Recently in Current Affairs Category
Marking the passing of yet another crazed session of clock adjustment, the empirical research is starting to stack up against the institution of daylight saving time. The New York Times has a nice resource page on the institution (frankly preferable to the Wikipedia version), while the naysayers started last spring in analyzing the 2007 extension of DST in the United States (Ars Technica) and have picked up steam in the days leading up to today's "spring forward" (TreeHugger, Gizmodo).
Here's a more radical approach, born of my once-upon-a-time engineer's heart: why not abolish time zones entirely and switch to a single world clock? The British established Greenwich Mean Time as a de facto world standard back when the sun never set on the British Empire, while today we've got UTC (Universal Time, Coordinated) which conveniently bolts atomic standards onto the Greenwich system. The time zone I've inhabited most of my life, in the eastern United States, is variously UTC-5 (during standard time) or UTC-4 (during daylight savings). As the world becomes flatter and more interconnected, it seems far easier to schedule and plan in UTC, rather than playing the whole "how many hours ahead/behind are you" game.
Maybe I'm just reacting to the pain of scheduling cross-country conference calls in my day job, but I'm not all that attached to the "9 to 5" work-a-day convention. Would it really be that difficult to switch gears to just designate all scheduled actions in UTC? Or am I imagining some Star Trek dreamworld where time is even more arbitrary than it seems today?
Here's a brief musical interlude while I contemplate "ticking away the moments that make up a dull day" ...
Scrawl -- "Clock Song" (from Bloodsucker, Feel Good All Over, 1991 / Simple Machines, 1993)
This post is not really about music, except for the background riff rattling through my skull. Fans of intense, moody, propulsive rock music from the late 70s and early 80s ought to get their tails over to Zeno Records and pick up the box set of the first three Wipers albums -- if only for the outtakes and bonus tracks. (If you already have this set, then take a few minutes to visit and learn about Greg Sage's tangential role in Portland's professional wrestling scene -- but do turn down your speakers first thanks to the embedded auto-play musical selections.)Anyway, most everyone has ranted about "those darn kids today" at some point. It goes back a few thousand years, at least, with those witty Romans sighing "O tempora, o mores" as they sashayed to the Colosseum to watch people maul each other for entertainment. Today, though, it's as much about their parents as it is about those darn kids.
One of the best interpretations I've seen appeared in a recent thread on Jezebel (part of the GawkerMedia family) about the nightmare that is recutting old Sesame Street episodes (i.e. the era I grew up watching) to remove the negative influences -- like "Alistair Cookie" taking a bite out of his pipe. Commenter Cycles does the honors:
The rewrite goes on for the second verse, as well.Sunny day (so be sure to put on sunblock so you don't get cancer)
Sweepin' the clouds away (but bring a raincoat and umbrella in case they come back)
On my way to where the air is sweet (but don't breathe in too hard, what with all the exhaust fumes and pollution)Can you tell me how to get (kids, if you're lost, go to a police station. do not get directions from strangers)
How to get to Sesame Street (get an adult to help you cross the street, you could get run over)
This latest incident gives me the chance to pull out some material I'd been meaning to mention for some time.
- CNet: "'MySpace Tom' lied about his age. Yawn." I guess I see something more to the story -- yes, people give false details on social networking sites (and elsewhere online), but doesn't it go further when those details are part of one's marketing and business image?
- And in a totally different direction, one woman's story of life beyond patrynomy. I definitely understand wanting to challenge convention and culture, and wanting to shed the bonds of "property" that once accompanied a woman's move from father's home to husband's home... but the impracticality of shunning any kind of last name (as detailed in this story) slides too far into the absurd.
- Nicole Atkins -- I guess I wasn't that far off, since she's now starring in an American Express ad.
- The Jersey squirrels aren't contaminated after all -- it seems that the lab that previously found heavy metals in the carcasses had faulty test protocols. Hooray.
- The good people at Idolator do one better on the real meaning of Halloween in 2007 than I could manage.
The inevitable sour grapes from the peanut gallery have begun. For those who don't have first-hand experience with life at Fenway before pink hats and "Sweet Caroline" and Monster Seats, please adjust your attitude.
Don't try to take away my joy just because your team blew the big mid-season division lead until you are scarred for life by Bucky [expletive deleted] Dent and Captain Carl popping out to end the game. Try living through 1986, 1999, and 2003 ... never mind the painful events (e.g. 1946, 1967) from the era before some car salesman more-or-less finagled a perfectly fine (if financially challenged) team away from Seattle.
