31 March 2002
1. Last week’s This American Life was the “hoaxes” one, the first which (in its description of someone who had a fake British accent as a teen) really caught my ear.

2. A pair of “follow the consumer good through the industrial capitalist system” articles in this week’s Times Magazine: beef and used clothes. “And yet the further you follow [the rational logic of industrializing agriculture], the more likely you are to wonder if that rational logic might not also be completely insane… how cheap, really, is cheap feedlot beef? Not cheap at all, when you add in the invisible costs.”

3. Other hidden costs: raising the cost of driving in NYC, to reflect the real costs of public space.

4. The advent of abusive spam: received an email today with the subject line “Stop Fu$%#ing around and fill it out.” Well then.