Properly Hideous
My old Princeton roommate Brink Lindsey and I agreed today that our 25th reunion jackets meet the primary test of such apparel: They must be both original and so hideous that one would never wear them outside of zip code 08544.
Can clothing be both hideous and cool at the same time? I think so (which my wife would say explains a lot). Now, if I could get Robert Graham to do an orange and black shirt to go with it....
PS: Brink has a new paper out, "Paul Krugman's Nostalgianomics: Economic Policies, Social Norms, and Income Inequality"
Update: Hat tip to the commenter who seems to be a fellow rail geek for coming up with the D&RGW locomotive analogy. I almost ran this post differently. I was going to have a joke post claiming to be an item from the stimulus bill, claiming one provision to increase employment was to replace traffic cones at construction sites with live humans wearing appropriate gear. But I am having trouble seeing very much funny in the stimulus bill right now. Never has so much been spent so quickly with so little deliberation or even understanding of what is being spent.
As for the test pattern comment, this does remind me of the "moiré" test patterns -- in fact, I had trouble trying to compress it too much as the jpeg started producing moiré patterns.