Weekend Reading: Christgau on the Decline, Spoon Holding Steady and Kismet on the Rise

Some found materials and reading collected while spending the weekend pondering the mind-numbing decline of Robert Christgau, Dean of American Rock Critics ((Truly a confounding title, no?)), who placed American Saturday Night by Brad Paisley atop his 2009 ballot for the Pazz and Jop poll. While I’ve little remaining appetite for further infographics, there’s likely an intrepid soul willing to take on the charting of Christgau’s decline in a format as easily-consumed as Paisley’s quasi-country-with-a-slice-of-the-21st-century pop. Until that day when The Village Voice takes a cue from Etsy and opens up its API, the Dean himself has made the data available.

The knowledge / implementation gap (in cookbooks)

via ChristmasGorilla, a link to a fantastic New Yorker piece by Adam Gopnik (@adamgopnik) on the ways in which we use cookbooks, highlighted by this nugget:
Handed-down wisdom and worked-up information remain the double piers of a cook’s life. The recipe book always contains two things: news of how something is made, and assurance that there’s [...]

links for 2009-01-16

cellar door: Demure Optimism
Acknowledgement v. Optimism through the prism of fashion – though I think it reaches well beyond.

“Technology” is the problem
Helge Tenno follows up on McCluhan and Davies.

Open plan vs. open to distractions « (almost) always thinking
A strong argument in support of open floorplans for creative organizations.

The Well-Constructed Document | Serial Consign
Michael Place and [...]

Transparency Paper One: The Executional Advantage of Celebrity Cookbooks

With transparency on the mind of so many – Andy Beal (transparency and Steve Jobs), B.L. Ochman (price transparency), Ben McConnell (bailout transparency), Paul Soldera (corporate transparency), Joseph Mann (transparency transparency), Mitch Joel (digital transparency) and Chris Anderson (personal transparency) – as well as frequently on my own mind, I thought that I might begin [...]