Jonathan V. Last's Blog, page 57

Comic Books as IP Loss-Leaders

Galley Friend A.K. sends along this very interesting analysis which pegs total sales of comic books/graphic novels for 2012 at roughly $700 million.

To put that in some perspective, in 2012 The Avengers grossed $623 million domestically.

In a weird way, I suspect this makes the actual comic-book industry more vital and secure today than it was 20 years ago when it was breaking sales records.

In Other “What to Expect” News

IKEA is doing their part. They must hate women. And the planet. And be a bunch of modular, self-assembling racists.

Also, look for me on CBS Sunday Morning this weekend. You’ll never guess what I’m talking about . . .

Spencer Ackerman, For The Win

Not just “for the win,” but maybe for the biggest win of 2013:

“Inside the Battle of Hoth.”

Totally, completely, epic.

Bonus: The symposium response only adds to the awesome. This has to be the best Star Wars counter-factual colloquy ever.

Double Bonus: It just keeps getting better: The Tarkin Doctrine and the Sith Way of War. Holy. Crap.

Bradley Lecture

In case you were just dying to attend my Bradley talk on Monday, but couldn’t make it, here’s the video:

 

Darren Rovell as the Honky Tonk Man

It’s weirdly convincing. Even though, to the extent I’d ever thought about Rovell, he struck me as basically harmless.

Remember, Honky Tonk only caught heat when he turned heel.

PSA

Last week was great in blog news, because not only is wwtdd back and running–with the possibility of revitalizing the format–but Galley Friend Santino has branched out. Now, not only is he blogging occasionally at sonnybunch.com, but he’s posting at the Washington Free Beacon’s kick-ass new blog, too. Alongside both Galley Friend Matt Continetti and . . .

THE TRUTH MONKEY!

More than Marginally Awesome

Tyler Cowen has some nice things to say about What to Expect.

Daily “What to Expect” Update

So the good news is that we broke Amazon. And the Kindle version is available. The bad news is that Amazon is out of hardcovers and waiting for the second printing. Further good news is that Barnes & Noble still has hardcovers and the Nook version available.

I’ve got an op-ed up on immigration and fertility rates over at the Los Angeles Times.

Then there are two reviews out. The first is from the Daily Beast’s Justin Green, who did the only thing a writer can really ask of a reviewer: He read the book carefully. I’m really grateful for that.

The second is from Ruy Teixeira at The New Republic. (Note to TNR’s digital editors: You’ve mis-spelled Ruy’s last name in your URL. Better for SEO if you fix it.)

I don’t want to say too much about Ruy’s review–if he read the book and wasn’t convinced by the data and research I assembled, then fair enough. Also, I’m a big fan of his work. Have been for a long time, and so I’m really inclined to assume the best. I’ll just suggest that I think it’s possible that if Ruy were to go back and read the book a little more closely, he’d find that–at the very least–I’m more careful than he’s giving me credit for in his review.

For instance, I don’t “reject out of hand” proposals about government setting up something like affordable, national daycare. What I say is this:

The best-case results suggest that the natalist programs—which essentially pay parents enough to put their kids in day care so that they can go to work—have created a small, positive effect. A large body of the research suggests they’ve had no effect at all, other than to nudge the timing of births slightly later in a woman’s life and closer together.

There are footnotes to this with links to the research, because I tried to make What to Expect as data-driven as possible, since a lot of the assumptions we hold about demographics and public policies turn out either not to be true, or to be more complicated than we think. Now maybe Ruy is unconvinced by the research on this–and that’s fine, though to my mind the body of it is fairly compelling. But my point is that if we decide that something like Scandinavian-style national daycare is a good which we value on its own, then so be it–but that there is research on its efficacy which suggests we should not expect more than marginal returns from it.

He also seems to fundamentally mis-understand the immigration section of What to Expect, where he says I’m not “interested” in seeing more immigration. For the life of me, I can’t figure out how that was his takeaway from the book. Here’s one passage on the subject from What to Expect, for instance:

So in sum: Immigration isn’t as good for your demographic profile as baby-making—and it causes lots of problems.20 Yet we are lucky to have it for as long as it lasts. Think of it as a hedge against our native fertility rate, should we continue down the slope toward Ital- ian or Japanese levels (as Second Demographic Transition theory suggests we will).

Again, there are footnotes in there showing that these statements are all based on research in the field. But like I said, I don’t want to belabor all of this.

If Ruy didn’t like What to Expect, or found it unconvincing, that’s fine by me. He’s a really smart guy. And as I said, I respect his judgment and generally admire his work quite a lot. But again, I think if he were to give the book a closer reading, his judgments might be a little different.

PSA

Brendan and wwtdd are back. And possibly about to change formats.

On The Blaze, Again

First, a reminder: The Kindle version of What to Expect is here.

Second, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I’m fascinated by what Glenn Beck is doing with The Blaze as an internet TV network and it’s incomprehensible why media reporters (and business reporters) aren’t all over this story. Beck took a cable TV following, ported it out of an established network, and ushered into his own new network, which is not just an internet TV channel, but a pay internet TV channel. How is this not the most interesting, and potentially disruptive, media experiment since the advent of Fox News Channel? And yet when you look around the mainstream press . . . crickets.

As I said, incomprehensible.

I went on The Blaze’s Real News last night and came away even more impressed with the operation. What they’re doing isn’t an alt-version of Fox. It’s actually more like what PBS might be in an alt-universe where it had created a hit newscast for younger, conservative viewers. It’s long-form broadcast. It’s high-energy, but not shout-y. And it’s really, really smart.

I had a great time with The Blaze gang and then went over to my other favorite cable show, Greg Gutfeld’s Red Eye. Doing those shows back-to-back is basically the most fun you can have on TV.