Category: Culture

Death of Blockbuster, Part IV

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Chris Anderson pens and charts his way to the conclusion that:

Bottom line: even in Hollywood, the home of the blockbuster, hits are losing their power. It’s not nearly as dire as in music, but it’s trending in the same direction. Does this mean the end of movies? Not at all–there have never been more films made, just as there has never been more music available than today, despite the fact that the bestsellers sell less.

It’s not that people aren’t watching films and listening to music, it’s that they’re watching different films and different music–we’re just not following the herd to the same hits the way we used to. I’d guess that most of the decline in box office is due to the rise of the DVD, not a loss of interest in movies.

The Gladwell Effect

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Rachel Donadio:

“PEOPLE are experience rich and theory poor,” the writer Malcolm Gladwell said recently. “People who are busy doing things — as opposed to people who are busy sitting around, like me, reading and having coffee in coffee shops — don’t have opportunities to kind of collect and organize their experiences and make sense of them.”

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The $33K 2007 Toyota Camry Hybrid

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Dan Nell takes a drive in the new Toyota Camry Hybrid:

Like a Trojan horse, Camry sneaks gas-saving radicalism into a trusted American staple.

By certain lights, the 2007 Camry Hybrid is not particularly revolutionary. Here we have a nicely equipped, 3,637-pound, five-passenger sedan with 192 horsepower, costing about $30,000 (final pricing has yet to be confirmed). Styling reminds me of the old Merle Travis song: So round, so firm, so fully packed. The ride and handling are straight-up Pink Floyd: comfortably numb.

Podcasts, blogs and Dave Barry

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C.W. Nevius:

“Newspapers,” he said right off the bat, “are dead.”

Uh, to be honest, I was hoping for something a little funnier. But, the more he talked about it, the clearer it became that it is a worthwhile topic for discussion. And Barry may even be right.

Everyone has heard about cutbacks in the newspaper business, from the big names on the East Coast to the papers in your driveway. And if there is anyone who typifies the rapid pace of change in the business and its effect on how you get your news, it is Barry.

Shopping in 1975

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Alex Tabarrok via a Sears Catalog:

Sears’ lowest-priced 10-inch table saw: 52.35 hours of work required in 1975; 7.34 hours of work required in 2006.

Sears’ lowest-priced gasoline-powered lawn mower: 13.14 hours of work required in 1975 (to buy a lawn-mower that cuts a 20-inch swathe); 8.56 hours of work required in 2006 (to buy a lawn-mower that cuts a 22-inch swathe. Sears no longer sells a power mower that cuts a swathe smaller than 22 inches.)

The Chocolate Bomber

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John Tagliabue:

Every three weeks, a FedEx flight departs Zaventem Airport on the edge of Brussels carrying Michel Boey’s products to the United States. Call it the chocolate bomber.

“It is exactly as in wine,” he said, receiving a visitor amid heavy aromas of dark chocolate. “Once, wine was wine. Now we appreciate smaller quantities, but the quality is better.”

Democracy in America, Then and Now, a Struggle Against Majority Tyranny

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Adam Cohen:

During the War of 1812, an angry mob smashed the printing presses of a Baltimore newspaper that dared to come out against the war. When the mob surrounded the paper’s editors, and the state militia refused to protect them, the journalists were taken to prison for their own protection. That night, the mob broke into the prison, killed one journalist and left the others for dead. When the mob leaders were brought before a jury, they were acquitted.
Alexis de Tocqueville tells this chilling story in “Democracy in America,” and warns that the greatest threat the United States faces is the tyranny of the majority, a phrase he is credited with coining.