"Dazed and Confused"
Daniel B Case
time, and for those of you who asked about it, wondering if it exists, the
answer is that yes indeed it does.
This is Richard Linklater's second film-after "Slacker" which I haven't
been able to see as of yet. I can tell you a lot about "Dazed and Confused",
though.
Yes, as you may have heard, there's a lot of pot smoking in the movie.
The eponymous Led Zeppelin song is not, though, because Robert Plant wouldn't
clear it.
This is the first honest-to-goodness '70s nostalgia movie-doing for
that time period what "American Graffitti" did for the fifties (I hope it
doesn't spawn a craze that big, though). It is also the first time I have seen
a movie that nostalgizes a time period I've actually lived through, so I feel
more qualified to comment on it.
How good is it? Very good-from practically the first frame, it's hard
to believe that Linklater didn't actually go back to Austin on May 28, 1976
and just follow people around the last day of school. The acting is similarly
good enough that you forget that most of the people playing the main roles are
actually my own age. In fact, it's almost too effective-"nostalgia", we must
remember, means "the pain of return", and returning indeed conjures up a lot
of pain in this movie for those who were there. Most of the pain comes from
a depiction of adolescent awkwardness that could occur in any period, but for
me sometimes it gets personal because I remember having difficult experiences
with some of the people like the ones in the film, who also looked the same way.
Some scenes actually make me twitch watching them-Mitch trying to act cool
around the girls outside the arboretum. Some of the pain is just from
remembering looking and dressing that way-there are some people who just
shouldn't let their hair grow out.
It's also because this movie adequately captures the mood of America
in the bicentennial year (although I'm surprised Linklater didn't show that
groovy-looking star logo at least once). I was only in third grade at the time,
but I remember that same mood of general social laxness and casual hedonism
which the movie captures so well. The dominant colors in the movie are sky
blue and grass green-perfect for the 1970s.
Linklater directs well, resisting the temptation to derive most of his
humor from nostalgia; and capturing the little details (people pumping up a keg,
flipping bottlecaps) quite well. A woman in one of my classes old enough to have
been that age says there are some minor details she could quibble with (happy
faces were gone by then, she says, but I differ) but on the whole she agrees
with me about the general mood of the movie-"If you ever hear me saying that
these were the best days of my life, remind me to kill myself" says one of
the main characters. It doesn't glorify the seventies more than it inevitably
would-you can't get around a decade in which marijuana was not something people
other than football coaches had shit fits about, and you did not have to worry
about AIDS when you chose to go have sex in the bushes-and is fair enough to
show a bit of the darker side (It has a mailbox-vandalizing scene far better
than the one in "Stand by Me" which ends with one of the aggrieved property
owners shooting at the occupants of the guilty vehicle). Even the classic-rock
soundtrack sounds much better restored to its social context (I'm getting the
CD for Christmas, I've decided).
So what's the Xer interest? Most of the older characters qualify as
later boomers, but the younger ones are people in the early waves of our
generation. And I can't help but notice that the least likable character in
the whole movie, the repeat senior O'Banion, has "boomer" on the paddle he
uses to haze incoming freshmen.
Yes, I liked it and I recommend it as a good attempt to get a handle
on the 1970s-that decade which was the earliest to shape us.
Daniel Case State University of New York at Buffalo
Prodigy: WDNS15D | GEnie: DCASE.10
Ceci n'est pas une pipe
V140...@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu dc...@acsu.buffalo.edu
Ian Williams
Good review, Daniel, I agree completely. The movie definitely threw me
back into that time with abandon. I was in Cedar Rapids, Iowa right then
(and the movie was set on my ninth birthday) so that suburban green and
hot-skied blues of the movie were right on. The people graduating from
high school that year were born in 1957-58, the same years as my two
older brothers, and it completely reminded me of their hazy, bored,
free-spirited and druggy adolescence. It was nothing like mine, the
turbo-charged and hyperkinetic early '80s, but I credit those few short
years in the late '70s for giving me the peace of mind to tackle the
impending millenium.
Linklater has a gift for anecdotal observation; yelping "shotgun!" springs
to mind. I wish he'd stop lying about his age, though- apparently he made
himself 29 for the '91 release of Slacker. Friends say he's 33 now, but he
hedges the issue. I've been pushed into similar corners myself, as if
being 23 would make a book sell better! I *like* being 26! We should all
be PROUD to make it through our twenties! This tenacious grasp on our
youth - I think we all know from whom we got *those* bad habits...
-Ian
--
The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Campus Office for Information
Technology, or the Experimental Bulletin Board Service.
internet: laUNChpad.unc.edu or 152.2.22.80
Daniel B Case
>[review of Dazed und Confused deleted]
>
>Good review, Daniel, I agree completely. The movie definitely threw me
>back into that time with abandon. I was in Cedar Rapids, Iowa right then
>(and the movie was set on my ninth birthday) so that suburban green and
Hmm. I didn't realize that you were technically a year ahead of me in school.
from your comments in 13th GEN, you could have been anybody else in my suburban
New Jersey elementary school.
See? Any more doubters in the universality of some aspects of generational
experience?
>older brothers, and it completely reminded me of their hazy, bored,
>free-spirited and druggy adolescence. It was nothing like mine, the
>turbo-charged and hyperkinetic early '80s, but I credit those few short
>years in the late '70s for giving me the peace of mind to tackle the
>impending millenium.
The seventies strike me, in hindsight, as being very loose in all aspects-
clothing, hairstyles, morals. Of course, we all know that now, but there
wasn't quite yet the dark edge to it there is now. I remember open doors
and neighborhoods where you could still leave them open and walk around for a
long time. I remember the sun on the grass on a spring weekend in Memorial Field
I remember me and my best friend spending Saturday afternoons in that time of
year exploring the Watchung reservation near where we lived-alone (Can you
imagine that now?) Not that these didn't have their dangers-mostly slightly
older kids. But I seem to remember feeling that the sun shone bright-perhaps
too brightly-in the 1970s, and many breezes blew softly through open windows.
I guess that fits in with the Fourth Great Awakening.
>Linklater has a gift for anecdotal observation; yelping "shotgun!" springs
>to mind. I wish he'd stop lying about his age, though- apparently he made
>himself 29 for the '91 release of Slacker. Friends say he's 33 now, but he
>hedges the issue. I've been pushed into similar corners myself, as if
>being 23 would make a book sell better! I *like* being 26! We should all
>be PROUD to make it through our twenties! This tenacious grasp on our
>youth - I think we all know from whom we got *those* bad habits...
I actually look, to many people, older than 25. So I guess I have an advantage
there.
Daniel Case
Jennifer Taub
Ian Williams <Ian.Wi...@launchpad.unc.edu> wrote:
>[review of Dazed und Confused deleted]
>
>Good review, Daniel, I agree completely. The movie definitely threw me
>back into that time with abandon. I was in Cedar Rapids, Iowa right then
>(and the movie was set on my ninth birthday) so that suburban green and
Well, I was far from Cedar Rapids, but the movie was set on MY seventh
birthday - I've met very few folks with my B-day...
The movie itself, while quite enjoyable, was so far removed from my high
school days in Manhattan that it made for nice fiction for me, though I'm
told it was dead on for suburbia.
Jennifer
Wendi Dunlap
>In article <2ejdos$9...@samba.oit.unc.edu>,
>Ian Williams <Ian.Wi...@launchpad.unc.edu> wrote:
>>[review of Dazed und Confused deleted]
>>
>>Good review, Daniel, I agree completely. The movie definitely threw me
>>back into that time with abandon. I was in Cedar Rapids, Iowa right then
>>(and the movie was set on my ninth birthday) so that suburban green and
>Well, I was far from Cedar Rapids, but the movie was set on MY seventh
>birthday - I've met very few folks with my B-day...
It was set almost exactly one week after my 11th birthday. (1976, right?
Or did the movie take place in '77? I can't remember.)
>The movie itself, while quite enjoyable, was so far removed from my high
>school days in Manhattan that it made for nice fiction for me, though I'm
>told it was dead on for suburbia.
Well, I wasn't quite in high school then, but it's pretty close to what I
remember from junior high. And some things hadn't changed by the time I
got to high school in '79.
I wrote a screenplay once that mostly took place at the end of the school
year in 1983, at graduation. Some of the stuff in dazed and Confused
reminded me of my screenplay, though D&C was much better, of course.
--
| Wendi Dunlap * litl...@u.washington.edu | "They're not dead, they're |
| Currently playing on my stereo: | metaphysically challenged!" |
| XTC, "Extrovert" | --MST3K |
Rick Healy
Daniel B Case <v140...@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu> wrote:
>In article <2ejdos$9...@samba.oit.unc.edu>, Ian.Wi...@launchpad.unc.edu (Ian Williams) writes...
>>[review of Dazed und Confused deleted]
>>
>>Good review, Daniel, I agree completely. The movie definitely threw me
>>back into that time with abandon. I was in Cedar Rapids, Iowa right then
>>(and the movie was set on my ninth birthday) so that suburban green and
.
.
.
>The seventies strike me, in hindsight, as being very loose in all aspects-
>clothing, hairstyles, morals. Of course, we all know that now, but there
>wasn't quite yet the dark edge to it there is now. I remember open doors
>and neighborhoods where you could still leave them open and walk around for a
>long time. I remember the sun on the grass on a spring weekend in Memorial Field
.
.
That reminds of a conversation I overheard waiting on line at the Auto
Teller Machine. Two women, early to mid twenties, dressed in black leather
and one has her hair dyed in a pastel color:
First woman: "My hair is gross."
Second: "I think it's the color. Green doesn't become you."
First: "I had carpet that color."
Second: "Everyone had carpet that color in the seventies."
-Rick
--
Richard J. Healy <cd...@nasagiss.giss.nasa.gov> (212) 678-5572
Niall Gaffney
and I really enjoyed it at the time, but the one thing about Dazed &
Confused was that, much like the 70's, two hours after it was over, I
found my self quickly forgetting it (unlike Slacker which will forever
be burned into my memory).
-----
Niall Gaffney ---- ni...@marple.as.utexas.edu
Department of Astronomy ---- University of Texas at Austin
Jym Dyer
> our twenties!
=o= Or, as Abbie Hoffman put it, "never trust anyone under 30."
<_Jym_>
Fritz
> >>
> >>Good review, Daniel, I agree completely. The movie definitely threw me
> >>back into that time with abandon. I was in Cedar Rapids, Iowa right then
> >>(and the movie was set on my ninth birthday) so that suburban green and
>
> >Well, I was far from Cedar Rapids, but the movie was set on MY seventh
> >birthday - I've met very few folks with my B-day...
>
> It was set almost exactly one week after my 11th birthday. (1976, right?
> Or did the movie take place in '77? I can't remember.)
>
college
a few years after that (my dad graduated 1973, my mom in 1968), I think I
would have missed the seventies completely ... I didn't get a clue of my
own until Joan Jet and the Blackhearts did 'Hell is for Children' ... maybe
the birthdate cutoff for being an Xer should be moved back to sometime
before November of 1972
Steve Conley
Fritz <cjah...@cc.swarthmore.edu> wrote:
>*sigh* I was 3 and a half at the time ... and if my parents weren't in
>college
>a few years after that (my dad graduated 1973, my mom in 1968), I think I
>would have missed the seventies completely ... I didn't get a clue of my
>own until Joan Jet and the Blackhearts did 'Hell is for Children' ... maybe
>the birthdate cutoff for being an Xer should be moved back to sometime
>before November of 1972
No way, man. Clue: being unable to remember the seventies is a blessing.
My sister was born in '78 and she's so obviously GenX that boomers cross
the street to avoid her! (Hi, Janna, in case you're taking a break from
irc!) :-)
Steve
--
steveconleyprodukt 1993 st...@bronze.coil.com
Life is short. Slack hard. Customer Service
My opinions are not COIL's. Central Ohio Internet Link, Inc.
"GenX owned and operated."
Ian Williams
>Fritz <cjah...@cc.swarthmore.edu> wrote:
>
>>*sigh* I was 3 and a half at the time ... and if my parents weren't in
>>college
>>a few years after that (my dad graduated 1973, my mom in 1968), I think I
>>would have missed the seventies completely ... I didn't get a clue of my
>>own until Joan Jet and the Blackhearts did 'Hell is for Children' ... maybe
>>the birthdate cutoff for being an Xer should be moved back to sometime
>>before November of 1972
Uhhh, unless it was a cover, didn't Pat Benetar do "Hell is for Children"?
I can't recall either Joan or the Runaways being that socially conscious...
>Steve Conley wrote:
>No way, man. Clue: being unable to remember the seventies is a blessing.
