Not only was it a setback for space exploration (yes, really!), but is also responsible for the rise of young-earth creationism, and innumeracy. So says Ken MacLeod. Talk about the law of unintended consequences.
J Michael Neal has a great post about the importance of trust in economics, using the current mortgage crisis as an example of how American capitalism has gone off the rails.
The switch from the concern of corporations with various stakeholders to the approach where profit maximization was the overriding, and in many cases, only, goal, did drastically increase the efficiency of the economy. It did so at a cost, however, and that cost was trust.
At its most bleeding heart, this has been a critical change in the employer/employee relationship. There are all sorts of euphemisms for it, but the idea that your boss was only going to employ you so long as he didn’t have some other way to get the job done for more profit is corrosive. It eliminates the trust on the part of the employee that his employer has his interests in mind.
Read the whole thing.
Followup to my previous post about the new Fleischmann releases, here are a couple of photos of the full-sized versions, both from my Swiss trip in the late summer of last year.
First, we have one of the veteran Ae6/6s at Erstfeld on a trainload of aggregates, at the foot of the climb up the north ramp of the Gotthard line. The train has stopped to attach a pilot loco, and the train later attacked the ferocious climb to the summit with the assistance of one of the more modern Re6/6s, an odd-looking combination.
BLS Re485 no 485.019 hurries through Liestal, just south of Basel, on a ‘rolling road’ train bound for Domodossola in Italy. The Re485 will work the train as far as Spiez, where a pair of Re465s will take over.
The Guardian Music Blog ponders that ‘Great British Institution’, BBC2’s “Later With Jools Holland”.
It’s unashamedly part of what you might call the middle-age-ification of rock music, light entertainment aimed squarely at people who don’t do gigs any more. Thus it doesn’t exist in order to be shocking or challenging or life-changing, hence the weird, fusty atmosphere that emanates from every edition.
Ah. That explains why I don’t like the programme; I am in the minority of my age group that still goes to gigs.
For all the artists are playing live, there’s a distinct lack of spontaneity about the show, which may explain why, if you were to compile a list of legendary moments in music television … not one of them would come from Later. You watch it safe in the knowledge that nothing untoward or unforeseen is going to happen.
The only spontanious moment I can ever remember was when Justin Hawkins of The Darkness frightened Sam Brown by jumping on the Steinway right behind her to play a not-terribly-good guitar solo.
Then they pose this question:
Which leads me to ask: if you had control over the show’s booking policy for one programme, which six acts would you chose to fill the coveted slots?
Two rules:
- You can’t bring anyone back from the dead - so no James Brown, John Lennon or, indeed, jam session featuring Joy Division and Jeremy Beadle.
- Nominate one of your guests to take part in the deathless trial-by-boogie-woogie that is the inevitable live collaboration with Mr Holland.
I considered this one for, well, at least five minutes, and came up with the following list, based on artists I’ve seen live in the past couple of years.
A well-balanced list, I think. Prog, metal and prog-metal :). Of course, I’d fall of my chair in shock if anyone on that list ever got on to the show.
I’ll nominate Opeth for the trial by boogie-woogie, on the grounds that they’ll play so loudly you won’t actually be able to hear Jools’ Steinway.
