthison)

Why Elite Shoppers Eschew Logos

The Wrong Stuff : Those Three Little Words (“Honey, You’re Right”): Harville Hendrix on Being Wrong

~ Mark

Anger is an attempt to coerce a person into surrendering their reality, so that there’s only one reality in the relationship instead of two. And when the anger triggered by the anxiety doesn’t work, people experience depression. Depression is the experience of the loss of power: “I can’t make my world happen.”

Once they go into depression, couples—if they stay together—will then enter a bargaining stage. The bargaining goes like this: “Well, OK, I’m different and you’re different, so let’s make a deal about whose reality is going to be in the forefront.”

The Wrong Stuff : Those Three Little Words (“Honey, You’re Right”): Harville Hendrix on Being Wrong

American Drink: Purist Intentions

~ Mark

Not everyone agrees with my No Rules Rule. Siiiiiiigh. Naturally. After all, this is America, where the only art more popular than the art itself is the art of being a dick about the art. Same as baseball, jazz, porn, and every other invented-for-fun pastime, drinking is rife with fundamentalist nutjobs (see “purists”) who have one way of doing things–by the book. And not that book either. This book, with the leather binding and 6pt Century Gothic. The old one.

American Drink: Purist Intentions

Painkiller Deathstreak: Adventures in video games

~ Mark

I like this kind of essay. The dude had never played video games before! I wish he’d chosen a broader variety of games, but it’s nice to have a fresh perspective. You take a lot of this for granted when you grow up with it:

The second thing I learned about video games is that they are long. So, so long. Playing one game is not like watching one ninety-minute movie; it’s like watching one whole season of a TV show—and watching it in a state of staring, jaw-clenched concentration. If you’re good, it might take you fifteen hours to play through a typical game. If you’re not good, like me, and you do a fair amount of bumping into walls and jumping place when you’re under attack, it will take more than twice that.

Painkiller Deathstreak: Adventures in video games

15th Anniversary: The Brian Eno Evolution

~ Mark

What do people want from Art? I don’t know the full answer, but one thing I’m increasingly sure of is that they want life. They want the sense that there is something going on, that something real and exciting and of its moment has been captured […]

In an age of digital perfectibility, it takes quite a lot of courage to say, “Leave it alone” and, if you do decide to make changes, quite a lot of judgment to know at which point you stop. A lot of technology offers you the chance to make everything completely, wonderfully perfect, and thus to take out whatever residue of human life there was in the work to start with. […] It’s a misunderstanding to think that the traces of human activity — brushstrokes, tuning drift, arrhythmia — are not part of the work. They are the fundamental texture of the work, the fine grain of it.

15th Anniversary: The Brian Eno Evolution

Up From Darkness – Book Review: “Brilliant: The Evolution of Artificial Light” by Jane Brox – NYTimes.com

~ Mark

Who had light and who did not? What did different types of people do with their newfound hours? How did street lighting change public behavior? (Once drinkers could move safely between taverns, instead of perching on a single tavern stool all night … the streets became far rowdier; prostitutes previously confined to brothels could now sell their wares al fresco.) With increased mobility and safety, those who could afford lighting stayed up later. Sleeping in became a mark of prestige. Meanwhile, those who lived near the gasworks — never located in a city’s high-rent district — endured foul-smelling and dangerous emissions.

(via)

Up From Darkness – Book Review: “Brilliant: The Evolution of Artificial Light” by Jane Brox – NYTimes.com

Crystal Boyle — By Robert Boyle (Harper’s Magazine)

~ Mark

This is so wonderful. We’re all living even further in the future than other people’s crazy dreams.

From a wish list of scientific advancements compiled by chemist and inventor Robert Boyle, who in 1662 discovered that the pressure and volume of a gas are inversely proportional, a property now known as Boyle’s Law. The list, which dates from the 1660s, is on display this month at the Royal Society of London, as part of the institution’s 350th anniversary celebration.

  • The Prolongation of Life
  • The Recovery of Youth, or at Least Some of the Marks of It, as New Teeth, New Hair Colour’d as in Youth
  • The Art of Flying
  • The Art of Continuing Long Under Water, and Exercising Functions Freely There
  • The Cure of Wounds at a Distance
  • The Cure of Diseases at a Distance or at Least by Transplantation
  • The Attaining Gigantick Dimensions
  • The Acceleration of the Production of Things out of Seed
  • The Transmutation of Metalls
  • The Making of Glass Malleable
  • The Making Armor Light and Extremely Hard
  • The Transmutation of Species in Mineralls, Animals, and Vegetables
  • The Emulating of Fish Without Engines by Custome and Education Only
  • The Practicable and Certain Way of Finding Longitudes
  • The Use of Pendulums at Sea and in Journeys, and the Application of It to Watches
  • A Ship to Saile with All Winds, and a Ship Not to Be Sunk
  • Freedom from Necessity of Much Sleeping Exemplify’d by the Operations of Tea and What Happens in Mad-men
  • Pleasing Dreams and Physicall Exercises Exemplify’d by the Egyptian Electuary and by the Fungus Mentioned by the French Author
  • Great Strength and Agility of Body Exemplify’d by That of Frantick Epileptick and Hystericall Persons
  • Varnishes Perfumable by Rubbing
  • A Perpetuall Light

Crystal Boyle — By Robert Boyle (Harper’s Magazine)

The Tyranny of Things by Edward Sandford Martin – The Oxford Book of American Essays

~ Mark

[$10,000] wouldn’t go so far now, and yet most of the reasonable necessaries of life cost less to-day than they did two generations ago. The difference is that we need so very many comforts that were not invented in our grandfather’s time.

And also:

It is man’s peculiarity that nature has filled him with impulses to do things, and left it to his discretion when to stop. She never tells him when he has finished. And perhaps we ought not to be surprised that in so many cases it happens that he doesn’t know, but just goes ahead as long as the materials last.

The Tyranny of Things by Edward Sandford Martin – The Oxford Book of American Essays