>My sister was born in '78 and she's so obviously GenX that boomers cross
>the street to avoid her!
Well, I agree with the prinicple - one does not need to have remembered
the '70s to be a card-carrying Xer (one of my least favorite phrases!) -
but I would argue that remembering the '70s is a good thing. I think
whatever idealism and ability to relax I have - I owe it to the '70s and
those hazy summer days around the bicentennial. I hate to make another
HUGE generalization, but I find the people who are about nine years
younger than me (say, the folks in tenth grade right now, up to the
sophomores in college) are a *lot* more cynical than I am, and a teensy
bit more self-destructive. I see a nihilism in them that is,
coincidentally enough, the same as those people born in 1961-64. Both of
these two groups were denied their formative childhood wonder years in the
'70s, and they, to me, are different for it.
Boy, *that's* a tenuous theory. Respond at will.
-Ian
P.S. Hey Steve, sorry about the Ohio St. game. Go Heels!
Carl Beaudry
> I hate to make another
> HUGE generalization, but I find the people who are about nine years
> younger than me (say, the folks in tenth grade right now, up to the
> sophomores in college) are a *lot* more cynical than I am, and a teensy
> bit more self-destructive. I see a nihilism in them that is,
> coincidentally enough, the same as those people born in 1961-64. Both of
> these two groups were denied their formative childhood wonder years in the
> '70s, and they, to me, are different for it.
> Boy, *that's* a tenuous theory. Respond at will.
Well you probably have considerably more personal experience with people in
your immediate age group because people are grouped by age throughout their
school years. So then it would seem that the attitude of the people born in
the 5 years surrounding your birth year is the phenomenon that needs
explaining--ie. why *don't* they seem to exhibit that nihilism.
Donning my sociologists hat, (which really looks more like a Radio Shack
walkie-talkie helmet) I'm guessing that the culprit is self-selection bias.
You probably just shied away from the real nihilists in your age group
which would create the impression that the whole cohort is happier.
Doffing that and donning my social psychologists hat (which is sort of an
NFL team-licensed stocking cap or sometimes a fake Stetson-like thing in
palomino brown with a garish yellow chin lanyard) I'd say that another
possibility is that the people that you personally know just *seem* to be
less bleak because you can more clearly identify the subtle difference
between frustrated idealism and nihilism in someone you know.
--Carl
Kathleen Hubbard
>> ...I find the people who are about nine years
>> younger than me (say, the folks in tenth grade right now, up to the
>> sophomores in college) are a *lot* more cynical than I am, and a teensy
>> bit more self-destructive. I see a nihilism in them that is,
>> coincidentally enough, the same as those people born in 1961-64. Both of
>> these two groups were denied their formative childhood wonder years in the
>> '70s, and they, to me, are different for it.
Carl Beaudry wrote:
>Well you probably have considerably more personal experience with people in
>your immediate age group because people are grouped by age throughout their
>school years. So then it would seem that the attitude of the people born in
>the 5 years surrounding your birth year is the phenomenon that needs
>explaining--ie. why *don't* they seem to exhibit that nihilism.
>
>...I'm guessing that the culprit is self-selection bias.
>You probably just shied away from the real nihilists in your age group
>which would create the impression that the whole cohort is happier.
>
>...I'd say that another
>possibility is that the people that you personally know just *seem* to be
>less bleak because you can more clearly identify the subtle difference
>between frustrated idealism and nihilism in someone you know.
On the face of it, I'm inclined to agree with Ian -- my best friend, born in
1963 (to my 1966), says her childhood is like a big blank, a noiseless
nothing; mine, though I wouldn't describe it as "70's wonder years", seems to
have been much fuller of...something. And indeed, she is a tad more cynical
than I. But this distinction is a fine one compared to the gross differences
between ourselves and anyone over 32 or so. Plus, there seems to be a crucial
effect of one's schooling: she went to Catholic school and then public high
school; I was in prep school (non-Catholic) for the whole shebang.
So Carl (of Many Hats) may be right that the nihilism level doesn't really
oscillate over time in the way Ian suggests -- rather, it corresponds to
features of (a) one's own personality, and thus the people you surround
yourself with and how you read them, and (b) the particulars of one's
surroundings. But we're all left (as far as I can tell) utterly unable to
convey an understanding of General Nihilism to our olders. Why?
--
_____________________________________________________________________
Kathleen A. Hubbard |
Department of Linguistics | o tempora, o morae
U.C. Berkeley |
Ian Williams
Strange as it may seem, I had already taken a lot of that into
consideration. This theory, as unscientific as it sounds, comes from my
personal observation after five years of fairly intense scrutiny - I just
feel as though having your childhood in the '70s made you a different sort
of creature. Those born before or a little after don't have the same
qualities.
On the younger end, I've had a lot of contact with the incoming freshmen
at Carolina, I remember who I have babysat, I know everyone's little
brother. On the older end, most of the folks I deal with in the publishing
world and all of my older brothers' friends are in that early Gen X
cohort. I just see in both of them a sadness that I don't really gefrom
people my own age.
By the way, no one is a harsher critic of my own age group than I am - I
just keep all those thoughts to myself so that I can still take a few of
them to dinner.
-Ian
JAMES E. GALL
>On the face of it, I'm inclined to agree with Ian -- my best friend, born in
>1963 (to my 1966), says her childhood is like a big blank, a noiseless
>nothing; mine, though I wouldn't describe it as "70's wonder years", seems to
>have been much fuller of...something. And indeed, she is a tad more cynical
>than I. But this distinction is a fine one compared to the gross differences
>between ourselves and anyone over 32 or so...
Agreed. My brother ('67) doesn't remember anything about Vietnam. I ('65)
however remember my Boomer babysitter (in her embroidered jeans) telling us
atrocious stories of what happened when you turned 18 and were drafted. As a
result, my childhood nightmares were about the Viet Cong, not the boogeyman.
Anyways, although our individual memories vary, as a whole my brother and I
are more alike than our psycho babysitter and a majority of other Boomers.
Dave Mooney
> Linklater has a gift for anecdotal observation; yelping "shotgun!" springs
> to mind. I wish he'd stop lying about his age, though- apparently he made
> himself 29 for the '91 release of Slacker. Friends say he's 33 now, but he
> hedges the issue. I've been pushed into similar corners myself, as if
> being 23 would make a book sell better! I *like* being 26! We should all
> be PROUD to make it through our twenties! This tenacious grasp on our
> youth - I think we all know from whom we got *those* bad habits...
The latest issue of _Shift_ magazine has an interview with Linklater. In it,
they mention that he is 32.
dave
--
Dave Mooney d...@vnet.ibm.com
"When dreams don't become their people, people become their dreams"
Daniel B Case
>So Carl (of Many Hats) may be right that the nihilism level doesn't really
>oscillate over time in the way Ian suggests -- rather, it corresponds to
>features of (a) one's own personality, and thus the people you surround
>yourself with and how you read them, and (b) the particulars of one's
>surroundings. But we're all left (as far as I can tell) utterly unable to
>convey an understanding of General Nihilism to our olders. Why?
The general feeling of epigony pervades all of us, from the 1961 cohorts to
the 1981 cohorts. That transcends a good deal of specific childhood experiences,
and leads to the attempt to deinfe ourselves chronologically.
Erich Schwarz
(Daniel B Case) wrote:
> The general feeling of epigony pervades all of us...
Speak for yerself. I don't feel like an epigone: I feel like a
Heinlein character trapped in a Vonnegut novel. In other words, *I* have
rationality, purpose and optimism, but a lot of people around me don't.
There's a lot of justification for concern and worry, given what's
facing us. But when you've met survivors of the Great Depression who can
face their own mortality with good humor, as I have, "nihilism" comes to
seem a terribly feeble response to our own troubles.
I do agree that the Seventies, in retrospect, look way gentler and
more fun than the Nineties. Alas, it was the foggy, pleasurable haze of
the Seventies that made the Nineties possible. We may get another "mellow
decade" eventually, but I want to get off-planet before it happens.
--Erich Schwarz / schwarze...@starbase1.caltech.edu
Jennifer Basil
: In article <CI9yF...@acsu.buffalo.edu>, v140...@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu
: (Daniel B Case) wrote:
:
: > The general feeling of epigony pervades all of us...
: Speak for yerself. I don't feel like an epigone: I feel like a
: Heinlein character trapped in a Vonnegut novel. In other words, *I* have
: rationality, purpose and optimism, but a lot of people around me don't.
Perfect! ....what *he* said!
: There's a lot of justification for concern and worry, given what's
: facing us. But when you've met survivors of the Great Depression who can
: face their own mortality with good humor, as I have, "nihilism" comes to
: seem a terribly feeble response to our own troubles.
: I do agree that the Seventies, in retrospect, look way gentler and
: more fun than the Nineties.
Actually, my memories of the 70's (born 1964) are riddled with
air-raid drills and heavy talk of nuclear attack (which only worsened
in the 80's). I have some bizarre sense of optimism about the world
these days..I have no idea why. Maybe it's the first decade in
which I believed I might actually make it to my 35th birthday, rather
than meeting my end in an atomic shelter. Those images were so pervasive
in my childhood anyway...they took awhile to shake.
: Alas, it was the foggy, pleasurable haze of
: the Seventies that made the Nineties possible. We may get another "mellow
: decade" eventually, but I want to get off-planet before it happens.
As for "mellow decade"...I want to be off-planet too!
: --Erich Schwarz / schwarze...@starbase1.caltech.edu
Jenny
--
Jennifer Basil Member: Generation X, BDFT#2, FcFC 8o
(ba...@bio.bu.edu)
*********Have a festive and joyous Solstice, everyone!*********
Brian Yamauchi
>In article <CI9yF...@acsu.buffalo.edu>, v140...@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu
>(Daniel B Case) wrote:
>> The general feeling of epigony pervades all of us...
> Speak for yerself. I don't feel like an epigone: I feel like a
>Heinlein character trapped in a Vonnegut novel. In other words, *I* have
>rationality, purpose and optimism, but a lot of people around me don't.
I know exactly what you mean, though personally my worldview
tends to oscillate between Heinleinian optimism and GenX nihilism --
usually ending up at an unstable saddle point in the middle, somewhere
near where _The_Fountainhead_ would be, if it were rewritten by
Coupland.
> There's a lot of justification for concern and worry, given what's
>facing us. But when you've met survivors of the Great Depression who can
>face their own mortality with good humor, as I have, "nihilism" comes to
>seem a terribly feeble response to our own troubles.
I think the media has a lot to do with it. Objectively, the
country (and the world) was certainly in worse shape during the
Depression than it is now -- but at least the media was hopeful that
things would get better in the future. Now, the media continuously
bombards the public with pessimistic views of both the present and the
future -- so is it any surprise that the most media-saturated
generation in history ends up both cynical and nihilistic?
--
_______________________________________________________________________________
Brian Yamauchi Case Western Reserve University
yama...@alpha.ces.cwru.edu Department of Computer Engineering and Science
_______________________________________________________________________________
Erich Schwarz
yama...@ces.cwru.edu (Brian Yamauchi) wrote:
> ...personally my worldview
> tends to oscillate between Heinleinian optimism and GenX nihilism --
> usually ending up at an unstable saddle point in the middle, somewhere
> near where _The_Fountainhead_ would be, if it were rewritten by
> Coupland.
Wow. Now *that's* a "temporal fantasy" I'd be interested to see!! :-)
--Erich Schwarz / schwarze...@starbase1.caltech.edu
Erich Schwarz
wrote:
>
> Erich Schwarz (schw...@starbase1.caltech.edu) wrote:
> : Speak for yerself. I don't feel like an epigone: I feel like a
> : Heinlein character trapped in a Vonnegut novel. In other words, *I* have
> : rationality, purpose and optimism, but a lot of people around me don't.
>
> Perfect! ....what *he* said!
Heinlein's views seem to have changed with time (like the views of most
intelligent people...) His early writing seemed to be fairly optimistic
and take the view that the bulk of human beings would be rational, given
half a chance. With _Time Enough for Love_ onward, I see Heinlein as
having moved towards more of a view that 1% of the human race had 99% of
the human race's brains; this seems to have been accompanied by
considerably more pessimism than formerly.
> Actually, my memories of the 70's (born 1964)...
(The same year I was born. Jungian synchronicity!)
> ...are riddled with
> air-raid drills and heavy talk of nuclear attack (which only worsened
> in the 80's).
From the late 1960s (my earliest memories) to the mid-1970s, I don't
recall anyone in my little world being seriously worried about nuclear war.
