These companies say they're successful because they have figured out how to tempt customers away from the convenience of 7-Eleven and the low prices of Wal-Mart by teaching employees to build relationships with shoppers through personal service.

"They're making shopping more aspirational and pleasurable," says Andrew Seth, co-author of Supermarket Wars. "They show customers they care about them, and they give them great food."

The result: America is both a Wal-Mart nation and a Wegmans nation. And even Wal-Mart is trying to look more like Wegmans or Whole Foods: The retailer just announced it's going to double its organic offerings in many of its 3,800 stores. Likewise, Safeway has tried to follow the Whole Foods and Trader Joe's model by introducing its Lifestyle stores, which feature such amenities as hardwood floors and more prepared meals.

"It used to be the three most important things for a supermarket were location, location, location," says Michael Sansolo of the Food Marketing Institute.

"Shoppers now are willing to drive to experience something they feel brings them value, and not just in the monetary sense. For some, it's Wegmans; for others it's Wal-Mart."

And for many, it's both, or even more. "Shoppers are actually increasing their channel surfing," says Laurie Demeritt, president of the market research firm the Hartman Group in Bellevue, Wash. "They might go to Wal-Mart to stock up on (bulk items). And when they want to buy hormone-free milk, they'll go to Wild Oats."

And if you want to find Diet Coke on a Sunday or Monday, you'd better go somewhere besides my neighborhood Albertson's.

In 1994 and '95, paper prices skyrocketed. The cost of magazine paper rose by about 10 percent a month, hardly the sort of hike you can simply pass on to subscribers. Most publishers, including REASON, dealt with the increase by printing fewer pages and adding fewer new subscribers than they'd planned. Newspapers were even harder hit: Escalating newsprint prices drove many to lay off hundreds of employees, raise prices, and, in some cases, go out of business. It was not a happy time in the publishing industry.

Yet as far as I know, no one in the Clinton administration ever called a press conference to address the "paper crisis." Congress never held hearings on the subject. CNN never led the evening news with tales of how paper buyers were struggling. Newt Gingrich never posed for photos in front of giant rolls of newsprint. Bob Dole never denounced the president for his lack of "leadership" on the matter.

And that's as it should be. There was no crisis, nothing requiring an emergency response from government. By historical standards, paper wasn't even that expensive; its price was just higher than expected, and rising rapidly. Government policy had exacerbated things--in this case, through recycling mandates that led paper companies to invest in converting, rather than expanding, capacity--but the main cause of the price jump was plain old ordinary tight supply hit by expanding demand. The higher prices gave both consumers and producers important information about the state of the market. In response, buyers bought less. Sellers started to produce more. And prices eventually crept down.

That's how prices work. They convey information. They give people feedback about what's happening in the world. They produce responses. They go up and down. And while sellers may experiment with different levels, always seeking the most profitable ones, no one in particular gets to decide where prices will end up. They are out of control.

Recently, we've had a "gas crisis." From February through the end of April, retail gasoline prices jumped about 12 percent nationally, 21 percent in California. What's interesting about the latest "gas crisis" is how, despite a brief flurry of media attention and political pontificating, it looks a lot more like the "paper crisis" than like the real gas crises of the 1970s. There are no long lines at the pump or threats of "odd-even" rationing based on your license plate number. You can fill your tank on Sunday, and every station has gas- -for a price. The government interventions that distorted energy markets in the 1970s, and put drivers through hell, have disappeared.

This crisis isn't a crisis. It's just a price increase, the sort of signal consumers adjust to every day. No hysteria is called for.

Anyway, I thought we were supposed to be using less gasoline--to save the planet, annoy the Saudis, whatever. But I guess that was just talk.

On a reporting trip last week, mostly to New York, I made a brief stop in Washington to see Sally Satel, who continues to recover rapidly from her kidney transplant. She's now busy working on a book about the screwed-up system for allocating organs--a remnant of extreme central planning that needlessly kills thousands of Americans every year. And the system isn't even as bad as some "bioethicists" wish it were.

For an outrageous example of trying to curtail organ donations in the name of "fairness," go here and here.

The folks in the counties colored blue here tend to assume the church is a worldwide hierarchy with bureaucracy, tradition, and deep pockets. Those in the red counties assume complete congregational autonomy, the right of members to hire or fire a preacher by a simple congregational vote, and a wildly free market for money and members. They may vote the same way in presidential elections, but their experiences of governance in their religious lives could not be more different. (The green, yellow, orange, and tan counties fall somewhere in between.)

(Via Marginal Revolution.)

The photo is from my neighborhood store, where I've been using the comfy chairs a lot this week.

A reader who blogs as Wonderduck suggests where to find the real culprits:

Instead of looking at the various presidents, veeps, and the like, I'd look more towards the Merchandisers and/or Buyers. I used to work for the Borders group as a store manager, and they would be the people who told us what to put where, for what it's worth. It's still reprehensible, of course, but that'd be my guess.

