What I’ve Been Reading
Weapons of Mass Persuasion: Marketing the War in Iraq – Paul Rutherford (decent but the author should be ashamed of himself. ignoring the wealth of data, he relied on a ‘community panel’ of people to discuss the marketing of the war. it would have been fine if they hadn’t been quoted like experts, all had the same education level, been asked leading questions or I don’t know, if they didn’t all LIVE IN CANADA.)
No Logo – Naomi Klein (klein has some big logic and belief problems but this book is great)
Teenage Wasteland: Suburbia’s Dead End Kids – Donna Gaines (held up well. cool Iron Maiden references)
Hackers and Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age – Paul Graham (more coming on this)
Ben has an awesome piece about American Apparel. On the same level as this one about Zappos.
Fail Dogs is one the a Top Ten Pet Trend of the year.
I want to live in this apartment.
And like I’ve been saying, there is a market for what you do online.
No Logo was one of those first big, perspective-changing books for me back as a teenager. You pretty much some up my view on Klein perfectly.
Good to see that you’re reading stuff from different ideologies and perspectives. There aren’t too many people out there who read “No Logo” and “The Myth of Robber Barons” in the same month.
Congrats on the Pet Trend award.
Just curious as to how you are able to get through so much material.
I assume you read pretty quickly, but I also assume you’re quite busy (as many of us are). How to you fit it in? Audiobooks, catching up on the weekend, skimming/speed reading, etc?
If you like No Logo, check out “A Nation of Rebels.” It breaks that book and a dozen other anti-corporate books down and gives a totally new theory of culture and economics.
Regarding your first point: Since the war is/was being marketed primarily TO Americans, I’d offer that it requires a group of people OTHER than Americans to gain any kind of objective perspective of the marketing efforts.
Should the panel have been more diverse? Probably. But I wouldn’t have any problem with their findings because none of them were American.
Just my two cents (as a Canadian living in the U.S. that is.)
Mike
Mike –
Do you do exit polling on the people down the street from the voting booth or do you ask the people who just voted?
Have you read Utility of Force by Gen. Smith?
I saw it in the bookstore while picking up the Boyd book and US Guys. The Amazon reviews seem somewhat split between awesome and okay.
Nation of Rebels arrived this morning from Amazon
Utility of Force is really bad
Holiday you’re a smart kid, and you know what is smart about you? That at 21 you intuitively understand the existence of something a lot of people never comprehend, which is psychological warfare.
I read a few times about you saying that being yourself and changing the world as you see fit can get you thrown in a psych ward, which it can because your enemies can use psychological warfare to fuck up your mind and destroy your brain, just like someone can use a knife to stab you or a gun to shoot you to destroy your physical body.
Not many regular people understand this and so they think if someone gets thrown in a psych ward or goes crazy they are mentally imbalanced when sometimes they were just taken down by a master of psychological warfare, and a lot of groups such as the C.I.A. are the best in the world at this.
Keep up the good work understanding the world.