My mother told me that she had spent her adolescence being told that the
world would end around 1964, and that my very existence proved the
doomsters wrong, so I should never listen to them during my life! :-)
In the late 1970s I became politically aware of the world and, at the
same time, the U.S./Soviet power balance began visibly shifting towards the
Soviets. This culminated in the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the
U.S. humiliation by Iran, with a rescue mission failing basically because
the world's richest nation couldn't send enough helicopters to make the
mission work. That was the period that I *seriously* expected to wind up
in Germany fighting a land war on my 19th birthday.
I never really believed that a world war would go nuclear, though. You
can't conquer, exploit, or fly a flag over radioactive rubble; so there's
not much incentive to actually fight a nukewar!
> I have some bizarre sense of optimism about the world
> these days..I have no idea why.
Well, seeing the Marxist prediction of the "state withering away"
actually come true--in Russia--would make most anybody but Alexander
Cockburn feel giddy!
> Maybe it's the first decade in
> which I believed I might actually make it to my 35th birthday, rather
> than meeting my end in an atomic shelter. Those images were so pervasive
> in my childhood anyway...they took awhile to shake.
There's an address by R.A.H. to the 1964 Worldcon (in _Requiem_, a Tor
book) worth looking at. Heinlein fully expected a major world catastrophe,
but he wasn't overawed by the prospect: "Death is the lot of all of us, and
the only way the human race has ever conquered death is by treating it with
contempt. By living every golden moment as if one had all eternity--"
> : Alas, it was the foggy, pleasurable haze of
> : the Seventies that made the Nineties possible. We may get another "mellow
> : decade" eventually, but I want to get off-planet before it happens.
>
> As for "mellow decade"...I want to be off-planet too!
Well, we're still alive, the Evil Empire is transiently defunct, and the
SSX spaceship is actually getting test-flown...who knows? :-)
--Erich Schwarz / schwarze...@starbase1.caltech.edu
> *********Have a festive and joyous Solstice, everyone!*********
Ditto!
Daniel B Case
>In article <CI9yF...@acsu.buffalo.edu>, v140...@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu
>(Daniel B Case) wrote:
>
>> The general feeling of epigony pervades all of us...
>
> Speak for yerself. I don't feel like an epigone: I feel like a
>Heinlein character trapped in a Vonnegut novel. In other words, *I* have
>rationality, purpose and optimism, but a lot of people around me don't.
I meant "epigone" in the sense of its Greek meaning-"one born after", which
may, but does not necesarily imply a defeatist, pessimistic, and lost attitude.
> There's a lot of justification for concern and worry, given what's
>facing us. But when you've met survivors of the Great Depression who can
>face their own mortality with good humor, as I have, "nihilism" comes to
>seem a terribly feeble response to our own troubles.
True, but the present historical circumstances differ somewhat from the
Depression. I hope things will turn out well, but I'm scarcely fool enough to
believe it will happen by itself.
> I do agree that the Seventies, in retrospect, look way gentler and
>more fun than the Nineties. Alas, it was the foggy, pleasurable haze of
>the Seventies that made the Nineties possible. We may get another "mellow
>decade" eventually, but I want to get off-planet before it happens.
If S&H's cyclical theory holds true, you'll be OK until the middle of the
coming century.
Daniel B Case
>> Actually, my memories of the 70's (born 1964)...
>
> (The same year I was born. Jungian synchronicity!)
>
>
>> ...are riddled with
>> air-raid drills and heavy talk of nuclear attack (which only worsened
>> in the 80's).
I was born four years later, and I don't really remember much of that. Most
of my cohort looked upon nuclear anxiety as something extremely pointless
and lacking basis in the real world. made for some nice early '80s pop songs,
though.
> From the late 1960s (my earliest memories) to the mid-1970s, I don't
>recall anyone in my little world being seriously worried about nuclear war.
> My mother told me that she had spent her adolescence being told that the
>world would end around 1964, and that my very existence proved the
>doomsters wrong, so I should never listen to them during my life! :-)
> In the late 1970s I became politically aware of the world and, at the
>same time, the U.S./Soviet power balance began visibly shifting towards the
>Soviets. This culminated in the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the
>U.S. humiliation by Iran, with a rescue mission failing basically because
>the world's richest nation couldn't send enough helicopters to make the
>mission work. That was the period that I *seriously* expected to wind up
>in Germany fighting a land war on my 19th birthday.
Well, it wasn't a question of not sending enough helicopters (although that
may have played a part), it was:
A) having Army or Marine helicopter pilots fly long missions for which AF pilots
were better trained, in order to satisfy JC interservice politics.
B) having no clue as to Iranian weather patterns because of the CIA's
incompetence in preparing reports.
C) the conspiracy theory that the mission might have been deliberately sabotaged
to embarrass Carter (the extremely high improbability of all the filters
failing at the same time).
Erich Schwarz
(Daniel B Case) wrote:
> If S&H's cyclical theory holds true, you'll be OK until the middle of the
> coming century.
What are the standard error bars on their predictions? I'm sure they're
doing a better job than I could do, but how good a job of prediction can
their theory really do?
Somebody posted that S&H said "the Civil War happened ahead of
schedule." If that quote's accurate, than it sounds to me like it's their
*theory* that's behind schedule in predicting a massive war in 1860!! Not
good.
I don't find the "cycle of history" idea terribly plausible, and will go
on feeling that way until I see a refereed article about it in _Nature_ or
_Science_...*with* statistical error bars, Student's t tests, etc....
--Erich Schwarz / schwarze...@starbase1.caltech.edu
Carl Beaudry
[Ian's theory and my hat discriptions deleted....]
> Strange as it may seem, I had already taken a lot of that into consideration.
The theory may be right, but without the appropriate headgear, it's hard to
take it seriously as social science. Didn't anyone tell you about wearing
the little paper hairnet-hat before serving up the McScience Nuggets? You
need it to separate what falls out of your own head from the final product
that your selling.
[BZEET! BZEET! METAPHOR EXTENSION ALERT!]
> This theory, as unscientific as it sounds, comes from my
> personal observation after five years of fairly intense scrutiny - I just
> feel as though having your childhood in the '70s made you a different sort
> of creature. Those born before or a little after don't have the same
> qualities.
Yeah, but personal observation is still only anecdotal and it will be
influenced invisibly by the people with whom you choose to associate and by
the people whom you see from day to day. None of this rules out the theory,
but it also doesn't rule out the 'different interpretation' possibility
either.
Perhaps if you wore some kind of sideways tilted fedora to amplify your
skepticsm or something...
> On the younger end, I've had a lot of contact with the incoming freshmen
> at Carolina, I remember who I have babysat, I know everyone's little
> brother. On the older end, most of the folks I deal with in the publishing
> world and all of my older brothers' friends are in that early Gen X
> cohort. I just see in both of them a sadness that I don't really gefrom
> people my own age.
Well, neither of these is a particularly random group. Personally, I agree
with your sense about the oldest Xers, but I attribute it to me having an
older brother who was born in 1961. It is impossible for me to separate the
attitudes of of he and his friends from the attitudes that I attribute to
the whole cohort no matter which hat I'm wearing.
But by the same token, I don't really sense that heightened sense of
nihilism from the youngest Xers that I know--namely, the baseball hat on
backwards adolescent to first year in college crowd. But it's still
anecdotal too.
> By the way, no one is a harsher critic of my own age group than I am - I
> just keep all those thoughts to myself so that I can still take a few of
> them to dinner.
Yeah....otherwise you'd need a flak helmet.....
--Carl
Daniel B Case
>In article <CIBLL...@acsu.buffalo.edu>, v140...@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu
>(Daniel B Case) wrote:
>
>> If S&H's cyclical theory holds true, you'll be OK until the middle of the
>> coming century.
>
> What are the standard error bars on their predictions? I'm sure they're
>doing a better job than I could do, but how good a job of prediction can
>their theory really do?
As good a job as any social science, I guess. Somewhere in "Generations", they
liken their theory to the theory of tides-instead of being able to predict
specific events, like election results and assassinations, they could
anticipate (that's a better word) general social trends. I don't know about
the error bars, and lacking time machines and alternate universes we have no
way to experiment.
> Somebody posted that S&H said "the Civil War happened ahead of
>schedule." If that quote's accurate, than it sounds to me like it's their
>*theory* that's behind schedule in predicting a massive war in 1860!! Not
>good.
They devote some time to this. The explanation they give is that the third and
fourth phases of the cycle were accelerated because the conflict was
within the US rather then between the US and an external force. They say, as I
pointed out, that this could happen again. They're not sure if it could happen
in different ways. But this does lead them to admit that the idea of cycles in
American history as they have conceived it is not incapable of failure.
> I don't find the "cycle of history" idea terribly plausible, and will go
>on feeling that way until I see a refereed article about it in _Nature_ or
>_Science_...*with* statistical error bars, Student's t tests, etc....
Oh please. You *know* that's not possible. History doesn't work that way, and,
in fact, when people have tried to quantify history in the hopes of making it
more "scientific" (a la "cliometrics") the result has usually been embarassments
like "Time on the Cross" ("Slavery wasn't *that* bad-see how our figures show
that slaves only got whipped once a year on average?"
hulsey
>*sigh* I was 3 and a half at the time ... and if my parents weren't in
>college
>a few years after that (my dad graduated 1973, my mom in 1968), I think I
>would have missed the seventies completely ... I didn't get a clue of my
>own until Joan Jet and the Blackhearts did 'Hell is for Children' ... maybe
>the birthdate cutoff for being an Xer should be moved back to sometime
>before November of 1972
You're a Nintendo 13er. I'm an Atari.
I turned 13 in '76. I remember the drugs filtering down into the junior
high from the high school. My locker partner got into that stuff. He kept
on telling me that I should try it sometime. To me, it seemed like an
incredibly stupid thing to do. I never saw this guy after 7th grade, I don't
know what happened to him. I'm certainly glad our locker never got searched.
BTW, "Hell Is For Childern" was by Pat Benatar. Joan Jett and the
Blackhearts did "I Love Rock and Roll" and a few other minor hits in the
early '80s.
Jim "I like both Pat Benatar and Kajagoogoo, so sue me" Hulsey
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
hul...@vitek.com (Jim Hulsey) TBDBITL '84 ('85 Rose Bowl)
Erich Schwarz
(Daniel B Case) wrote:
>
> In article <schwarze-2...@anise.bio.caltech.edu>, schw...@starbase1.caltech.edu (Erich Schwarz) writes...
>
> > I don't find the "cycle of history" idea terribly plausible, and will go
> >on feeling that way until I see a refereed article about it in _Nature_ or
> >_Science_...*with* statistical error bars, Student's t tests, etc....
>
> Oh please. You *know* that's not possible.
No, dammit. Maybe *you* "know." But I only know things when they've
been seriously validated.
When I was a small child most serious people were loudly predicting that
*my current work* (molecular genetics of metazoa) would never, ever be
possible because blah blah blah. 20-odd years later, here I am, doing
"impossible" work routinely... That impossibility prediction is so
discredited not even Gunther Stent likes to remember it any more.
As far as I'm concerned, Isaac Asimov's "psychohistory" is a science
waiting to be made real, *not* an impossibility.
> History doesn't work that way,
See above.
> and,
> in fact, when people have tried to quantify history in the hopes of making it
> more "scientific" (a la "cliometrics") the result has usually been embarassments
> like "Time on the Cross" ("Slavery wasn't *that* bad-see how our figures show
> that slaves only got whipped once a year on average?"
Oh I see. A scientific discipline is "discredited" when it tells us
nasty, politically incorrect stuff we'd rather not hear. Well, who needed
Darwinian evolutionary theory anyhow? Let's toss it.
As I recall, the author of "Time on the Cross" (who got a Nobel in
economics last year) wrote a sequel where he distinguished slavery's
economic efficiency from its moral standing. So he wasn't the oaf that
your paraphrase suggests.
I stand by my original contentions. I think a science of history would
be possible and interesting. I also think that sloppy work merely slows
down the rate at which we will achieve it. I'd love it if S&H weren't
sloppy, but without testable hypotheses, that's what they are.
--Erich Schwarz / schwarze...@starbase1.caltech.edu
Christopher Frankonis
special, that this whole 70s nostalgia thing is over and done with. It
was tired then and its still tired now.
BTW, I went to college with Parker Posey, who plays Darla in D&C, and I
just saw an ad for a 70s-based special coming on PBS with her in it. I
sure hope her entire career doesn't get stuck in the 70s.
-- Kit
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Give me a Leonard Cohen afterworld \ slo...@mindvox.phantom.com
So I can sigh eternally /
\ aj...@freenet.buffalo.edu
-- Kurt Cobain / ad...@leo.nmc.edu
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Daniel B Case
>> > I don't find the "cycle of history" idea terribly plausible, and will go
>> >on feeling that way until I see a refereed article about it in _Nature_ or
>> >_Science_...*with* statistical error bars, Student's t tests, etc....
