It’s often difficult to get the attention of my students. But when I told them that it’s possible that a few of them would see the year 2100, and that most of their children surely would, they stopped furtively texting under their desks and began paying attention.
When I was born just after World War II, I told them, the population of the United States was about 141 million; of the world, about 2.7 billion. Now, 62 years later, Americans tip the scale at about 303 million; the world’s population has grown to about 6.6 billion.
A little extrapolation of U.S. Census data, I told them, shows the American population hitting 518 million at mid-century and 758 million in 2100. The world’s population is likely to grow to 14 billion at century’s end. Imagine what that world — their world — would be like, I challenged them.
But I was too optimistic. In a report to be released today, a Virginia Tech professor estimates that between 2100 and 2120 the population of the United States will reach one billion people. Full Story »
During its 36-year run, LIFE Magazine traversed a period of technological innovation and peril unsurpassed in the recorded history of humanity. As the first issue was released in November of 1936, a resurgent Germany was constructing the most awesome war machine the world had yet seen, a development that literally threatened the very future of the hemisphere. LIFE’s final issue went to press at the end of 1972, roughly three weeks after NASA’s last manned mission to the moon, Apollo 17, closed the books on a program that proved — theoretically, at least — that humanity was not inevitably bound to this planet.
The technological distance between these two moments is mind-boggling. Full Story »
If it was the Marlins, you wouldn’t see people in Florida getting up at 5 a.m. And if it was the Yankees — well, their fans aren’t real. They just buy the hat.
— Helio Rocha, a restaurant manager who stayed up all night in anticipation of watching the Red Sox’ Major League Baseball opener (played in Toyko) at 5:30 a.m. in famed Boston watering hole Cask ’n’ Flagon; March 26.
Adam Smith’s invisible hand has a puppeteer: the Federal Reserve. In case there is any confusion about who was pulling the strings behind the scenes of JPMorgan Chase’s acquisition of Bear Stearns, the curtain was lifted Monday. By raising its bid — with the grudging approval of the Fed — to $10 a share, from $2, JPMorgan exposed what had long been whispered about but no one dared to say aloud: the Fed is officially in the deal-making business.
— from Andrew Ross Sorkin’s “Dealbook” column in The New York Times; March 25; emphasis added. Full Story »
Back in 2001 the US Fed was considering the very real risk that the US government would be able to pay off their entire national debt. The government had been running a fiscal surplus for five years and was projected to continue with this to 2010. It was this which underpinned George W Bush’s (then recently elected) $1.3 trillion tax cut.
Why worry about paying off all the debt? Well, the Fed controls money supply by using dollars to buy the bonds which the US government issues to cover its debt. No debt, no bonds … and the Fed had to consider new ways of controlling money supply.
At the time then Fed Governor, Alan Greenspan, would rather that additional capital went to prepare the US economy for the pressure to be placed on it through obligations in Social Security and - especially - Medicare. Full Story »
What’s the difference between a skeptic and a cynic?
A skeptic is someone who, when told something, doesn’t immediately believe it to be true and looks deeper into the issue before making their decision.
A cynic is someone who, when told something, automatically assumes it to be false, and doesn’t bother looking any further, because it’s just got to be bullshit.
It’s essential, especially in these times of fear and paranoia, that we maintain a healthy skepticism about what we are told. Full Story »
There is a very important man in human history whose name too few people know: Alfred Korzybski. He’s the father of general semantics, and before you say to yourself, “Oh, it’s only semantics,” understand that improper use of semantics can absolutely, positively, kill you. I’ll explain why, shortly.
Hello. My name is Jim Booth and I’m (at least nominally) a writer for S&R. For those of you vaguely familiar with my work and wondering where I’ve been, here’s a brief explanation of sorts.
It’s been a rough couple of months.
