Thursday, July 16, 2009
The new New York Times commercial
Their new commercial has been on for a couple of months now…. long enough for me to hate it almost as much as I hated their previous efforts. Gone are the obnoxious happy yet empty stereotypes. They have been replaced with a couple whose relationship is based on the New York Times; people for whom the New York Times is the highlight of their weekend; people who are “fluent in” sections of the New York Times (yes, the woman is fluent in the Style section!) and a man who knows beyond any argument, that the very best journalists in the world work for the New York Times. In other words, shallow people who don’t have a life beyond the New York Times, plus an opinionated idiot.
As before, the commercials come on all too frequently and feel more like harassment than an attempt to sell me a product. They come across as an attempt to lose the traditional customer base and run the paper into the ground. If there are many other people – advertisers nightmares – who, like myself, tend to use commercials more to determine what not to buy than what to buy - the criteria being that if they are aiming at morons they can’t be trying to sell me anything so I won’t buy it - then their strategy is probably doomed to lose them readership at an even faster rate than modern trends would otherwise predict.
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As before, the commercials come on all too frequently and feel more like harassment than an attempt to sell me a product. They come across as an attempt to lose the traditional customer base and run the paper into the ground. If there are many other people – advertisers nightmares – who, like myself, tend to use commercials more to determine what not to buy than what to buy - the criteria being that if they are aiming at morons they can’t be trying to sell me anything so I won’t buy it - then their strategy is probably doomed to lose them readership at an even faster rate than modern trends would otherwise predict.
Mattresses, swedes and mashed potatoes
Some of you may wonder how these could possibly be linked. But you will know from your own secret thoughts, that memories can take our minds on wild tangents. And so it was with me.
I moved in with Jan a couple of weeks ago. She had inherited a mattress which was somewhere in age between considerably older than 15 years and post civil war. It was brutal. I realised after I replaced it with my wonderful 2 year old but good as new firm memory foam model, that I shouldn’t have dumped the thing. I missed an opportunity. I should have donated it to the American torture camp program. Suspected bad people could have been confined to it for 22-23 hours per day. I tell, you, they would have broken even if strong enough to withstand water boarding. And there’s not a convention in the world that would call it torture or consider it illegal!
I was convinced that this was the worst mattress I had ever slept on until my memory dredged up a long forgotten number that I slept on a few times in my Aunt and Uncles place as a pre-teen. It was old, but suited me well enough. Until one day, my Uncle’s Mother stayed over. She was a lovely lady with a truly enormous belly. The next time I slept on the bed, there was an indentation in the middle which directly corresponded to her girth, and which I had to curve my body around for fear of falling in. At the time, I always slept on my front, and this really wasn’t conducive to sleeping in semi craters.
How my mind took me from this to Swedes, which are known in the US as rutabagas, even I’m not willing to guess at, other than both were awful memories. At my Primary School (for US readers, this goes from ages 4 or 5 up to 11), the school dinners were also torture (maybe this memory is linked to Jan’s old mattress and not my uncle’s?). And we had to finish every bite, because “children are starving in Biafra”. The swede was boiled down into a mush, which was somewhat lumpy and watery – remarkably similar in texture to what they called mashed potatoes, which were so traumatic for me that I couldn’t eat mashed potatoes again for 30 years – but with a strong flavour I will never forget but couldn’t begin to describe.
I believe I blogged once before about a moment indelibly etched in my memory. The headmistress of the school, who we all thought was incredibly old, had an enormous gap between her two front teeth. One day, I was sitting in the front of the lunch room, and she decided to speak, or rather shout at all of the kids. I watched in horror as a huge gob of her spit landed in the middle of my mashed potato and slowly disappeared into it, and my usual laboured eating of this dreadful stuff became an exercise of trepidatious picking around the edges.
When she asked me why I wasn’t eating, my young (9 or 10 year old) mind understood that telling her I couldn’t eat my mashed potato because she spat in it could only end badly for me. So when all the other children went out to play, I went into her office to finish my lunch. And I continued nibbling until a dinner lady came in and took pity on me. And no, in case you are wondering, this is not the reason I couldn’t eat mashed potatoes for 30 years. Even without the Miss Kohn spittle incident, these were quite disgusting enough to have left their mark on me.
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I moved in with Jan a couple of weeks ago. She had inherited a mattress which was somewhere in age between considerably older than 15 years and post civil war. It was brutal. I realised after I replaced it with my wonderful 2 year old but good as new firm memory foam model, that I shouldn’t have dumped the thing. I missed an opportunity. I should have donated it to the American torture camp program. Suspected bad people could have been confined to it for 22-23 hours per day. I tell, you, they would have broken even if strong enough to withstand water boarding. And there’s not a convention in the world that would call it torture or consider it illegal!
I was convinced that this was the worst mattress I had ever slept on until my memory dredged up a long forgotten number that I slept on a few times in my Aunt and Uncles place as a pre-teen. It was old, but suited me well enough. Until one day, my Uncle’s Mother stayed over. She was a lovely lady with a truly enormous belly. The next time I slept on the bed, there was an indentation in the middle which directly corresponded to her girth, and which I had to curve my body around for fear of falling in. At the time, I always slept on my front, and this really wasn’t conducive to sleeping in semi craters.
How my mind took me from this to Swedes, which are known in the US as rutabagas, even I’m not willing to guess at, other than both were awful memories. At my Primary School (for US readers, this goes from ages 4 or 5 up to 11), the school dinners were also torture (maybe this memory is linked to Jan’s old mattress and not my uncle’s?). And we had to finish every bite, because “children are starving in Biafra”. The swede was boiled down into a mush, which was somewhat lumpy and watery – remarkably similar in texture to what they called mashed potatoes, which were so traumatic for me that I couldn’t eat mashed potatoes again for 30 years – but with a strong flavour I will never forget but couldn’t begin to describe.
I believe I blogged once before about a moment indelibly etched in my memory. The headmistress of the school, who we all thought was incredibly old, had an enormous gap between her two front teeth. One day, I was sitting in the front of the lunch room, and she decided to speak, or rather shout at all of the kids. I watched in horror as a huge gob of her spit landed in the middle of my mashed potato and slowly disappeared into it, and my usual laboured eating of this dreadful stuff became an exercise of trepidatious picking around the edges.
When she asked me why I wasn’t eating, my young (9 or 10 year old) mind understood that telling her I couldn’t eat my mashed potato because she spat in it could only end badly for me. So when all the other children went out to play, I went into her office to finish my lunch. And I continued nibbling until a dinner lady came in and took pity on me. And no, in case you are wondering, this is not the reason I couldn’t eat mashed potatoes for 30 years. Even without the Miss Kohn spittle incident, these were quite disgusting enough to have left their mark on me.
Sunday, July 05, 2009
Mike Bloomberg ads
Mayor Bloomberg is on TV constantly. It’s almost as if he is running against himself in the Mayoral race. He certainly present a compelling case for himself. But I have two points to make.
You can either believe what he and his political supporters say about City schools, or speak with teachers, who, in my experience, hate the man.
And second and far from least, the reason why he absolutely must not be elected. A vote for Bloomberg is a vote against democracy. I will state and restate this. The New York City electorate voted twice to maintain term limits and Bloomberg overturned these democratic decisions claiming there was a financial need for him to be given another 4 years. After he claimed that the economy here was picking up, a journalist asked him if the conditions for him overturning the will of the people still existed. He not only didn’t respond to the question, he was rude to the questioner. Because the truth is, economic problems or not, he is so conceited, he would have put forward legislation to overturn the public votes and run for a 3rd term.
Please, if you believe in democracy, do not vote for Mike Bloomberg, no matter how you rate his performance as Mayor.
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You can either believe what he and his political supporters say about City schools, or speak with teachers, who, in my experience, hate the man.
And second and far from least, the reason why he absolutely must not be elected. A vote for Bloomberg is a vote against democracy. I will state and restate this. The New York City electorate voted twice to maintain term limits and Bloomberg overturned these democratic decisions claiming there was a financial need for him to be given another 4 years. After he claimed that the economy here was picking up, a journalist asked him if the conditions for him overturning the will of the people still existed. He not only didn’t respond to the question, he was rude to the questioner. Because the truth is, economic problems or not, he is so conceited, he would have put forward legislation to overturn the public votes and run for a 3rd term.
Please, if you believe in democracy, do not vote for Mike Bloomberg, no matter how you rate his performance as Mayor.
The high speed rail debate
I saw an article about this on cnn.com today. Apparently, President Obama has pledged $13bn to the cause and there is a split between those who say it will be financial self-supporting, those who say it can never be so and those who say that talk of financial viability is beside the point.
Of course, the last of the three is the right answer, and those who oppose it on financial grounds are the type of dinosaurs who should just hurry up and turn into oil already, like their far more interesting ancestors. But I digress.
The talk seems to be of trains in excess of 110mph. England had the ‘Inter-City 125’ over 30 years ago. In 2007, France broke the world record for a train, at 357.2 kph, which translates to a little under 225mph. So I would seriously question why the country which prides itself as being the greatest in the world is looking to upgrade to 30+ year old, and obviously inferior trains.
My vision is of 300mph trains on all new tracks, built through a combination of corporate and government financing with bond issues allowing the public to also invest. And I want to see these trains run from East to West and North to South. Yes, the cost will be hugs, but the cost of not doing it would be considerably greater in so very many ways.
First, a couple of reasons why this would be a good idea: If you could get from New York to Miami in under 4 hours, would you bother driving to the airport, leaving your car in the long term parking lot, checking in an hour or more before the flight time, waiting for the almost inevitably delayed take off, and then taking a cab from the airport to your destination, when the stations these trains will run between will be in City centres?
You can walk on these trains. They have proper refreshment cars. People who are very long legged or very overweight will not need to choose between travelling first class in order to fit into the seat or upset those sitting in front of them (that person being unable to recline their seat – I know this, because I was that person once) or next to them.
Would you consider a 10-hour train ride between California and New York when the plane supposedly takes about 5 ½ hours? But how long before your flight do you leave home? What is the actual door-to-door journey time? I suspect the actual difference in journey time would be closer to 2 hours than 4 ½. But how much more comfortable and hassle free would those hours be?
Are you perhaps an environmentalist? Think of the savings in gasoline and aviation fuel!
But the recent talk has been about intra-State rail links, connecting major cities in California and Florida to each other. For these routes, perhaps 300mph trains would be overkill, even though a mere 110 seems pointless and redundant even while being planned. But if you could get from LA to San Francisco in 2 ½ hours, or Jacksonville to Miami in 2 hours, might it keep you out of your car or be a far more attractive alternative to flying? Traffic on roads would improve, meaning better air quality, less traffic, less stress and less road works. There would be less delays in air travel, which would also become safer.
And the cost, while undoubtedly high, will be mitigated by a few factors that the status quo people are too blinkered to think of. Many people would work on these projects. A proportion of the jobs would actually pay decently. These people would put money back into the economy by spending. They would pay taxes. They would have health insurance!
And here’s another way this should and probably will be partly paid for: tax on air tickets and higher tolls on roads where these routes coincide with the new high-speed rail lines. True, people would scream that they are subsidising others against their wish. And true, the airlines would scream that their business was being strangled. But times must change.
We are killing our planet and clogging our roads, airports and airways. The cost of gasoline will only go one way in the future, and this plan would relieve the upward pressure. And ultimately, apart from the cost of fuel in dollars and cents at the pump, there is the very real, if less easily discernable cost of dealing with increased asthma and cancer rates and other health issue directly related poor air quality, as well as the cost of attempting to clean the air. Yes, whatever the dinosaurs say, times must change. And the sooner we get real and accept these changes, the healthier we, our children and grandchildren will be.
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Of course, the last of the three is the right answer, and those who oppose it on financial grounds are the type of dinosaurs who should just hurry up and turn into oil already, like their far more interesting ancestors. But I digress.
The talk seems to be of trains in excess of 110mph. England had the ‘Inter-City 125’ over 30 years ago. In 2007, France broke the world record for a train, at 357.2 kph, which translates to a little under 225mph. So I would seriously question why the country which prides itself as being the greatest in the world is looking to upgrade to 30+ year old, and obviously inferior trains.
My vision is of 300mph trains on all new tracks, built through a combination of corporate and government financing with bond issues allowing the public to also invest. And I want to see these trains run from East to West and North to South. Yes, the cost will be hugs, but the cost of not doing it would be considerably greater in so very many ways.
First, a couple of reasons why this would be a good idea: If you could get from New York to Miami in under 4 hours, would you bother driving to the airport, leaving your car in the long term parking lot, checking in an hour or more before the flight time, waiting for the almost inevitably delayed take off, and then taking a cab from the airport to your destination, when the stations these trains will run between will be in City centres?
You can walk on these trains. They have proper refreshment cars. People who are very long legged or very overweight will not need to choose between travelling first class in order to fit into the seat or upset those sitting in front of them (that person being unable to recline their seat – I know this, because I was that person once) or next to them.
Would you consider a 10-hour train ride between California and New York when the plane supposedly takes about 5 ½ hours? But how long before your flight do you leave home? What is the actual door-to-door journey time? I suspect the actual difference in journey time would be closer to 2 hours than 4 ½. But how much more comfortable and hassle free would those hours be?
Are you perhaps an environmentalist? Think of the savings in gasoline and aviation fuel!
But the recent talk has been about intra-State rail links, connecting major cities in California and Florida to each other. For these routes, perhaps 300mph trains would be overkill, even though a mere 110 seems pointless and redundant even while being planned. But if you could get from LA to San Francisco in 2 ½ hours, or Jacksonville to Miami in 2 hours, might it keep you out of your car or be a far more attractive alternative to flying? Traffic on roads would improve, meaning better air quality, less traffic, less stress and less road works. There would be less delays in air travel, which would also become safer.
And the cost, while undoubtedly high, will be mitigated by a few factors that the status quo people are too blinkered to think of. Many people would work on these projects. A proportion of the jobs would actually pay decently. These people would put money back into the economy by spending. They would pay taxes. They would have health insurance!
And here’s another way this should and probably will be partly paid for: tax on air tickets and higher tolls on roads where these routes coincide with the new high-speed rail lines. True, people would scream that they are subsidising others against their wish. And true, the airlines would scream that their business was being strangled. But times must change.
We are killing our planet and clogging our roads, airports and airways. The cost of gasoline will only go one way in the future, and this plan would relieve the upward pressure. And ultimately, apart from the cost of fuel in dollars and cents at the pump, there is the very real, if less easily discernable cost of dealing with increased asthma and cancer rates and other health issue directly related poor air quality, as well as the cost of attempting to clean the air. Yes, whatever the dinosaurs say, times must change. And the sooner we get real and accept these changes, the healthier we, our children and grandchildren will be.
