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February 24, 2007
Moving on from the Generation Jones vs. Generation Obama question, here's another moniker debate for you.
Over at Slate, Marisa Meltzer takes a look at slacker movies from last year (Clerks 2, Mutual Appreciation, The Puffy Chair), and makes a very important point about how, in these and other cinematic tributes to slackerdom, "if male slackers are stuck in a permanent state of adolescence, all deep thoughts and long talks and sleeping in, then women are agents of growing up and getting a grip, two things that could harsh any slacker's mellow." So true, and so unfair!
Even more importantly, Meltzer addresses the philosophical question of what slacking is all about:
Being a slacker isn't actually about underachievement. Slacking is about a different standard of achievement, eschewing corporate work to follow your passion, however obscure or lacking in formation. If what you really want to do is go on tour with your band Hey, That's My Bike!, or spend time in coffee shops making collages for your conceptual zine about Barbie, slacking reminds us that those are valuable pursuits.
I couldn't agree more. In fact, I once penned an entire "Idler's Glossary" in order to make the same point. In doing so, however, I decided that -- despite Richard Linklater's noble effort to redeem the term "slacker," I preferred the term "idler." I mean, we do need to distinguish between the underachiever and the alt.achiever, right? So I use "slacker" for the former and "idler" for the latter.
As I put it in the "Glossary," paraphrasing something Oscar Wilde said about Taoism:
Unlike the idler, in whom work and leisure have combined to become something fine, the slacker remains unhappily trapped in that dichotomy.
Meltzer is aware that slackers are prone to being unhappily trapped in this dichotomy, and points out several lame attempts to resolve the tension in these movies. She concludes:
If these movies are meant to celebrate slacking, why must the slackers always give it up at the end? Sure, everyone likes a character arc, but there are many ways to be an adult between the extremes of the wake-and-bake and the morning commute.... After two decades of slackers on film, the genre hasn't grown up -- it's just moved to Brooklyn.
Again, great point. But maybe the problem is that these movies aren't about idlers. They really are about slackers. Has a great movie been made about idlers? Sure, the French New Wave directors made several. Richard Linklater's entire oeuvre (including School of Rock) is about idlers. Perhaps Meltzer is looking for idlers in all the wrong places.
Readers who wish to suggest idler movies, or defend the moniker "slacker," please get in touch.
Posted by Joshua Glenn at 08:30 AM
February 23, 2007
Here's a pretty spectacular report from the Telegraph (UK), which I came upon via 3 Quarks Daily. The setup hypothesis:
Early humans had a few specific utterances, from howls to grunts, that became associated with specific objects. Crucially, these associations formed when information transfer was beneficial for both speaker and listener. And in this way, the evolution of cooperation was crucial for language to evolve.
But this theory has been impossible to prove....
Until now, although proof is still a strong word. Enter an experiment involve robots with self-improving software for brains:
The breeding robots ... forage in a virtual environment containing "food" and "poison" sources that could only be told apart at close range.
Theoretically, the efficiency of food foraging could be increased if the robots transmitted information to one another about the location of poison but in the case of food, there is a downside to announcing finds because rival robots could then compete for the same resource.
...
The team found that communication evolves rapidly when [robot] colonies contain genetically similar (related) individuals, or when evolutionary selection pressure works primarily on the "group" level.
Pretty amazing.
Posted by Evan Hughes at 05:45 PM
February 23, 2007
Crooked Timber picks up an Irish Times story that the tech firm Sandisk, which quite possibly made the memory card in your digital camera or the memory expansion chip in your computer, is avoiding paying millions in US corporate tax by funneling their profits through their Irish office. From the Irish Times: "By accounting for such revenues in Ireland, they take advantage of the 12.5 per cent rate of corporate taxation on their profits, a rate that compares favourably with other EU states and the US." Crooked Timber adds:
The US is pretty vigorous about reclaiming taxes from citizens living abroad, but has been curiously supine in its attitude to the various schemes that US companies have come up with to relocate revenues outside the taxman’s grasp.
A commenter there adds that Microsoft is also remarkably adept at this, to the tune of depriving Uncle Sam of half a billion dollars a year. (I can't confirm that.)
This phenomenon is well-documented in a book called "Offshore," which pays special attention to the notorious shelter that is the Cayman Islands. There one can find shell companies that consist solely of a PO box and are untraceable due to lax local banking laws, but that are probably tax dodges for prominent multinational companies.
Posted by Evan Hughes at 04:10 PM
February 23, 2007
The Times, in a piece that got an A1 ride yesterday, takes up, once again, the tale of the gyroball, which, as I've noted before in this space, Ideas was on to long before Dice-K was a household name. A time that a lot of Sox fans, thoroughly bored by the blanket coverage Matsuzaka has received before ever throwing a pitch in a game, now remember fondly.
The Times piece adds something to our understanding of the pitch in that it's the first piece I've read that interviews Kazushi Tezuka, who the Times credits with inventing the gyroball. (Ideas caught up with Ryutaro Himeno, who co-authored, with Tezuka, the book that set the gyroball story in motion.)
But there's still a lot that's puzzling about this story, and I'm still not convinced we have a game-changing pitch on our hands here. The Times piece has some nifty diagrams showing how the gyroball spins (i.e., like a football), and a description of Tezuka throwing gyros in Scottsdale, Ariz. But take a look at that description:
The pitch started on the same course as a changeup, but it barely dipped. It looked like a slider, but it did not break. The gyroball, despite its zany name, is supposed to stay perfectly straight.
“That’s it!” Tezuka said, laughing hysterically on the mound. “That’s the gyro!”
Tezuka seems to think the pitch works in part thanks to the element of surprise, but I can't get over the fact that what he's describing is a not-very-fast pitch with no movement. I believe we already know about that kind of pitch, and even have a name for it: the gopher ball.
