Read morethe Pew study reveals some other interesting statistical tidbits that point to broad economically-driven lifestyle shifts among Generation Y. For example, 12% of respondents have recruited a roommate to defray their housing costs. 15% of respondents under 35 report postponing marriage because of the recession and 14% put off having a baby. These findings, coupled with surging community college enrollment and the highest unemployment rate among workers aged 16- 24 in the last 60 years, point to a cohort of young Americans whose career and life trajectories are being significantly shaped by the current recession and who are either delaying or reversing traditional adult milestone activities and decisions
Quotes
Read moreGovernments have cut interest rates, created new electronic money and allowed budget deficits to reach record levels in an attempt to boost growth after the near-collapse of the global financial system, but Turner said the problems in Dubai were indicative of widespread malaise. “Despite having oil, it’s still the case that many of these countries had explosive credit growth. It’s very clear that in 2010, we’ve got plenty more problems in store.”
Read moreI once sat in on a Bunnie Huang presentation about labor conditions in South China, and he described the factories where rubber logos – the Nike swoosh on the side of a shoe, the rubber designer’s logo hanging from the top button-hole of a shirt – are made. The workers lack basic safety clothes and often end up with several companies’ logos branded into their skin by the hot metal.
Since then, I’ve found it nearly impossible to think about branding without thinking of the young women of the Pearl River Delta with all those logo-marks – vector art from the west turned into curdled flesh in the east – burned into their skin.
Eliot’s T-shirt bears his new “Meaning” logo, a collection of abstract shapes with no discernible pattern.
“You’re co-branding with a label called ‘Meaning’,” Karl had told him.
“What kind of a product is this logo attached to?”
“That’s the brilliant thing, El. It’s not attached to anything. Not yet.”
“Wha?”
“It’s a brand without a product. It’s pure meaning, so to speak. Meaning is hoping to use licensing deals to grow its Reputation. Then, the Meaning people — really, just a group of graphic designers working out of a loft in Seoul — hope some bigger firm will buy out their Name. They’ve got a dozen Brand Names growing, evolving, in the mediasphere. It’s a great business opportunity and a whole new way of building brands.”
Lee Konstantinou, Pop Apocalypse, page 102. (via steveshaviro)
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There certainly was audacity in 1961, when John F. Kennedy made his lunar pledge. The key line was not the crazy bit about landing a man on the moon, it was the hubristic promise to do so by 1970. If Wernher Von Braun had insisted the moon was unreachable before 1975, they probably would never have gone. Why? Because by 1975 Kennedy’s presidency would be ancient history. Some other guy would get all the glory as Old Glory was hammered into the lunar regolith.
Of course that happened anyway, but Kennedy’s reasoning must have been that, even in 1969, he would be able to bask in the glory of a successful moon shot.
It may simply be that space exploration is incompatible with US democracy. A Mars shot would take four presidential terms at least. No president will ask taxpayers to fund something he won’t be around to take credit for.
Another big problem is the legacy of some terrible decisions that left NASA with the expensive, dangerous space shuttle and a white-elephant space station that manages the feat of making space seem as dull as cardboard. The whole thing is a mess.
So where now? Probably nowhere. Expect the Augustine report to be quietly forgotten. After all, we’ve been here before. In 1989 George Bush Snr promised the moon and Mars too, and that came to naught. The problem with these visions is that they are too sane. Human space exploration requires a tinge of madness – that theatrical Kennedy hubris – to work.
Is this the end for human space flight? – opinion – 20 November 2009 – New Scientist
I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna take it anymore. LET’S GO!
There’s no such thing as life without bloodshed. I think the notion that the species can be improved in some way, that everyone could live in harmony, is a really dangerous idea. Those who are afflicted with this notion are the first ones to give up their souls, their freedom. Your desire that it be that way will enslave you and make your life vacuous.
Cormac McCarthy (via thedaniel)
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Read moreZoetica has created herself from whole cloth. She is very much an internet personality, moves through the world virtually identical to the person she projects online.
And quite the personality it is, a self-described cosmonomad, she has constructed of herself a brand.
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It’s not a new idea to point out that we can create ourselves anew if we so choose. Or that the internet is an excellent venue for such an activity.
But I suppose what fascinates me is the fact that, if you’re of a mind, the transformation can be as thorough as you like.
Some folks create their internet personality as an alter ego, as a costume to be worn when they’re online, so that they can play act as a more functional, more interesting version of themselves. That’s easy.
But Zoetica has actually Become the person she wanted to be, the person she constructed. That is a much harder task, a much more laudable feat.
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Zoetica is tangible proof that if you really want to, you can become whatever you want. If you don’t like who you are, or more accurately, if you want to become better than you are, it’s entirely possible. And that there is a damned exciting thought.
Lou describes my philosophy on person vs. persona, and us all having the power to become anything we want.
You know who I thank for that? Count Monte Cristo, who escaped imprisonment and returned to the world as someone else. Book I read when I was 7.
Zoetica – Style Dispatch 003
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Read moreGiant, jagged earthwork berms should surround the area. Dozens of granite message walls or kiosks, each 25 feet high, might present graphic images of human faces contorted with horror, terror, or pain (the inspiration here is Edvard Munch’s Scream) as well as text in English, Spanish, Russian, French, Chinese, Arabic, and Navajo explaining what’s buried. This variety of languages, as Charles Piller remarked in a 2006 Los Angeles Times story, turns the monoliths into quasi-Rosetta stones. Three rooms—one off-site but nearby, one centrally located, and one underground—would serve as information centers with more detailed explanations of nuclear waste and its hazards, maps showing the location of similar sites around the world, and star charts to help intruders calculate the year the site was sealed.
Read moreIt’s impossible to say what apocalyptic event might separate 21st-century Americans from our 210th-century successors. Successors, mind you, who could live in a vastly more sophisticated society than we do or a vastly more primitive one.
The Committee to Nuke Elysium 