On the blogging front, the two “big” stories I spent most of 2007 writing about, the evil that is Blackwater and the Jena 6 travesty of justice, are gone from the news cycle. In the first case Blackwater coverage is now buried - by, I suspect, tacit agreement between the Bush junta and corporate media - so as to allow Erik Prince and company to slither away with minimal (if any) punishment for their crimes against humanity in the name of protecting “American interests” in Iraq. In the second case, Jena’s impetus toward equal treatment under law has dissipated (sadly) due to revelations that the principal prosecutee/cause célèbre has been something of a habitual criminal whose previous unsavory behavior had been excused with wrist taps for the following reasons: 1) he was a star athlete; 2) he committed his crimes against fellow African-Americans rather than against whites in his home town in the deep south. Full Story »
Something big happened a few nights ago in Iowa. Barack Obama began the evening as one of the top two contenders for the Democratic nomination and by the time people went to bed he was John F. Kennedy.
This might sound like hyperbole - and to be sure, the race is far from won - but if the results we saw in the Hawkeye State last Thursday are replicated in New Hampshire and beyond, then what we are seeing may be a defining shift in American politics and culture. The key factor is the emergence of the 75-100 million strong Millennial Generation as a political force. Let’s look at some of the evidence.
The Young Voter PAC’s roundup provides ample data for consideration. Full Story »
I met Bill Clinton once - well, “met” might be too strong a word. “Saw” would be more apt as a description. He and Gore were doing that bus tour thing in ‘92 and their bus stopped near where I was and I stood in a small crowd while they stepped from the bus to glad hand for a few moments. Though I was near the back of the group, Clinton looked out over the sea (well, pond) of faces and we made (I think) eye contact. I saw caring in his eyes - and I liked it. It reminded me of our mutual hero, John F. Kennedy. I voted for him twice based on that glimpse as much as on any rational principle….
I had dinner one evening last spring with an astronaut. He’d piloted the space shuttle and now works in the aerospace industry. He was just the sort of person you’d want an astronaut to be - intelligent and thoughtful in his discourse, genial to everyone we met, casually modest about his exploits. It was like meeting John Glenn. He was what my parent’s generation used to call “an All-American guy.” He was the sort of guy you’d want to marry your sister. He just shimmered with the aura of heroism. I got him to give me an autographed picture of himself in his space suit…. Full Story »
As if picking out the 500 greatest songs, 500 greatest albums, and 100 greatest artists weren’t argument fodder enough, now the magazine whose masthead motto used to be (cue laugh track) “All the news that fits” and whose motto for the last 25 years has been “All the money we can gets” has created another list to foment bar stool scholarly discussion:
Pundits are much like birds flocking south for the winter…they travel in large groups, directed a certain way by a few leaders that twist this way and that, directing the rest of the flock to follow. It seems that if you watch the flock, it looks like they have no idea which way they’re going, so willy-nilly and arbitrary are their changes of direction.
And so it is that this week we get no fewer than four distinct flocks flying around this week, each one presenting a very different directional tilt on the topic of whether or not Barack Obama is a candidate for “Generation X,” the “Millenial” generation, both, neither, or something totally different. Full Story »
I was just coming back to my office at the university from teaching an 8 AM class. As I passed the department offices, I noticed a TV had been brought in and that the chair, the secretaries, and a couple of professors were gathered around it.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“A plane crashed into the World Trade Center,” someone said. “They’ve been on with coverage since about 8:30.”
I turned to go, then suddenly there was a gasp from the group. The second plane had hit the south tower. I went into the office and watched the coverage with everyone else for a stunned half-hour or so.
Then panic set in. My son Josh was a freshman at Columbia University. New York was under attack by terrorists. Full Story »
I think maybe this starts at a Who concert in 1976:
I went to the concert with two musician friends of mine and some women who, for reasons obvious to me at least, shall remain nameless. Toots and the Maytals, one of the great reggae bands, opened the show. In retrospect, they played a nice opening set - what there was of it. We booed them off the stage early.
