MaoXian.com -- Archive > July 19, 2005

Reading Roundup (IV)

Articles I've recently read with my comments in brackets:

Harry Potter Works His Magic Again in a Far Darker Tale, by Michiko Kakutani. [I haven't read any of the Harry books -- I've never been interested in Fantasy, but Michiko Kakutani is clearly a fan. Key paragraph explaining the success of the series:]

"In addition to being a bildungsroman, of course, the Harry Potter books are also detective stories, quest narratives, moral fables, boarding school tales and action-adventure thrill rides, and Ms. Rowling uses her tireless gift for invention to thread these genres together, while at the same time taking myriad references and tropes (borrowed from such disparate sources as Shakespeare, Dickens, fairy tales, Greek myths and more recent works like 'Star Wars') and making them her own."

Adsense Tips for Bloggers 1 [This guys apparently makes between $10,000 and $20,000 a month from AdSense. I'm not sure if it's true, but in any event, he gives some good tips about exploiting AdSense. (Frankly, I don't care for ads, even unobtrusive text-based ones.) He spreads his "tips" over eight pages to maximize the serving of ads -- call me old fashioned, but I find that scummy.]

Housing Goes Frothy to Flat in Denver Area, by Motoko Rich. ["Five years ago, median house prices were rising at an annual clip of nearly 17 percent. By the first quarter of 2005 the increase had slipped to 3 percent ... 'we're back to what I would portray as a normal market. Historically we had 5 percent appreciation, and now we have 5 percent appreciation.'" The only number that interested me in the article: "Inventories of available homes have tripled from 8,010 in January 2000 to 25,817 in June." That isn't new home inventory, that's available home inventory. You can bet there isn't a huge inventory of DR Horton's "Prairie Palaces."]

Own Original Chinese Copies of Real Western Art!, by Keith Bradsher. [This is a fascinating article... we've been looking for someone who can make us some Brancusi copies, but sculptors are harder to come by than oil painters... great line: "Chinese universities, sensing a financial opportunity, now charge twice as much in annual tuition for arts majors as for engineering majors."]

List of films ordered by uses of the word fuck [The Big Lebowski, one of my favorite movies, weighs in at #9. It's no surprise that three Tarantino movies make the list.]

Posted on July 19, 2005 at 7:30, GMT


	Tuesday, July 19 Reading Roundup (IV) Articles I've recently read with my comments in brackets: Harry Potter Works His Magic Again in a Far Darker Tale, by Michiko Kakutani. [I haven't read any of the Harry books -- I've never been interested in Fantasy, but Michiko Kakutani is clearly a fan. Key paragraph explaining the success of the series:] "In addition to being a bildungsroman, of course, the Harry Potter books are also detective stories, quest narratives, moral fables, boarding school tales and action-adventure thrill rides, and Ms. Rowling uses her tireless gift for invention to thread these genres together, while at the same time taking myriad references and tropes (borrowed from such disparate sources as Shakespeare, Dickens, fairy tales, Greek myths and more recent works like 'Star Wars') and making them her own." Adsense Tips for Bloggers 1 [This guys apparently makes between $10,000 and $20,000 a month from AdSense. I'm not sure if it's true, but in any event, he gives some good tips about exploiting AdSense. (Frankly, I don't care for ads, even unobtrusive text-based ones.) He spreads his "tips" over eight pages to maximize the serving of ads -- call me old fashioned, but I find that scummy.] Housing Goes Frothy to Flat in Denver Area, by Motoko Rich. ["Five years ago, median house prices were rising at an annual clip of nearly 17 percent. By the first quarter of 2005 the increase had slipped to 3 percent ... 'we're back to what I would portray as a normal market. Historically we had 5 percent appreciation, and now we have 5 percent appreciation.'" The only number that interested me in the article: "Inventories of available homes have tripled from 8,010 in January 2000 to 25,817 in June." That isn't new home inventory, that's available home inventory. You can bet there isn't a huge inventory of DR Horton's "Prairie Palaces."] Own Original Chinese Copies of Real Western Art!, by Keith Bradsher. [This is a fascinating article... we've been looking for someone who can make us some Brancusi copies, but sculptors are harder to come by than oil painters... great line: "Chinese universities, sensing a financial opportunity, now charge twice as much in annual tuition for arts majors as for engineering majors."] List of films ordered by uses of the word fuck [The Big Lebowski, one of my favorite movies, weighs in at #9. It's no surprise that three Tarantino movies make the list.] Posted on July 19, 2005 at 7:30, GMT Buying the Daylights out of DayStar DSTI got some big order yesterday, apparently. It doesn't matter, what matters is that the every day trader was alerted to this puppy the minute it popped. Dummies know it's just a matter of waiting for a low-risk spot when it comes to runaway stocks. DSTI, 3-min. Chart Posted on July 19, 2005 at 7:00, GMT Previous Entry >>> "Focus on the Homebuilders" Chat		Home Archive © 2000 - 2005 Chairman MaoXian

Reading Roundup (IV)

Buying the Daylights out of DayStar