Dealing with contemporary consumerism, capitalism, and the life it permits. 2008-07-25T20:08:13Z Copyright (c) 2008, PopMatters.com ExpressionEngine tag:popmatters.com-marginal-utility,2008:07:25 tag:popmatters.com,2008:pm/blogs/marginal-utility/9.61402 2008-07-25T22:54:30Z 2008-07-25T22:54:30Z Rob Horning tag:popmatters.com,2008:pm/blogs/marginal-utility/9.61327 2008-07-24T13:18:18Z 2008-07-24T13:18:18Z Rob Horning Theory of Literary Production several times now, and I still don't think I understand what he's talking about. Either that, or I can't grasp why it matters. But... ]]> tag:popmatters.com,2008:pm/blogs/marginal-utility/9.61270 2008-07-23T21:23:58Z 2008-07-23T21:23:58Z Rob Horning tag:popmatters.com,2008:pm/blogs/marginal-utility/9.61236 2008-07-22T14:42:28Z 2008-07-22T14:42:28Z Rob Horning tag:popmatters.com,2008:pm/blogs/marginal-utility/9.61029 2008-07-17T17:09:22Z 2008-07-17T17:09:22Z Rob Horning tag:popmatters.com,2008:pm/blogs/marginal-utility/9.60965 2008-07-16T17:30:59Z 2008-07-16T17:30:59Z Rob Horning Harvard Business Review by professors Anat Keinan and Ran Kivetz, summarizing their research into consumer regret. Our research... ]]> tag:popmatters.com,2008:pm/blogs/marginal-utility/9.60957 2008-07-15T14:28:48Z 2008-07-15T14:28:48Z Rob Horning tag:popmatters.com,2008:pm/blogs/marginal-utility/9.60914 2008-07-14T17:14:43Z 2008-07-14T17:14:43Z Rob Horning tag:popmatters.com,2008:pm/blogs/marginal-utility/9.60766 2008-07-11T15:57:14Z 2008-07-11T15:57:14Z Rob Horning Technology Review, Bryant Urstadt has an interesting article about the potential for advertising on social networks. Obvioulsy, Facebook's flubbed Beacon program, which notified member's... ]]> tag:popmatters.com,2008:pm/blogs/marginal-utility/9.60721 2008-07-10T15:55:39Z 2008-07-10T15:55:39Z Rob Horning Us Weekly editor Bonnie Fuller and makes an interesting point about the ideological effects of... ]]> tag:popmatters.com,2008:pm/blogs/marginal-utility/9.60718 2008-07-09T22:34:13Z 2008-07-09T22:34:13Z Rob Horning tag:popmatters.com,2008:pm/blogs/marginal-utility/9.60659 2008-07-08T15:45:59Z 2008-07-08T15:45:59Z Rob Horning tag:popmatters.com,2008:pm/blogs/marginal-utility/9.60625 2008-07-07T14:49:57Z 2008-07-07T14:49:57Z Rob Horning tag:popmatters.com,2008:pm/blogs/marginal-utility/9.60426 2008-07-02T18:55:28Z 2008-07-02T18:55:28Z Rob Horning tag:popmatters.com,2008:pm/blogs/marginal-utility/9.60361 2008-07-01T14:44:54Z 2008-07-01T14:44:54Z Rob Horning tag:popmatters.com,2008:pm/blogs/marginal-utility/9.60335 2008-06-30T20:23:13Z 2008-06-30T20:23:13Z Rob Horning tag:popmatters.com,2008:pm/blogs/marginal-utility/9.60322 2008-06-29T01:35:41Z 2008-06-29T01:35:41Z Rob Horning No One Makes You Shop at Wal-Mart (highly recommended), complains about The Long Tail in this post, noting all the effort wasted in debunking an idea that was,... ]]> tag:popmatters.com,2008:pm/blogs/marginal-utility/9.60249 2008-06-27T00:59:12Z 2008-06-27T00:59:12Z Rob Horning Eros and Civilization by Herbert Marcuse, then Escape From Freedom by Erich Fromm. (Maybe... ]]> tag:popmatters.com,2008:pm/blogs/marginal-utility/9.60194 2008-06-25T18:23:00Z 2008-06-25T18:23:00Z Rob Horning tag:popmatters.com,2008:pm/blogs/marginal-utility/9.60094 2008-06-24T14:10:00Z 2008-06-24T14:10:00Z Rob Horning tag:popmatters.com,2008:pm/blogs/marginal-utility/9.60021 2008-06-23T16:30:01Z 2008-06-23T16:30:01Z Rob Horning tag:popmatters.com,2008:pm/blogs/marginal-utility/9.59981 2008-06-20T14:10:00Z 