"Ideas" man. MediaBistro.com has a Q&A with Alex Star, editor of the Globe's "Ideas" section. (Via Romenesko.)

In the nine or so months that "Ideas" has been coming out, I haven't quite known what to make of it. I know people who love it; and I know people who really, really hate it. If pressed against the wall and forced to give an answer, I guess I'd say I like it, but not all the time, and that in some respects it still doesn't feel like it's quite gelled.

"Ideas" runs some terrific stuff. At the same time, I'd like to see more policy pieces, especially on local issues. In other words, maybe move it just a bit toward what was offered by the old "Focus" section, which it replaced.

Anyway, Star comes across in the interview as smart and interesting.

And here is my favorite chunk from "Ideas" since its debut, a hilarious meditation on old age headlined "Would You Let Your Grandmother Marry a Rolling Stone?", published last October and written by Joe Sacco and Gerry Mohr:

Perhaps you prefer the implacable dignity of Bob Dylan, who, in recent years, has recast himself as a romantically world-weary and crusty old man. This might be how you like to imagine yourself aging -- wisely, your face to the wind, with, as Shakespeare's Prospero mused, "every third thought [about the] grave." The Stones, on the other hand, are aging pretty much how you are likely to -- gracelessly, scared witless, clutching and clawing at the years that run through your fingers, dancing like a maniac when you think someone half your age is watching, and generally making yourself a laughingstock.