I’ve watched (most of) Gangs of New York (in little pieces) on AMC this past week or so, and it’s funny how hatred of the Irish (and German and Italians and Poles) Catholics begat hatred of African-Americans begat hatred of the Mexicans begat hatred of various ‘others’, while the Protestants are still, well, Protestants, be they Mainline, Methodist, Baptist, or what have you.
If we weren’t so dumb (or scared, anxious, or greedy), you’d think we’d have recognized the pattern by now.
Great article in Time by Chris Hayes titled The Twilight of the Elites:
Such figures show that the crisis of authority extends beyond narrow ideological categories: Big Business and unions, Congress and Wall Street, organized religion and science are all viewed with skepticism. So why is it that so much of the country’s leadership in so many different walks of life performed so terribly over this decade? While no single-cause theory can explain such a wide array of institutional failures, there are some themes — in particular, the concentration of power and the erosion of transparency and accountability — that extend throughout.
Last spring, we replaced our leased 2006 Toyota Sienna with a new-but-left-over 2008 Dodge Grand Caravan, purchased from Family Dodge at the Philadelphia Automall.
I’ve wanted to do a post on the slow motion car wreck that is the Toyota story, but I just haven’t had the time. This is a subject that satisfies several of my interests, from automobiles to politics to organizational dynamics, and I’ve followed it closely. So instead, here’s a collection of links…
I finally got around to watching the new Star Trek movie.
J.J. Abrams [IMDB] is a genius, and I have completely forgotten TOS (the original series, for non fans. To be honest, I never watched it much anyway) while watching the movie. Although his plot device is probably the most abused in all of SciFi, Abrams manages to do what none of the other directors of earlier Trek movies could – break free of Trek Canon. Jason Kottke explains:
One of the more frustrating things about Obama’s economic team and policy has been the use of the same advisors who contributed to the conditions that made the Great Recession possible (Geithner, Summers, etc.).
Some schools, such as the University of Pennsylvania, saw the changing and challenging economic environment and shifted their investments accordingly. An earlier email by Penn President Amy Gutman (via Business Insider) detailed the investment strategy and operating cost-containment measures:
In a nutshell (Jeff McMahon at True/Slant):
[US Commerce Secretary Gary Locke] said unparalleled economic growth occurred in the 20th Century because of two factors: access to cheap, abundant fossil fuels and ignorance or disregard for the fact that those fuels produced greenhouse gas pollution that caused global warming. Both of those factors, he said, belong to history.
“Those days are over,” Locke said moments ago in Copenhagen. “What’s required is nothing less than completely redesigning the way we produce and consume energy…. We’re talking about creating an entirely new model of economic growth.”The world has spent a century investing in petroleum infrastructure, Locke said: refineries, pipelines, stations.
The mass printing of words via movable-block type did not reinvent books, it lowered the costs and made them more affordable. The typewriter didn’t reinvent writing, it just made creating content faster and more uniform.
These are simplistic statements and certainly provable as false. But the point remains valid – social media is going to change some industries and destroy others, but the fundamental processes remain the same.