Posted by John Swansburg at 02:07 PM
February 23, 2007
I've seen these tasteless jokes around Boston, but a friend sends a photo from Washington, DC, where this image was pasted to a building:
If only the cops in New York, or at least Philadelphia, would blow up something obviously harmless, so Bostonians could start feeling better! In other Mooninite-related news, objects that were, at first, worrisome -- but upon closer inspection were (one might imagine) obviously not bombs -- continue to be detonated by police, in Santa Fe and a town in Ireland, reports Boing Boing. Santa Fe... nope, doesn't make me feel any better.
John Brownlee, of the Wired magazine blog Table of Malcontents, opined this morning about why this sort of thing keeps happening:
One of the problems with escalating law enforcement (and, particularly, escalating SWAT style law enforcement) is that these groups are created in small towns that don't need them out of a sense of paranoia and then find themselves constantly having to justify their funding. That's the reason you have SWAT teams kicking in the doors of high schools and aiming their rifles at kids heads for petty drug busts. That's why you have bomb squads exploding a purse found on a subway platform. And that's what caused the entire city of Boston to panic in the face of a coordinated Mooninite attack of Lite-Brites.
Boston, a small town? Ouch.
READ MORE FROM BRAINIAC: Attack of the Mooninites! | Eat your heart out P.T. Barnum | Son of Mooninite! | Panic in the Hub | Marketing Gone Awry | Mooninite Photo Op | Do the Mooninites have a posse? | Malden vs. Mooninites | Mooninite missives 1 | Mooninite missives 2 | Zebro video | Red Sox vs. Mooninites | Danger Bomb Clock | Mooninite kudos | Mooninite Man sighted | Mooninite guru? | Mooninite mockery |
Posted by Joshua Glenn at 02:06 PM
February 23, 2007
Ideas editor Wen Stephenson points out that generational signposts and touchstone figures or idols are usually not in fact the exact contemporaries of the generation they shape: the heroes are older.
Speaking for myself, a '75 baby, the folks who have had major cultural impact among my peers were the "Friends" (now in their early 40s), the Seinfeld gang (a bit older), the Simpsons creator (53), Dave Eggers (six years older, but especially popular with those who are/were about 10 years younger than he), the Brat Pack (mid-40s, as Josh pointed out), Yo-Yo Ma (a personal favorite, 51), Springsteen (57!), Conan O'Brien (43), "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" (would you believe Judge Reinhold is 49?). You get the point.
As Wen said, Obama was past college when the Brat Pack flicks came out; he wasn't the target audience at all, especially since the film was so self-consciously about the '80s teenager.
Moreover, as Josh briefly noted, the concept of a generation is pretty hazy and questionable. People are born continuously, and they are each affected by cultural or political events and people slightly differently but also in much the same way. In my own example, Watergate was huge whether you were 25 or 55 at the time. So maybe we should be looking at the people Obama himself actually idolized or defined himself against. Now that would be instructive. Let's ask him that, not "boxers or briefs."
[Revised 1:06 p.m.]
Posted by Evan Hughes at 11:29 AM
February 22, 2007
I've received an impassioned missive from Brainiac reader James A. about the generation born between the mid-1950s and the mid-1960s. It's not impossible that James A. is a "sock puppet" for the author of a forthcoming book on Generation Jones, but here's the letter:
Obama's generation already has a name, a name that is already quite well-established: Generation Jones. I realize that you mentioned GenJones in your article, but only with a passing reference, while also mentioning "Generation Obama," "The Brat Pack Generation," and "The Repo Man Generation," as if all four of these monikers are used to describe this cohort. But the reality is that the latter three monikers are basically never used to describe this generation, while Generation Jones is a term that has been used frequently in major media, in hundreds of newspaper/magazine/TV/radio pieces about this heretofore lost generation between the Boomers and Xers.
Generation Jones is already a household term in many Western European countries, and is fast becoming that in the States. I just recently came upon more examples of the speed with which Genration Jones is becoming an entrenched part of our vocabulary: from the bible of demography -- American Demographics Magazine -- devoting a cover story to GenJones, to the many references to GenJones, by name, I've encountered, made by top political, business, and entertainment leaders. My sense is that within the next several months, bolstered by the major media book tour I heard about in a recent radio interview with Jonathon Pontel (about his soon-to-be-released book "Generation Jones"), that Generation Jones will be a household term in the States as well.
The reason I'm going on so long about this, is that I'm a GenJoneser, and like many others in my age group that I've discussed this with, I'm damn glad that my generation finally has a label that stuck, along with a growing consciousness of what it means to be a Joneser. Obama could be the first GenJones President, and that is exciting for many of us in his generation.
OK, I'll bite: What's the GenJones worldview? What would a GenJones president do differently than a boomer president? We need answers.
MORE FROM BRAINIAC: Generation Obama Jones | Generation Obama politicians | Generation Obama comedians | Generation Obama mailbag | Generation Obama: Music | Generation Obama sports stars | Generation Obama vs. the Boomers
Posted by Joshua Glenn at 09:43 PM
February 22, 2007
Now for something completely different. If you like little psych experiments, you'd be wise to listen good. Literally.
Someone in Norway -- perhaps a science researcher but it's hard to tell in Norwegian -- has posted a video online that illustrates the so-called McGurk Effect (funny name). The effect is in essence an interaction between vision and hearing that takes place beneath the perceiver's consciousness. We are all, it seems, reading lips when someone talks to us.
Watch the man in the video (very Norwegian looking, by the way) make the same sound repeatedly and try to identify the sound; is it "da" or "ba" or "ga"? Midway through, close your eyes or look away. The sound is suddenly different, and crystal clear.
Another video of the same phenomenon, even more dramatic, is here.
Posted by Evan Hughes at 05:36 PM
February 22, 2007
Wow, that's quite a line from Yglesias, but an even more remarkable one from LSS. Throwing a rock through the window is quite the violent and strangely evocative sexual metaphor.