If I didn't have so many deadlines this week, I'd make some phone calls to Borders HQ.

And reader Bob Basil provides some background on Free Inquiry. This sounds pretty familiar:

I was executive editor of FI for three years in the late eighties. I agree with you re newsstand sales: In my time they were never even sought. The goal was to get subscribers, who would then be solicited for additional money during biannual "fund drives." We even tried to get our older subscribers -- those village atheists often alienated from their families -- to leave the magazine in their wills. Many did. We also made money by putting on annual conferences. The magazine was a serious enterprise but in business terms it was a loss leader.

Paul Kurtz, who runs FI, is an excellent promoter. He has to be, as the material he publishes (he also founded Skeptical Inquirer, an antiparanormal magazine, and Prometheus Books Inc.) is usually a hard-sell.

UPDATE: Reader Jim Walsh writes: "Interesting story about Borders and Free Inquiry. It just so happens I picked up the latest FI the other day at my local Barnes & Noble. To be fair about it though, I don't imagine Bismarck, North Dakota is on the Islamofascists' short list of sexy targets..."

I can't fault his math, but I don't endorse his views on fluorescent bulbs. Aesthetics counts too. But at least "Mycroft" relies on persuasion rather than legal sanctions.

I think the shallow sets in pretty quickly, which is why I don't blog--or even read other people's blogs--every day.

Besides, my brand is, if considerably less financially valuable, then also less sullied than the Times's. I don't act ethically for their sake, but for mine. Their assumption that they're ethically slumming when they use freelancers is insulting.

Here's the Times questionnaire. (I tried to use Movable Type's extended entry format, but it didn't work.)

1. Please list your other current employers, whether full time or part time

2. For what other employers have you worked in the last three years?

3. What sort of volunteer work do you do regularly, if any, and for whom? (Please include any public relations, advocacy or advisory board involvement.)

4. Do you do any work paid or unpaid in politics or government? Have you done any lobbying of governmental bodies?

5. Do you have any financial investments or financial ties that may limit your ability to cover specific topics free of conflict, and if so, what are the topics?

6. Although we don't regulate the activities of spouses, partners or immediate family members of our contributors, do any of their professional or personal involvements or any of their financial investments or ties make certain topics inappropriate for you, and if so, what are the topics?

7. Have you accepted any free trips, junkets or press trips in the last two years? Have you accepted any substantial free merchandise or discounts from people we might cover?

8. Has anything you’ve written later resulted in a published editor's note or retraction for deliberate falsehood or plagiarism or become the subject of a lawsuit involving allegations of deliberate falsehood? (If yes, please include details about the publication and your role in the article or story. If a lawsuit, please describe the disposition of the case.)

The old Times freelance contract already prohibited you from things like taking money from people you write about. But it trusted the freelancers' judgment about when to ask editors about possible conflicts.

I returned my Borders Rewards card today via snail-mail to

Borders Customer Care
100 Phoenix Drive
Ann Arbor, MI 48108-2202
888-812-6657

I'd like to know who at corporate headquarters is responsible for the bone-headed decision to take Free Inquiry off the newsstand.

I'm happy to say that my recovery is pretty much complete. The light blogging recently reflects how much time I'm spending on reporting and writing, a.k.a. "real work." I even made a trip to San Francisco last weekend to do reporting for my first Atlantic column. Sally Satel--the Three Kidney Wonder--is also doing well.

One great thing about getting a kidney from a healthy friend is that you can be sure it won't give you rabies.

"It is syntax that gives words the power to relate to each other in a sequence, to create rhythms andn emphasis, to carry meaning--of whatever kind--as well as glow individually in just the right stuff," writes Tufte. She has collected hundreds of sentences to illustrate how effective writers use specific techniques to create desired effects. She has a whole chapter on appositives and another on parallelism. And I learned what to call one of my favorites: asyndeton, which means omitting conjunctions. (As the previous sentence illustrates, I also like starting sentences with conjunctions, something forbidden by elementary school teachers. They have apparently never read the Hebrew scriptures, where nearly every sentence starts with And.)

The book is delightful on its own merits. But I also like it because it includes four examples from The Substance of Style.

You might think that [foley artist John] Roesch's profession, which got its start with the birth of the "talkies," would be one of the first casualties of computer-generated cinema. After all, foley artists — whose craft was invented in the 1920s by an enterprising stuntman and director named Jack Foley — pride themselves on being low-tech.

But thanks to improvements in digital recording equipment and the boom in computer animation films that lack ambient sound, foley artists are becoming increasingly important players in movie production.

In the last few years, several Hollywood studios have upgraded and expanded their foley soundstages, known as "pits," to help artists make noise the old-fashioned way. They gleefully stomp on cereal boxes, crush pine cones with hammers, whack car doors with crowbars. Why synthesize a sound, they argue, when you can have the real thing?

In the last 10 years, increasing demand for foley artists has doubled their ranks to about 100, mostly in Los Angeles.

Beyond the "high tech, high touch" angle, the article is simply fun.