The Saddest Shelf In The Library
Fuck that! “Philip and Alex’s Guide To Web Publishing” changed my life. You can read it here, though it’s been heavily revised since the original (per Philip Greenpun’s very practical philosophy of what a book should be), so anyone with a library this cool should check out a copy (and then somehow transport yourself to 1998, if at all possible, for context).
In all seriousness, Greenspun set a bar and a vision for long-form web writing that has been sadly marginalized. There’s something very touching, 13 years on, about the “Philip and Alex’s” chapters in which he argues for the web as an accessible form of education. This is a book that can remind those of us writing online what the hell we’re working toward.
Rainz :-(
By 1845 a full railway mania was raging. By the summer new schemes were being floated at the rate of more than a dozen a week. Scrip was sold by alley men, and the stock exchange resembled a country fair… Schemes for direct lines connecting little-known towns to other little-known towns became a craze, launched more with an eye to garnering investment than actual profits… “We see nine or ten proposals for nearly the same line, all at a premium, when it is well known that only one CAN succeed,” said The Economist.
Trouble began in October 1845, when scrip ceased to pay a premium and shares in established railways began to fall.
When everyone else calls you a “hopeless alcoholic” or whatever, Grüner Vet has your back. Eight million quietly desperate Austrians can’t be wrong!
Ashton Kutcher’s special “Social Issue” of Details seems to have a certain theme.
There will be many MANY 9/11 covers in the coming weeks. I’m certain that this will not be the best one of those. But, I’m a sucker for aerial photography so I’m easily sold on this one…
These are the issues that posturing editors like to make big grand statements with enormous single topic zeitgeist-capturing feature wells - photo essays, first persons, graphics, essays by eminent thinkers, artist commission photography, covers and imagery, crowd sourced content.. the whole shebang. The pressure to perform and make stand-out issues is intense as magazines compete for the imaginary ‘who did the best 9/11 coverage’ awards. I’m already finding it all a bit tiring…
As Dan Frommer writes this morning, it’s a breathtaking cover. All the more impressive because it’s so easy to get trapped in cliché when visualizing this topic. (This makes me wonder if I should be paying more attention to Bloomberg Businessweek.)