It's also, I think, very misguided and dated. The image calls to mind the old saw, said by grand dames in '50s movies to women engaging in premarital sex, "Are you going to have him buy the cow, or are you going to keep giving away the milk for free?" That image of sex as the sacred property of the woman is off-putting, to me, but not as off-putting as Stepp's image of sex as a form of lasting damage. (Yes, you can fix a broken window, but Stepp seems to regard it as a scar on the shiny new house, forever to be regretted.)
I must admit that in my conservative -- or perhaps it's romantic -- soul, it worries me to see acts of intimacy conceived of by "the young these days" as, ya know, no big deal. Much has been made of the casual performance of oral sex among teenagers. Caitlin Flanagan wrote a somewhat flippant but concerned article about this, and a blogger named Sara Nelson had a perceptive comment, in the course of a longer discussion about sex: "Yes, her daughter is more likely to [give oral sex] in high school than she was -- but she's also much much more likely to receive it."
Perhaps Stepp would call that mutual prostitution. And a part of me half agrees. But it's certainly not an act of exploitation, as Stepp seems to believe.
Posted by Evan Hughes at 04:26 PM
February 22, 2007
Evan, I haven't read the Sessions Stepp book, but one line from it, plucked from a review in the Washington Post, seems to have caught everyone's attention. Addressing young women, she writes:
Your body is your property. . . . Think about the first home you hope to own. You wouldn't want someone to throw a rock through the front window, would you?
This was blogger Matthew Yglesias's rewrite*:
Your body is your property. Think about the first home you hope to own. You want to have a big party and invite all your friends over.
Other riffs, by other bloggers, were less printable.
I'm not sure Meghan O'Rourke added anything to the debate, in Slate. I don't have any great answers myself, but neither "What's wrong with lots of random hook-ups?" nor "Barricade your house till you're married -- even if you get married at 40," quite seem like the message I'd want to send my hypothetical daughter, or my non-hypothetical son.
*I think the blogger I link to may be quoting from an actual conversation with Yglesias. Anway, can't find the quote on his blog.
Posted by Christopher Shea at 02:21 PM
February 22, 2007
In the cyclical world that is the issue of the romantic and sexual climate in the US, another entry -- and perhaps just another (attempted) swing of the pendulum: WaPo staff writer Laura Sessions Stepp, whose name unfortunately already has an Emily Post-ish schoolmarm ring, has written an alarm-sounding book about the "hookup culture" of kids today called "Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love, and Lose at Both." Stepp sees college students hanging out in packs, forgoing the intimacy of dates or one-on-one conversations, and then hopping in the sack, usually after a night of drinking.
Meghan O'Rourke has written a mostly negative piece for Slate on the book called, edgily but also charmingly, "In Defense of 'Loose' Women." O'Rourke has a subtle analysis, but you could reduce her thesis to "what's wrong with hooking up?" She sees a generation that finally views work and achievement as more important than romance, and therefore more likely to keep a hookup or a sexual hang-up in perspective.
Ezra Klein picks out this quote from Stepp:
Relationships have been replaced by the casual sexual encounters known as hookups. Love, while desired by some, is being put on hold or seen as impossible. Some girls can handle this; others … are exhausted physically, emotionally and spiritually by it.
Klein's riposte: "Doesn't that also describe...relationships?" One of his commenters clearly isn't hip to Stepp's tsk tsks, either: "Is there really a pervasive 'hook up culture'? I guess I missed it by 10 years. Damn '90s...."
Posted by Evan Hughes at 12:34 PM
February 22, 2007
I got a few angry letters last year, when I challenged Time magazine's claim, in a major Time cover story, that the debate over global warming was over. Certainly, I wrote, the consensus leans toward the view that humans are causing global warming, and it will have significant negative effects. But there are still a few major meteorologists and climatologists out there who dispute their peers' findings. I, like most journalists, wrestle with the question of how to make use of this small minority: If we quote people like MIT's Richard Lindzen in every story about global warming, does that give them a voice disproportionate to their numbers? (The Globe's Alex Beam highlighted Lindzen's views in this recent column.)
So I'm hardly one to quash debate. But the conservative National Review's new blog, Planet Gore -- it launched last week -- is an embarrassment to the cause of global-warming skepticism. (Some contributors to the blog are outright skeptics of many of the claims by scientists about global warming and its effects; others appear to accept them but think more scientific research, not conservation or economic regulation, is the proper response.) Here's the mission statement:
NRO [National Review Online} has gathered a team of experts to report and comment on the myriad scientific and economic issues surrounding the global warming debate. So check back regularly for informed news and views about climate change, alternative energy, environmental activism, and of course, Al Gore's carbon footprint.
So far I count six contributors on the blog -- none of whose credentials appear to be provided on the Web site. So I did some Googling. Here's whom NRO has tapped for their expertise:
1. The online editor of National Review.
2. A "Web manager and blogger" from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a pro-free-market think tank.
3. A senior fellow at the Discovery Institute (best known for its work in defense of creationism), with a Ph.D. from the Princeton Theological Seminary.
4. An English "expat businessman," who writes a popular economics blog.
5. A senior fellow at the C.E.I., with a BA from Oxford, an MBA from the University of London, and a "Diploma of Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine." (I'm not sure what this last is.)
6. A resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, with a doctorate in environmental science from UCLA and a c.v. filled with stints at pro-free-market think tanks.
I'll correct those descriptions if NRO decides to post more information. Everyone is reasonably smart and witty, and at least three of the bloggers appear to be have knowledge of economics and statistics, which is certainly relevant. But really: Not one climatologist or meteorologist? No one thought to call, say, a chemist who studies the issues involved?
Compare the above credentials with those of the contributors to Realclimate.org, whose views are more in line with Al Gore's.
I'd love to read a blog co-written by Lindzen and William Gray, of Colorado State, two of the best-known, best-credentialed dissenters from the global-warming CW. But NRO's contribution to the debate, so far, is awfully, awfully feeble.