I always rationalize to myself that it was because they covered John Denver’s execrable “Country Roads” - I mean, who in hell can tolerate “Almost Heaven/West Jamaica” as a lyric? But that wasn’t the real reason we booed them off, pissed off Pete Townshend, and had to wait an extra half-hour for The Who to come out and play an amazing show.
What we wanted was the spectacle. We wanted The Who - rock stars who’d give us a show worthy of our grubbily lofty expectations. It was 1976, after all. No one would want to see authentic musicians like The Maytals playing their music - we wanted the Big Bang.
And The Who delivered - a laser lit , ear ringing spectacle that I have long told anyone who’d listen was the best concert I ever saw…. Full Story »
Detachment. Disassociation. Ennui. Call it what you want, but Generation X has been steeped in a post-Boomer loss of identity that has lingered for so long now that it’s being unceremoniously shoved aside by Generation Xtreme, the under-30’s that find boredom too boring. Begone, middle-aged punks, shoegazers, headbangers, OGs and goths… make way for the emos and the BDSM-liters. Full Story »
Today is the 38th anniversary of the ending of The Woodstock Music and Art Fair at Bethel, NY.
For all us Boomers who became what Hunter called “The Generation of Swine” and who’ve elected the likes of Thrill Bill and The Decider as OUR POTUSes, time for a little assessment and reflection on what Woodstock nation has contributed to our culture: Full Story »
…but I got such a massive contact high just from watching this educational film last night that I instead laughed my ass off for two hours straight, then binged on cupcakes, effectively wiping my brain, and my colon, clean.
I’ve written recently about some generational issues facing companies - most notably the “macro-succession crisis” that I suspect very few corporations have even thought about in meaningful detail. In that post I examine how the coming Baby Boomer retirement explosion is going to engender all kinds of crisis, especially in larger legacy corporations that are so top-heavy with Boomer leaders that their Gen X successors are ill-prepared for the transition that must begin taking place in the next five years.
But if you’re a different kind of company - say an entrepreneurial outfit started and run by front-edge Xers (people now in their early to mid-40s) - you’re in good shape, right? Full Story »
I recently had an interesting discussion with an online acquaintance. We were discussing a tagging project she’s doing for a thriving Live Journal community I referee moderate. She found the project to be very productive and educational, and I was happy to let her use her considerable skills as an organizer and archivist to clean up the hundreds of tags the community has generated in its four years of existence. She told me that I seemed to be very comfortable operating in the digital world and that my work-style and behavior was that of a ‘digital native’. She then asked me my age, and was surprised when I told her. I’m 46- a ‘cusp’ of the Baby Boom and Generation X. She’s almost thirty- a genuine ‘Generation Y’.
Why the surprise? And why the significance of ages? It appears that folks of both Gen-X and the earlier Baby Boom generation are considered by certain scholars to be ‘digital immigrants’ while people of her generation, who were born in the late 70s and beyond- are considered ‘digital natives’ because they’ve grown up with all the wonderful digital toys we now take for granted. I had Merlin, she had Nintendo. But she was the person who introduced me to the idea of ‘digital natives’- and she paid me the compliment that my online behavior was like that of a ‘native’.
Of course, I was intrigued, so I went digging, as I tend to do when introduced to a new idea. There are lots of interesting articles about the cognitive and methodical differences between ‘natives’ and ‘immigrants’ and how they apparently have a hard time speaking to each other. The “immigrants” come out looking like clueless, often wrinkly lamers. What gets forgotten in all the labeling is that folks of my generation helped to create, build, test, and perfect all the lovely toys that the ‘natives’ take for granted today. Full Story »
This might sound like hyperbole - and to be sure, the race is far from won - but if the results we saw in the Hawkeye State last Thursday are replicated in New Hampshire and beyond, then what we are seeing may be a defining shift in American politics and culture. The key factor is the emergence of the 75-100 million strong Millennial Generation as a political force. Let’s look at some of the evidence.
I think maybe this starts at a Who concert in 1976:
