Is this box too small or big? Enough of this infinite flexibility shinola! It's making me sick. In my day you had two choices: (a) beautiful and made by a designer, preferably Swedish, and (b) kludgible but ugly. And (a) is [I'm laying down the law here] invariably the better product, for any consumer, in the long run. I know this from my coffee-making experience, not to mention the evidence that sprouts up sickeningly all around me, that people cannot be trusted with customization. Before long, somebody will want a peppermint eggnog iced latte.
Even in this enlightened age, when every computer user in the country has access to OS 10.2, there exists this operating system, named "Windows", or something, which will allow you to make the all your window frames bright fuchsia with labels in some 14-point baby blue fantasy brush script. To what is the world coming?
All I want is not standardization -- ugh, that's even more foul -- but strict aesthetic controls on what medium-sized objects can be generated in the universe. If the table is ugly, I want it DESTROYED. Think of the children who go through their lives without seeing the Savoy vase. Join the American Society for Improved Aesthetics today!
Music: H I F Biber's Arminio. The man could write a melody -- I have known him for years as a composer of chamber music for violins, and half-scoffed at his rather over-stated large-scale masses, but this opera is the bomb.
Language and "Power": a fascinating set of links about languages and the euro is at Michael Everson's typography site, which, among other things, talks about the rather uninformed assumptions the officers who decree [this construction is parallel to "ladies who lunch"] make about morphology.
Cosmic Kick Me Sign: Doing the late shift Monday night, until 10 pm Eastern time. Find me on IM [notalastair, or YM: st_aelred] and keep me company.
Reading: Ladies and gentlemen, do you remember a little book I like to call "Possession"? I haven't have had the pleasure of the movie yet, but I have that tingly feeling down there like you have just before a bad date that ends in drunken sex nonetheless.