How do we perceive art?  How do we value art? In case you missed the original, Pulitizer-prize winning article, it’s all here in the Washington Post’s piece by Gene Weingarten.

I’ve been away, lured back by this photo via fluffyfollies, of all places (don’t ask).  In the 60s, plastic leather had passed its prime and the marketers decided that they wanted to make the products distinctive and memorable.  So they created a creature called the Nauga (for Naugahyde, a branded vinyl product).  Needless to say, it wasn’t the huge success that the Mad Men had predicted.  Johnny seems nonplussed.

Aretha, circa 1968. Photograph by Lee Friedlander (via 1968. Photograph by Lee Friedlander (via cdsporch.org)

Flachbild, a Danish company puts a more modern spin on modern Danish furniture with a line of carpets that reimagine beloved sausage.  The line, Worsttepich, includes Salami, Blutwurst, and my personal favorite, Mortadella.  Via Big Fun.

David Rosenberg, he of Gluskin Sheff, checks in, a bitter wind from the North:

Never in recorded history has growth coming out of a string of declines been as weak as what we just witnessed. Considering all the government efforts to usher in a V-shaped recovery, what we saw unfold in the real economy in Q3 – admittedly quite divorced from the action in financial markets – was, in a word, sad.

For TC (and others) who didn’t understand ‘A Serious Man.’  They are not always detectives, but the main characters in Coen Brothers movies resemble Raymond Chandler’s remark about his own main character:

Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective in this kind of story must be such a man. He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honour – by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world.

Many of us, whether in the jungles of Asia or on the streets of Chicago, had discovered that noble causes can lead to ignoble actions and that we were capable of sacrificing honor to a sense of efficacy.
(Linda Grant (b. 1949)

Cheering for an Isetta.  Zoom! (via Frango).

Via Clusterflock.