[Credit: I learned of Planet Gore via Best of Both Worlds, whose author raises an eyebrow at the presence of the theologian from the Discovery Institute.]
UPDATE: I've added links to Planet Gore and its mission statement, which I failed to include the first time around.
Posted by Christopher Shea at 11:07 AM
February 21, 2007
In the ongoing battles over copyright in an age when dissemination is impossible to control -- a favorite topic of mine, Brainiac readers know -- another interesting frontier: the world of Japanese anime cartoons. According to a blog post by media and pop culture theorist Henry Jenkins, one anime outfit in Japan is choosing not to run scared from viewer trading nor sue copyright violators, but instead to capitalize on the international spread of videos whose subtitles have been supplied by fans ("fansubs"). They encourage the viral marketing and inject their own urging to support the commercial release of the products into the pumping bloodstream.
Jenkins notes that Bostonians can look forward to a conference at MIT beginning Feb. 28 called Cool Japan, where anime fans will be very much at home. Also worth noting: Thoughtcast interviews Jenkins and tells us that he will be speaking at another MIT conference this Saturday called Beyond Broadcast, subtitled From Participatory Technology to Participatory Democracy. Sounds like my bag, anyway.
Thanks to ThoughtCast for including Brainiac among the favorite links.
Posted by Evan Hughes at 05:11 PM
February 21, 2007
One sorta helpful resource, for those of us -- including Peter Canellos -- who can't call to mind many US politicians on the national stage born from the mid-1950s through the mid-'60s is the website The Political Graveyard. Oddly enough, they haven't updated Obama's profile since 2004; and at that time, they didn't seem to know his date of birth. So although he's in the database, he doesn't show up on the 1961 page. (Mary Bono does, though.) So, like I said, it's sorta helpful. Let me know if there's a better resource out there.
Here's a list of links to Political Graveyard pages, by date:
1956 | 1957 | 1958 | 1959 | 1960 | 1961 | 1962 | 1963 | 1964 | 1965
MORE FROM BRAINIAC: Generation Obama Jones | Generation Obama politicians | Generation Obama comedians | Generation Obama mailbag | Generation Obama: Music | Generation Obama sports stars | Generation Obama vs. the Boomers
Posted by Joshua Glenn at 04:35 PM
February 21, 2007
As I mentioned in last Sunday's Word column, it was Jon Stewart's report on the Lisa Nowak incident -- with its multiple uses of diapers in a context that sounded singular -- that got me wondering about the status of the word. I e-mailed lexicographer Ben Zimmer for help untangling the singular/plural possibilities of diapers, and boy, did he answer the call.
His first round of results, "Astronaut drives 900 miles wearing . . . ", appeared on Language Log last week; the second, "Diapers, diapers, and more diapers," is up today, with more detailed evidence that both diapers and a pair of diapers can be used to mean a diaper.
Zimmer's oldest example (so far) of singular diapers dates from a 1915 infant-care book, which uses "dry diapers" to mean "a dry diaper": "Directly before the nursing or feeding time it [the baby] should be put in dry diapers and properly powdered."
And "pair of diapers" appears by 1930: "We wish that when the New Year is welcomed into Wisconsin that they'll give the poor little tyke something besides a pair of diapers."
James Michael Curley, Harold Ickes, and the comic strips "L'il Abner" and "Moon Mullins" also supply important evidence. Who'd have thought there was so much to discover in diapers?
Posted by Jan Freeman at 04:18 PM
February 21, 2007
Speaking of Obama's youth, Chris and I have been talking, off Brainiac, about whether Obama is too young to run for POTUS and win, or, more to the point, too young to serve. Bill Clinton was actually younger than Obama will be by election day when he took office. And John F. Kennedy was younger still in 1961.
But the issue with Obama, as I see it, is his inexperience. Nicholas Lemann wrote that George W. Bush has what might be the thinnest resume of any president in history, including those who served long before politician was a career choice. But foreign policy is even more of a hornet's nest than when GWB appeared, and I wonder if voters will entrust the path of a nation at war to a fortysomething.
That said, look at a list of 2008 presidential candidates ranked by age, oldest to youngest. Perhaps this is my youth showing, but I would say, even striving for objectivity, that the only serious candidate in the first half is McCain. Everyone else is young enough to have missed World War II entirely. The Un-Greatest Generation Strikes Back.
Gravel (who?): 1930
Paul (eh?): 1935
Tancredo (wha..?): 1935
McCain: 1936
Thompson: 1941
Biden: 1942
Dodd: 1944
Clark: 1944
Giuliani: 1944
Kucinich: 1946
Richardson: 1947
Romney: 1947
Clinton: 1947
Gore: 1948
Gimore: 1949
Vilsack: 1950
Edwards: 1953
Sharpton: 1954
Huckabee: 1955
Brownback: 1956
Obama: 1961
Posted by Evan Hughes at 03:51 PM
February 21, 2007
As I think about comics/comical actors born into Generation Obama, I find myself dividing up even that thinly sliced demographic cohort into smaller groups. (PS: I realize that I'm not strictly sticking to a particular set of years in these various posts. Like I said, generational diviniation is more of an art than a science.) Over-generalizing doesn't begin to describe what I'm about to say, but I'll bite the bullet. We've got to respond to Canellos's challenge!
