From: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org (fegmaniax-digest) To: fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Subject: fegmaniax-digest V14 #143 Reply-To: fegmaniax@smoe.org Sender: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk fegmaniax-digest Tuesday, June 7 2005 Volume 14 : Number 143 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: pres shrub shat on from great height [Benjamin Lukoff ] Re: stop me before I buy again [Benjamin Lukoff ] Re: stop me before I buy again [Capuchin ] Re: pres shrub shat on from great height [FSThomas ] Re: pres shrub shat on from great height [Jeff ] Re: pres shrub shat on from great height [adams@boutell.com] Re: pres shrub shat on from great height [FSThomas Subject: Re: pres shrub shat on from great height On Tue, 7 Jun 2005, Capuchin wrote: > On Tue, 7 Jun 2005, FSThomas wrote: > > I would counter with the purpose of *this* civilization is to be a > > society where it is within everyone's grasp to bring up their *own* > > level, the Government not withstanding. > > But that's not even social, Ferris. How can the purpose of civilization > be to undermine civilization? Making it within everyone's grasp to bring up their own level is undermining civilization? > > It's not the Government's *job* to bring you up, but rather their duty, > > according to the Constitution, to stay the Hell out of your way while > > you're on the way to making yourself all you can be. > > So we band together to keep out of each others' way? In a sense. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 7 Jun 2005 17:32:25 -0700 (PDT) From: Capuchin Subject: Re: stop me before I buy again On Tue, 7 Jun 2005, Benjamin Lukoff wrote: >> Have you seen "The Corporation"? The interview with the woman who does >> market research for childrens' products is highly enlightening. > > Yes, I have, and I didn't much care for it. Too biased. Objectivity is the responsibility of the audience, not the media. This woman, for those who have not seen it, describes her job with glee. She is quite happy to use psychological studies to guide advertising directors and increase the "nag factor" that children can bring to their parents at the market. The whole thing is quite frightening. The woman exhibits no sign of self-analysis or consideration of her work. She tackles it like a puzzle to be solved with no concern for the implications or ramifications of actually achieving her goals. >> Nobody's holding a gun to your head. But the entire capitalist world >> is holding peer pressure against you. And peer pressure makes people >> put guns to their own heads. (And it's not even real peer pressure, >> but an illusion of peer pressure by the creation of false peers on >> television and in print.) > > People believe too much they see and read. I'm sure that dismissive remark will make it all better. J. - -- _______________________________________________ Capuchin capuchin@bitmine.net Jeme A Brelin ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 7 Jun 2005 17:46:46 -0700 (PDT) From: Benjamin Lukoff Subject: Re: stop me before I buy again On Tue, 7 Jun 2005, Capuchin wrote: > On Tue, 7 Jun 2005, Benjamin Lukoff wrote: > >> Have you seen "The Corporation"? The interview with the woman who does > >> market research for childrens' products is highly enlightening. > > > > Yes, I have, and I didn't much care for it. Too biased. > > Objectivity is the responsibility of the audience, not the media. It would help if the media did it a little more, too. > >> Nobody's holding a gun to your head. But the entire capitalist world > >> is holding peer pressure against you. And peer pressure makes people > >> put guns to their own heads. (And it's not even real peer pressure, > >> but an illusion of peer pressure by the creation of false peers on > >> television and in print.) > > > > People believe too much they see and read. > > I'm sure that dismissive remark will make it all better. Maybe we should work on educating people NOT to believe everything they see and read rather than simply say "the corporations are bad! the corporations are bad!" That may not be what YOU are saying but it's what a lot of people who think like you are. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 7 Jun 2005 18:16:52 -0700 (PDT) From: Capuchin Subject: Re: stop me before I buy again On Tue, 7 Jun 2005, Benjamin Lukoff wrote: > On Tue, 7 Jun 2005, Capuchin wrote: >> Objectivity is the responsibility of the audience, not the media. > > It would help if the media did it a little more, too. That's just not possible. When you speak, you have a perspective. When you show something, you have a limited camera viewpoint. Bias is inherent in communicating. The listener has the job of maintaining objectivity and listening/watching for the things that are potentially misleading. So the question I would pose follows: Was there misleading information presented or did you merely object to the perspective of the filmmaker? Personally, I think it's much more dangerous for media to pretend to be objective. First, I think it has the undesirable effect of giving absurd notions equal time with confirmable ones. (Note how the news doesn't ever call anyone on their lies anymore. They just "report" when someone else accuses a person of lying. Facts become perspectives and all opinions become equally valid.) Second, I think people get lazy when they believe their media is "unbiased". The myth of objectivity coupled with the profit motive has made a mockery of news media. >> I'm sure that dismissive remark will make it all better. > > Maybe we should work on educating people NOT to believe everything they > see and read rather than simply say "the corporations are bad! the > corporations are bad!" That may not be what YOU are saying but it's what > a lot of people who think like you are. Who thinks like me? I assure you that my views are almost universally unaccepted. Educating people is a very tricky business. I think that maybe the advertisers are the only ones who really know anything about it. (Certainly the first century of public schooling hasn't made much progress in that area. -- Incidentally, I have a professor who insists that a student simply cannot learn from a lecture. She refuses to do it. I've learned more in her class than all of my others combined.) And the profiteers have it down. They can take any popular movement and spin it into an acceptable lifestyle choice. You can buy a Made In China T-shirt with a circle-A on it. Somewhere in this country, there's a shipping container with ten thousand identical stickers that read "Dare to be different" inside. And, of course, whenever you set out to educate someone, you just end up learning about yourself. Nah, all you can do is live the way you think is right and share the ideas that you have (just don't confuse that with education). J. - -- _______________________________________________ Capuchin capuchin@bitmine.net Jeme A Brelin ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 07 Jun 2005 21:27:37 -0400 From: FSThomas Subject: Re: pres shrub shat on from great height Jason Brown wrote: > > Um, sorry the US Census is just not that simplistic. This not a > single number statistic. In fact a massive survey of income tax > returns are not part of their methadology. For more information see: > > http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/income_wealth/002484.html > http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/guidance081904.html From the first link, census.gov: Income used to compute poverty status: * Money income (Includes earnings, unemployment compensation, workers compensation, Social Security, Supplemental Security Income, public assistance, veterans payments, survivor benefits, pension or retirement income, interest, dividends, rents, royalties, income from estates, trusts, educational assistance, alimony, child support, assistance from outside the household, and other miscellaneous sources. * Noncash benefits (such as food stamps and housing subsidies) do not count. * Excludes capital gains or losses. - --- "Excludes capital gains or losses." Example: I have 800k in the bank and quit my job. I sell my house (or one of my houses, or an apartment building I own; whatever, it doesn't matter), and live off those profits (capital gains), I have no income. Nothing. Not a dime of reportable income. I have hundreds of grand in the bank, but still the Government is statistically welcoming me into poverty with open arms. ... Computation: * If total family income is less than the threshold appropriate for that family, the family is in poverty ... All family members have the same poverty status - --- Example: You live with your folks. Your mother doesn't work. You attend community college, and deliver pizzas on weekends. You gross maybe $150 a week, after gas. Your father doesn't work, either, but rather lives off of investments, buying and selling real estate. As a family of three, your total reported income is $7800 a year, even though Dad gave you a new car last year, and you live in a fashionable 3-2 that he'll sell in the winter for a tidy profit. Welcome to poverty. ... [Other notes of interest:] Many government aid programs use a different poverty measure, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) poverty guidelines, or variants thereof. Official poverty data come from the Current Population Survey (CPS) Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC), formerly called the Annual Demographic Supplement or simply the "March Supplement." - -f. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 07 Jun 2005 21:34:09 -0400 From: FSThomas Subject: Re: pres shrub shat on from great height Capuchin wrote: > On Tue, 7 Jun 2005, FSThomas wrote: > >> Would you consider France's failed attempt at capping the work week a >> good example of improving the quality of life for the working poor? > > > France successfully capped the work week. But the industrialists don't > like it and are waging an all-out war to raise the bar. > > I firmly believe that this country, right now, would benefit enormously > from the institution of the 30 hour work week. Unemployment would go > down and quality of life would go up. When I got out of college, I worked three jobs concurrently: I substitute taught in three city's junior- and high schools, worked a retail job in the afternoons, and at a bar four nights a week. The worst of the work days ran from a 5:30 am call, 7:30 first class, 2:45 dismissal, 4:30-9:00 shift, and then 9:30 to 1:15 am bar shift, not knowing when I went to bed if the phone was going to ring in the 4 1/2 hours. That schedule, which I did for two and a half years, was hell in a hand basket, but it afforded me a good car, the ability to pay off my student loans in 1/2 the time, and a chance to save a fair amount while driving a decent car. Even after I landed my first "professional" gig, I kept the bar job for six or seven more years before leaving. Under the French labour laws, I wouldn't be allowed to do any of it, with the exception of the middle of the day, crap retail gig. Capping worker's max hours does nothing except penalize those willing and able to work. - -f. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 7 Jun 2005 20:46:36 -0500 From: Jeff Subject: Re: stop me before I buy again On 6/7/05, Benjamin Lukoff wrote: > On Tue, 7 Jun 2005, Jeff wrote: > > > In other words: sure, it's people's choices to buy that crap...but > > where did those preferences, those perceived needs - hell, that crap - > > come from in the first place? Advertising 101 is to persuade people > > that they need things that they, objectively in terms of their > > survival, do not need. If all companies could sell was what people > > needed, the economy would go plop within a few weeks. > > Hey, I don't buy everything I'm advertised. I'm not going to blame my > consumption patterns on anyone else than myself. Nobody's holding a gun to > my head. First: I'm not sure the relevance of "I don't buy everything I'm advertised." No one does - so I'm not sure what your point is. But if it's "I'm not influenced by advertising," how can you prove that? As advertisers know, the point of any given ad isn't to persuade you to buy the product - it's to cement that product in your brain, the less consciously the better...so that when it pops up in front of you on the shelf, it seems like your own choice to buy it, for reasons that seem completely exterior to any advertising you (don't) remember. Anyway: You say your consumption patterns are your own doing. At some level, of course this is true. But how conscious are you when making purchasing decisions? (I should note right now that I'm not claiming every individual can be expected to analyze every purchase they make - I mean, it'd be a good idea, but expecting it, and blaming people when they don't, would be impractical.) And how much choice do you have? Ironically, given all the supposed volume of choice said to flow from the energies of capital, quite often choice is extremely limited. Let's look at something extremely trivial: flavored sugar water. If you develop a taste for Offbrand Cola, at most purchase points you can buy any cola at all, you will not be able to buy Offbrand Cola. You could, of course, not patronize those places...but they sell other things you want, let us say. So: either you buy no cola, or you eventually decide that some cola is better than no cola, and you end up buying a Pepsi or a Coke (and at a lot of places, you can choose one or the other, not both). Now it's true no one's forcing you to buy Pepsi or Coke - but the situation is forcing you to purchase one or the other *if* you want to consume cola to the degree you'd like. And notice that your, and everyone else's, partially unwilling purchase of Pepsi or Coke adds to those brands' market dominance, and continues to marginalize Offbrand Cola. In other words, popularity has its own momentum against the unpopular, at least in cases where the substitution is minimal (I'm assuming, for example, that Coke or Pepsi in this case does not make you gag or something: you can drink it, even enjoy it, but you'd prefer something else). If you extend this, you'll realize that, essentially, the less popular the brand, the more work it takes to consume it (seeking it out, etc. - - plus the risk that it will simply cease to exist through insufficient sales). One problem with marketization of such items is the way it reduces choice through attrition, and tends toward minimal acceptibility (i.e., so long as you don't gag, you'll drink it, even though you'd rather have something else). Everything blands toward the middle; strong flavors (in this case) get marginalized. The point of this