And now for something completely different

Erik Kain

Erik writes about video games at Forbes and politics at Mother Jones. He's the contributor of The League though he hasn't written much here lately. He can be found occasionally composing 140 character cultural analysis on Twitter.

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5 Responses

  1. Lev says:

    I know what you mean. I love a lot of the TV summaries over at the A.V. Club, but I’m usually so late to the party that I can’t connect with any of them until way after the fact.Report

  2. Madness can have it’s usefulness, but only in moderation.

    There was a blog by some designer that had a different format for each day. It was neat. Of course, there’s no way I’m going to be able to find it and supply a link.

    Have a good Easter.Report

  3. Louis B. says:

    Happy Pagan fertility holiday!Report

  4. zic says:

    E.D. Kain with not much to say?

    Gotta be an April Fools joke.Report

  5. Jason Kuznicki says:

    How many magazines do you read a day? And how many blogs? I’m guessing the latter is an order of magnitude more.

    Blogs and other websites strive for uniformity because they use it for branding. Magazines don’t have to. It’s rare that you don’t know or need a reminder of which magazine you are reading. People don’t exactly throw them at you at random, as happens with blogs and hyperlinks.

    Also, hyperlinks need to be unambiguously differentiated into visited and unvisited, and they must be differentiated from regular text. The whole scheme must be intuitive enough that it does not demand anything of your attention. Websites use fonts and colors for navigability, and to achieve this navigability, they often have to use every bit of your surplus attention. (Note how the most intellectual sites, like Arts & Letters Daily, are amazingly simple. Then look at MySpace.)

    Dead-tree publications use paper for navigability, so they can often be more creative with fonts. And they probably should be, otherwise there’d be a bit of your brain left unengaged.Report