Avedon Carol reminded us of Malcolm Gladwell's 2006 account of how US businesses strapped themselves to a demographic time bomb:

In the uncertain nineteen-forties, in the wake of the Depression and the war, workers wanted security, and in 1949 the head of the Toledo, Ohio, local of the United Auto Workers, Richard Gosser, came up with a proposal. The workers of Toledo needed pensions. But, he said, the pension plan should be regional, spread across the many small auto-parts makers, electrical-appliance manufacturers, and plastics shops in the Toledo area. That way, if workers switched jobs they could take their pension credits with them, and if a company went bankrupt its workers' retirement would be safe. Every company in the area, Gosser proposed, should pay ten cents an hour, per worker, into a centralized fund.

The business owners of Toledo reacted immediately. "They were terrified," says Jennifer Klein, a labor historian at Yale University, who has written about the Toledo case. "They organized a trade association to stop the plan. In the business press, they actually said, 'This idea might be efficient and rational. But it's too dangerous.' Some of the larger employers stepped forward and said, 'We'll offer you a company pension. Forget about that whole other idea.' They took on the costs of setting up an individual company pension, at great expense, in order to head off what they saw as too much organized power for workers in the region."

[Via The Sideshow]

If you have tears, prepare to shed them now.

[Via Lots of Co. Part II]

Well, that's the Xmas TV sorted. Wallace & Gromit: A Matter of Loaf and Death Comes to BBC One This Christmas:

[Viewers...] will catch up with Wallace and Gromit who have opened a new bakery – Top Bun – and business is booming, not least because a deadly Cereal Killer is targeting all the bakers in town so competition is drying up. Gromit is worried that they may be the next victims but Wallace couldn't care – he's fallen head over heels in love with Piella Bakewell, former star of the Bake-O-Lite bread commercials. So Gromit is left to run things on his own when he'd much rather be getting better acquainted with Piella's lovely pet poodle Fluffles.

[Via kottke.org]

Fifty Years of Popular Songs Condensed Into Single Sentences:

The Beatles, "I Want to Hold Your Hand"
I want to do it with you.

[...]

Pulp, "Common People"
I once met a stuck-up European who wanted to do it with me.

[...]

Kate Bush, "Wuthering Heights"
I'm an 18th-century fictional character and I want to do it with another 18th-century fictional character.

[Via GromBlog]

If I ever get round to adding a blogroll to this site's sidebar, The Big Picture is going to be under the heading 'Daily Essentials'¹.

Why? For publishing photographs like this.

1. Yes, I know The Big Picture only publishes new pictures three times a week. Don't confuse me with minor details. ↩

Seeing Phil Gyford's gallery of Wired UK covers takes me back.

Wired UK never took off as a distinctive offshoot of the parent magazine, but for a while there it was at least fun to read (if not to put together.)

[Via kottke.org]

Danny Boyle on 'product displacement':

Danny Boyle – the director of Slumdog Millionaire, which was shown last night at the closing gala of The Times BFI London Film Festival – told The Times that there was such a thing as product displacement.

Mercedes-Benz and another multinational insisted that their logos be removed from scenes in the film because they did not want to be associated with a Bombay slum, he said.

The car manufacturer and a well-known soft drinks company believed that their brands would be sullied if their products were shown in one of Bombay's shantytowns.

[Via IPKat, via ORG-discuss]

Write your own Daily Express front page.

[Via Qwghlm]

Economist readers react to the magazine's endorsement of Barack Obama. Most readers were shocked or disappointed that it should endorse a left-of-centre politician, but this last correspondent had other concerns:

SIR – I would like to congratulate Mr Obama on his brilliant victory. In his official capacity as president of the United States he will probably have to meet our prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi. I apologise in advance.

Marta Sanna
Cagliari, Italy

[Via Memex 1.1]

How to Tell if Your Cat is Plotting to Kill You.

[Via GromBlog]

Google Flu Trends uses an analysis of search terms entered into their search engine as a means of identifying localised flu outbreaks well before the aggregate data flowing through official channels identifies the existence of an epidemic.

We compared our query counts with data from a surveillance system managed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and discovered that some search queries tend to be popular exactly when flu season is happening. By counting how often we see these search queries, we can estimate how much flu is circulating in various regions of the United States.

My one qualm about this sort of thing is that the efficacy of such a fairly benign real-time search query analysis is only going to encourage some government to demand real-time access to Google's search query data so they can carry out this sort of data mining for themselves. I can hear the minister on the Today programme now: "If we can prevent just one [insert hot topic of the day here] then the loss of privacy is a small price to pay."¹

For the avoidance of doubt: the problem isn't with the concept of analysing search query data for trends and patterns that might not show up as rapidly by other means, it's with the prospect that the government might end up being the ones doing the searching. I'll freely concede that there's not the slightest suggestion that this is an imminent prospect, but I guarantee you that a certain mindset will find the idea extremely appealing. You know the sort: ministers who go round claiming that people keep coming up to her in the street and begging her to hurry up and issue them a National ID Card.