isn't to claim that you're a mindless robot consuming whatever's pushed at you. It's to move beyond the simplistic notion that each individual freely chooses what to consume. With many consumer products, the choice you confront is highly constricted, and it takes way more time to find alternatives - time a lot of people aren't willing to spend, whether they're aware of those alternatives or simply proceed assuming Big Fronted Display Brand is the only thing around. - -- ...Jeff The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 7 Jun 2005 20:56:58 -0500 From: Jeff Subject: Re: pres shrub shat on from great height On 6/7/05, FSThomas wrote: > When I got out of college, I worked three jobs concurrently: I > substitute taught in three city's junior- and high schools, worked a > retail job in the afternoons, and at a bar four nights a week. The > worst of the work days ran from a 5:30 am call, 7:30 first class, 2:45 > dismissal, 4:30-9:00 shift, and then 9:30 to 1:15 am bar shift, not > knowing when I went to bed if the phone was going to ring in the 4 1/2 > hours. > > That schedule, which I did for two and a half years, was hell in a hand > basket, but it afforded me a good car, the ability to pay off my student > loans in 1/2 the time, and a chance to save a fair amount while driving > a decent car. Even after I landed my first "professional" gig, I kept > the bar job for six or seven more years before leaving. Under the > French labour laws, I wouldn't be allowed to do any of it, with the > exception of the middle of the day, crap retail gig. In the words of the Sisterhood of Convoluted Thinkers, "I bought a car, so I could go to work, so I could get more money, to pay for my car. I got a job, so I could make money, so I could pay for my car, so I could go back to work." So you're saying that those two-and-half-years of driving a good car were worth that schedule - as opposed to a more humane schedule driving a less-good-but-adequate car? And as for the paid-off loans: presumably the "extra" money you had then benefited you, then. I guess I don't see why not spread out both the sacrifice and the benefit, instead of digging your grave in slow motion. I mean, I sorta get it: I don't like being indebted either, but it's the car part that confuses me. What you're saying is you'd rather work for a car than have your freedom. Okay...your choice, I guess - but it seems an odd world where someone would want to do that willingly. And again, it'd be understandable if the jobs were of real, altruistic benefit to people (the teaching job was; the others, not so much)... > Capping worker's max hours does nothing except penalize those willing > and able to work. Hmm. Another way of looking at it is that for the sake of your nice car, you leveraged your greater social capital to soak up nearly two full-time jobs, thereby depriving a less-advantaged person of one of them... (Yes, I'm being just slightly more cynical than average here - but not that much more.) - -- ...Jeff The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 7 Jun 2005 21:11:02 -0500 (CDT) From: adams@boutell.com Subject: Re: pres shrub shat on from great height "Jeff" : >> The >> worst of the work days ran from a 5:30 am call, 7:30 first class, 2:45 >> dismissal, 4:30-9:00 shift, and then 9:30 to 1:15 am bar shift, not >> knowing when I went to bed if the phone was going to ring in the 4 1/2 >> hours. > And > again, it'd be understandable if the jobs were of real, altruistic > benefit to people (the teaching job was; the others, not so much)... hey! I find my bartender to be extremely altruistic. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 07 Jun 2005 23:09:30 -0400 From: FSThomas Subject: Re: pres shrub shat on from great height Jeff wrote: > > In the words of the Sisterhood of Convoluted Thinkers, "I bought a > car, so I could go to work, so I could get more money, to pay for my > car. I got a job, so I could make money, so I could pay for my car, so > I could go back to work." Not as such. I re-read the mail after I sent it, and I did give the car a double-tap. It was unintentional. > So you're saying that those two-and-half-years of driving a good car > were worth that schedule - as opposed to a more humane schedule > driving a less-good-but-adequate car? And as for the paid-off loans: > presumably the "extra" money you had then benefited you, then. I guess > I don't see why not spread out both the sacrifice and the benefit, > instead of digging your grave in slow motion. > > I mean, I sorta get it: I don't like being indebted either, but it's > the car part that confuses me. What you're saying is you'd rather work > for a car than have your freedom. Okay...your choice, I guess - but it > seems an odd world where someone would want to do that willingly. And > again, it'd be understandable if the jobs were of real, altruistic > benefit to people (the teaching job was; the