Bad Web Design

This time from the Rhode Island school of Design: http://www.risd.edu/ . They follow the shooting gallery style hyper links.

Shock and Resignation

Human interest article on the impact of GM's plant closing on autoworkers and their families, something the NY Times usually excels at: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/22/business/22workers.html

What is jarring is that the reporter visits a plant where two-thirds of the 300 workers have been laid off "temporarliy" earlier this year:

"The automaker slowed production there to a trickle as demand for the vehicle it produces, the $40,000 high-performance Chevrolet SSR pickup truck, failed to keep pace with capacity. Although most employees do not come to work, under their union contract G.M. is still required to pay them."

What this means is that GM, most likely next year, is going to quit paying workers they laid off this year. The Times misses the real story: while the lay offs are devastating to the employees, their families, and their communities, what has changed since the days of "Roger and Me," is not so much that American drivers have quit buying GM cars (a fact fairly unchanged, except downwards, since the late 70s), but rather GM has stretched out laying off and retiring their work force even when facing a possible bankruptcy.

The British and Their Drinking: Well, at Least We're Not like the French.

To balance out the previous post, which has hints of Irish bashing by the Brits, I would like to mention a recent BBC article that discusses the British and their love of drinking:BBC NEWS Magazine Half-empty or half-full?: "Although our young people are among the biggest boozers in Europe, overall we still do not drink as much as the French (see last section), but we do so in a different way"


Incidentally, any study of the Industrial Revolution in Britain also automatically becomes an examination of how factory owners and local authorities (often the same body of persons) controlled the consumption of alcohol by the new factory workers, formerly known as peasants. After pay day not much got done until the work force sobered up. (One line of reasoning by the factory owners was that over paying the workers only encouraged them to drink more.) In fact, the regulated closing times of pubs date back to World War I and the government's concern about drink-induced absenteeism in the arms and munitions plants.

BBC NEWS | Northern Ireland | 'The number u are calling knows ur waiting...'

Irish fear being buried alive and are being buried with cell phones: BBC NEWS Northern Ireland 'The number u are calling knows ur waiting...'

My favorite quotes:

"Some people, who are superstitious, insist the phone is turned off so that if they do wake up they will have battery power when the phone is turned on again.

One undertaker said: "This is despite the fact that there is more chance of them being taken up into space by aliens than waking up." "


"He said it would not make much sense for people to be buried with a mobile phone if they were to be cremated. "


And finally:

"Mr Flanagan said he asked anyone wishing to leave a mobile phone in the casket to turn it onto vibrate or turn it off.

"Obviously you don't want a phone ringing inside a coffin during a funeral," he said. "

Talking 'Bout My Degeneration

Jack Shafer brings up a good point in his Slate article The New Power Generation about how to tell when the boomers have jumped the shark.

While Shafer brings up the mainstreaming of catch phrases from the Simpsons as possibly signaling the fade out of the boomers, I like to think that a South Park-esque reference in the New York Times, preferably in the book review section (example:"Post-modernism blows!") will provide the all encompassing sign that the boomer era is over.

Which brings up another observation: the generational shift of power in the 60s and 70s was a brutal ideological blitzkrieg that took no prisoners and laid waste to the cultural heartland of American small towns and suburbs. The current interest in "The Greatest Generation," is not so much a way of making guilt driven, fawning, amends, but rather a careful and calculated move by the most self absorbed generation to set the tone for their treatment by the post-boomers.

What will happen, though, is that the Xers and Yers will revile aging boomers for draining scarce pension funds and medical services. It's happening already in the sitcoms and movies: boomers are stereotyped as having been sexual libertines in their youth, addicts and spendthrifts in their adult years, and perpetually lost adolescents in their middle years. Perhaps the character of Frazier's father, Martin, will go down in pop culture history as having been the first indication that the boomers had lost their hold on the popular imagination in comparison to generation before.

'The Chosen': Getting In'-NY Times Review

David Brooks' review of of Jerome Karabel's "The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton." Normally I am very weary of the impression, often contained in the NY Times, that there are fewer than ten colleges worth attending in the entire United States; however, despite my initial reluctance I enjoyed his review and will buy and read the book.

One part of Brooks' review especially caught my attention; essentially, a 1960s admittance shift, ostensibly meritocratic in nature, by these elite colleges has resulted in a less diverse socio-economic student body. 'The Chosen': Getting In - New York Times: "In 1952, more than 37 percent of Harvard freshmen had fathers who had not attended college. By 1996, less than 11 percent did. In 1954, 10 percent of Harvard freshmen had fathers who worked at blue-collar jobs. Forty-two years later, only 5 percent did."

This observation fits in with Michael Bennet's "When Dreams Came True: The GI Bill and the Making of Modern America" . I have been reading his very compelling argument that the post-war period represented the most dynamic and socially mobile era of U.S. history. The 1950s, long derided for its perceived conformity and dullness, re-emerges in Bennet's book as the decade of true fundemental change and progress. By the way, the then president of Harvard, Conant, opposed the education provision of the G.I. Bill because of its implied threat to the educated elite.

DVD Report

Watched two this weekend. "Diary of Mad Black Woman" and Melinda and Melinda . I'd heard that"Diary of a Mad Black Woman" was worth seeing, and "Melinda and Melinda" was a whim pick. While the two movies on the surface have little in common, both tell a story about what happens when men and women follow their hearts instead of their common sense.

"Diary of a Mad Black Woman" is from a play by Tyler Perry, who acts in three roles . We watch how Helen's (Kimberly Elise) world collapses when her wealthy, professional husband kicks her to the curb. With nowhere to go, Helen seeks help from her grandmother, Madea, played by Tyler Perry with some remarkable makeup work and monstrous fake boobs. Madea is a good hearted pistol waving senior citizen, not afraid to stand up for herself, and her relatives and friends. The story unfolds showing how Helen, already self aware, is torn and transformed, forced to reach inside herself to make very hard choices. The writing at times seems more suited for the stage, and I wish we could have had more of Madea and less of her sex mad husband, Joe, played by Tyler Perry. There is also a sub plot involving Helen's friend Deborah who has hit bottom, and is estranged from her husband, played by Tyler Perry, and children. Through this interplay, we learn about how family, community, and spirituality provide the framework for a life with meaning and purpose.

"Melinda and Melinda" is different, a Woody Allen exercise that shows us how love provides the same material for comedy and tragedy. If this Chekhovian theme wasn't enough, the movie opens with what looks like the reunion of the "Uncle Vanya" cast having an after dinner discussion centering on tragedy and comedy. Based on a story of an emotionally distraught woman, Melinda (Radha Mitchell), who intrudes without warning into a dinner party held by a sophisticated, artistic New York couple, the two versions of the story take their tragic twists and comic turns. The movie is enjoyable not only because it is clever, but also for the way it simultaneously idealizes and satirizes the Manhattan elite strata of low budget and high minded film makers, actors, and classical musicians.

After seeing "Diary of Mad Black woman" and "Melind and Melinda" my conclusion is that love is the strongest force affecting humans, one that can either destroy or reshape us, and either way, we're not ever the same afterwards.

(By the way, last week Woody Allen said, with a straight face that he had paternalistic feelings for his wife. Guess that has something to do with him being her stepfather.)