Comics born between 1952-59: Jerry Seinfeld, Dan Aykroyd, John Goodman, Roseanne Barr, Matt Groening, Rick Moranis, Howard Stern, Sandra Bernhard, Dana Carvey, Whoopi Goldberg, Gilbert Gottfried, Kelsey Grammer, Fran Drescher, Denis Leary, Jon Lovitz, Ray Romano, Drew Carey, Bernie Mac, Tom Arnold, Tracey Ullman, and Weird Al Yankovic. It strikes me that theirs is an angry, edgy, sarcastic, often nihilistic humor. These comics are satirists who believe that progressive social change is necessary, but -- unlike their kookier, cuddlier boomer comic elders (Cheech Marin, Billy Crystal, Robin Williams, Ted Danson, John Belushi, Bill Murray, Jay Leno) -- they don't believe their satire can contribute to that change; they don't seem comfortable, finally, with being comedians. Among the many things preventing progressive change, they seem to believe, is humor itself, which is perhaps why many of them favor the deadpan, even stoneface style: Weird Al and Aykroyd and Romano and Seinfeld are prime examples, as are Kelsey Grammer and Bebe Neuwirth, who of course played an absolutely stone-faced duo on "Cheers."
Ellen Degeneres is the odd woman out -- she seems much more like a cuddly boomer. Hard to imagine these others with a daytime talk show.
Comics born between 1960-64, on the other hand, practice slacker comedy. This is the comedy of those who -- schooled in the scorn of "Saturday Night Live" and Howard Stern, really don’t believe that progressive social change is possible. Theirs is the free-floating, all-consuming, air-quote irony that Generation X was accused of; in fact, these 1960-64s are the original and true Generation X. (Douglas Coupland, author of the novel of that title which branded everyone born after 1965, was born in 1961; Coupland lifted it from the punk band fronted by Billy Idol, born in 1955.) The comedy of Steve Carell, Mike Myers, Jim Carrey, Conan O'Brien, Eddie Murphy, Amy Sedaris, Damon Wayans, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Mike Judge, Craig Kilborn, Greg Kinnear, Lisa Kudrow, Norm MacDonald, Hank Azaria, John Leguizamo, Rob Schneider, Yeardley Smith, and David Spade is perfectly suited to the Bush era, a time when progressives have been marginalized, rendered politically impotent, branded as traitorous. It's simultaneously vulgar and aestheticist, politicized and apathetic. Unlike the previous group, these comics don't seem like resentful children or younger siblings; they seem like the prematurely sophisticated only children of broken homes. They're sophisticated savages, latchkey kids raised by TV. They really do have love to give, to paraphrase a line from "Magnolia," a movie studded with Generation Obama actors, but they just don't know where to put it.
Jon Stewart, David Cross, and Janeane Garofalo (all from the latter group) are a different story. I think... But anyway, I went way, way out on a limb here. Still, I'm going to put this theory out there. Email me with constructive criticism, friends.
MORE FROM BRAINIAC: Generation Obama Jones | Generation Obama politicians | Generation Obama comedians | Generation Obama mailbag | Generation Obama: Music | Generation Obama sports stars | Generation Obama vs. the Boomers
Posted by Joshua Glenn at 02:40 PM
February 21, 2007
Some Brainaic readers want to know why I've compared Barack Obama to Hollywood celebs. Jim M. writes:
So you're really good at naming people who where born in the early '60s. What does this have to do with politics and how can you compare Obama to the likes of Sean Penn and Emilio Estevez. I don't think they went to Columbia/Harvard Law or spent years working in poor neighborhoods.
Julie M. (no relation) writes:
As someone born in that era I've long argued that the label "baby boomer" did not apply to myself and my peers.... We came of age in a very different atmosphere, one that was more cynical and self-absorbed. What I think is unfortunate is that among the many figures you cite as examples of this post-boomer generation, all of them are actors. Other than Obama, you fail to mention anyone involved in politics, academia or literature.
First, I should say that this business of naming and defining generations is a pseudo-science at best, more of a parlor game than a sociological project. That said, on with the show. As you'll recall, in my post I was picking up on Peter Canellos's acute observation that if we understood Obama's generational touchstones better, we might understand better what kind of president he'd be. One way to understand Bill Clinton's politics is to view him as a product of the Sixties, suggests Canellos; George W. Bush's politics, inversely, can be thought of as part of the neoconservative reaction against the Sixties.
The Sixties, as we know them, are part history, part generational attitudes and worldview, and in no small part pop culture. (Chris Shea points out the importance of that Fleetwood Mac song to Clinton's campaign.) I was obviously focusing on the pop culture, partly for comic effect. But Canellos, who I'm pretty sure is part of Obama's generation, says it's hard to know what to say about those Americans born between, let's say, 1954 and 1965:
Just what these touchstones comprise in political values and impulses is still undefined, partly because so few politicians born after the first years of the baby boom have been on the national stage. Political dialogue has so often contrasted the quiet commitment of the World War II generation with the self-referential baby boomers that a voter could easily assume that no other perspective exists besides Greatest Generation stoicism and Me Generation bravado.
This suggests that Generation Obama is a new Silent Generation -- you know, the generation between the Greatest Generation and the boomers who've never had one of their number in the White House. We don't know anything about them; they've toiled in obscurity. Chris Shea suggests that musicians born in those years are "anti-boomers" -- a negative definition, but still something. I'm born too late to be in Generation Obama, so let's hear from you readers born in the late '50s and early '60s. What's it like to be you?
MORE FROM BRAINIAC: Generation Obama: Music | Generation Obama sports stars | Generation Obama vs. the Boomers
Posted by Joshua Glenn at 02:04 PM
February 21, 2007
I had a psychology professor in college who taught a hugely popular lecture. On day one, he gave the lie to the widely expressed claim -- delivered while looking down the nose -- that psych is the study of the intuitively obvious. In one example after another, he shot down the class's vote in answer to a given question by explaining a study that demonstrated the opposite. It was impressive.
Add this study to the list: according to new research, it seems that women are drawn to men who are attractive (duh) and men who have high status professionally and financially (duh), but not to men who have both in spades. The researchers' suggestion is that the guy who has it all is viewed by women as "likely to pursue a mating strategy rather than parenting strategy."
What a gentle way of putting it.
Thanks to reader C.F. for the tip.
