February 23

I was trying to avoid linking to one more unemployment story, but a comment in this New York Times piece on "The New Poor" caught my eye:

“American business is about maximizing shareholder value,” said Allen Sinai, chief global economist at the research firm Decision Economics. “You basically don’t want workers. You hire less, and you try to find capital equipment to replace them.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/21/business/economy/21unemployed.html

It's not just capital equipment that can replace workers, of course; it's new technologies, new efficiencies, outsourcing, offshoring, reduction of middle management, use of temp labor, use of volunteer labor. (Not just unpaid interns; much "content" is now obtained for nothing. The popular DVD review website DVD Verdict doesn't pay its contributors a dime, and still has to beat writers off with a stick.)

It's in every company's interest to have consumers; it's in no company's interest to have workers. But since we have so strongly linked the ability to consume to the money earned by work -- which seems like a necessary and self-evident link, but in fact is not -- the paradox we face is that every company in attempting to maximize its "shareholder value" is undermining the very basis of the economy it participates in. Unless we have a major paradigm shift, this can't end well.

David Bromwich, who has written perceptively on President Obama before, offers a devastating take on his relations with bankers:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-bromwich/wall-streets-obama-invest_b_470234.html

John Judis writing in The New Republic identifies reasons why Obama would take "pride in the fact that he moves in [bankers'] circles": He was educated with them at the nation's best schools; he was raised by a bank vice-president (his grandmother); his class allegiances are professional rather than working class; essentially, he's a yuppie. (And hey, I am, too, but I think Judis is onto something here.)

http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/hes-yuppie

When Obama's bankers get together in southern Europe, I suggest they meet at the Ibiza Conference Center, because it is gorgeous:

http://www.archdaily.com/49261/conference-center-in-ibiza-up-arquitectos/

I love night photographs, so I wish I could see this exhibition of work by Robert Adams (but happily, there is a book version):

http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=11&int_new=36303

The night photography blog The Nocturnes (yes, of course there's a night photography blog!) has featured some outstanding work:

http://thenocturnes.blogspot.com/

Going beyond night into near-total darkness are the "black" (but actually subtly mutlti-colored) paintings of James Krone:

http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=11&int_new=36256

Jaime J. Weinman at the blog Something Old, Something New resuscitates a Seventies oddity, Mary Tyler Moore's variety special Mary's Incredible Dream, a "unique, no-holds-barred musical happening" (or something). It sounds right up there with The Paul Lynde Halloween Special, also a product of the bicentennial year 1976. Everyone must have been high then.

http://zvbxrpl.blogspot.com/2010/02/marys-incredible-and-very-expensive.html

Check out MTM's rendition of Stephen Sondheim's "I'm Still Here" at the start of the Act 4 clip -- as one commenter on the post aptly says, it's "Shatner-esque"!

And if that isn't far enough out for you, how about a Voyage to the End of the Universe?

http://princeplanetmovies.blogspot.com/2010/02/voyage-to-end-of-universe-ikarie-xb-1.html

As a 2001: A Space Odyssey precursor based on a novel by Stanislaw Lem, this would seem to be well worth seeing, especially if we could have it restored to its original form.

Among notables born on this date are intellectual W.E.B. Du Bois, philosophers Richard Price, Edouard von Hartmann, and Karl Jaspers, diarist Samuel Pepys, soprano Regine Crespin, Ukrainian painter Kazimir Malevich, composer Georg Frideric Handel, pop singer Howard Jones, journalist/historian William L. Shirer, German children's author Erich Kastner, film directors Victor Fleming, Terence Fisher, and Claude Sautet, NPR personality Tom Bodett, and actor Peter Fonda. Whether or not it is politically correct to do so, I still find Du Bois's concept of the "Talented Tenth" to be very persuasive. I agree with him that the "conversation" of a civilization -- the ongoing debate of concepts and culture -- is conducted by about ten percent, at most fifteen percent, of its citizens, who are, as Du Bois asserted, the people of influence and the engines of action (this is in large part what John Judis means by "yuppies," who are not just young urban professionals by any means). Everyone else, nothing against them, simply goes along with the dominant flow.