The Cost of Efficiency

Kevin Carson has a good post at C4SS laying out how the supposed efficiencies of industrial capitalism actually end up costing consumers. It reminds me of a point Paul Roberts makes in The End of Food, where he cites a study suggesting that, even if you value your own labor at a pretty high wage rate, it's impossible to figure a cost for home canning vegetables that comes anywhere close to what you pay in a grocery store. The markup to cover packaging, advertising, distribution and all the other overhead is something like 400%.

Frustrations With Consumer Capitalism

It always annoys me when I can conceive of a product that I would gladly pay for, but I can't seem to find anyone who makes it.

For example, when my old cell phone died, I wanted to replace it with a similar "bar" (as opposed to flip) model, but with a few more up-to-date features like Bluetooth and support for mp3 ringtones (i.e., only two years out of date instead of six). But such a device did not appear to exist, at least not among the couple dozen of phone models offered by my provider.

Similarly, after I left my favorite winter hat at the opera, I embarked on a months-long, and ongoing, quest to find a replacement in a similar vein. This out-of-stock item is the closest I've found, though the one I lost was this completely non-stretchy wool felt that I really liked.

I've temporarily suspended my search for a basket and metal chainguard that will work on my blue bike.

The latest of these frustrations derives from the idea that I should get a table-top radio so I can listen to Mets games this summer. I had some idea in mind about the kind of radio I'd want, and what I read about this model sounded good at first. Some more investigation left me disappointed, though: the reception is apparently no good, the components are cheap and poorly assembled, and the advertised impressive sound quality is evidently reliant on the kinds of trickery used to make Bose products sound deceptively good.

The Tivoli Model One definitely seems like it's supposed to appeal to people who like the idea of a simple, elegant device that does a limited number of things well. But then instead of actually being such a product, it instead conveys those values through its visual aesthetic, and then relies on cognitive dissonance to convince consumers that they're satisfied with it.

Anyway, I've probably spent too much time on this topic (though not nearly as much time as I've wasted looking for felt caps on the internet), but I do think it's an interesting way that capitalism fails consumers on a pretty regular basis. The markets for many types of products are flooded with virtually indistinguishable offerings that change capriciously in response to fads and trends without ever responding to the needs and desires of sizable minorities of consumers. The result being that large numbers of people are constantly underwhelmed by many of the products in their lives for reasons that should have been easily corrected.

Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps?

Heard this on the radio yesterday morning. The Takeaway's correspondent, Todd Zwillich, who reports for an organization called Capitol News Connection, is completely clueless on what card check even is...he's clearly heard the phrase "secret ballot" connected to the debate, so he tosses that out and then bullshits from there.

He seriously sounds like a student who got called on when he hadn't done the reading ("card check...it's all about who checks your card"), ending up getting the Republican and Democratic positions on the issue completely reversed. Hilarious. And nobody corrects him or explains what the debate actually is. Do they even know?

No transcript, but listen to the audio at the link and fast forward to around 7:20.

Puckish NY Times Headline Writer

Talking about Rush Limbaugh flapping over his rolls seems more like the Post's style.

Pssst

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Who Let the Dolls Out

I started catching my ass up on Dollhouse, because I'm a dork like that. I am not really up on the reviews, but the ones I've read have been fairly negative, non-committal at best. My impression is that reviewers were expecting a little more of a specific condemnation of the prostitution-like aspects of the Dollhouse business model. Not perceiving it, they conclude that the show condones prostitution, or exploits it for the audience's titillation.

The criticism is partially correct in that, at least so far, Dollhouse has refrained from a portrayal of the sexual exploitation of the "Actives" as uniquely immoral. Which is not to say that their situation is shown as anything other than horrific. But the horror stems from denying them their personalities and memories, with sexual exploitation being merely a facet of their dehumanization: brainwashing someone into a willing assassin is as violent an act as brainwashing her into a prostitute. Viewers and reviewers who want the sexual abuse identified as especially heinous violations are missing the point.