>>
>> Oh please. You *know* that's not possible.
>
> No, dammit. Maybe *you* "know." But I only know things when they've
>been seriously validated.
My point was that historical knowledge doesn't work that way (There's a whole
bunch of people on alt.revisionism who wish that it did, but that's another
story). You deleted the end of the paragraph where I pointed out that you
simply cannot experiment with history the way you can with science, and that
it's easier to try and predict general trends rather than specific events.
> When I was a small child most serious people were loudly predicting that
>*my current work* (molecular genetics of metazoa) would never, ever be
>possible because blah blah blah. 20-odd years later, here I am, doing
>"impossible" work routinely... That impossibility prediction is so
>discredited not even Gunther Stent likes to remember it any more.
> As far as I'm concerned, Isaac Asimov's "psychohistory" is a science
>waiting to be made real, *not* an impossibility.
Now, that would be something to work on.
>
>
>> History doesn't work that way,
>
> See above.
See above.
>
>
>> and,
>> in fact, when people have tried to quantify history in the hopes of making it
>> more "scientific" (a la "cliometrics") the result has usually been embarassments
>> like "Time on the Cross" ("Slavery wasn't *that* bad-see how our figures show
>> that slaves only got whipped once a year on average?"
>
> Oh I see. A scientific discipline is "discredited" when it tells us
>nasty, politically incorrect stuff we'd rather not hear. Well, who needed
>Darwinian evolutionary theory anyhow? Let's toss it.
I think evolution has been proven to a great extent (but just say that on talk.
origins). even the Catholic Church thinks so.
> As I recall, the author of "Time on the Cross" (who got a Nobel in
>economics last year) wrote a sequel where he distinguished slavery's
>economic efficiency from its moral standing. So he wasn't the oaf that
>your paraphrase suggests.
Well, it later turned out that his figure was off because he miscounted both
the number of slaves and the number of the whippings. But in any case he was
barking up the wrong tree-the revised figures indicated that slaves saw at
least one whipping every four days, and that was how it really affected them.
AS your answer tacitly admits, there is an element of history that can't be
reduced to figures.
I'm not terribly impressed by finding out he won the Nobel in economics, either.
> I stand by my original contentions. I think a science of history would
>be possible and interesting. I also think that sloppy work merely slows
>down the rate at which we will achieve it. I'd love it if S&H weren't
>sloppy, but without testable hypotheses, that's what they are.
A lot of early science was sloppy and had bad hypotheses. Those are inevitable
on the way to truth. I'm sure you would admit that.
Brian Yamauchi
>In article <schwarze-2...@fennel.bio.caltech.edu>, schw...@starbase1.caltech.edu (Erich Schwarz) writes...
>>> > I don't find the "cycle of history" idea terribly plausible, and will go
>>> >on feeling that way until I see a refereed article about it in _Nature_ or
>>> >_Science_...*with* statistical error bars, Student's t tests, etc....
>>>
>>> Oh please. You *know* that's not possible.
>>
>> No, dammit. Maybe *you* "know." But I only know things when they've
>>been seriously validated.
>My point was that historical knowledge doesn't work that way (There's a whole
>bunch of people on alt.revisionism who wish that it did, but that's another
>story). You deleted the end of the paragraph where I pointed out that you
>simply cannot experiment with history the way you can with science, and that
>it's easier to try and predict general trends rather than specific events.
True, but at least you can come up with quantitative analyses after
the fact. I'm not quite as demanding as Erich, I don't need a
_Nature_ article, but I would like to see _some_ quantitative data
that indicates a cycle roughly in correspondence to S&H's generations.
For example: If reactive generations really are so economically
disadvantaged with resepect to the other generations, I would expect
to see cyclic declines in the median income for people of a given age.
In fact, if these generational influences are so sweeping as S&H
argue, I would expect this to show up in a number of measurable ways
in addition to income: suicide rates for teenagers, poverty levels of
the elderly, voting tendencies of 30-year-olds, etc. The point is
that the resulting trends need to be cyclic (and the phase of the
cycle should approximate that of S&H's four-stroke cycle) in order to
support their theories. So, simply pointing out that current
twentysomethings make less than Silents did when they were in their
20s isn't enough -- the same would need to be true in previous cycles
as well.
>> I stand by my original contentions. I think a science of history would
>>be possible and interesting. I also think that sloppy work merely slows
>>down the rate at which we will achieve it. I'd love it if S&H weren't
>>sloppy, but without testable hypotheses, that's what they are.
>A lot of early science was sloppy and had bad hypotheses. Those are inevitable
>on the way to truth. I'm sure you would admit that.
Yes, but it doesn't imply that all sloppy theories with bad hypotheses
are inevitably true.
The problem is that you can "prove" anything if you pick-and-choose
your statistical factoids. Recent statistics indicate that the amount
of money spent by teenagers on entertainment products has increased
substantially over previous generations. Therefore, all Xers are
rich and carefree, right? :-)
One or two graphs with peaks and valleys in the right places would go
a long way toward convincing me that S&H are onto something real. As
it stands, they have an interesting theory, which may be right and may
be wrong, but I'm not planning my life around it.
hulsey
I ('63) remember seeing Walter Cronkite list the body counts for each country
on the evening news. I also remember one of the draft lotteries. I looked
in the list for my birthday. I had a fairly low number (I probably would
have been drafted.) Not realizing what it meant, I was happy because I
thought a low number was better. My babysitter then told me, "You don't want
to have a low number," but she didn't go into details.
Considering that I grew up in Akron, it's surprising that I don't remember
the Kent State shootings. I remember much of the aftermath, but not the
reporting of the event itself.
That about sums up my Vietnam recollections.
Guru Aleph_Null
Erich Schwarz <schw...@starbase1.caltech.edu> wrote:
> As far as I'm concerned, Isaac Asimov's "psychohistory" is a science
>waiting to be made real, *not* an impossibility.
I has already, somewhat... I've seen a book about "psychohistory" but
it wasn't quite the same thing as what Asimov wrote about. It wasn't
a "people forecaster" but a "person" forcaster. By taking a
description of a person's childhood they tried to predict what the
person would do when they grew up.
>> History doesn't work that way,
> See above.
> I stand by my original contentions. I think a science of history would
>be possible and interesting. I also think that sloppy work merely slows
>down the rate at which we will achieve it. I'd love it if S&H weren't
>sloppy, but without testable hypotheses, that's what they are.
In a general way, it would be possible, but anything more specific
would be reading tea-leaves.
Speaking of Tea-Leaves... here's some interpretations of Nostradamus's
quaintrains targetted for the next few years:
1992 -- "George Bush reelected."
Whoops.
1993 -- "The California Earthquake"
Still got until New Years... even though they said it was supposed
to happen in May.
1993 -- "Sound Waves Kill Cancer"
1993-1995 -- "America Burns"
Supposedly there's a major dought.
1993-1996 -- "A New Hole In the Ozone Layer"
1995 -- "Black Holes Explained"
That's funny, I thought we had alredy explained them, just
not proved them.
1995-1998 -- "Israel Defeated by her Arab Nieghbors"
A really antisemitc prediction to put in a book. I wouldn't
have included it if I were putting the book together, because the
world needs less reasons for hatred.
1996 -- "Medicine Reverses the Aging Process"
Good, then we can put all them old people back to
work again.. "You're not old anymore, retire at 140."
<satire notied for the satire impaired>
1998 -- my favorite... "Aliens Televised"
2000 -- "A New World Religion"
``In the next millennium, Christianity faces a strange doctrine
which encircles science and religion, two high associates of God
who suffers from undermining.''
Supposedly beginning on March 4th, 1993... everyone mark that
on their calendars for a predicted media circus. The "meltdown"
starts on Feb 2nd up to the 3rd of May, so its going to be like
a month long media circus.
1992-1998 -- "Women Priests in the Church of England"
1992 -- "AIDS in the Catholic Priesthood."
Heh. Who's shocked? Who's surprised? Year's wrong though.
1995 -- "The Power of Genetics"
``Genetics gives power over the human body by making a map. It
indicates the heart of a cell. It destroys the isolated virus.
On the case itself, the symptom treated through the located
center of infection.''
From the rest of the description, it sounds like a prediction that
incremental gene therapy will become a more regular treatment.
1994-1996 -- "Education"
This one makes a lot of sense:
`` Each child receives a unique education. The instructors
will not constrict the brain. It teaches itself laws so much
more easily that it outstrips adults.''
1993-1996 -- "Japan's Economy Hurts"
(I don't know if they intended that to be a Japlish phrase or not.)
Blah.. its mostly a lot of education guesses, I don't buy into their
system of analyzing the quaintrains because it looks a lot like they
did a *lot* of "fudge the hypothesis and ignore the data that doesn't
fit" chicanery.
The book: Nostradamus: The End of the Millennium, V.J. Hewitt and
Peter Lorie.
>--Erich Schwarz / schwarze...@starbase1.caltech.edu
--
.---------------------------------------. \ //~\ ~|~ |~~\
|Guru Aleph-Null s...@ukelele.gcr.com|% \ /| | | | |
`---------------------------------------'# \/ \_/ _|_ |__/
%#######################################% Where Prohibited.
Wendi Dunlap
>I ('63) remember seeing Walter Cronkite list the body counts for each country
>on the evening news. I also remember one of the draft lotteries. I looked
>in the list for my birthday. I had a fairly low number (I probably would
>have been drafted.) Not realizing what it meant, I was happy because I
>thought a low number was better. My babysitter then told me, "You don't want
>to have a low number," but she didn't go into details.
My memories are similar. (I was born in '65.) I remember seeing the body
counts and war footage on the evening news every night. I remember
hearing my parents discussing it, and hearing my mom say something like
"The world revolves around Cambodia." I have no idea what she meant. :) I
remember saying at the age of four or so, "I''m glad I'm not a boy,
'cause boys get drafted." I also remember an Archie comic from roughly
that time period which was an "imaginary story" (silly phrase. aren't
they ALL imaginary?) in which all the boys in Riverdale get drafted and
are sent off to Vietnam. The Archies' band play one last hometown gig
before going off to war. This stuff gave me NIGHTMARES.
>Considering that I grew up in Akron, it's surprising that I don't remember
>the Kent State shootings. I remember much of the aftermath, but not the
>reporting of the event itself.
I remember it, but I didn't really know much about it.
>That about sums up my Vietnam recollections.
Mine too...
--
Wendi Dunlap | litl...@hebron.connected.com * sysop of Slumberland,
206-547-2629 | Contact me for info on the Posies mailing list *
I'm listening to: A Lump of Coal, Xmas compilation, Various Artists
Ian Williams
>: (Daniel B Case) wrote:
>: > The general feeling of epigony pervades all of us...
>Then Erich Shwarz wrote:
>: Speak for yerself. I don't feel like an epigone: I feel like a
>: Heinlein character trapped in a Vonnegut novel. In other words, *I* have
>: rationality, purpose and optimism, but a lot of people around me don't.
>Then Jennifer Basil wrote:
>Perfect! ....what *he* said!
Um, I can't speak for my distinguished colleague in Buffalo, but what I
believe Daniel was saying was that everyone around our age group has a
vastly different way of looking at the world than those who are twenty
years older, regardless of your own private notions. A sense of purpose
and rationale - much like a Sense of Humor and Individuality - are
qualities that very few will admit to Not having. You can have a raging
sense of personal optimism and still have, to a Boomer or anyone
else of that phylum, a distinctly nihilistic outlook. I want to think like
Roald Dahl, but I still whine a lot.
>: Alas, it was the foggy, pleasurable haze of
>: the Seventies that made the Nineties possible. We may get another "mellow
>: decade" eventually, but I want to get off-planet before it happens.
>
>As for "mellow decade"...I want to be off-planet too!
I think there is a HUGE chasm between the concepts of "fun" and "mellow".
To me, despite the typical childhood nostalgia, the '70 were *fun*.
If you're afraid of mellow, then don't dare walk outside - he we are in
our 20s, full of ravishing estrogen and effervescent testosterone, aching
for meaningful contact with the other gender, and we have to endure
articles in "Newsweek" entitled "Sex in the 'Snoring '90s'"... if nobody
else is going to bother getting angry about stuff like that, I'll gladly
volunteer.
Ian Williams
Brian Yamauchi <yama...@ces.cwru.edu> wrote:
>In article <CIEB0...@acsu.buffalo.edu> v140...@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu (Daniel B Case) writes:
>>In article <schwarze-2...@fennel.bio.caltech.edu>, schw...@starbase1.caltech.edu (Erich Schwarz) writes...
