I'm currently reading Rob Walker's 2008 book, Buying in: the Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are. I'm finding Walker's chapter on "Hello Kitty" especially interesting in its own right and also because his description of the success of Hello Kitty has helped me to understand Sarah…
At DI, we have an extremely conservative fellow visiting the blog these days. He's trying to convert all of us to his reactionary world view. He clings to his Bible as a book of literal truths and he seems to love everything that Sarah Palin ostensibly stands for. I'd like…
What wacky liberal is saying these treasonous things? It's actually Lee Iacocca, who used to run Chrysler Corporation. These excerpts are from Iacocca's book, "Where Have all the Leaders Gone?" : ‘Am I the only guy in this country who’s fed up with what’s happening? Where the hell is our…
The Wall Street Journal has published a short article commemorating the book in which psychologist Howard Gardner announced his theory of the "multiple intelligences": Frames of Mind (1983). [I'd recommend starting with Gardner's 2000 sequel: Intelligence Reframed]. This WSJ article is light-hearted, though it makes some serious points along the way. It reads…
How does one find a transitional fossil? It's a lot harder than I ever imagined. I just started reading a book that looks quite promising: Your Inner Fish: a Journey into the 3.5 Billion Year History of the Human Body (2008), by Neil Shubin. The author is a professor of…