Please understand that the real fans are neither smug nor condescending. To be honest, I barely remember the 2004 World Series -- after the ALCS comeback, everything else was just a blur. This time around, it was possible to enjoy the event. If the Brew Crew finally establishes some level of consistency in the frustratingly mediocre NL Central, I'll be happy for them. For now, Mr. Haudricourt, let us enjoy the experience.
I had the good fortune to spend this afternoon at the Lucky Bar watching the finals of the UEFA Champions League. Sadly, the first Inzaghi goal for AC Milan was complete garbage (the arm/hand ball was beyond obvious on the replay) but his second on the counter was sadly legit. Liverpool really should have owned the game based on its dominance of the first half. Coaching dilemma of the game -- why didn't Rafa Benitez bring on a sub at the half for Bolo Zenden, instead of waiting until 70 minutes to bring in Peter Crouch?
Despite the final score, this was a worthy experience for me in another respect. I've been trying to pick a Premiership team to follow for the past year -- and today's experience convinced me that I'm a Liverpool fan at heart. (Bill Simmons, read it and weep after picking Tottenham Hotspur. It's OK to be from Boston and root for Liverpool.)
I've mused about indecency and obscenity in the broadcast arena before... whether warranted or not (in the minds of the few and proud commenters in this space). Things are getting out of control again, however, which leads me to pipe up.
1. Just this weekend, Fox Sports stepped into the continuing mess with its strategic decision to show a woman at the Superdome wearing a homemade t-shirt with the slogan "**ck Da Eagles." Some tried to argue that the shirt said "Pluck Da Eagles," but Fox has now admitted its error. Poor timing, gang, especially since it wasn't a live reaction shot (by your admission) ...
2. WFMU's Liz Berg recently attended oral arguments at the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City, in which Fox apparently made a strong challenge to the inane FCC policies currently in place. I appreciate Liz' reveling in the judges' eagerness to use the word that, according to the FCC's infamous "Golden Globes" ruling, "invariably calls to mind a coarse sexual image." I can't say that I ever expected Nicole Richie to be a champion of First Amendment principles, but bad law is often made on bad facts -- and the history of broadcast indecency is a continuous string of bad facts, starting with the original complainant in the Pacifica case over 30 years ago. I would also be remiss if I didn't point everyone back to the analysis of the last round of absurd FCC rulings by WFMU's broadcasting counsel and a fine scholarly paper on the F-word that I have finally downloaded and will read.
3. In the Dec. 22 edition of "Fierce Mobile Content," Jason Ankeny (better known to some of us as a former indie-music contributor to AllMusicGuide.com) offered a slightly different take on broadcast indecency and the "most important player" in that space.
Instead of analyzing the year that was or forecasting the year that will soon be, let's stay in the here and now to talk about a man whose every action seems to shake the foundations of popular culture as we know it. A man instrumental in shepherding that culture into its darkest age -- and who now carries the torch of freedom lighting our way out of the shadows. A man who still found time to date Britney Spears in all her pre-Federline glory. That man, of course, is Justin Timberlake -- pop idol, teen pin-up and herald of a new era in digital content. Hear me out.
First let's go back to February 2, 2004, and Janet Jackson's notorious Super Bowl halftime wardrobe malfunction ... the event set in motion an FCC crackdown on broadcast decency standards that also continues to this day, severely limiting the creative latitude of terrestrial television and radio content. And whom do we have to blame for all this? Jackson's duet partner Justin Timberlake, who ripped the costume from the R&B diva's chest in the first place.
Fast-forward to December 16, 2006. Timberlake is now a guest star on NBC's long-running sketch comedy series "Saturday Night Live," and appears alongside cast regular Andy Samberg in a three-minute digital film spotlighting an unbelievably raunchy holiday song performed by a fictional pop singing duo. NBC censors bleeped an offending word in the song's chorus no fewer than 16 times, but almost immediately after the network broadcast concluded, NBC posted an uncensored version ... on its NBC.com website as well as on video aggregator site YouTube. In doing so, "SNL" became the first scripted network comedy to employ the Internet as a means of circumventing the FCC, which maintains no jurisdiction over online content, further cementing the web as a safe haven for creative thought and expression. And once again, there was Timberlake at the center of it all, pointing the way out of the mess he created almost three years earlier.
The Timberlake connection is cute, even if the Bono/Golden Globes incident came first and has had a greater legal impact to date. More importantly, however, I worry that the end game of NBC's maneuver will be FCC regulation of the Internet.
