Looks like the Indigo Girls got a great cover for their new album from the awesome Jamie Hernandez.
It makes me so happy that Los Bros Hernandez continue to tell the stories they began in Love & Rockets. In terms of storytelling, I’ve never been able to settle on a favorite brother. But when it comes to the art, Jamie has always kept me spellbound.
There was a lovely example today of President Bush’s jobless economic recovery–you know, the one being driven by efficiency.
Alaska Airlines had some sort of melt-down at the Seattle airport today, and it appears to have been caused by a lack of personnel (the employees who have been axed in the name of efficiency).
My sister and her family were heading down to Puerto Vallarta for a vacation. Instead of arriving to sunshine and fresh margaritas this afternoon, they spent eight hours in lines at Seattle-Tacoma airport.
In the end, they were sent home and won’t be leaving for vacation until Monday. Eight hours wasted at the airport, two days of vacation time down the drain, and absolutely no compensation from the airline for a problem caused by the company’s staffing decisions.
After waiting in the electronic ticket check-in line for two hours (so much for do-it-yourself service making things more efficient), they finally got to the counter after their flight had already left. Everyone else in line seemed to be in similar circumstances, according to my sister. Upon getting to the front of the line, they were sent to another line for re-booking. They spent more than six hours–six hours!–in this line.
What happened? According to reports from KOMO TV news, too many people showed up too early (huh?), there weren’t enough employees to deal with the situation, and by 9am, 500 people had missed their flights.
When economists and talking-heads chatter on about efficiency, aren’t they really talking about increased profits for shareholders. Surely there’s an inverse relationship going on in terms of efficiency vs. customer support and satisfaction. And aren’t these kinds of things going to happen more and more often as corporations get more and more “efficient?”
The customer service representative waiting at the head of the six-hour-long re-booking line said the airline was “fully staffed.” Sure, it probably was fully staffed–at the anemic levels deemed most efficient to the company. Another Alaska Airlines employee was being a little more honest and proactive about the situation.
According to my sister, she was walking the line handing out the company’s customer complaint phone number and encouraging people to call and vent about the low staffing levels that are making Alaska Airlines so efficient.
In this Sunday’s New York Times Magazine:
The Tyranny of Copyright?
New York Times Sunday Magazine
A protest movement is forming, made up of lawyers, scholars and activists who fear that bolstering copyright protection in the name of foiling ”piracy” will have disastrous consequences for society — hindering the ability to experiment and create and eroding our democratic freedoms. This group of reformers, which Lawrence Lessig, a professor at Stanford Law School, calls the ”free culture movement,” might also be thought of as the ”Copy Left” (to borrow a term originally used by software programmers to signal that their product bore fewer than the usual amount of copyright restrictions). Lawyers and professors at the nation’s top universities and law schools, the members of the Copy Left aren’t wild-eyed radicals opposed to the use of copyright, though they do object fiercely to the way copyright has been distorted by recent legislation and manipulated by companies like Diebold. Nor do they share a coherent political ideology. What they do share is a fear that the United States is becoming less free and ultimately less creative. While the American copyright system was designed to encourage innovation, it is now, they contend, being used to squelch it.
I’ve been hearing a lot lately about Kevin Phillips’ new book, American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush. Looking forward to reading it.
Listen to an interview with Phillips on NPR.
My dad snapped this beautiful photo of a sun dog in Alaska.
I took it last week on my way from Anchorage to Glennallen. It was about 20 below zero when I went over Eureka Summit just when the sun was rising over the mountains (about 11:00 a.m.). It was a cold trip. When I left Glennallen to return home the next day, it was 42 below. I guess global warming is taking a winter off.
P.S. If you want more details, I found this description on a web site:
“Sun dogs, also called mock suns, are colored, luminous spots caused by the refraction of light by six-sided ice crystals in the atmosphere. These bright spots form in the solar halo at points that are 22 degrees on either side of the sun and at the same elevation as the sun.”
Click the image for a larger view.
Britney utters to many unintentionally funny lines in the following article — hard to pick out just one to highlight. It was between this one and her attempt to deflect attention to Mars. Read the rest for a few good laughs.
Britney On Her Marriage: Vegas Made Me Do It
MTV.com News
“I do believe in the sanctity of marriage, I totally do,” she explained in a phone call to ‘TRL’ Wednesday, “but I was in Vegas and it took over me and things got out of hand.”
Plenty of newspapers require registration in exchange for viewing their online content. If you’re a regular reader of these newspapers, registering makes sense. But if you’re just following a link to a story that looks interesting and don’t want to jump through the registration hoops, the good folks at The Morning News offer salvation. Look on their masthead page for a user name and password that will get you past the gates.
Give it a try by checking out this story in the Los Angeles Times.
My grandparents, Paul and Isabel Gerhard, started making Christmas cards in 1936, when they were living in Tokyo, Japan. This continued for 46 years, up until the year before my grandfather’s death in 1982.
The first five years — through 1940 — featured greetings from Japan and the early additions to their family, with the births of my aunts Laura, Marilyn and Sarah.
The 1941 card shows the three girls in America, after the family moved to the States less than a year before the outbreak of war between Japan and the U.S.
I love the pre-Photoshop cut-and-paste technique my grandfather often used in the cards. 1945, 1946 and 1947 are nice examples; the 1947 combo of diorama with cut-and-paste heads is one of my favorites. On the other hand, the 1949 beach scene looks a little rushed in its execution.
I suppose by posting these here I’m trying, in some small way, to make up for the fact that I don’t send out Christmas cards every year. Many thanks to Grandma and Grandpa for the Christmas memories!