Word: crazes
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Your article on the Pokemon craze [ARTS, Nov. 22] noted many of the reasons that children are drawn to this imaginary world of battling pocket monsters--the charm of the characters, the addictiveness of the game, the challenge of collecting the cards and a child's innate urge to acquire. But one of the most powerful aspects of this phenomenon is Ash, the hero of the TV series. He attains something real children yearn for--independence and control over relationships. Ash leaves home on the noble quest to become a Pokemon master. He achieves this by using his wits...
...call mathematics a fin-de-siecle craze would be a bit of an exaggeration, but there is something remarkable about how the most arcane of academic disciplines has finally implanted itself firmly in popular culture. The trend began in 1994 when Princeton University's Andrew Wiles proved Fermat's Last Theorem, a cantankerous problem that had defeated the best mathematical minds for more than 350 years. Not since Archimedes ran naked from his bathtub shouting "Eureka!" has a mathematician received more publicity. PEOPLE magazine put him on its list of "the 25 most intriguing people of the year...
...York-based makeup artist, Bobbi Brown, scraped together $10,000 to start her own minimalist line, which Lauder also snapped up. In 1995 a 22-year-old premed student, Dineh Mohajer, mixed nail polish to match a pair of light blue sandals, kicking off Hard Candy and a craze for pastel lacquers. The upstarts keep coming--makeup-artist lines such as Laura Mercier and Stila; New Agey innovators such as Philosophy and Tony & Tina--almost faster than stores can stock them. Together they capture a relatively small share of the market, but their quirky products and hip attitude influence everyone...
...promotional tour aren't new to Jordan--he's weathered the gonzo publicity machines surrounding his more high-profile efforts, including 1992's The Crying Game, for which he won a best original screenplay Oscar, and Interview with the Vampire, which came out as the worldwide Brad Pitt craze was fast approaching a fever pitch...
Mocha's comments point to another difference between little mergers and the monster variety (besides the obvious one of size). Although the conglomerate craze is waning, most big-time mergers still aim at a degree of diversification. But small firms almost always combine with others in the same industry. That, of course, frequently means mergers of direct competitors or potential competitors, like Personify and Anubis. But while trustbusters may try to stop such a merger between two giant competitors or at least attach onerous conditions, they are almost sure to ignore combinations of little competitors. It is difficult to imagine...