>>>> > I don't find the "cycle of history" idea terribly plausible, and will go
>>>> >on feeling that way until I see a refereed article about it in _Nature_ or
>>>> >_Science_...*with* statistical error bars, Student's t tests, etc....
>>>>
>>>> Oh please. You *know* that's not possible.
>>>
>>> No, dammit. Maybe *you* "know." But I only know things when they've
>>>been seriously validated.
>
>the fact. I'm not quite as demanding as Erich, I don't need a
>_Nature_ article, but I would like to see _some_ quantitative data
>that indicates a cycle roughly in correspondence to S&H's generations.
>
>For example: If reactive generations really are so economically
>disadvantaged with resepect to the other generations, I would expect
>to see cyclic declines in the median income for people of a given age.
>
>In fact, if these generational influences are so sweeping as S&H
>argue, I would expect this to show up in a number of measurable ways
>in addition to income: suicide rates for teenagers, poverty levels of
>the elderly, voting tendencies of 30-year-olds, etc. The point is
>that the resulting trends need to be cyclic (and the phase of the
>cycle should approximate that of S&H's four-stroke cycle) in order to
>support their theories. So, simply pointing out that current
>twentysomethings make less than Silents did when they were in their
>20s isn't enough -- the same would need to be true in previous cycles
>as well.
>
>>> I stand by my original contentions. I think a science of history would
>>>be possible and interesting. I also think that sloppy work merely slows
>>>down the rate at which we will achieve it. I'd love it if S&H weren't
>>>sloppy, but without testable hypotheses, that's what they are.
>
>Yes, but it doesn't imply that all sloppy theories with bad hypotheses
>are inevitably true.
>
>The problem is that you can "prove" anything if you pick-and-choose
>your statistical factoids. Recent statistics indicate that the amount
>of money spent by teenagers on entertainment products has increased
>substantially over previous generations. Therefore, all Xers are
>rich and carefree, right? :-)
>
>One or two graphs with peaks and valleys in the right places would go
>a long way toward convincing me that S&H are onto something real. As
>it stands, they have an interesting theory, which may be right and may
>be wrong, but I'm not planning my life around it.
This is going to sound pissy...
But those parties complaining about S&H's books will sound a lot
smarter if they actually *read* one of them. I guarantee the conversation
will go much smoother...
Ian Williams
Carl Beaudry <bea...@cc.swarthmore.edu> wrote:
>Ian Williams wrote:
>
>[Ian's theory and my hat discriptions deleted....]
>
>> Strange as it may seem, I had already taken a lot of that into consideration.
>
>The theory may be right, but without the appropriate headgear, it's hard to
>take it seriously as social science. Didn't anyone tell you about wearing
>the little paper hairnet-hat before serving up the McScience Nuggets? You
>need it to separate what falls out of your own head from the final product
>that your selling.
I said it was a tenuous theory, Carl. I wasn't planning on toting it to
the Social Science BBQ Bake-Off 'n' Bingo Tractor Pull. I'll leave all of
the dangerous Social Scientific heavy lifting to you boys over in the "What
is Art" thread... :)
Christopher Frankonis
> This is going to sound pissy...
> But those parties complaining about S&H's books will sound a lot
> smarter if they actually *read* one of them. I guarantee the conversation
> will go much smoother...
Common sense may indeed sound pissy, but sign me up in agreement here.
Having been watching this thread go by for the pasy few days or so, and
having read both GENERATIONS and 13TH GEN, I'd like to stick my nose in now.
The theory S&H present in GENERATIONS, frankly, struck me as fairly well
argued for. Maybe I'm just overly-suggestible, but the patterns they
describe seem pretty clear as they outline them.
That said, I must also say that I have a problem with S&H's focus on
financial and economic issues. I think I posted a reference to this
somewhere (and I still haven't found the exact citation in the piles of
paper I have in a trunk in my room), but there was a piece in The Nation
this year that illustrated how authors like S&H have been using the
Generation X issue in an attempt to further their own economic and
politcial ideas -- moreso than to attempt to galvanize or illuminate ours.
This is not to say there aren't legitimate economic issues to be faced,
just that I think more of us should read these two books, but then try to
understand what the scope of their motivations might be.
Rick Healy
Do get angry...get even. Does anybody else see magazine potential for
this news group? GenX paracultural responds to Bommerisk end-of-history
self-importance.
--
Richard J. Healy <cd...@nasagiss.giss.nasa.gov> (212) 678-5572
Guru Aleph_Null
I suspect you saw Tuesday's Washington Post
Wash-Post Excerpt: Tues Dec 21, Style:Magazines/Radio Page B7
Bikini's Typeface Explosion
===========================
...a magazine aimed at young men who can't related to the
yuppie gloss of GQ and Playboy. The aesthetic is that of the
quiver-camera music video, whith photos, text and layouts affecting a
nervously random, imperfect look.
The Hard part is reading it. The designes seem to have
concluded that the male half of the 13th Generation depises such
literary conventions as paragraphs, columns, and basic legibility.
Thus, in perusing an interview with musician and writer Henry Rollins,
you find yourself holding the page about two inches from your face in
hopes of deciphering the part where the little gray-green words fade
into a blue-green photographic image that may or may not be Rollins's
right arm.
...but has anyone considered devising a truly original
magazine for this generation, one that's abotu something other than
stars?
---8<---
From the rest of the description, this magazine looks like a
uncyberpunk Mondo 2000 knockoff. And what realy marks it as a crap
magazine, is they printed it on 10-inch square pages. At least WiReD
isn't printed on square pages...
I don't think you could do anything for a.s.g-x to turn it into a
magazine, but a newsletter might be possible.
>--
>Richard J. Healy <cd...@nasagiss.giss.nasa.gov> (212) 678-5572
Carl Beaudry
> Carl Beaudry wrote:
> >Ian Williams wrote:
> >
> >[Ian's theory and my hat discriptions deleted....]
> >
> >> Strange as it may seem, I had already taken a lot of that
> >> into consideration.
> >
> >The theory may be right, but without the appropriate headgear, it's hard to
> >take it seriously as social science. Didn't anyone tell you about wearing
> >the little paper hairnet-hat before serving up the McScience Nuggets?...
>
> I said it was a tenuous theory, Carl. I wasn't planning on toting it to
> the Social Science BBQ Bake-Off 'n' Bingo Tractor Pull. I'll leave all of
> the dangerous Social Scientific heavy lifting to you boys over in the "What
> is Art" thread... :)
What? So you can sit back and listen to "The Safety Dance?" :^)
Metaphoric overextension intended.
--Carl
Jennifer Basil
: >: In article <CI9yF...@acsu.buffalo.edu>, v140...@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu
: >: (Daniel B Case) wrote:
: >: > The general feeling of epigony pervades all of us...
: >Then Erich Shwarz wrote:
: >: Speak for yerself. I don't feel like an epigone: I feel like a
: >: Heinlein character trapped in a Vonnegut novel. In other words, *I* have
: >: rationality, purpose and optimism, but a lot of people around me don't.
: >Then Jennifer Basil wrote:
: >Perfect! ....what *he* said!
: Um, I can't speak for my distinguished colleague in Buffalo, but what I
: believe Daniel was saying was that everyone around our age group has a
: vastly different way of looking at the world than those who are twenty
: years older, regardless of your own private notions. A sense of purpose
: and rationale - much like a Sense of Humor and Individuality - are
: qualities that very few will admit to Not having. You can have a raging
: sense of personal optimism and still have, to a Boomer or anyone
: else of that phylum, a distinctly nihilistic outlook. I want to think like
: Roald Dahl, but I still whine a lot.
What a telling image...you're very good at this! Really, I'm sincere.
: >: Alas, it was the foggy, pleasurable haze of
: >: the Seventies that made the Nineties possible. We may get another "mellow
: >: decade" eventually, but I want to get off-planet before it happens.
: >
: >As for "mellow decade"...I want to be off-planet too!
: I think there is a HUGE chasm between the concepts of "fun" and "mellow".
: To me, despite the typical childhood nostalgia, the '70 were *fun*.
: If you're afraid of mellow, then don't dare walk outside - he we are in
: our 20s, full of ravishing estrogen and effervescent testosterone, aching
: for meaningful contact with the other gender, and we have to endure
: articles in "Newsweek" entitled "Sex in the 'Snoring '90s'"... if nobody
: else is going to bother getting angry about stuff like that, I'll gladly
: volunteer.
: -Ian
I guess concepts of mellow differ...I don't associate "mellow"
with the thrill of hormones, and the *ping* of being an alive
20 something year old ("fun"). I think of people sitting back and watching,
rather than going out and *doing*....("not fun, mellow").
As for Newsweek..they've been off my list for about 5 years now (can
you say...Tabloid?). But I too tire of the self declared "oh the
world is boring..buy a car phone!" view of the universe. I mean
really, the world is what you make it...so you're not the only
one who gets angry at the sight of garbage like that! The newscasts
are the same as well...gone are the human interest stories with
a sense of optimism and adventure ("this 80 year old lady skydives!")..
replaced with Bobbits and bizarre 4 way marriages that end in
turmoil. The adventure is still out there..they just choose to
declare that it doesn't exist.
I ramble...that's what you get for staying up until 4am when you
still have to work the next day. But, ah! The adventure of being
the only one awake during an exciting rainstorm! Couldn't sleep.
Jenny
: --
: The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the University of
: North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Campus Office for Information
: Technology, or the Experimental Bulletin Board Service.
: internet: laUNChpad.unc.edu or 152.2.22.80
--
Jennifer Basil Member: Generation X, BDFT#2, FcFC 8o
(ba...@bio.bu.edu) Boston Univeristy Marine Program, Woods Hole, MA
"More light..."
Goethe
Rick Healy
No I didn't see the article, but from your description it isn't what
I have in mind. I was thinking of something more like Spy with it's
cynical expose's of the public life. Then add some short fiction to it.
Every month or every week even you could add an article about the current
topic in this news group. What'a'ya say? Anyone?
-Rick
Dave Mooney
> In article <2f9dq1$d...@paleo.giss.nasa.gov>,
> Rick Healy <ri...@paleo.giss.nasa.gov> wrote:
>> In article <2f91og$d...@samba.oit.unc.edu>,
>> Ian Williams <Ian.Wi...@launchpad.unc.edu> wrote:
>>> I think there is a HUGE chasm between the concepts of "fun" and "mellow".
>>> To me, despite the typical childhood nostalgia, the '70 were *fun*.
I agree, but I'd like to destroy each and every photograph taken of me
during the entire decade. But on top of the fun, remember that in this
newsgroup we have slagged off the music, the fashion, and much else about the
decade, All that remains is Scooby Doo and Koogle. (And I'm sure that any
minute now, Brett will weigh in with another round of self-contradictory
statistics 'proving' how Carter screwed up the economy).
>>> If you're afraid of mellow, then don't dare walk outside - he we are in
>>> our 20s, full of ravishing estrogen and effervescent testosterone, aching
>>> for meaningful contact with the other gender, and we have to endure
>>> articles in "Newsweek" entitled "Sex in the 'Snoring '90s'"... if nobody
>>> else is going to bother getting angry about stuff like that, I'll gladly
>>> volunteer.
If you take seriously anything that Newsweek has to say about anything, that's
your decision. I prefer to roll my eyes and snigger at yet another lame
attempt to document the trends of the time. Knowing Newsweek, they probably
had an article "Sex in the 'Randy '90s'" the next week.
> I suspect you saw Tuesday's Washington Post
> Wash-Post Excerpt: Tues Dec 21, Style:Magazines/Radio Page B7
>
> Bikini's Typeface Explosion
> ===========================
> [snip]
>
> From the rest of the description, this magazine looks like a
> uncyberpunk Mondo 2000 knockoff. And what realy marks it as a crap
> magazine, is they printed it on 10-inch square pages. At least WiReD
> isn't printed on square pages...
It sounds more like a Raygun knockoff, with the agressive font design and
the interview with Sonny Rollins. But before we can properly criticise the
magazine, we need to know what they are trying to accomplish. If they are
primarily about experimental typography, with music as the sideline (like
Raygun), then that's one thing. If they are a music magazine with random
typographical styles, then flame the design mercilessly.
> I don't think you could do anything for a.s.g-x to turn it into a
> magazine, but a newsletter might be possible.