Posted by Evan Hughes at 01:42 PM
February 21, 2007
When I think "baby boom," pop musically speaking, I think of '60's-era rock and soul, depending on the demographics, and strong nostalgia today for same. (I heard Bob Edwards the other weekend interviewing David Crosby, ecstatically quizzing him about the California folk scene 40 years ago -- a classic instance.) You could throw into the mix '70s classic rock: Think of Clinton and his theme song "Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow." In contrast, these musicians, in their various subgenres, strike me as anti-boomers:
Bob Mould, Husker Du (1960), Paul Westerberg, the Replacements (1959), Morrissey, the Smiths (1959), Michael Stipe, R.E.M. (1960), James Hetfield, Metallica (1963), Tom Araya, Slayer (1961), Chuck D. and Professor Griff, Public Enemy (both 1960).
MORE FROM BRAINIAC: Generation Obama sports stars, Generation Obama vs. the Boomers
Posted by Christopher Shea at 10:27 AM
February 20, 2007
Eric F., a Brainiac reader born in 1961, writes to remind us not to forget those athletes who also might have served as touchstones for those born within five years of Barack Obama. He writes:
Here's a Hall of fame-type sampling, with a Boston slant, from the "Obama era." Basketball: Larry Bird [1956], Magic Johnson [1959], Patrick Ewing [1962], Michael Jordan [1963]. Baseball: Roger Clemens [1962]. Football: John Elway [1960]; Lawrence Taylor and Patriots' own Andre Tippett [both 1959]. And Bruins Hall-of-Famer Ray Bourque: [1960]. Not sure if it signifies some cluster representing the "golden age of sports", or just a coincidence, but it sure seemed like it to me at the time.
Thanks, Eric. Does anyone want to go deeper and offer a hypothesis about what qualities of character, say, or athletic intelligence, or joi de vivre these athletes may have shared? Can we derive any insights into Generation O from this list? Keep those emails coming, readers!
MORE FROM BRAINIAC: Generation Obama vs. the Boomers
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Posted by Joshua Glenn at 10:06 PM
February 20, 2007
Barack Obama's bid to capture the Democratic presidential nomination has been hyped in the media as a story about race. But in a perceptive National Perspective column today, Peter Canellos, the Globe's Washington bureau chief, pointed out that "much of what's striking about Obama's campaign ... can be better read in generational, rather than racial, terms."
Canellos points out that although Obama, who was born in 1961, is "technically a baby boomer, one of the last of the breed," his "cultural guideposts" are markedly different from the boomers'. I agree with the latter comment, but I'd take Canellos's argument to the next level: Barack Obama is not a baby boomer at all.
The "baby boom" label was applied to all Americans born between 1946 and 1962, because these dates bracket a period of unusually high birthrates. But a generation is not simply an age bracket: History, attitudes, behavior, and self-identification are also a factor. And when you think about Americans born in the 5 or 6 years following, say, 1959, it's impossible to lump them in with the boomers. (NB: I was born in the late '60s, so I'm not talking about my own generation. I'm defending the generational integrity of my immediate elders.)
Canellos writes: "Obama, for all his uniqueness, has shared with everyone his age a certain set of touchstones, and a certain view of society. Just what those touchstones comprise in political values and impulses is still undefined...." Brainiac readers, let's take a first step toward such a definition by recalling certain aspects of the pop culture of Obama's formative years.
Consider, for example, the Brat Pack, who appeared together in one teen-oriented film -- "Class," "Sixteen Candles," "The Breakfast Club," "St. Elmo's Fire," "Pretty in Pink" -- after another in the mid-'80s. Emilio Estevez (1962), Rob Lowe (1964), Andrew McCarthy (1962), Demi Moore (1962), Judd Nelson (1959), and Ally Sheedy (1962) are the same age as Obama! He was formed in the same generational crucible as they were. Their touchstones are his touchstones.
The Brat Pack generation (it's been more charitably called the Repo Man generation, or Generation Jones) gave us other iconic teens, too: There's Sean Penn (1960), a star of “Fast Times at Ridgemont High," which co-starred Jennifer Jason Leigh (1962), Phoebe Cates (1963), and Forest Whitaker (1961); Penn was also in "Taps," which co-starred Timothy Hutton (1960) and introduced Tom Cruise (1962). Cruise went on to star in "Risky Business" with Rebecca DeMornay (1962). Another teen icon from Obama's generation is Matt Dillon (1964), star of "Little Darlings," which co-starred Tatum O’Neal (1963) and Kristy McNichol (1962), not to mention the movie versions of S.E. Hinton novels like "Tex," co-starring Estevez (op. cit.); "The Outsiders," co-starring Lowe, Estevez, and Cruise (all op. cit.); and "Rumble Fish," co-starring Nicolas Cage (1964) and Laurence Fishburne (1961). Let's not forget Johnny Depp (1963), who got his start on "21 Jump Street," or Keanu Reeves (1964), who started in "River's Edge."
I could go on and on. A second string of Brat Packers appeared in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," "Young Guns," "Footloose," etc. Kevin Bacon (1958), Matthew Broderick (1962), Lou Diamond Phillips (1962), Jennifer Grey (1960), Elizabeth McGovern (1961), James Spader (1960), Ralph Macchio (1961), and Eric Stoltz (1961) are also Obama's contemporaries. So are: Scott Baio and Erin Moran (1961) of "Joanie Loves Chachi," Michael J. Fox (1961) of "Family Ties," Willie Aames (1960) of "Eight is Enough," Valerie Bertinelli (1960) of "One Day at a Time," even Gabrielle Carteris (1961) and Ian Ziering (1964) from "Beverly Hills 90210."
Yes, you heard me right: "The Breakfast Club," "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," "21 Jump Street," "Footloose." Tremble, baby boomers! A generation weaned on "Joanie Loves Chachi" may soon make it into the White House. After getting your kicks in the '60s and '70s, you helped form this generation's touchstones and view of society by shoving such movies and TV shows down its collective throat. Tremble, I say!
