Missed this earlier, but worth reading in this month’s Esquire: A nice profile of past CER interviewee and Nicobar Group head Barrett Comiskey, rather boldly titled “The New American.” On one hand the article is full of chestnuts like Shanghai/Blade Runner comparisons and the breathless style that we’ve come to expect from the parachute journalism form (sample sentence: “He is an unrepentant logician, even here in Shanghai, a place that defies rationality.” One wonders if an earlier draft had exclamation marks). On the other hand, it does a good job of classifying the various species of Shanghai expatriate (with some delicious barbs at the expense of the Bund-frequenting yuppie phylum thrown in for taste) and gives a solid portrait of a genuinely interesting person.
Also worth noting, if you get your hands on a paper copy of the magazine: The cover this month includes a changing E Ink display, also used in the Amazon Kindle and pioneered by Comiskey when he was an undergraduate at MIT. Neat touch, and an impressive logistical feat.
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