I can't wait to read the society column... "Ms Hubbard told Mr Inventor to
stuff himself, Mr Beaudry said nasty things about Mr Yoder, Ms O'Hare brought
ham sandwiches for refreshments."
dave
--
Dave Mooney d...@vnet.ibm.com
"Let bitter silence infect the wound"
Christine Delaney
(Ian Williams) wrote:
> I see a nihilism in them that is,
> coincidentally enough, the same as those people born in 1961-64. Both of
> these two groups were denied their formative childhood wonder years in the
> '70s, and they, to me, are different for it.
> Boy, *that's* a tenuous theory. Respond at will.
Can you go into a little more qualitative detail on what you mean by
nihilism in the 1961 to 1964 group? Paint me curious.
Christine DelPrete-Delaney | <Insert Standard Disclaimer>
cdel...@novell.com | <Insert Insightful Phrase >
Brian K. Yoder
>In article <2f9dq1$d...@paleo.giss.nasa.gov>,
>Rick Healy <ri...@paleo.giss.nasa.gov> wrote:
>>In article <2f91og$d...@samba.oit.unc.edu>,
>>Ian Williams <Ian.Wi...@launchpad.unc.edu> wrote:
>>>If you're afraid of mellow, then don't dare walk outside - he we are in
>>>our 20s, full of ravishing estrogen and effervescent testosterone, aching
>>>for meaningful contact with the other gender, and we have to endure
>>>articles in "Newsweek" entitled "Sex in the 'Snoring '90s'"... if nobody
>>>else is going to bother getting angry about stuff like that, I'll gladly
>>>volunteer.
It occurred to me that part of this "Nobody is having sex anymore" thing
that has been brewing in the press may well be a consequence of boomers
settling down. The truth is probably more that THEY aren't having sex
anymore, and as usual, if boomers aren't doing it, it isn't being done.
--Brian
--
+------------------+-----------------------------------------------------------+
| Brian K. Yoder | "The children who know how to think for themselves, spoil |
| byo...@netcom.com| the harmony of the collective society that is coming, |
| US Networx, Inc. | where everyone (would be) interdependent" --John Dewey |
+------------------+-----------------------------------------------------------+
Brian Yamauchi
>In article <YAMAUCHI.93...@yuggoth.ces.cwru.edu>,
>Brian Yamauchi <yama...@ces.cwru.edu> wrote:
>>In article <CIEB0...@acsu.buffalo.edu> v140...@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu (Daniel B Case) writes:
>>>In article <schwarze-2...@fennel.bio.caltech.edu>, schw...@starbase1.caltech.edu (Erich Schwarz) writes...
>>>>> >>I don't find the "cycle of history" idea terribly plausible, and will go
>>>>> >on feeling that way until I see a refereed article about it in _Nature_ or
>>>>> >_Science_...*with* statistical error bars, Student's t tests, etc....
>>>>>
>>>>> Oh please. You *know* that's not possible.
>>>>
>>>>>No, dammit. Maybe *you* "know." But I only know things when they've
>>>>been seriously validated.
>>
>>True, but at least you can come up with quantitative analyses after
>>the fact. I'm not quite as demanding as Erich, I don't need a
>>_Nature_ article, but I would like to see _some_ quantitative data
>>that indicates a cycle roughly in correspondence to S&H's generations.
>This is going to sound pissy...
>But those parties complaining about S&H's books will sound a lot
>smarter if they actually *read* one of them. I guarantee the conversation
>will go much smoother...
I've read both of them (including Ian's "crashes" :-).
S&H present a huge number of statistical factoids, comparing one
generation to another, to support their theory. Some of these facts
are interesting and some are compelling, but it would have been more
convincing, to me at least, if the _same_ measures were used to
compare all of the generations -- or at least all of the generations
over the last couple cycles.
They present quantitative evidence that there are more poor (young)
13ers and more poor (old) Lost than the GIs/Silents/Boomers in the
middle, but about the Gilded they just say they "were more likely to
die or fall into destitution than their parents at like age. They
were also more likely to make a fortune starting out from nothing",
and economic measures seem to be missing from the sets of Liberty
Facts and Cavalier Facts. It's certainly interesting that "the
Liberty accounted for all five delegates accused of complicity with
the British" and "a striking number of the best-known Cavaliers died a
violent death", but it's not something that one can base a firm
economic model upon.
I'm not trying to run down S&H. They've come up with an interesting
theory, and they've obviously done a lot of work trying to find
evidence to support that theory. It could be that such quantitative
evidence simply doesn't exist for the earlier cycles, and that's
certainly not _their_ fault.
All I'm saying is that it seems a bit premature to me to be placing so
much confidence in their predictations about "completing the cycles"
for the various generations. Maybe 100 years from now, we'll look
back and see that they were absolutely correct (though one wonders
what biotechnology and increased lifespans would do to such
generational dynamics) -- but maybe not.
My guess is that they probably _are_ onto something with respect to
the generational moods -- maybe a pragmatic, cynical, nihilistic
generation does always follow on the tail of a moralistic,
ideological, self-righteous one, but what bothers me is the sense of
fatalism they imbue to their predictions.
For example, consider the last chapter of _13th_Gen_, where they
write:
"[The American Dream] is each generation's unique vision of
progress, each generation's unique sense of how to improve on the
legacy that has been handed down by its ancestors. The GIs defined
their Dream through economics. The Silent defined it through social
justice. Boomers defined it through inner consciousness...
"13ers do have a mission. Theirs is the American generation
that history has charged with the task of cleaning up after everybody
else's mess... Do the dirty work, have a little fun, help the kids
behind them."
And there's certainly nothing wrong with that, if that's what you want
to do with your life -- but some of us want more. Not more money,
necessarily, but a more positive, more progressive sense of life.
Instead of limiting ourselves to clean-up and damage control, we
should see our future more in terms of opening new frontiers and
creating new possibilities.
The GIs had their heroic campaigns against the Nazis and the
Communists; the Silents their New Frontier of science and their
crusade for civil rights; the Boomers their "spiritual awakening" and
Age of Aquarius; are we going to be satisfied being generational
garbage collectors for the rest of our lives?
Robert Cooperman
>I guess concepts of mellow differ...I don't associate "mellow"
>with the thrill of hormones, and the *ping* of being an alive
>20 something year old ("fun"). I think of people sitting back and watching,
>rather than going out and *doing*....("not fun, mellow").
>As for Newsweek..they've been off my list for about 5 years now (can
>you say...Tabloid?). But I too tire of the self declared "oh the
>world is boring..buy a car phone!" view of the universe. I mean
>really, the world is what you make it...so you're not the only
>one who gets angry at the sight of garbage like that! The newscasts
>are the same as well...gone are the human interest stories with
>a sense of optimism and adventure ("this 80 year old lady skydives!")..
>replaced with Bobbits and bizarre 4 way marriages that end in
>turmoil. The adventure is still out there..they just choose to
>declare that it doesn't exist.
Mellow always seemed to mean different things, similar to
"cool". But, a mellow person was not "up tight". A mellow
person could be active, or just be "hanging out".
Mellow is an inner calmness with an uninhibited sense of
activity. You know, sort of "do your own thing", and not
having any "guilt trips".
You know, these 70's words are cool man.
The 90's are not a mellow decade. The 90's are a time when
being up-tight is considered appropriate behavior. I guess
being earnest is also in style. It is also the time for the
New Puritanism. and the Mind Your Neighbor Decade.
And what about those weird TV talk shows? What does it mean
for this decade, that they are so popular? Maybe we should
translate TV shows from Cuba and North Korea, and replace the
shows about 4 way marriages involving mothers and daughters
with uplifting stuff about how the 5 year plan for tractor
construction is being exceeded, and how medical studies show
that eating just one bowl of rice a day will improve your
health. Instead of billboards advertising stuff, they could
show pictures of heroic workers building the future.
>I ramble...that's what you get for staying up until 4am when you
>still have to work the next day. But, ah! The adventure of being
>the only one awake during an exciting rainstorm! Couldn't sleep.
Neat-o wind storm here in Boston. Yesterday, before 3:26 pm
EST (the solstice) it was raining and fall like. Then last
night it got cold and real windy. A good start to winter.
Happy solstice!
Have a good winter! Enjoy those crisp cold days, under bright
sunlight reflected off of snow. For those of you in places
where you do not get winter, well drive up north (check your
anti-freeze first).
Bob Cooperman
r...@xis.xerox.com
Any views expressed are my own and are not intended to
represent my employer. (But you already know that).
Robert Cooperman
>In article <2evuqr$g...@samba.oit.unc.edu>, Ian.Wi...@launchpad.unc.edu
>(Ian Williams) wrote:
>> I see a nihilism in them that is,
>> coincidentally enough, the same as those people born in 1961-64. Both of
>> these two groups were denied their formative childhood wonder years in the
>> '70s, and they, to me, are different for it.
>> Boy, *that's* a tenuous theory. Respond at will.
>
>Can you go into a little more qualitative detail on what you mean by
>nihilism in the 1961 to 1964 group? Paint me curious.
Well I was born in 1964, and the 70's were pretty formative.
There were some formative elements in the late 60's though.
I remember that there were hippies, but they were just
people with long hair.
My elementary school was pretty radical, with a lot of Silent
Generation teachers, who somehow coexisted with the GI teachers.
I was pretty into Earth day in 1970, and on boycotting tuna
because of the dolphins.
I don't see how these would make one nihilistic though.
I don't really think I am nihilistic, but who knows, who cares.
Bob Cooperman
r...@xis.xerox.com
#define STANDARD_DISCLAIMER "Any views expressed are my own and are
not intended to represent my employer."
STANDARD_DISCLAIMER
Peter Dubuque
>S&H present a huge number of statistical factoids, comparing one
>generation to another, to support their theory. Some of these facts
>are interesting and some are compelling, but it would have been more
>convincing, to me at least, if the _same_ measures were used to
>compare all of the generations -- or at least all of the generations
>over the last couple cycles.
>They present quantitative evidence that there are more poor (young)
>13ers and more poor (old) Lost than the GIs/Silents/Boomers in the
>middle, but about the Gilded they just say they "were more likely to
>die or fall into destitution than their parents at like age. They
>were also more likely to make a fortune starting out from nothing",
>and economic measures seem to be missing from the sets of Liberty
>Facts and Cavalier Facts. It's certainly interesting that "the
>Liberty accounted for all five delegates accused of complicity with
>the British" and "a striking number of the best-known Cavaliers died a
>violent death", but it's not something that one can base a firm
>economic model upon.
>I'm not trying to run down S&H. They've come up with an interesting
>theory, and they've obviously done a lot of work trying to find
>evidence to support that theory. It could be that such quantitative
>evidence simply doesn't exist for the earlier cycles, and that's
>certainly not _their_ fault.
Chances are that this sort of evidence *doesn't* exist for the most part
except in very general terms. You'll find that in their coverage of the
earlier generations, they rely more heavily on social attitudes than on
economic statistics. Even then a lot of things just don't carry over from
one cycle to the next. I mean, you can't look at the number of Cavaliers
convicted of witchcraft, compare that number with the number of Liberty &
Gilded convicted of witchcraft and say that since none of the later
generations were, there's no cycle. You also have to look at the impact
of things that are completely outside the scope of the cycle, like the
influenza epidemic early in this century, and try to correct for them.
But in general things, like changes in life expectancy and economic
prosperity from one generation to the next *can* be identified even
without concrete, detailed economic indicators, based on long-term trends
observed in things like newspapers, census reports etc. They just can't
always be quantified into nice pie charts and bar graphs.
It's important to recall that generational dynamics are not really
quantifiable or predictable--but then, neither is the theory of evolution.
The trend only appears over the long term, and the farther back you go,
the less data you have to work with. However, S&H have developed a quite
valid scientific theory, to the extent that they have formulated a
hypothesis that satisfactorily describes the data they observe and provide
a way of testing the validity of that hypothesis.
>My guess is that they probably _are_ onto something with respect to
>the generational moods -- maybe a pragmatic, cynical, nihilistic
>generation does always follow on the tail of a moralistic,
>ideological, self-righteous one, but what bothers me is the sense of
>fatalism they imbue to their predictions.
Well, by that same token, *all* predictions made by scientific theories
are "fatalistic." All useful theories need to explain a set of data *and*
predict the nature of new data that has yet to be obtained. That is the
only way their theory can be tested. They don't say definitively that
certain things will happen; rather, they say that if their theory is
correct, certain things are likely to happen--such as the "Crisis of
2020." What it will be--a nuclear or biological war, another Great
Depression, a coup d'etat--is not something that can be predicted. But *if*
their theory is correct, we can expect *some* kind of major shock to
the structure of society toward the end of the first quarter of the 21st
century. That's no more fatalistic than a prediction of when the next
lunar eclipse will occur (although, granted, the timing of lunar eclipses
isn't influenced by random events).
