Clearing Out The Clippings, No. 52

Burt Likko

In the creative industries, culture gets reinterpreted as a means of economic development. Culture becomes a lifestyle, a consumer choice. Art matters not because it elevates the human experience, but because it contributes to “international competitiveness, economic modernization, urban regeneration, economic diversification, national prestige, [and] economic development” — the way theatre in New York creates jobs and gets tourists to spend money on restaurants, hotels, and cabs.

— F.S. Michaels, quoting “The Nonprofit Instrument and the Influence of the Marketplace on Policies in the Arts,” by Paul J. DiMaggio

Monday Trivia #51

Will Truman 55 Comments

This is, these are, or doing this is banned in the following states: Alabama, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Texas, and Wisconsin

This is, these are, or doing this is allowed, more-or-less unconditionally, in the following states: Colorado, Kentucky, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, South Carolina, Vermont, and Wyoming

The rest of the states are particular about the circumstances in which this is allowed, these are allowed, or this is allowed to be done.

(The odd wording of the question is because I don’t want to specify if it is a thing, things, an action, or more than one of these three things)

Update: I missed two states that permit it more-or-less unconditionally. Added states italicized. Mea culpa.

The Stones Are Back

Burt Likko 10 Comments

I know I’ve not offered any new writing in a while, and I feel that I owe my Reader an apology. This is unreasonable of me, yet I feel the need to offer an explanation nevertheless.

Earlier tonight, Mrs. Likko wondered why it is that I was cranky and made an unkind remark. We’d had a very nice morning and a pleasant afternoon together. We’d been together, away from work, since Wednesday. The ailment that nearly felled me Wednesday and Thursday has been abated and will be treated hopefully soon, my schedule allowing. So what was wrong with me?

These two concerns are related. After all, how was I to tell my wife that a big part of what was making me anxious and unsettled was not just my anxiety about having to pass a kidney stone out of my back in the next several weeks, but much more so my inability to find some quiet time to myself to sit down and write about something?

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Clearing Out The Clippings, No. 51

Burt Likko

When you look back on a lifetime and think of what has been given to the world by your presence, your fugitive presence, inevitably you think of your art, whatever it may be, as the gift you have made to the world in acknowledgement of the gift you have been given, which is the life itself.

— Stnaley Kunitz

“Losing Everything”, the Carbonite Wedding Ad

Will Truman

Below is a re-post from Hit Coffee from before the whole Rush brouhaha. Given their apparent market weakness, and the possible unsustainability of the company, perhaps the ad could be seen as prescient in a sort of way.

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Computer geek that I am, I thought this commercial was brilliant:

Adweek disagrees:

It’s almost a laugh-out-loud moment—this is what everyone was referring to?! Thank God it was only their files! And that’s the weird thing about this approach—it makes the viewer realize that photos and files and music and videos and the like, while sometimes of great sentimental value, really, in the end, is just stuff. It can’t compare to actually life, which is what the viewer is made to feel is threatened by the whole faux-horror tactic. The spot is nicely produced, but Carbonite is deflating its own importance here, which may not lead to too many new customers. Check out some print work after the jump.

I agree that it is jokey, but to me there is no “only [your] files.” I lose sleep over the possibility of losing my files, which are twice or thrice or (for some files) quice backed up (depending on the file directory and its importance). I don’t use a service like Carbonite. Maybe, for the ones I feel the need to back up more than once, I should consider it. One piece of subtlety I think AdWeek misses is that among the files lost would be those from the wedding itself. Or maybe I feel that way because our wedding photographer did everything digitally and provided no prints. But I suspect I am less than unusual among the sorts of people that would even consider using a service like Carbonite.

On a sidenote, the groom in the ad is Joe Egender, the same guy that played a sniper in the second episode of Alcatraz. When I saw him in Alcatraz, I swore he looked familiar. I hadn’t yet seen this Carbonite ad and going through his IMDB profile, nothing jumped out at me as familiar. I think that he simply reminds me of one of my apartment roommates immediately following college.

