Shouzer

Joystiq linked to and gave a bit of commentary on this piece by George Will.  The whole editorial is a weak, elitist tirade against denim, of all things.  Honestly, I feel a bit bad about potentially wasting anybody’s time by contributing to his readership.  Perhaps that’s all he’s going for; I hear newspapers around the country are failing, but based on drivel like this, I’m starting to think it has more to do with “Pulitzer Prize-winning” authorship like this than anything else.

The crux of his argument seems to be that denim was created for poor, dirty laborers, and our uncivilized society has idiotically adopted it as our primary fabric.  He attributes it to a “thou shalt not dress better than society’s most slovenly” mentality, simultaneously revealing that he believes denim-wearers are unclean and–of course–that he’s superior (who didn’t see that coming?).

He goes on to bemoan this “misuse of freedom” (oh yeah, denim is far more damaging to society than the KKK), all the while revealing his jealousy of people more successful (“Silicon Valley billionaires are rebels without causes beyond poses, wearing jeans when introducing new products”), who have more fun (“Seventy-five percent of American ‘gamers’ . . . are allowed to vote”), and of apparent inferior intelligence (“children and their childish parents become undifferentiated audiences for juvenilized movies”).  Boohoo.

Personally, I wear jeans because they’re comfortable, not as some fashion statement.  It seems that Will puts more thought into what I wear than I do, which he might argue is the root of his discontent.  In reality, I do like wearing suits, but there’s at least two problems with wearing one all the time:  1) I don’t feel like sweating in my office all day, and 2) frankly it devalues the few times in my life that I do dress up.

It reminds me of an early episode of House (yeah, George, I watch TV.  Fuck you.) in which House doesn’t hire a female doctor, because it’s apparent she’s more concerned with her looks than with being comfortable.  Assumedly, Will would prefer the opposite:  that we all dress uncomfortably to create false facades of importance and self worth.   He calls wearing denim “the carefully calculated costume of people eager to communicate indifference to appearances”.  I call his editorial a carefully calculated attack on lower castes.

After all, his argument isn’t that, as a society, we’ve outgrown denim.  No, it’s that denim is meant for laborers and bums, and everybody else should have better taste–everybody else should dress their stature.  I suspect he would have loved to live in the middle ages.  Back then, everybody knew their place.  You had royalty, and you had peasants.  And they most certainly didn’t dress alike.

BBC News had an interesting article about a month ago that basically said the more religious a person is, the less likely they are to “pull the plug” when they’re terminally ill.  I think that statistic becomes a little more interesting when you try to reason why that is.

Honestly, I would have expected it to be the other way around–my first thought would have been that people with strong religious beliefs would be more willing to accept death, with the knowledge that an afterlife is awaiting them.  Apparently that’s not the case, though, and I’m curious if anybody has thoughts on why that might be.  I have a couple guesses myself, but I won’t get into them unless somebody’s interested in the comments.

I happened to catch this clip the other day, and it seemed worth posting.  Over the years of watching SportsCenter, I’ve sort of come to the decision that I like Hockey highlights the best.  There’s just something about them that keeps ‘em unique–most baseball highlights look the same to me (you can only dive in so many directions to catch a ball), for instance.  Anyway, enjoy.

I know. It’s shocking. The Final Four has given people a reason to go to Detroit though. They had a big music festival down by the river front this weekend. I caught Gavin Degraw live there (for free) followed by a pep rally with each of the four bands performing. The weather was gorgeous, and spirits were high.

It’s pretty cool having a local team in the Final Four and now in the championship game. Probably at least 75% of the people downtown today were wearing the green and white. I’ve only been here for 10 months, and even I’m feeling it. MSU has been an underdog in their last two days, and they have systematically defeated their Golliathian opponents. It’s been a lot of fun to watch, and it’s been a lot of fun to be here in the atmosphere of it all.

This area has had a pretty bad year. Detroit has been slowing dying for at least a decade, but it’s on the mat now. The next few months will determine its fate, but at least for one weekend, people here can have some excitement and joy in their lives.

This week, the Obama administration gave GM 60 days to establish a plan for viability and Chrysler 30 days to accomplish a merger with Fiat, otherwise, both would be forced into bankruptcy. In addition, Rick Wagoner was forced to resign from his position as CEO of GM, and he was replaced by Fritz Henderson.

Firstly, I think Rick Wagoner was a bit of a scapegoat here. He really didn’t do anything wrong to merit the forced resignation. Most of the damage done to GM happened before his tenure, and he has done some good things to turn it around. However, CEO of a company the size of GM is a rather unique position. Decent really isn’t good enough. Rick accomplished some good things, and had the economy not turned sour, he might have righted the ship over the long-haul. During the last few months of this crisis, he has not really shown a great sense of expedience in fixing the mistakes.

The new CEO, Fritz Henderson, did an employee broadcast a few days ago, and I was greatly impressed by him. He seemed to have a great sense of urgency about him, and he is clearly intelligent and tough. He is certainly more charismatic than Wagoner, though I don’t know how important that is for a CEO. It is obviously too early to judge him, but I would hire him for the job if I had the power to do so. So while Wagoner got a pretty bum deal, I think they did the right move by giving the job to Henderson.

GM was given 60 days to submit a new plan for viability. Really, though, this is a bit of a misnomer. GM has a lot of constituencies who negatively affect their balance sheet. These are the bondholders who fear they will have to take pennies on the dollar for the debt they hold; the union who fears their contract will be broken; and the dealers who fear the national network will be greatly reduced. The 60 days is not to create a plan; it is to get concessions from all of these groups. The threat of bankruptcy in 60 days is a means of holding the proverbial feet to the fire. Or else it is a means of forcing those concessions as GM obviously cannot survive without them.

GM has no negotiating power with these constituencies, and I think the 60 day deadline will provide that power. If some group is unwilling to give concessions, they will be forced to risk bankruptcy which seems to be an enigma. Without the deadline, they would have no incentive to give in, and this mess would drag on endlessly on the taxpayer’s dollar. The deadline hurts, but it has to be done.

I also think the deal they are giving Chrysler is appropriate too. Chrysler was gutted of its ability to make cars when it merged with Daimler, and now that they stand alone again, they are doomed. Sadly, the merger is their only real hope.