Readers, email me with feedback, other well-known Americans born within 5 years of Obama, etc.
UPDATE: MORE FROM BRAINIAC: Generation Obama Jones | Generation Obama politicians | Generation Obama comedians | Generation Obama mailbag | Generation Obama: Music | Generation Obama sports stars | Generation Obama vs. the Boomers
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Posted by Joshua Glenn at 06:24 PM
February 20, 2007
"Pogo" fans, rejoice!
As they've done with several of the other great newspaper strip cartoonists of the past -- Charles Schulz, Hank Ketcham, E.C. Segar, George Herriman, Hal Foster, Harold Gray -- Fantagraphics will next publish a comprehensive series comprising Walt Kelly's "Pogo" strip. The first in their planned series of 12 volumes ("Pogo" ran from 1949 to 1973) will appear in October. The announcement just went out.
Although I already owned stacks of old "Peanuts" and "Dennis the Menace" collections (stolen from my father's shelves), I've been thrilled by the recent Fantagraphics series of collected Schulz and Ketcham strips. The books are hardcover, the reproduction is gorgeous, and most importantly -- they're complete. According to Fantagraphics, the consecutive run of "Pogo" has never before been systematically collected into book form.
Coincidentally, I just this week received in the mail a CD I'd purchased online: "Songs of the Pogo." The 1956 album, whose lyrics were written by Kelly, was released as a CD in 2004, but I didn't hear about it till it was mentioned on Boing Boing last week. Seems that emusic.com made it available as a free download. I still sent away for the CD.
Posted by Joshua Glenn at 04:29 PM
February 20, 2007
According to news reports of the last few days, a group of scientists and astronauts are warning that there is a chance that Earth will be struck by a large asteroid on April 13 [naturally], 2036 -- a mere twenty-nine years away.
What kind of chance are we talking about? Well, maybe 1 in 45,000, says the group. But they still think the UN needs to take action as soon as possible.
A spokesman for the group says it's "important to start the search for asteroids now, to allow enough time to effectively deal with them." And what do these astro-guys propose we do? Not entirely clear, but theoretically we could use a weapon on the asteroid's surface or pull the asteroid off course with the force of another object's gravity. "Another suggestion," says ABC News, "is to crash a spacecraft into an asteroid in the hopes of changing its direction." A multibillion-dollar spacecraft sacrificed "in the hopes" of a good outcome.
On the face of it, there's nothing absurd about this call for evasive action, and especially for more study into other flying threats. But it is almost charmingly naive to think the UN is going to devote itself, for many billions of dollars, to preventing a 1-in-45,000 event when it can't seem to halt certain climate change and definite genocidal killing in Darfur.
Posted by Evan Hughes at 02:44 PM
February 20, 2007
When persistent Catholic foes caused Amanda Marcotte, John Edwards's "blogmaster," to resign from his campaign (after I had discussed her hiring), I wrote critically about her tell-all that appeared in Salon, and reported the indignant response of a reader wholly opposed to Marcotte's attacker(s).
Another reader has come forward to second in a more general way the views of the first reader -- that the incursion of strictly religious forces into politics is leading us down a foolish and dangerous road, no matter what principles they may think they are defending. This second reader points to a post on the lefty political blog Talking Points Memo about a memo distributed and signed by a Georgia State Representative, Ben Bridges, that tars evolution not only as an incorrect theory but as the product of pernicious Jewish teachings. Double penalty.
Bridges denies any involvement with the memo, though the author says Bridges signed off. In any case, the politician says he doesn't find it such a problem:
Asked if he agreed with the Kaballah evolution conspiracy theory and the earth's lack of motion, he told the Atlanta Journal Constitution, "I agree with it more than I would the Big Bang Theory or the Darwin Theory. I am convinced that rather than risk teaching a lie why teach anything?"
I don't think we can blame Marcotte's fall on people with views quite like these, but thanks for the reader tip.
Posted by Evan Hughes at 12:11 PM
February 20, 2007
Since the response at TNR.com (and on Brainiac), to the call for a new American book review has so far been universally positive, let me quibble with it -- not with the idea itself, but with the way it's framed. (Who could object to a new TLS-style review of books?)
First is Jeffrey Herf's failure to ask whether scholars and publishers -- and not just book reviews -- contribute to the problems he identifies. Herf argues that it's a crime that roughly 9,300 of the 10,000 books published by university presses each year get ignored. (He leaves out many publications, including the Atlantic and the Boston Review, in arriving at that figure.) But shouldn't he at least make a nod toward the contention that humanities and some social-science departments have turned into factories producing books of often-negligible value? How many of those 9,300 books should even have been published, let alone reviewed?
And the "manifesto" on book reviewing posted by Eric Rauchway strikes me as schoolmarmish rather than funny, as Josh describes it. "Write a book before you review one"? TNR's main fiction critic, James Wood, just to give one of countless examples, established his pre-eminence long before he wrote his lone novel. And is an associate professor of whatever really automatically better-qualified to review a work of history, law, or philosophy than the Philadelphia Inquirer's Carlin Romano, who is, at least for now, pre-book? (It goes without saying I'm all for reviews by professors, too.)
"Avoid quips"? You've got to be kidding. (Or did I just break the rules?) A quip, should you need reminding, is a "sharp or sarcastic remark" or a "clever or witty saying." Does Rauchway read TNR's book reviews?
Finally, there are the unembarrassed paeans to the New Republic, by these TNR contributors (Herf even refers to TNR's Leon Wieseltier as "our greatest editor," sounding all too much like the much-mocked Sean Penn at the 2005 Oscars, defending Jude Law), and the bashing of the Times Book Review and the New York Review of Books. Here rivalry is recast as cultural critique. TNR's back-of-the-book is great -- but if you think it has fewer hobbyhorses than NYRB, talk to John Updike, Judith Butler, Cornel West, or admirers of the late Edward Said.