[Via Kevan Davis]

1. In case you're thinking that the data can easily be anonymised, consider the AOL fiasco. ↩

The designer of the new Dutch 5 Euro put a great deal of thought into his design.

I'm not sure I particularly like the design he came up with, but his post about the design process is fascinating.

[Via Design Observer, via kottke.org]

The Big Picture does Antarctica.

The Perroquet project:

Born out of a lifelong fascination with science photography and nature documentaries, Parroquet showcases a body of work by fashion photographer Sølve Sundsbø, comprising eight film shorts and a selection of photographs. Keen to produce imagery that didn't fall into the traditional genres of photography, this project's central focus is the parroquet, a type of small, slender, long-tailed parrot. This particular subject matter couldn't be more removed from Sundsbø's lavish editorial spreads and striking campaign imagery, although his reasons for choosing this particular species do, in a way, relate to fashion. Possessing almost sartorial qualities, it was the bird's trademark vibrant plumage that piqued the photographer's interest. Sundsbø looks to this as fashion on an evolutionary scale: compared to the fast-paced, demanding nature of the fashion calendar and the many 'looks' each season produces, this creature's stunning 'outfit' has taken centuries to develop. [...]

I wasn't all that taken with the films, but the still images are startlingly colourful and quite beautiful.

[Via The Long Now Blog]

FUCK YEAH SHARKS.

It's like LOLCats, but with much sharper teeth.

[Via Qwghlm]

Wow!

(Best viewed at Original Size.)

[Via The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century]

I've started using the One Pixel Webcam's output to provide my desktop wallpaper:

This project began with a desired to feel more connected with my environment and particularly with the daylight. By taking one sky-pixel from a webcam in my town and duplicating that colour periodically as my desktop I am continuously reminded of the outside world. My desktop colour changes with the sky.

As it happens, as I first fired the program up at just before 5pm all I've seen so far is a tiny sliver of blue sky followed by varying shades of darkness.

Oh well, tomorrow is another (sunnier?) day…

[Via cityofsound]

The US election as fanfic:

Dear America,

[...] Come on. That name alone. Seriously, what's with people and their love for unusual names? John and Bill are perfectly fine for a president. Or Milhous. [...]

[Via James Nicoll]

Nick Hornby listed the front page headlines in the English press the morning after the US presidential election:

• Mr President (The Independent)
• Yanks Very Much (The Star)
• Gobama (The Mirror)
• One Giant Leap For Mankind (The Sun)
• America's Historic Verdict (The Guardian)
• A New World Dawns (The Express)
• Home Loans: A Slap in the Face (The Mail)

Yep, yesterday will be remembered for the home-loan face-slapping.

Nathan Rabin enthuses over The Rocketeer, one of those films I just have to sit down and watch on the odd occasions when it shows up on Sunday afternoon TV:

The Rocketeer's plot concerns a glistening, alluringly mammary-like rocket-pack developed by Howard Hughes; it falls into the hands of mobsters, then gets discovered by hotshot flyboy Campbell and mentor Arkin. Campbell is immediately fascinated. What red-blooded American boy wouldn't want a jetpack of his own? [...]

Campbell uses the jetpack to become costumed adventurer The Rocketeer. Of course, by superhero standards, The Rocketeer is kinda lame. He doesn't shoot fireballs or have X-ray vision or superpowers or titanium skin. He's just a handsome guy with a rocket pack. But rocket packs are so inherently awesome that they make other superpowers unnecessary. Like the simpatico Superman, The Rocketeer beautifully exploits mankind's eternal longing to fly. There's a reason people dream about flying and not filing their taxes.

Granted, the special effects in The Rocketeer weren't particularly special even in their day, but that's not such a big deal: it certainly helps to have convincing SFX work, but any halfway worthwhile superhero film is remembered for the characters and storyline and performances anyway. Happily, The Rocketeer had the benefit of a sharp script whose writers knew exactly the tone to aim for,¹ fine performances from the likes of Timothy Dalton, Jennifer Connelly, Terry O'Quinn, Alan Arkin and Paul Sorvino, and (crucially) a bunch of Nazis as the villains. Even mobsters hate Nazis!

As it turned out, all that wasn't enough to create a Rocketeer franchise, but it did make for a highly entertaining couple of hours.

1. As Rabin notes, "[...] it's refreshing to see a superhero whose biggest psychological weakness involves neglecting his bestest gal in favor of flying." ↩