Monthly Archives: January 2002

Information Superhighway Robbery

I’m uploading this page to my web server over my cable modem internet connection. Time Warner Cable used to have a monopoly on internet cable service in Manhattan, but over the past few weeks we’ve started seeing a rash of … Continue reading

Posted in Culture | 1 Comment

The fall and fall of celebrity journalism

Be worried about the decline of magazine journalism in this country. Talk might not have achieved a cohesive identity, but at least it did run some well-written pieces. To see what Tina Brown was reacting against, I suggest you pick … Continue reading

Posted in Media | 1 Comment

Don’t go anywhere near iname or mail.com

Many years ago, at the dawn of the internet era, a company called iname had the rather good idea of registering a whole bunch of domain names (you didn’t need to pay for them back then, it was first come … Continue reading

Posted in Announcements | 26 Comments

More on Sullivan and Krugman

Sullivan has now gone mad. Just after 7:00 this evening, he posted no fewer than four new pieces on l’affair Krugman – an affair, I hasten to add, which he single-handedly created. He seems to be an expert at following … Continue reading

Posted in Media | 1 Comment

Austerlitz

Just finished reading Austerlitz, and everything the reviews say is true. Sebald really did manage to come up with a whole new genre of book, neither memoir nor novel nor concatenation of postmodern digressions. Austerlitz is a great and haunting … Continue reading

Posted in Culture | 1 Comment

Talk, with hindsight

I went out and bought the final issue of Talk yesterday. I wondered if, with hindsight, one might be able to look at it and see where it went wrong. I thought I would read through the articles and try … Continue reading

Posted in Media | 1 Comment

Talk, R.I.P.

When I interviewed Tina Brown just after the first issue came out, she told me that "people didn’t necessarily know they wanted something, but I think that when you produce something that is entertaining, smart, fresh and new, they will … Continue reading

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Andrew Sullivan, Paul Krugman and Enron

I’m worried I might be getting old. My 30th birthday is fast approaching, and I’ve recently been reminded of that old canard about how if you’re not a socialist when you’re young you don’t have a heart, and if you’re … Continue reading

Posted in Finance, Media | 2 Comments

Legal lesbian marriage in Texas

It turns out that there are at least two legal lesbian marriages in America. Not civil unions in Vermont, mind, but fully-fledged bona fide marriage. And they’re in Texas! This fact emerges from an article in the New York Times … Continue reading

Posted in Culture | 71 Comments

Donnie Darko

So I’ve just got back from seeing Donnie Darko at the cinema, and I feel as though I have to put my thoughts down here, in some kind of attempt to get them into shape. One thing is for sure: … Continue reading

Posted in Film | Comments Off on Donnie Darko

Felix at the movies

I’m disappointed. 2001 was a bad year for movies. Bad films did well, good films did badly, and there was very little that was exceptional. The Oscar race is wide open, not because there were so many good films (as … Continue reading

Posted in Film | Comments Off on Felix at the movies