The real crime isn't the quirks of highbrow publications other than TNR, but the cutting back on book-review pages by mainstream newspapers and magazines. But, yes, of course: More reviews, in more publications.
Posted by Christopher Shea at 11:46 AM
February 20, 2007
Would this blog's version of this Globe Magazine story also make it to Boston.com's most e-mailed list?
Posted by John Swansburg at 11:22 AM
February 20, 2007
An article in Sunday's Times is in one sense simply a report on a competitive market wherein competitors are fighting to provide what customers want. It's about the sperm donation industry, in which women now "want proof of perfection before buying a dream donor's sperm." Personality tests, voice audio files, SAT scores, not only baby and adult pictures but teenage ones (eek) -- you name it. "Intelligent, tall, and interested in music" no longer cuts it.
There is something uncomfortable about this, since it represents an attempt, clearly, to control nature, to see to it that you get a designer baby for your money. But the underlying assumption is that biology to a great degree governs human development. The article implies that one prolific donor would not be in business, so to speak, if buyers knew he was living in an RV, eking out a living from odd jobs (including sperm donation). As if genetics made him do it.
One remark from the blog Half Sigma, which calls itself "Neither Republican, Democratic, nor Libertarian":
I think this is highly ironic, because somehow one suspects that the women who use the services of sperm banks voted for John Kerry in the last election. Under normal circumstances, they'd agree with the following statement: "The Bell Curve is racist pseudo-science proven wrong by experts." But these same women become True Believers in The Bell Curve and eugenics when it comes to selecting genes for their own children.
That comparison is not quite well thought-out, but the writer is in the close neighborhood of a good point.
Posted by Evan Hughes at 08:11 AM
February 19, 2007
As I was investigating the uses of stomach, the verb, for yesterday's Word column, I remembered being taught that I should distinguish between stomach, the digestive organ, and belly, the abdomen. At the time I thought the issue was scientific accuracy, but there was more to the story, it turns out: A belly reclamation project was under way through much of the 20th century, as usagists labored to restore the word to respectability.
Here's a sampling of the campaign literature, starting with H.L. Mencken in "The American Language" (1921):
The Englishman, on the whole, is more plain-spoken than the American, and such terms as bitch, mare and on foal do not commonly daunt him, largely, perhaps, because of his greater familiarity with country life. . . . But an Englishman hesitates to mention his stomach in the presence of ladies, though he discourses freely about his liver. To avoid the necessity he employs such euphemisms as Little Mary.
H.W. Fowler, Modern English Usage (1926):
Belly is a good word now almost done to death by genteelism. It lingers in proverbs & phrases, but even they are being amended into up-to-date delicacy, & the road to the heart lies less often through the b[elly] than through the stomach or the tummy.
Bergen and Cornelia Evans, A Dictionary of Contemporary American Usage (1957):
Belly is a good, sensible, established, time-honored word for that part of the human body which extends from the breastbone to the pelvis and contains the abdominal viscera. . . .
Stomach describes a particular organ, a sac-like enlargement of the alimentary canal. . . .
Tummy is simply disgusting when used by anyone over the age of four.
Kenneth G. Wilson, The Columbia Guide to Standard American English (1993):
Victorian American manners made the word belly, like leg, cock, bull, and many others taboo in most mixed company. Abdomen, stomach, midriff, and the cute tummy and jocular breadbasket were used as euphemisms instead. Today belly is Standard (although conservatives may prefer abdomen) in a range of literal and figurative meanings, the most central of which are the literal “the front lower part of the human body,” “the stomach,” “the abdominal cavity,” and “the underside of an animal’s body.” As a name for the womb, belly is partly archaic, partly Conversational: Where do babies come from? From Mommy’s belly.
Bill Bryson, "Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States" (1994):
On an early [TV] talk show when the English comedian Beatrice Lillie jokingly remarked of belly dances that she "had no stomach for that kind of thing," it caused a small scandal.
Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage (1994):
The committee for the defense of belly as applied to people seems to have been formed by Fowler 1926. . . . Although none of our 19th-century sources mention the word, there seems to have been a notion around that it was not polite. Krapp 1927 notes that belly was not then used in polite conversation or writing with reference to human beings. This newspaper article refers to the question:
"[It's time] to scrap the Victorian version of belly and explain that since the gay nineties it has not been necessary to confuse belly with stomach or abdomen in order to show your good breeding." (Bronx Home News, 1937)
Posted by Jan Freeman at 08:13 PM
February 18, 2007
Over at Open University, a blog published by The New Republic, historian Jeffrey Herf has issued a call for a new weekly review of books focused on informing a non-specialist but sophisticated public about developments in the world of American scholarship. Something closer, he says, to England's Times Literary Supplement than to the New York Review of Books (too political; too many fiction reviews) or any of this country's weekly newspaper book sections.
Herf's fellow OU bloggers agree, and offer advice. David A. Bell says: You should publish it online. Richard Stern says: You should also survey foreign publications. Linda Hershman says: You should include more reviews of books by women, and reviews by women. Steven Pinker says: You should be more fair to the cognitive and biological sciences. Eric Rauchway, finally, takes the opportunity to post a funny reviewer's manifesto:
1. Write a book before you review one. You'll learn lots of useful things about the performance you're assessing.
2. Write about the book you're reading, not the book you would have written, the author, the political position you impute to the author, or the book, on a similar subject, that you are now writing.
3. Eschew predicate adjectives, especially "persuasive" and "convincing" and their opposites. The least persuasive sentence in any book review is, "The argument is unpersuasive." What you mean is, the argument does not account for facts (a), (b), and (c). Saying so specifically will add a mote of value to civilization.
4. Avoid quips: to criticize the author, quote the author saying disagreeable or foolish things.
TNR subscribers can join in the discussion via the COMMENTS function.
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Posted by Joshua Glenn at 04:24 PM
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