>For example, consider the last chapter of _13th_Gen_, where they
>write:
> "[The American Dream] is each generation's unique vision of
>progress, each generation's unique sense of how to improve on the
>legacy that has been handed down by its ancestors. The GIs defined
>their Dream through economics. The Silent defined it through social
>justice. Boomers defined it through inner consciousness...
> "13ers do have a mission. Theirs is the American generation
>that history has charged with the task of cleaning up after everybody
>else's mess... Do the dirty work, have a little fun, help the kids
>behind them."
>And there's certainly nothing wrong with that, if that's what you want
>to do with your life -- but some of us want more. Not more money,
>necessarily, but a more positive, more progressive sense of life.
>Instead of limiting ourselves to clean-up and damage control, we
>should see our future more in terms of opening new frontiers and
>creating new possibilities.
>The GIs had their heroic campaigns against the Nazis and the
>Communists; the Silents their New Frontier of science and their
>crusade for civil rights; the Boomers their "spiritual awakening" and
>Age of Aquarius; are we going to be satisfied being generational
>garbage collectors for the rest of our lives?
I wonder...if this book had been written fifty years ago, would the GIs,
then in rising adulthood, have found its predictions fatalistic? Just
because the outlook isn't pretty doesn't mean it's not correct. Maybe we
don't want to be a sacrificial generation destined to clean up the messes
of our elders. But *somebody's got to do it. *They're* obviously not
going to, and are we willing to force the janitor's uniform onto future
generations the way it was forced onto us? Don't we have a greater sense
of decency in such matters than our elders?
That's not to say that we're all condemned to a life of relative poverty.
Recall your citation of the economic health of the Gilded generation as a
whole. The situation is the same today. There are members of our
generation dying in the streets every day. There is also Michael Dell.
Our generation faces risks that previous generations never had to deal
with. We also face tremendous opportunities if we can see them and take
advantage of them.
--
________________________________________________
This is a test of our high-pitched, whiny sound.
________________________________________________
Erich Schwarz
Aleph_Null) wrote:
> In article <schwarze-2...@fennel.bio.caltech.edu>,
> Erich Schwarz <schw...@starbase1.caltech.edu> wrote:
> > I stand by my original contentions. I think a science of history would
> >be possible and interesting. I also think that sloppy work merely slows
> >down the rate at which we will achieve it. I'd love it if S&H weren't
> >sloppy, but without testable hypotheses, that's what they are.
>
> In a general way, it would be possible, but anything more specific
> would be reading tea-leaves.
Take a look at Raymond Smullyan's essay "5000 B.C.", in which he
describes the travails of somebody trying to do astronomy before the
invention of geometry.
The fact is, neither of us "knows" whether a real science of
psychohistory, Hari Seldom-style, is possible. We just have differing
suspicions about the intellectual structure of the universe. Since I've
had absolutely first-hand experience of doing "IMPOSSIBLE! NEVER!"-type
science with my own hands, I tend to be a tad more optimistic than most of
you out there.
I think a lot of the opposition to the *idea* of an effective science
of history comes from the desire of some people to leave some areas of life
magical and uncontaminated by the painful sort of illuminations that, say,
evolutionary science has brought to biology. If we had rigorous proofs
that--for instance--socialism was an ideal/really stupid (pick your least
favorite result!), a LOT of people would demonstrate their rationality by
lynching the scientists who had been mean-spirited enough to tell them the
truth. Likewise with any other form of society that people are attached
to.
The blunt fact is, there are a boatload of people out there who like
being lied to and living in a warm fuzzy blur. That's OK, as long as they
don't try to keep science from doing its job--which is to frustrate them at
every turn.
Meanwhile, half-witted psuedoscience, without testability or rigorous
chains of reasoning, helps keep us *all* deluded by thinking that we "know"
more than we really know. I don't see why I should be patient with that,
and I'm not.
--Erich Schwarz / schwarze...@starbase1.caltech.edu
Erich Schwarz
Dubuque) wrote:
> ...you can't look at the number of Cavaliers
> convicted of witchcraft, compare that number with the number of Liberty &
> Gilded convicted of witchcraft and say that since none of the later
> generations were, there's no cycle. You also have to look at the impact
> of things that are completely outside the scope of the cycle, like the
> influenza epidemic early in this century, and try to correct for them.
> But in general things, like changes in life expectancy and economic
> prosperity from one generation to the next *can* be identified even
> without concrete, detailed economic indicators, based on long-term trends
> observed in things like newspapers, census reports etc. They just can't
> always be quantified into nice pie charts and bar graphs.
So, what's the point?
If the means of ascertaining the "pattern" are totally impressionistic,
just how "testable" are any of S&H's conclusions going to be?
Science is prose, not poetry. It's bitterly hard to make complex
systems interpretable in objective terms, but that's what somebody's going
to have to do if we're going to get past Nostradamus and have any
resembling a serious theory of history.
--Erich Schwarz / schwarze...@starbase1.caltech.edu
Erich Schwarz
yama...@ces.cwru.edu (Brian Yamauchi) wrote:
>
> In article <2f930f$e...@samba.oit.unc.edu> Ian.Wi...@launchpad.unc.edu (Ian Williams) writes:
> >This is going to sound pissy...
> >But those parties complaining about S&H's books will sound a lot
> >smarter if they actually *read* one of them. I guarantee the conversation
> >will go much smoother...
I originally asked an honest, benign question: "Where are the error
bars?" I got the answer (paraphrased): "We don't need no steenking error
bars!"
Why exactly do I want to waste my time plowing through several hundred
pages by two authors who have no idea of the concepts of falsifiability,
multiple hypotheses assignable to single data, or definable error levels?
They're cold-fusion wannabes. To heck with them.
> ...consider the last chapter of _13th_Gen_, where they
> write:
>
> "[The American Dream] is each generation's unique vision of
> progress, each generation's unique sense of how to improve on the
> legacy that has been handed down by its ancestors. The GIs defined
> their Dream through economics. The Silent defined it through social
> justice. Boomers defined it through inner consciousness...
> "13ers do have a mission. Theirs is the American generation
> that history has charged with the task of cleaning up after everybody
> else's mess... Do the dirty work, have a little fun, help the kids
> behind them."
>
> And there's certainly nothing wrong with that, if that's what you want
> to do with your life -- but some of us want more. Not more money,
> necessarily, but a more positive, more progressive sense of life.
> Instead of limiting ourselves to clean-up and damage control, we
> should see our future more in terms of opening new frontiers and
> creating new possibilities.
>
> The GIs had their heroic campaigns against the Nazis and the
> Communists; the Silents their New Frontier of science and their
> crusade for civil rights; the Boomers their "spiritual awakening" and
> Age of Aquarius; are we going to be satisfied being generational
> garbage collectors for the rest of our lives?
Not me.
--Erich Schwarz / schwarze...@starbase1.caltech.edu
Jonathan Priluck
What precisely do you mean by "theory of history"? It is difficult to
imagine what sort of a theory one could apply to a singular continuum. I
mean "history" is nothing more than a series of events which already
occured, any theory would almost have to have some predictive power or it
could never really be testable. Unfortunately this immediately leads
straight into prime philosophy territory. Is the universe deterministic?
If it is not, as I strongly suspect, then there can be no theory of history
either. At least not anything we would *recognize* as a theory. The very
structure of the logic of any such theory would very likely have to be
something new.
The Inventor
>
>--Erich Schwarz / schwarze...@starbase1.caltech.edu
--
* Jonathan Aerospace Materials Corp., 41 Naples Road, Brookline MA 02146 *
* Tel (617) 731-3637, Internet: jam...@world.std.com *
* Developers and future manufacturers of Lattice Block Materials ... *
* the world's strongest and lightest materials. *
Brian Yamauchi
>yama...@ces.cwru.edu (Brian Yamauchi) writes:
>>For example, consider the last chapter of _13th_Gen_, where they
>>write:
>> "13ers do have a mission. Theirs is the American generation
>>that history has charged with the task of cleaning up after everybody
>>else's mess... Do the dirty work, have a little fun, help the kids
>>behind them."
>>And there's certainly nothing wrong with that, if that's what you want
>>to do with your life -- but some of us want more. Not more money,
>>necessarily, but a more positive, more progressive sense of life.
>>Instead of limiting ourselves to clean-up and damage control, we
>>should see our future more in terms of opening new frontiers and
>>creating new possibilities.
>I wonder...if this book had been written fifty years ago, would the GIs,
>then in rising adulthood, have found its predictions fatalistic? Just
>because the outlook isn't pretty doesn't mean it's not correct. Maybe we
>don't want to be a sacrificial generation destined to clean up the messes
>of our elders. But *somebody's got to do it. *They're* obviously not
>going to, and are we willing to force the janitor's uniform onto future
>generations the way it was forced onto us? Don't we have a greater sense
>of decency in such matters than our elders?
Yes, there are a lot of things wrong with society in general, and
government in particular, and they need fixing -- but the point is
that we can do _more_ than just fix things.
We're the vanguard generation for the new millennium, and that calls
for a larger vision than just "reduce the deficit" (which is certainly
necessary, but hardly inspiring). Maybe that vision is one of a
global society linked by information superhighways, or maybe it's a
vision of building colonies in orbit and expanding throughout the
solar system, or one of transforming society with intelligent robots,
virtual reality, biotech, or nanotech -- or maybe it's a thousand
different visions being pursued by millions of different people.
The point is to look forward to new possibilities, not back at lost
opportunities.
>Our generation faces risks that previous generations never had to deal
>with. We also face tremendous opportunities if we can see them and take
>advantage of them.
This is absolutely true of Generation X -- and of every other
generation. New risks are always appearing -- the key is to be able
to see beyond the immediate problems to the opportunities on the other
side.
Steve Conley
Brian K. Yoder <byo...@netcom.com> wrote:
>It occurred to me that part of this "Nobody is having sex anymore" thing
>that has been brewing in the press may well be a consequence of boomers
>settling down. The truth is probably more that THEY aren't having sex
>anymore, and as usual, if boomers aren't doing it, it isn't being done.
That's the best explanation I've heard yet for this strange inconsistency
between the media and reality (imagine that, the media not being
consistent with reality! the horror!). I can't wait for thirty years
from now, when "Nobody is eating solid food anymore".
Steve
--
steveconleyprodukt 1993 st...@bronze.coil.com
Life is short. Slack hard. Customer Service
My opinions are not COIL's. Central Ohio Internet Link, Inc.
"GenX owned and operated."
Peter Dubuque
>> But in general things, like changes in life expectancy and economic
>> prosperity from one generation to the next *can* be identified even
>> without concrete, detailed economic indicators, based on long-term trends
>> observed in things like newspapers, census reports etc. They just can't
>> always be quantified into nice pie charts and bar graphs.
> So, what's the point?
> If the means of ascertaining the "pattern" are totally impressionistic,
>just how "testable" are any of S&H's conclusions going to be?
> Science is prose, not poetry. It's bitterly hard to make complex
>systems interpretable in objective terms, but that's what somebody's going
>to have to do if we're going to get past Nostradamus and have any
>resembling a serious theory of history.
When Harvard established its core requirements for sciences, they felt
the need to divide the incredibly broad area of "science" into two
categories based on the methods used in those categories. The first
category deals with the standard hard scientific stuff like chemistry and
physics, where results are always quantifiable and predictions are (if the
theory is correct) 100% accurate. Combine two moles of hydrogen and one
mole of oxygen and you always get one mole of water. The second, and no
less scientifically valid, deals with things that are *not* quantifiable,
where experiments are not always possible and events are not always
repeatable. Here we're dealing with things like evolution, plate
tectonics...things that take place on historical time scales, where the
further back you go the less data you have. All of these are no less
"impressionistic" than S&H's research, yet scientists agree that (with
possibly some dissent over things like punctuated equilibrium vs. straight
Darwinism) these theories are serious and valid. The fact that you can't
actually measure mutation of DNA half a billion years ago doesn't mean
that it didn't happen. You can witness its effects if you take a
broader--impressionistic, if you will--view of it. And the inability to
quantify your data in the same way that a high-energy physicist can
determine exactly what happens if you smash two protons together does not
mean that evolution is any less real than quantum mechanics.
Scientists keep telling us that Los Angeles is due for a massive
earthquake sometime within the next 30 years or so...but they are
completely unable to pinpoint exactly where and when it will occur up
until mere hours or minutes before the event (if at all). Does that mean
that the theory of plate tectonics, on which their estimates are based, is
not useful? Of course not. So why claim that S&H's theory is not useful
simply because it cannot make accurate predictions about the future?
