The continuing commodification of the short story

This is an interesting little piece about The Atlantic's deal with Amazon. The magazine is publishing short fiction again, but you have to buy it separately from Amazon to play on ye olde Kindle.

Some of the comments are pretty funny, too. Here is one of them, from Chris Broe:

What’s the difference? Short story. Novel. It’s going to have stupid vampires in it. If the reader is that easily amused, then $3.99 is a perfect price point. “What are you reading?” (Oh, it’s a short story I bought on line.) “What’s it about?” (Well, it’s got these, you know, it’s really great, it’s set in this weird country…….it’s about vampires, okay? Vampires.) “Why Johnny can’t read, eh?” (Huh?) “This is my stop, good luck.” (Snob. What are you reading? Come back here!) The Snob stepped quickly from the car, dodging the rush of fresh passengers. Then a vampire jumped from out of nowhere and killed him, and laughed about it, like the dirty rat-person thingie a vampire truly is. The end. That’ll be $3.99 please.

Brave new world

A local convenience store delivers pizza, sandwiches, and select groceries:

$3.99 Haagen Daz Ice Cream
$3.99 Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream
$4.99 Butter
$2.49 Eggs
$4.99 Oreo Cookies
$4.99 Chips Ahoy! Cookies
$3.49 Triscuit Crackers Original
$3.49 Wheat Thins
$0.99 Doritos
$3.79 Tostitos
$0.99 Microwave Popcorn
$0.99 Snickers
$0.99 M & M's
$0.99 Reese's Peanut Butter Cups
$0.99 Kit Kat Bars
$4.99 Beer Cups
$5.99 Ping Pong Balls
$2.49 Power Bars
$2.49 Tooth Brushes
$3.99 Tooth Paste
$3.49 Kleenex
$2.49 Dish Soap
$3.99 Cheer Laundry Detergent
$4.49 Paper Plates
$5.99 Advil
$5.99 Motrin
$6.99 Sudafed Sinus
$1.89 Paper Towels
$2.89 Charmin Toilet Paper
$3.49 Tampax

Another question about the revolution

I'm thinking about getting a DVR.

Will I be first against the wall?

Progress

iPhone now available for business users. Naturally, it costs more for a business to get the same product, but that's AT&T for you.

Tangentally, here in Michigan the Comcast cable network has been waging a propaganda war against the Big Ten around the issue of whether the Big Ten Network will be included in basic cable packages. The whole affair is sick with bizarrely bad judgement from Comcast, which is filling its own airwaves with anti-Big Ten attack ads. To make the resemblance to a political campaign complete, the latest Comcast ad is accusing the Big Ten of imposing a tax on Comcast customers.

Since the major effect of attack ads in politics is to suppress turnout, you have to wonder what Comcast thinks it's going to accomplish here. Then ask yourself, who is the median television sports viewer going to side with? My guess is that the cable company which customers already dislike is going to lose out to the incredibly popular major sports conference.

But let me bring this back to AT&T. I was thinking the other day about the companies that I hate but purchase services from anyway. They are, without exception, providers of various kinds of utilities. I hate Comcast, I hate AT&T, and once I get them to send me a bill I'm pretty sure that I'm going to hate DTE. If I were a right winger I might have something to say about the way that utilitity providers have a kind of quasi-governmental way of doing business, but I'm not and I think that the explanation here is a little deeper than 'government is bad.' As to what that explanation is...are there any sociologists in the house?

Conundrum

About three months ago I bought a pair of Grado SR-60 headphones with the idea that I'd hook them up to my stereo when listening to music at night. My thinking was that my apartment walls are thin and my neighbor the med student usually has the lights off by 9pm and is out the door in the morning by 7am, and that I could therefore use sensitivity and politeness as excuses for buying some choice gear.

The only problem was that the Grados are so good that I couldn't bear to leave them lying there next to my stereo while I walked out the door listening to my iPod through those horrid ear buds. So before too long the SR-60s were more or less permanently attached to my iPod. Which, while great from a listening perspective, tended to undermine my sensitivity and politeness rationale. You see, the Grado's have an open design, meaning that when I'm rocking out everyone near me is treated to a tinny version of my music. Not a problem when walking down the street, but a rude way to ride the bus, let alone an airplane.

