Browser Daily Newsletter 1214
Why Does A Good Kettle Cost $90?
Chewxy | Bigger On The Inside | 20th January 2014
Theory and practice of building and buying kettles. "Expensive basic kettles are the same as cheap basic kettles, except for price differentiation. The increase in marginal utility from purchasing a expensive kettle is not big enough compared to buying a baseline cheap kettle to warrant it. It’d be better to buy a temperature control kettle, as then the increase in marginal utility would be enough to warrant purchasing it"
Evolving Without Darwin
Rachel Mason Dentinger | Books & Ideas | 13th January 2014
What if Darwin had never existed? We would still have got a theory of evolution, which was very much "in the air in Darwin’s time". But natural selection might have waited another 30 years — and gained from the delay. If formulated in the 1890s, natural selection could have been "more firmly rooted in the newly emerging science of ecology, with its sense of complex interactions between organisms and their environments"
Gates And The Art Of The Political Memoir
Buce | Underbelly | 18th January 2014
Robert Gates's "much-hyped memoir" of his time as defense secretary is "a delight", a "remarkably unbuttoned affair", which reads "like an insurance policy by a guy who wants to guarantee that no one will ever invite him back into public office again". Most public-service memoirs are about self-justification and score-settling; this one actually teaches you something about how government works
The Tipping Point (E-Commerce Version)
Jeff Jordan | Andreessen Horowitz | 15th January 2014
While American stores were bemoaning weak holiday-season sales, UPS and FedEx were overwhelmed by shipments from online retailers. The "profound structural shift from physical to digital retail" is accelerating. "A Darwinian struggle is playing out in the malls of America" among surviving traditional retailers of consumer durables. Grocery stores and drug stores are holding up OK, but their turn will come
Narrative Persona In Nonfiction
Will Wilkinson | 19th January 2014
In works of nonfiction we identify the narrator with the author. But this is a "naive convention", a demand for sincerity rather than truth. "To give a nonfiction narrator a name distinct from the author – to announce that this true story will be narrated by Sasha Fierce or Slim Shady – would be to acknowledge the inherently performative aspect of authorship, to acknowledge the gap between authorial persona and author"
Video of the day: Bangalore Rickshaw
Thought for the day:
"The surest way to avoid disappointment is to lower expectations" — Shane Parrish
From February 3rd, The Browser newsletter will be for subscribers only. (https://thebrowser.com/support-the-browser) So, if you enjoy receiving this newsletter, please subscribe to The Browser for just $12/year by clicking here (https://thebrowser.com/support-the-browser) . (Unless, of course, you are a subscriber already, in which case: Thank You!)