Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder
I really have to be grateful to Kris. Some…
Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2002 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.
I really have to be grateful to Kris. Some Mondays, Wednesdays, and even Fridays, the first glimpse of joy I find in the morning is when I remember that a new Checkerboard Nightmare is up.
Rob Walker's latest, at Slate, takes a profound look at a subtly profound ad for the XBox. Perhaps the most telling part of the article is at the end -- Walker apologizes for not replying to e-mail correspondence, saying that "because of a software download gone horribly awry, this and almost all the other e-mail correspondence I received early last week (as well as every message I'd ever sent or received prior to that and my entire address book) was wiped out." Hey, what do you want to bet that Rob uses the software of his employer, Microsoft, which sponsors Slate?
In more Slate metacommentary: Slate has a conceit of several categories for articles, e.g., Chatterbox, Moneybox, Culturebox. Michael Kinsley used to be editor of Slate. Now he's not. So he should no longer get the authoritative category "Readme" for his editorials. Wouldn't "Soapbox" be more apropos?