This is a theme that Joss had begun exploring in the final televised season of Buffy, where the expectations of the duties of the Slayer, imposed from without upon a young woman without her consent, echo the expectations society has for all women from the day they are born. Dollhouse extends the (uncontroversial) theme of women's ownership of their own bodies along the lines of feminism's broader critique of capitalism, with the idea that all humans should have a right to their own minds as well.

Flashbacks have hinted that Echo, at least, began working for Dollhouse willingly, though doubtless with the understanding that she had no other viable options given her circumstances (still unknown). The horror of her employment's reality makes clear that such a selling of one's soul is illegitimate in its essence, and does violence to the subject's humanity.

Others participating in Echo's dehumanization are tainted and dehumanized as well, as demonstrated by the head of security's obvious contempt for the Actives. Even a sympathetic character, like Echo's Watcherhandler Langton, is faced with the impossible choice of either abandoning his charge to a potentially less caring successor or staying to lend legitimacy to the enterprise. In this way capitalism sorts everyone into those who are irrelevant and those who are complicit, the only other option being (going out on a limb here in a prediction for where the narrative's headed) to bring down the system itself.

Anyway, I expect that reviewers who find themselves turned off by the value system implied by Dollhouse are picking up on two quite real themes: an absence of any specific objection to sexual prostitution in the context of more general and horrifying violence, and tension resulting from trying to square feminist-humanist values with the inhuman excesses of capitalism. A reviewer operating from a worldview in which sexual violence is uniquely vile, not because of its denial of humanity, but because of its power to sully and impart shame on its victims; and in which capitalism is a force of individual freedom rather than its enemy; is going to be understandably disconcerted by a narrative that does not share or opposes those values.

Defending the USPS

Amanda has a good post in defense of the Post Office, in response to some typically banal lukewarm libertarian cant spewed up by Myglesias. Nothing gets my goat like USPS-bashing, which so often amounts to "nobody goes to the post office anymore, it's too crowded."

I'd only add that not only does the USPS make urban areas more walkable, it makes rural areas practical places to live at all: without the postal service as competition, it's doubtful private carriers would pick up from or deliver to remote parts of the country at any kind of affordable rate.

Meet the Mutts

Long before having a dog I would talk about how I would get him or her Mets gear. Specifically, I wanted them to have both home and away jerseys, though I was undecided on which player to get. But now I've discovered that the only dog jersey they sell is the black "alternate" design, and it comes only as number 00 with no player name. Boo.

Good to Know

I had noticed several months ago that the Bicycle Station storefront on Vanderbilt had "For Lease" signs up in the windows, and then it closed and was replaced by what looks like a higher end bike retail outfit (I haven't actually been inside to check it out). But according to the internet they have relocated to Park and Adelphi, up by the Navy Yard. Not very convenient to me, but I'm glad they're still around...their business always seemed to be booming, so I hadn't figured they'd have gone out of business and they must have just gotten priced out of the neighborhood.

Pinball Construction Kit

Gamasutra has a good post remembering Pinball Construction Kit for the Apple deuce, which was totally fun. I remember Nate built a table called "Mr Green Jeans," but I don't remember any of mine. I doubt any of them turned out any better than my abortive Democratic Presidents of the 20th Century table I was working on for Visual Pinball a couple years ago when I forgot to eat all day and passed out the next morning and busted my head.

Baby's First Poop "Al Fresco"

We didn't even have to put paper down for him. We're so proud!

Art and Life Imitate One Another in Lockstep

Gabe tires of the vampire fad. Which prompts me to notice that, spoiler alert, the last few issues of Buffy Season Eight have involved a growing vampire trend that is making the slayers' jobs difficult. I wonder if Joss just lucked into that or if he was paying attention enough to see the vampire thing coming. Probably the latter but it seemed like a crazy coincidence to me.

