One of the highlights of Saturday morning is reading Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal. Following is the last two paragraphs from her piece on 2/21.
"Perhaps the biggest factor behind the new pessimism is the knowledge that the crisis is not only economic but political, that we’ll have to change both cultures, economic and political, to turn the mess around. That’s a tall order, and won’t happen quickly. One thing for sure: Our political leaders for at least a decade, really more, have by and large been men and women who had fortunate lives, who always seemed to expect nice things to happen and happiness to occur. And so they could overspend, overcommit and overextend the military, and it would all turn out fine. They claimed to be quintessentially optimistic, but it was a cheap optimism, based more on sunny personal experience than any particular faith, and void of an understanding of how dark and gritty life can be, and has been for most of human history.
I end with a hunch that is not an unhappy one. Dynamism has been leached from our system for now, but not from the human brain or heart. Just as our political regeneration will happen locally, in counties and states that learn how to control themselves and demonstrate how to govern effectively in a time of limits, so will our economic regeneration. That will begin in someone’s garage, somebody’s kitchen, as it did in the case of Messrs. Jobs and Wozniak. The comeback will be from the ground up and will start with innovation. No one trusts big anymore. In the future everything will be local. That’s where the magic will be. And no amount of pessimism will stop it once it starts."
Monday, February 23, 2009
Sunday, February 08, 2009
Going Negative
I've been feeling rather depressed lately. I can't seem to beat it, so I'm going to bleed it out on paper.
A Bunch of Stuff That Really Annoys Me:
Standing Ovations. Somewhere along the way, the standing ovation got hijacked. The standing ovation should be reserved for performances so transcendent that they either leave you weeping in your seat or compel you to leap to your feet to shout and clap with wild abandon. My guess is that even if I had season tickets to The Met, I might only see three such performances in a lifetime. On too many occasions I have stubbornly refused to budge from my seat while all around me, entire audiences including my embarrassed wife rose in unison to salute performances that were mediocre at best. Yes, your kid was cute in the Christmas pageant, but he deserves a hug not a standing O. Please join me in the seats, let's make the standing ovation mean something again.
Bicycle Helmets. My wife and I used to make fun of people who wore bicycle helmets. Then we had kids and she bought them bicycle helmets. (Cue longstanding marital disagreement.) My friends and I never wore bike helmets growing up, whether we were standing on the seat with one leg, riding backwards, or bombing down steep hills and we never wore helmets. There is no better way to say, "I am a risk averse American wuss" than to put on a bicycle helmet.
Nuance. This word is used all the time in the media, usually to explain how brilliant a certain politician is, how he understands things at a deeper level than either his colleagues or you. The dictionary defines nuance as "a subtle distinction or variation". So when the media says something along the lines of, "Senator Wormwood brings a more nuanced approach to universal health care than his predecessor", they are implying that Senator Wormwood is so brilliant, so heavy that he can distinguish between a thousand shades of grey. I'm not buying it, whenever I hear the word nuance used in this way, I automatically translate it into its actual meaning, "unnecessarily complicated."
The guy in shorts and flip flops who passes you doing a wheelie on his motorcycle at 90 miles an hour. Always prompts me to shake my fist and scream, "if you crash - I'm not stopping to peel you up off the pavement!" This entry may seem strange considering my dislike of bike helmets. Nuance, my friends. Bicycle helmets and the flip flop wearing wheelie poppers reside at opposite ends of the safety spectrum. One is too safe, the other is too dangerous and in between lies that forgotten trait, common sense.
Guys who wear "Second Place is the First Loser" t-shirts. I would like to assemble a couple thousand of these guy in a convention center and force them to play musical chairs until there was only one winner. Everyone else would then be told they were losers and their shirts would be confiscated.
A Bunch of Stuff That Really Annoys Me:
Standing Ovations. Somewhere along the way, the standing ovation got hijacked. The standing ovation should be reserved for performances so transcendent that they either leave you weeping in your seat or compel you to leap to your feet to shout and clap with wild abandon. My guess is that even if I had season tickets to The Met, I might only see three such performances in a lifetime. On too many occasions I have stubbornly refused to budge from my seat while all around me, entire audiences including my embarrassed wife rose in unison to salute performances that were mediocre at best. Yes, your kid was cute in the Christmas pageant, but he deserves a hug not a standing O. Please join me in the seats, let's make the standing ovation mean something again.
Bicycle Helmets. My wife and I used to make fun of people who wore bicycle helmets. Then we had kids and she bought them bicycle helmets. (Cue longstanding marital disagreement.) My friends and I never wore bike helmets growing up, whether we were standing on the seat with one leg, riding backwards, or bombing down steep hills and we never wore helmets. There is no better way to say, "I am a risk averse American wuss" than to put on a bicycle helmet.
Nuance. This word is used all the time in the media, usually to explain how brilliant a certain politician is, how he understands things at a deeper level than either his colleagues or you. The dictionary defines nuance as "a subtle distinction or variation". So when the media says something along the lines of, "Senator Wormwood brings a more nuanced approach to universal health care than his predecessor", they are implying that Senator Wormwood is so brilliant, so heavy that he can distinguish between a thousand shades of grey. I'm not buying it, whenever I hear the word nuance used in this way, I automatically translate it into its actual meaning, "unnecessarily complicated."
The guy in shorts and flip flops who passes you doing a wheelie on his motorcycle at 90 miles an hour. Always prompts me to shake my fist and scream, "if you crash - I'm not stopping to peel you up off the pavement!" This entry may seem strange considering my dislike of bike helmets. Nuance, my friends. Bicycle helmets and the flip flop wearing wheelie poppers reside at opposite ends of the safety spectrum. One is too safe, the other is too dangerous and in between lies that forgotten trait, common sense.
Guys who wear "Second Place is the First Loser" t-shirts. I would like to assemble a couple thousand of these guy in a convention center and force them to play musical chairs until there was only one winner. Everyone else would then be told they were losers and their shirts would be confiscated.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)