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The U.K. Guardian, Friday, July 28, 2000

They are words that dare not speak their name in America, especially among the thrusting young bucks of dot.com land. But failure and pessimism are enjoying a renaissance not seen since the Dark Ages. New webzine failuremag.com takes an in-depth (and tongue-in-cheek) look at this nasty notion, listing events and business deals that infamously went awry. Last week's edition looked at Kellogg's doomed venture to sell cereal and milk in the same packet. Tasty. The site also sports a nifty catalogue of failure, dubbed the Flophouse, and even has its own souvenir shop—Failure T-shirts, mugs, etc. Better still, failuremag's philosophy seeks to turn the notion of success on its head, by reinterpreting triumphs, such as the Frankish victory over the Arabs at the Battle of Poitiers in AD 732, which, it claims, may have set the Renaissance back about 750 years.

This article appeared in the U.K. Guardian, July 28, 2000
Copyright © 2000 Guardian Newspapers Limited