Hilarious

I can't really believe that John Ashcroft insisted on being called "general." Too perfect. Wikipedia confirms that, the "general" in "attorney general" being an adjective, this makes no sense. Maybe he was confused by the surgeon general's being a vice admiral.

Defense

A Revealer post linking to a review of Prayers for Bobby draws a parallel between that film's portrayal of homosexuality and Revolutionary Road's portrayal of women (spoilers alert):

In the film, women are...conniving but not too bright, sex for them is a form of vengeance or control, and they often talk too much. Star Kate Winslet does have sex -- once to control Leonardo DiCaprio, once to take vengeance on him, and then never again. And, of course, she dies tragically, the wages of sin -- the result of aborting a baby Leo wanted.

Everyone is entitled to their own interpretation of course, but this one strikes me as fairly eccentric. Both main characters in Revolutionary Road are extremely flawed, and neither can be held free from blame for the events in the narrative, but the most obvious reading places the moral responsibility for April Wheeler's death squarely on Frank's shoulders: it is his haranguing and emotional manipulation—indeed, his "talk[ing] too much"—that pressures April into delaying the abortion until after it would have been (relatively) safe. If anything, Frank's culpability is so clear-cut that the story threatens to deny April's agency in her own demise, but to gloss this as April's earning "the wages of sin" seems badly wrong to me.

Also not sure about the implied slight to Underworld: Rise of the Lycans. I mean, it is plainly the case that Lycans is no "feminist parable," and it doesn't come close to satisfying the Bechdel test (there is barely more than one speaking female role), but it's hardly a notably egregious offender along those lines, and the antagonist's autocratic enforcement of patriarchy is portrayed as nearly as serious a flaw as his devotion to racial purity (which is saying quite a lot for a film that is a slavery parable).

I Would Trust Them Over the Editorial Board of The New Republic

Via Narco News, a plea for President Obama to rescind the Cuba embargo by Cigar Aficionado. Sort of hard to take their recommendation as that of a dispassionate and rational observer interested only in the pursuit of justice.

(But who knows. I don't read Cigar Aficionado, and for all I know they were the sole cigar-focused periodical to speak out against the Bush regime in the months before the war in Iraq. If that's the case, then I stand happily corrected.)

But whether you suspect an ulterior motive or not, they're clearly on the right side of this issue. And given the what I imagine is considerable overlap of their subscriber base with the people who actually fill the smoke-filled rooms in which important foreign policy decisions are made at the highest levels of government with smoke, they might actually have a shot of being listened to.

Nowhere to play it, right?

So frustrating.

Update: Wrong! Could have hooked it on to make (OKE)H.

Weather 2.0?

Is there a clean, fast web site for checking weather forecasts?

It occurred to me a week or two ago that it's 2008, and there should be no reason to subject myself to the cluttered interface and animated banner ads of weather.com. I don't know of anything better, so I've switched to the government. It's actually not bad, functionality-wise, though it is still pretty unattractive. But at least they don't assault you with ads or distract you with golf conditions or whatnot.

Pro-Corporate Regulation

Ezra Klein has a good post on the USDA's official standards for the labeling of "naturally raised" chicken, and how the regulatory apparatus colludes with agribusiness in misleading consumers. He doesn't mention, though perhaps it is implied, the way that something like this hurts the smaller-scale operations raising chickens in a manner that does correlate strongly with a reasonable person's common-sense understanding of "natural."

Whoa

The indy media logo,

,

is rendered as "((( i )))" in the web page title when you go to the site.

I believe (i) was the emoticon we came up with as the counterpart to the ever-useful 8==D. Use it in a text message today!

:-P (i)

VidProp

Via tiltfactor, an interesting article in the Jerusalem Post about war propaganda video games. I think it's interesting that the medium of video games is still young enough that this kind of propagandizing doesn't necessarily seem out of place. I think a lot of US-made World War II games, for example, present a perspective so simplistic and blindly patriotic as would seem crass (if not flatly offensive) were it in a movie.