So now I'm in the market for reasonably good closed design headphones. Ideally, I'd like to spend only about $50, but I'd spend more for sound comparable to the Grados'. Also, I'd like to have them in my hands by Monday, so the brand has to be one I can find in the Detroit metro area.

For what it's worth, I happened to be at Target last night and gave the Bose TriPort's a listen. The sound seemed pretty good, though maybe so heavy and full that it verged on mushy. But the cost was more than I'd ideally like to spend, and they felt and looked extremely flimsy.

So, any suggestions?

When I saw colors, you saw pigs

Awhile ago I blogged about my iPod's disappointing quality as an audio source, even when using lossless compression. One of the things that perplexed me then was that I'd read an awful lot of praise for the quality of the Apple Lossless Codec in the audio press. Those folks are definitely more discerning than I am, so what gives?

I think the answer is that I've got a third generation iPod, and with the 4th generation Apple switched to a higher quality Digital Analog Converter. Is that right?

Relatedly, if I'm going to use the lossless codec on my iPod, I need more than the 20 gigs I've got now. So it looks like an upgrade is in the offing some time in the next year or so. Which brings me to this. Overkill?

Enoughus alreadyorum

Pardon my elvish, but I am fucking sick to death with this Harry Potter shit. And no, it's not Rowling envy. There, I just had to say that.

Of course, without this cultural force at work, we wouldn't have very amusing things like this to laugh at.

i minus 2h31m...

...and the line in front of the Cingular store next door has grown to 32.

This is grain, which any fool can eat, but for which the Lord intended a more divine means of consumption

First, if you haven't read it already, scoot on over to Crooked Timber and read this spirited defense of the claim that Budweiser is a good beer. For my part, I agree that beer snobs don't give mass produced American beers enough credit and endorse the observation from a commenter that it's important to taste American beers in the right sort of context. Writing about Budweiser, the commenter wrote:

...when chilled to refrigerated temperatures, which removes most of the flavor notes in all beverages, Bud has a pleasant hint of malt without the apparent weight that most so-called craft or micro brews have, making it a great accompaniment to a summer BBQ in the typically sweltering American summer.

Which is about right, although I would say that the best beer for a hot summer day isn't Budweiser but is rather Miller High Life. It has to be served extremely cold, though.

Who is right?

The party of the first part:

If you have any interest in building a high-quality audio system, the experts will tell you to spend what you can on speakers first, and spend on an amplifier second. This approach has been further reinforced by engineers who say there is no audible difference among amplifiers within a given price range. But you can’t hear your CD player or your speakers without an amplifier. |source|

Or, the party of the second part:

A principle that I want to be sure you understand is the hierarchy of Hi Fi. No component should ever be better than the component which precedes it (except maybe when evaluating equipment.) If the speakers outclass the rest of the system they will simply show you what a poor job the turntable or amplifier is doing. It is true that the speakers are often the weakest link of a cheap system and some improvement may be had by upgrading them but going beyond a point will make the sound worse. |source|

Dumb question

I'm thinking about buying a stereo to replace the one that was stolen^[1], and I'm confused. Here's the thing. I have less than no interest in a home theater system and the surround sound that such a system implies. I want a stereo. For music. Two channels of audio bliss combining to produce a homey 3D sound. But I also want a subwoofer. Perhaps stupidly, I believe that a good old fashioned two channel reciever won't let me hook up a subwoofer. Is it possible to connect a subwoofer to something with fewer than 6.1 channels and 87 buttons?

For the record, I care a whole lot more about clarity than volume. So maybe I'm also stupid to think that I even want a subwoofer.

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1 Which stereo was a hand me down from Jason, replacing the very nice stereo that I sold very cheaply in a haze of moving and sex which is actually the stereo that I am now, nine years later, replacing.