Some interesting (or at least I thought so) stats from the latest issue of WIRED Magazine. Of the total 366 pages, a little over half, 200 are advertisments. Of the remaining 166 pages of ‘editorial’ content, 16 are basically unpaid ads for the products the cover.

I haven’t compared these numbers to other magazines, and I’m not really complaining (no one forced me to buy it), but it seems that WIRED is the Christmas Wish Book of the new milllenniyumyum.

About 50 of those editorial pages are dedicated to a fine history of the U.S. vs. Microsoft case which I would recommend reading (I’d like to it if it existed online – sigh).

Just finished reading No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies by Naomi Klein. It was an interesting book about the “brands, not products” phenomenon and provided a balanced historical look at the culture-jamming movement. Klein was careful to distance herself from organizations such as Adbusters that, despite earning my readership and respect, receive some much-needed criticism.

While interesting, No Logo does tend to drag a bit with an encyclopaedic style as is pointed out in a fine Slashdot review.

This probably shouldn’t matter, but I was drawn to the book in part by the fact that Klein is the wife of Avi Lewis who stands alone in the field of intelligent Canadian TV as host of the CBC’s Counterspin (Ralph Benmurgi is pretty cool too but I don’t know if he’s still on the air).