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Unpopular Mechanics
 Posted 11/17/2009 7:20:00 AM
I thumbed through an old Popular Mechanics... From October 1950...
Fascinating trip back in time but also a solid lesson in what’s wrong with the US economy today.
There were countless ads...Seiberling Tires...South Bend precision lathes...Atlastic Underwear...Wham-O slingshots...Syncro Electric sanders...Kodak cameras...and on and on and on.
In 1950, all this stuff was designed and manufactured in the United States. Today 90% of it comes from Asia. The people who manufactured it in local plants in places like Ramey Pennsylvania and Oxford Michigan have no modern counterparts!
In short, the blue collar work force has been decimated. Today you’re either a college grad making big bucks in computers or finance or else you’re flipping hamburgers. The working class of the fifties provided solidity. It nourished local communities. And it bought what it made.
Sure. There’s progress. Some of those old ads promote $3500 a year as a good income. Mind you ...
Poison Ivy Logo
Posted 11/12/2009 7:20:00 AM
The new Ontario logo is creeping into our lives gradually...like mould or dry rot.
A few months ago, probably because he didn’t have anything better to do, Dalton McGoofy decided to restyle Ontario’s classic Trillium logo. The new one, more like poison ivy than the trillium, is beginning to appear now on government paperwork, signs, vehicles, advertising...
The old one, bland and rounded and uncontroversial, had served us well through Tory, Grit and NDP governments.
The new one is still a three leafed trillium except it now looks somehow malevolent, threatening, evil. It’s as though you had replaced a happy face with a devil’s head.
The trillium actually is a rather pretty flower and the old logo was an effective, stylized representation of it. But the new one is harsh and threatening. It reminds me of those electron microscope images of deadly bacteria or cancer cells.
There really was no ...
Tainted Newspapers
Posted 11/10/2009 7:42:00 AM
We have very tough rules on the quality of the food our supermarkets sell.
We have none on the quality of the reading material they sell.
I speak of the execrable scandal magazines like National Enquirer.
In fact these affronts to journalism are so closely identified with food stores that they’ve come to be known as Supermarket Tabloids.
I usually ignore them. But it was impossible to ignore the Globe (the tabloid) which last week boldly proclaimed that US President Obama is gay.
How do they get away with this stuff.
And where do they find the amoral writers and editors willing to prostitute their craft.
Not to mention readers. The day of the bimbo housewife obsessed with laundry detergent and floor polish is long gone. Most people in supermarkets --- whether men or women --- are intelligent, informed people.
Yet this trash continues to sell.
We recall tainted lunch ...
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