Clearing Out The Clippings, No. 50

Burt Likko

The world of Greek mythology was not a place of terror for the human spirit. It is true that the gods were disconcertingly incalculable. One could never tell where Zeus’ thunderbolt would strike. Nevertheless, the whole divine company… were entrancingly beautiful with a human beauty, and nothing humanly beautiful is really terrifying.

— Edith Hamilton

A Spiral & A Rabbit Hole

Will Truman 9 Comments

Regardless of one’s thoughts on the content of Limbaugh’s remarks*, there’s something interesting about gloating over the alleged fallout from a critical response to a critical response that caused fallout for a radio personality.

By which I mean, you can’t call it just desserts when you are saying that the markets are acting irrationally against Carbonite, but criticize Carbonite for acting irrationally against Rush Limbaugh.

Nor can you really call stockholders or customers that pull support due to a political statement (market-)rational while supposing that pulling ads from controversial radio personality is (market-)irrational, since they are both largely putting their money where their ideology is**. Someone who quits Carbonite because of politics is not substantively different than Carbonite pulling its advertising. If you treat them differently, I’d actually have to say that leaving Carbonite has less merit than pulling Limbaugh ads, given that the latter is a political entertainer/figure and the former is a software company.

Customers are absolutely within their rights to “punish” Carbonite for the CEO’s politics. Just as Carbonite is within its right to punish Limbaugh for what he said. There’s really not much moral high ground beyond one’s thoughts on the comments that started the dominos or shirts vs. skins.

(I have no great love or loathing for Carbonite. I’d never use their service, but their wedding commercial is awesome.)

* – And please, I am not trying to rehash where Rush’s comments themselves were unconscionable or misunderstood or whatever.

** – This assumes that Carbonite’s troubles are significantly related to the Rush incident. That’s a very, very heavy assumption, but the article makes it.

Clearing Out The Clippings, No. 48

Burt Likko

One always imagines that the days that change one’s life must be marked with something extraordinary in nature—storms and lightning, darkness at noon, and so on. In truth they are indistinguishable from any other, which is one reason we feel mocked, as if the world is telling us we are inconsequential.

— Margaret George

Importing Quebec

Will Truman 23 Comments

Rick Santorum to Puerto Ricans:

“Like any other state, there has to be compliance with this and any other federal law, and that is that English has to be the principal language. There are other states with more than one language such as Hawaii but to be a state of the United States, English has to be the principal language.”

Some people are gleefully pointing out that actually there is no federal law regarding English, which is correct. A Reuters article suggests that Santorum’s position is at odds with the Constitution, which is not correct*. Others are suggesting that this is a racist attempt at getting the votes of people who are all hopped up on illegal immigration.

Very little discussion has been had, so far, regarding the meat of his argument. And, once I overlook that it’s Rick Santorum and get over his incorrectness regarding English and the federal law, I think he’s more right than not. We should not grant statehood to a territory where English is not the primary language. It doesn’t matter if, as Doug Mataconis says, “many Puerto Ricans, especially those that travel between the island and the mainland already do speak English or at least functionally literate enough in it to be able to communicate.” A majority, however, do not. This isn’t about travel to and from the mainland, but rather countrymen’s ability to communicate with one another.

I am personally not all that concerned with the number of Spanish-speaking immigrants we’ve had coming to this country over the last decade or two. My lack of concern, however, is due in good part to a confidence that they will indeed learn it. There is little reason to believe that Puerto Ricans living in Puerto Rico will. They’ve been teaching English as a second language for some time now, and it hasn’t taken. They already have free movement throughout the United States, but given the distance it’s not a successful enticement (I’d perhaps be more amenable to Baja California, if it were a territory, but only if shifting to English were a priority).

Without the ability to communicate freely, there is a lack of foundation to be considered a single country. Canada has the Quebec problem, and they deal with it, but there are reasons that they have that simply don’t apply to Puerto Rico and the US.

Even without the language barrier, I’m not sure how well-served we are having another far-flung state. But the language barrier presents a legitimate issue that separates it from places like Guyana.

* – Congress has a wide range of requirements it can put upon a state. They may not be able to require that everyone speak English all the time, but they can say “no statehood until you’ve made strides or demonstrate a roadmap to English primacy.” In fact, they came within just a few votes of doing just that when they authorized the referendum.