2008-06-20T14:10:00Z Rob Horning tag:popmatters.com,2008:pm/blogs/marginal-utility/9.59957 2008-06-19T04:36:00Z 2008-06-19T04:36:00Z Rob Horning The Harried Leisure Class, which examines the impact of time constraints on consumption. Linder argues that the time it takes to consume... ]]> tag:popmatters.com,2008:pm/blogs/marginal-utility/9.59901 2008-06-17T15:02:01Z 2008-06-17T15:02:01Z Rob Horning Reason piece about fertility fears by Kerry Howley. The upshot: social conservatives love to use demographic fears to try to roll back feminist... ]]> tag:popmatters.com,2008:pm/blogs/marginal-utility/9.59706 2008-06-13T14:54:00Z 2008-06-13T14:54:00Z Rob Horning tag:popmatters.com,2008:pm/blogs/marginal-utility/9.59647 2008-06-12T17:32:00Z 2008-06-12T17:32:00Z Rob Horning tag:popmatters.com,2008:pm/blogs/marginal-utility/9.59616 2008-06-11T15:50:00Z 2008-06-11T15:50:00Z Rob Horning tag:popmatters.com,2008:pm/blogs/marginal-utility/9.59572 2008-06-10T14:56:00Z 2008-06-10T14:56:00Z Rob Horning The Promotional Culture, which was mention in this... ]]> tag:popmatters.com,2008:pm/blogs/marginal-utility/9.59506 2008-06-09T17:18:00Z 2008-06-09T17:18:00Z Rob Horning tag:popmatters.com,2008:pm/blogs/marginal-utility/9.59504 2008-06-09T14:38:00Z 2008-06-09T14:38:00Z Rob Horning The Death of the Critic, which argues that literary criticism should be evaluative so that it can reach a broad audience and therefore be relevant, has prompted... ]]> tag:popmatters.com,2008:pm/blogs/marginal-utility/9.59478 2008-06-07T19:32:00Z 2008-06-07T19:32:00Z Rob Horning WSJ series on the last days of Bear Stearns: At least six efforts to raise billions of dollars -- including selling a stake to leveraged-buyout titan Kohlberg... ]]> tag:popmatters.com,2008:pm/blogs/marginal-utility/9.59473 2008-06-06T16:06:01Z 2008-06-06T16:06:01Z Rob Horning Harper's has an interesting article about culture-bound syndromes (the fear of having one's penis stolen in particular, a Nigerian phenomenon). Culture-bound illnesses are... ]]> tag:popmatters.com,2008:pm/blogs/marginal-utility/9.59453 2008-06-06T01:05:00Z 2008-06-06T01:05:00Z Rob Horning tag:popmatters.com,2008:pm/blogs/marginal-utility/9.59434 2008-06-05T13:53:01Z 2008-06-05T13:53:01Z Rob Horning tag:popmatters.com,2008:pm/blogs/marginal-utility/9.59414 2008-06-04T21:00:00Z 2008-06-04T21:00:00Z Rob Horning New York Times Magazine, which is sort of a thinking person's trendspotting report. Unlike most writers who cover consumerism, he's not... ]]> tag:popmatters.com,2008:pm/blogs/marginal-utility/9.59387 2008-06-03T21:38:00Z 2008-06-03T21:38:00Z Rob Horning tag:popmatters.com,2008:pm/blogs/marginal-utility/9.59338 2008-06-02T17:22:00Z 2008-06-02T17:22:00Z Rob Horning NYT foodie blog that "the same plate of pasta goes down a lot easier at $12 -- it even tastes better at $12 -- than it does at $16," Felix Salmon wonders why... ]]> tag:popmatters.com,2008:pm/blogs/marginal-utility/9.59189 2008-05-29T22:24:00Z 2008-05-29T22:24:00Z Rob Horning tag:popmatters.com,2008:pm/blogs/marginal-utility/9.59090 2008-05-27T18:08:00Z 2008-05-27T18:08:00Z Rob Horning tag:popmatters.com,2008:pm/blogs/marginal-utility/9.58891 2008-05-21T19:48:01Z 2008-05-21T19:48:01Z Rob Horning tag:popmatters.com,2008:pm/blogs/marginal-utility/9.58849 2008-05-20T17:02:00Z 2008-05-20T17:02:00Z Rob Horning New Yorker column, the econoblogosphere has been discussing this paper about purchasing power and income inequality. Says Surowiecki, "In a recent... ]]> tag:popmatters.com,2008:pm/blogs/marginal-utility/9.58820 2008-05-19T21:25:04Z 2008-05-19T21:25:04Z Rob Horning tag:popmatters.com,2008:pm/blogs/marginal-utility/9.58730 2008-05-19T16:32:00Z 2008-05-19T16:32:00Z Rob Horning tag:popmatters.com,2008:pm/blogs/marginal-utility/9.58699 2008-05-16T15:29:00Z 2008-05-16T15:29:00Z Rob Horning tag:popmatters.com,2008:pm/blogs/marginal-utility/9.58636 2008-05-14T18:26:00Z 2008-05-14T18:26:00Z Rob Horning tag:popmatters.com,2008:pm/blogs/marginal-utility/9.58585 2008-05-13T14:13:02Z 2008-05-13T14:13:02Z Rob Horning New York Times, Paul Krugman opined that oil prices are high not because of speculation but dwindling supply: "A realistic view of what’s happened over the past few... ]]> tag:popmatters.com,2008:pm/blogs/marginal-utility/9.58565 2008-05-13T02:56:00Z 2008-05-13T02:56:00Z Rob Horning n+1 article about the "hype cycle" in the previous post, but it's worth, well, hyping. Mocking the odious New York magazine-style approval matrices, the author... ]]> tag:popmatters.com,2008:pm/blogs/marginal-utility/9.58553 2008-05-12T14:56:00Z 2008-05-12T14:56:00Z Rob Horning Buying In (which I plan to review more thoroughly in a few weeks), Rob Walker, who writes the Consumed column for the New York Times Magazine, discusses protest... ]]> tag:popmatters.com,2008:pm/blogs/marginal-utility/9.58480 2008-05-10T23:26:00Z 2008-05-10T23:26:00Z Rob Horning Peyton Place a few days ago. Called "Online Social Networking as Participatory... ]]> tag:popmatters.com,2008:pm/blogs/marginal-utility/9.58460 2008-05-09T16:08:00Z 2008-05-09T16:08:00Z Rob Horning W magazine piece on time-conserving tactics for "squillionaires" is a joke, but I've decided that it doesn't matter; it's darkly funny regardless.... ]]> tag:popmatters.com,2008:pm/blogs/marginal-utility/9.58438 2008-05-08T22:06:00Z 2008-05-08T22:06:00Z Rob Horning Peyton Place, a notoriously lascivious book about the seamy secrets of a small town in New England. This grand ambition of mine was... ]]> tag:popmatters.com,2008:pm/blogs/marginal-utility/9.58337 2008-05-07T05:55:00Z 2008-05-07T05:55:00Z Rob Horning tag:popmatters.com,2008:pm/blogs/marginal-utility/9.58319 2008-05-06T18:08:00Z 2008-05-06T18:08:00Z Rob Horning tag:popmatters.com,2008:pm/blogs/marginal-utility/9.58165 2008-05-02T21:35:00Z 2008-05-02T21:35:00Z Rob Horning NYT Magazine issue devoted to reducing readers carbon footprint: Why bother? Let’s say I do bother,... ]]> tag:popmatters.com,2008:pm/blogs/marginal-utility/9.58116 2008-05-01T14:18:00Z 2008-05-01T14:18:00Z Rob Horning tag:popmatters.com,2008:pm/blogs/marginal-utility/9.58081 2008-04-30T15:43:03Z 2008-04-30T15:43:03Z Rob Horning FT editorial yesterday, former investment banker Abigail Hofman blamed the current financial... ]]> tag:popmatters.com,2008:pm/blogs/marginal-utility/9.58049 2008-04-29T16:33:01Z 2008-04-29T16:33:01Z Rob Horning tag:popmatters.com,2008:pm/blogs/marginal-utility/9.58028 2008-04-28T20:18:01Z 2008-04-28T20:18:01Z Rob Horning tag:popmatters.com,2008:pm/blogs/marginal-utility/9.57839 2008-04-24T23:37:00Z 2008-04-24T23:37:00Z Rob Horning Guardian, CEPR economist Dean Baker makes a point I was struggling to make in this column. Baker does a good job of explaining how irrational, economically... ]]> tag:popmatters.com,2008:pm/blogs/marginal-utility/9.57810 2008-04-24T02:11:00Z 2008-04-24T02:11:00Z Rob Horning What's the Matter with Kansas? and One Market Under God and other left-leaning cultural critiques, would... ]]>