others, not so much)... The situation was a bit more complex then I initially let on. The work that got my student loans paid off also allowed me to be 100% debt free when I got married in 1997, something that wouldn't have been possible in the least if I had stuck to one 40-hour job. My (now ex-) wife was from Great Britain; we met during my last year at college (when I was working another totally different bar job). In the time between her return to the UK in November of 1993 and when we married in 1997 the work, while not only paying off debt and getting me transport, allowed me to fly back and forth across the Atlantic (guessing) eight or ten times. We got married and paid for both an American and British ceremony, and a honeymoon to Greece, ourselves. I worked pretty damned hard those years--both prior to and after landing a "real" job--in a self-serving fashion to not only to dig myself out of a hole, but to build our relationship, and see a good chunk of the world at the same time. So the slow grave I dug, while unbeknownst to me at the time, seemed like the right decision to make. We split in 2000, and that was difficult for both of us, but I wouldn't trade the time committed for anything in the world. As for depriving anyone of nigh two full-time jobs: neither subbing nor bar work are for everyone. The retail gig, yes, most could have done, but it was a good fit, what with my background in fine arts. (It was an art supply shop, with my splitting my time between that and custom framing.) - -f. *Coming off what's probably the most personal post I've ever made to that thar internet* ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 07 Jun 2005 23:15:10 -0400 From: FSThomas Subject: Re: pres shrub shat on from great height, whilst singing... ...hits from X&Y On a completely different note: that Coldplay album is pretty danged good. This coming from a guy who wasn't that much a fan of their first effort. From a different angle, this is pretty funny: From http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/05/arts/music/05pare.html The New York Times June 5, 2005 The Case Against Coldplay By JON PARELES THERE'S nothing wrong with self-pity. As a spur to songwriting, it's right up there with lust, anger and greed, and probably better than the remaining deadly sins. There's nothing wrong, either, with striving for musical grandeur, using every bit of skill and studio illusion to create a sound large enough to get lost in. Male sensitivity, a quality that's under siege in a pop culture full of unrepentant bullying and machismo, shouldn't be dismissed out of hand, no matter how risible it can be in practice. And building a sound on the lessons of past bands is virtually unavoidable. But put them all together and they add up to Coldplay, the most insufferable band of the decade. This week Coldplay releases its painstakingly recorded third album, "X&Y" (Capitol), a virtually surefire blockbuster that has corporate fortunes riding on it. (The stock price plunged for EMI Group, Capitol's parent company, when Coldplay announced that the album's release date would be moved from February to June, as it continued to rework the songs.) "X&Y" is the work of a band that's acutely conscious of the worldwide popularity it cemented with its 2002 album, "A Rush of Blood to the Head," which has sold three million copies in the United States alone. Along with its 2000 debut album, "Parachutes," Coldplay claims sales of 20 million albums worldwide. "X&Y" makes no secret of grand ambition. Clearly, Coldplay is beloved: by moony high school girls and their solace-seeking parents, by hip-hop producers who sample its rich instrumental sounds and by emo rockers who admire Chris Martin's heart-on-sleeve lyrics. The band emanates good intentions, from Mr. Martin's political statements to lyrics insisting on its own benevolence. Coldplay is admired by everyone - everyone except me. It's not for lack of skill. The band proffers melodies as imposing as Romanesque architecture, solid and symmetrical. Mr. Martin on keyboards, Jonny Buckland on guitar, Guy Berryman on bass and Will Champion on drums have mastered all the mechanics of pop songwriting, from the instrumental hook that announces nearly every song they've recorded to the reassurance of a chorus to the revitalizing contrast of a bridge. Their arrangements ascend and surge, measuring out the song's yearning and tension, cresting and easing back and then moving toward a chiming resolution. Coldplay is meticulously unified, and its songs have been rigorously cleared of anything that distracts from the musical drama. Unfortunately, all that sonic splendor orchestrates Mr. Martin's voice and lyrics. He places his melodies near the top of his range to sound more fragile, so the tunes straddle the break between his radiant tenor voice and his falsetto. As he hops between them - in what may be Coldplay's most annoying tic - he makes a sound somewhere between a yodel and a hiccup. And the lyrics can make me wish I didn't understand English. Coldplay's countless fans seem to take comfort when Mr. Martin sings lines like, "Is there anybody out there who / Is lost and hurt and lonely too," while a strummed acoustic guitar telegraphs his aching sincerity. Me, I hear a passive-aggressive blowhard, immoderately proud as he flaunts humility. "I feel low," he announces in the chorus of "Low," belied by the peak of a crescendo that couldn't be more triumphant about it. In its early days, Coldplay could easily be summed up as Radiohead minus Radiohead's beat, dissonance or arty subterfuge. Both bands looked to the overarching melodies of 1970's British rock and to the guitar dynamics of U2, and Mr. Martin had clearly heard both Bono's delivery and the way Radiohead's Thom Yorke stretched his voice to the creaking point. Unlike Radiohead, though, Coldplay had no interest in being oblique or barbed. From the beginning, Coldplay's songs topped majesty with moping: "We're sinking like stones," Mr. Martin proclaimed. Hardly alone among British rock bands as the 1990's ended, Coldplay could have been singing not only about private sorrows but also about the final sunset on the British empire: the old opulence meeting newly shrunken horizons. Coldplay's songs wallowed happily in their unhappiness. "Am I a part of the cure / Or am I part of the disease," Mr. Martin pondered in "Clocks" on "A Rush of Blood to the Head." Actually, he's contagious. Particularly in its native England, Coldplay has spawned a generation of one-word bands - Athlete, Embrace, Keane, Starsailor, Travis and Aqualung among them - that are more than eager to follow through on Coldplay's tremulous, ringing anthems of insecurity. The emulation is spreading overseas to bands like the Perishers from Sweden and the American band Blue Merle, which tries to be Coldplay unplugged. A band shouldn't necessarily be blamed for its imitators - ask the Cure or the Grateful Dead. But Coldplay follow-throughs are redundant; from the beginning, Coldplay has verged on self-parody. When he moans his verses, Mr. Martin can sound so sorry for himself that there's hardly room to sympathize for him, and when he's not mixing metaphors, he fearlessly slings clichis. "Are you lost or incomplete," Mr. Martin sings in "Talk," which won't be cited in any rhyming dictionaries. "Do you feel like a puzzle / you can't find your missing piece." Coldplay reached its musical zenith with the widely sampled piano arpeggios that open "Clocks": a passage that rings gladly and, as it descends the scale and switches from major to minor chords, turns incipiently mournful. Of course, it's followed by plaints: "Tides that I tried to swim against / Brought me down upon my knees." On "X&Y," Coldplay strives to carry the beauty of "Clocks" across an entire album - not least in its first single, "Speed of Sound," which isn't the only song on the album to borrow the "Clocks" drumbeat. The album is faultless to a fault, with instrumental tracks purged of any glimmer of human frailty. There is not an unconsidered or misplaced note on "X&Y," and every song (except the obligatory acoustic "hidden track" at the end, which is still by no means casual) takes place on a monumental soundstage. As Coldplay's recording budgets have grown, so have its reverberation times. On "X&Y," it plays as if it can already hear the songs echoing across the world. "Square One," which opens the album, actually begins with guitar notes hinting at the cosmic fanfare of "Also Sprach Zarathustra" (and "2001: A Space Odyssey"). Then Mr. Martin, never someone to evade the obvious, sings about "the space in which we're traveling." As a blockbuster band, Coldplay is now looking over its shoulder at titanic predecessors like U2, Pink Floyd and the Beatles, pilfering freely from all of them. It also looks to an older legacy; in many songs, organ chords resonate in the spaces around Mr. Martin's voice, insisting on churchly reverence. As Coldplay's music has grown more colossal, its lyrics have quietly made a shift on "X&Y." On previous albums, Mr. Martin sang mostly in the first person, confessing to private vulnerabilities. This time, he sings a lot about "you": a lover, a brother, a random acquaintance. He has a lot of pronouncements and advice for all of them: "You just want somebody listening to what you say," and "Every step that you take could be your biggest mistake," and "Maybe you'll get what you wanted, maybe you'll stumble upon it" and "You don't have to be alone." It's supposed to be compassionate, empathetic, magnanimous, inspirational. But when the music swells up once more with tremolo guitars and chiming keyboards, and Mr. Martin's voice breaks for the umpteenth time, it sounds like hokum to me. ------------------------------ End of fegmaniax-digest V14 #143 ********************************