Angeli Primlani
>that time period which was an "imaginary story" (silly phrase. aren't
>they ALL imaginary?) in which all the boys in Riverdale get drafted and
>are sent off to Vietnam. The Archies' band play one last hometown gig
>before going off to war. This stuff gave me NIGHTMARES.
Ackkk! That's oogie!
I don't remember much except the cover of Newsweek and the picture of
naked, fire bombed baby and mother. They had charred skin and were black
and red all over. In Cambodia. Also Nixon resigning. I remember Nixon
resigning. I didn't know what resigning was. I didn't know he was
president. Growing up in New Jersey, terribly close to umpteen American
Revolutionary battle sites, I kind of still thought the President was
George Washington.
Angeli Primlani
Dave Mooney
> Well I was born in 1964, and the 70's were pretty formative.
>
> There were some formative elements in the late 60's though.
> I was pretty into Earth day in 1970, and on boycotting tuna
> because of the dolphins.
You were politically active at six!? When I was that age, I was too busy
playing with blocks and learning my one-plus tables to do anything even
slightly Earth-saving.
> I don't really think I am nihilistic, but who knows, who cares.
"What's the difference between ignorance and apathy?"
dave
--
Dave Mooney d...@vnet.ibm.com
On the CD player:
Carl Beaudry
> Brian K. Yoder <byo...@netcom.com> wrote:
>
> >It occurred to me that part of this "Nobody is having sex anymore" thing
> >that has been brewing in the press may well be a consequence of boomers
> >settling down. The truth is probably more that THEY aren't having sex
> >anymore, and as usual, if boomers aren't doing it, it isn't being done.
>
> That's the best explanation I've heard yet for this strange inconsistency
> between the media and reality (imagine that, the media not being
> consistent with reality! the horror!). I can't wait for thirty years
> from now, when "Nobody is eating solid food anymore".
Yeah, but shortly after that: Time's Man Of The Year--The Grim Reaper!
Does this mean that someday there will be Ralph Lauren(tm) caskets?
--Carl
Dave Mooney
> Yeah, but shortly after that: Time's Man Of The Year--The Grim Reaper!
"It's a Mr Death. He's here about the reaping."
> Does this mean that someday there will be Ralph Lauren(tm) caskets?
Not at all. Ralph Lauren [tm] Cryogenic Capsules, maybe.
dave
--
Dave Mooney d...@vnet.ibm.com
On the CD player: "Don't Cry Too Hard", The Leslie Spit Tree-o
Wendi Dunlap
>I don't remember much except the cover of Newsweek and the picture of
>naked, fire bombed baby and mother. They had charred skin and were black
>and red all over. In Cambodia. Also Nixon resigning. I remember Nixon
>resigning. I didn't know what resigning was. I didn't know he was
>president. Growing up in New Jersey, terribly close to umpteen American
>Revolutionary battle sites, I kind of still thought the President was
>George Washington.
I remember being HIGHLY pissed off about the Watergate hearings, because
they kept pre-empting the cartoons and shows I wanted to watch.
I remember my mom being really happy when Nixon resigned. I didn't
understand Watergate at the time myself.
I also remember going to the drive-in with my parents to see a movie.
(The Sting, perhaps?) The second movie on the bill was called Let The
Good Times Roll; it was a documentary on the '50s. (Hmm. Maybe it wasn't
showing with The Sting. I did see The Sting at the drive-in, though.) At
some point, they showed Nixon on the screen, and everybody in the
drive-in started honking and booing. It was quite impressive. :)
Speaking of drive-ins... I miss them terribly. They were great. First
you'd go while it was still light out, to get a good spot. Then, if you
were a little kid like me, you'd run up to the playground under the
screen and play on the swingset, teeter-totter, and merry-go-round as the
light faded. As it started to get really dark, a parent would come get
you and take you by the snack bar for refreshments. The inside of the
snackbar was either in bright '50s turquoise and pink, or a '70s redo
with yellow and orange super-graphics. You could get popcorn and hotdogs
and coke. Then you'd go back to the car, where the big chunky metal
speaker was hanging firmly clipped to the window.
Then the show would begin. They'd start by playing the Star Spangled
Banner, with a film of a waving flag, then some previews of Coming
Attractions. Then the Main Event. You'd watch the first movie,
occasionally running down to the snack bar and lavatory. (And that was
probably the MOST fun -- walking through the drive-in while the movie was
playing, hearing the soundtrack coming from all the cars around.) On the
way back you'd forget which row your car was in. :) During intermission,
they played little films telling you to go to the snack bar.
If you were lucky, your parents would let you stay up to watch the
second feature; otherwise, you;d sleep in the back of the car. This was
fun, too - especially on the drive home when you could drift in and out
of sleep and feel the motion of the car all the while.
Those are some of my best childhood memories. The weird thing is that
people my age are probably the last generation to have these memories.
Almost all the drive-ins here in the Seattle area are gone; turned into
office parks and warehouse shopping clubs. I went to a great one in
Spokane a couple of years ago, but there were only 4 or 5 cars there that
night and the place was surrounded by office parks. I'm sure it's already
gone, now.
--
Wendi Dunlap | litl...@hebron.connected.com * sysop of Slumberland,
206-547-2629 | Contact me for info on the Posies mailing list *
I'm listening to: A Lump of Coal, Xmas compilation, Various Artists
JIM...@nuacvm.acns.nwu.edu
litl...@hebron.connected.com (Wendi Dunlap) writes:
> Speaking of drive-ins... I miss them terribly. They were great. First
>you'd go while it was still light out, to get a good spot. Then, if you
>were a little kid like me, you'd run up to the playground under the
>screen and play on the swingset, teeter-totter, and merry-go-round as the
>light faded. As it started to get really dark, a parent would come get
>you and take you by the snack bar for refreshments. The inside of the
>snackbar was either in bright '50s turquoise and pink, or a '70s redo
>with yellow and orange super-graphics. You could get popcorn and hotdogs
>and coke. Then you'd go back to the car, where the big chunky metal
>speaker was hanging firmly clipped to the window.
and able to watch the movie. You could be in your jammies and anything! I
once went to a drive-in that broadcast a weak signal over the low FM band.
That was cool, too.
> Then the show would begin. They'd start by playing the Star Spangled
>Banner, with a film of a waving flag, then some previews of Coming
>Attractions. Then the Main Event. You'd watch the first movie,
>occasionally running down to the snack bar and lavatory. (And that was
>probably the MOST fun -- walking through the drive-in while the movie was
>playing, hearing the soundtrack coming from all the cars around.) On the
>way back you'd forget which row your car was in. :) During intermission,
>they played little films telling you to go to the snack bar.
>
> If you were lucky, your parents would let you stay up to watch the
>second feature; otherwise, you;d sleep in the back of the car. This was
>fun, too - especially on the drive home when you could drift in and out
>of sleep and feel the motion of the car all the while.
pillow and maybe a blanky (might as well go all out here) was just so cool.
Especially in the 70's when car seats were VINYL. Gotta love the slippery
slidey VINYL feel.
> Those are some of my best childhood memories. The weird thing is that
>people my age are probably the last generation to have these memories.
>Almost all the drive-ins here in the Seattle area are gone; turned into
>office parks and warehouse shopping clubs. I went to a great one in
>Spokane a couple of years ago, but there were only 4 or 5 cars there that
>night and the place was surrounded by office parks. I'm sure it's already
>gone, now.
flicks there, though I admit not having gone to it. Always MEAN to, but
never get around to it. Ah well. Perhaps next summer.
Heh, heh. Not to long ago there was a porno drive-in in Elgin (where I
went to high school) and you could see the movie from the road for many
years. Finally, they planted trees so you couldn't see anything. It was
pretty hilarious. 'Specially for immature high school guys (everyone raise
their hands. I *know* you'd a looked too).
Jim
Hans Lachman
>
>nihilism in the 1961 to 1964 group? Paint me curious.
I'm from that time period and identify with the attitude, but
when trying to explain it, I'm at a loss for words.
Now do you understand? :-)/2 [half-kidding]
Hans Lachman '63 <lac...@netcom.com>
Don't trust anyone over 30 who used to say "Don't trust anyone over 30."
Hans Lachman
>
>The GIs had their heroic campaigns against the Nazis and the
>Communists; the Silents their New Frontier of science and their
>crusade for civil rights; the Boomers their "spiritual awakening" and
>Age of Aquarius; are we going to be satisfied being generational
>garbage collectors for the rest of our lives?
This is a lead-in to a question I wanted to bring up. It may have
been addressed somewhat in other posts, but I'd like to hear people's
thoughts on the following:
"What is Greatness?"
What does "Greatness" mean in the present time? Is it different now
from what it meant in past times? What kinds of people (or specific
persons) currently represent our current notions of Greatness? Years
from now, who will history say were the Great Persons of our time?
Does our society effectively foster and support Greatness in its people?
Should it? How? ObGenX: Will GenX bring about a shift in society's
notion of Greatness?
"Discuss." [ <-- thrown in for Linda Richman fans ]
Peter Dubuque
>> Does this mean that someday there will be Ralph Lauren(tm) caskets?
>Not at all. Ralph Lauren [tm] Cryogenic Capsules, maybe.
I hope they don't expect *us* to thaw them out! :)
Jonathan Priluck
>In article <YAMAUCHI.93...@yuggoth.ces.cwru.edu> yama...@ces.cwru.edu (Brian Yamauchi) writes:
>>
>>The GIs had their heroic campaigns against the Nazis and the
>>Communists; the Silents their New Frontier of science and their
>>crusade for civil rights; the Boomers their "spiritual awakening" and
>>Age of Aquarius; are we going to be satisfied being generational
>>garbage collectors for the rest of our lives?
>
>This is a lead-in to a question I wanted to bring up. It may have
>been addressed somewhat in other posts, but I'd like to hear people's
>thoughts on the following:
>
> "What is Greatness?"
There was a similar question/thread on misc.engr.mechanical about the
greatest living engineers. One of the troubles with greatness is that it is
very easy to spot after the fact and allmost impossible to detect before
that. THis is because greatness (at least in engineering) is often
intimately tied into changes, and the changes are only seen as advances by
the great people who instigate the changes. It is only afterwards when the
changes have taken effect, and everyone *else* begins to understand what
Mr./Mrs. Great understood a long time ago, that people begin to attribute
greatness to a person.
Also greatness often takes a full lifetime to develop, so don't
expect to see many great Xers.... yet. Greatness is like genius and/or
madness "difficult to define, but you know it when you see it."
>
>What does "Greatness" mean in the present time? Is it different now
>from what it meant in past times? What kinds of people (or specific
>persons) currently represent our current notions of Greatness?
For me that would be Richard Feynman, Eli Weisel, and Dr. Salk. I dont
think the definition of greatness changes all that much over time. It is
almost allways linked to accomplishment.
>Years
>from now, who will history say were the Great Persons of our time?
Damn near impossible to say. Undoubtedly it is someone we have never heard
of yet.
>Does our society effectively foster and support Greatness in its people?
Absolutely not. In fact quite the opposite. DeToqville said it best over a
hundred years ago "it is a natural evil of democracy that it fosters
mediocrity and holds it up as the standard for all to follow". One of the
desires of an egalitarion society is that all people be equal, and our
social srtuctures and cultural attitudes reflect this irrational desire.
Because while all people may be *created* equal they most definately all do
not *end up* equal. If they did we would not even have a word for
greatness.
>Should it?
yes.
>How?
By protecting personal liberty from the encroaching hand of beurocratic
control with the same jealous zeal with which we used to pursue the destruction
of monopolies through the anti-trust laws. A severe and un-avoidable
inheritance tax wouldn't hurt either. After all it is difficult to imagine
ythat "all men are created equal" when one inherets the ghetto and another
an empire, before they are even born. A good inhberitance law would squash
our national debt and eliminate the worst social inequities within one or
two generations. Perhaps the GenX leader who institutes such a change and
restores some fairness to our society will be one of the grats of our
generation.
The Inventor
Doug Morris
Speaking of drive-ins... I miss them terribly. They were great.
Then the Main Event. You'd watch the first movie,
occasionally running down to the snack bar and lavatory. (And that was
probably the MOST fun -- walking through the drive-in while the movie was
playing, hearing the soundtrack coming from all the cars around.) On the
way back you'd forget which row your car was in. :) During intermission,
they played little films telling you to go to the snack bar.
Those are some of my best childhood memories. The weird thing is that
people my age are probably the last generation to have these memories.
I think one of the most upsetting things to happen around here (Yorktown, VA)
was when they closed the Drive-in down. There's just not a lot to do around
here. Throughout my entire time in high school, the Drive In was the place
to be on weekends. I worked there from the time I was 15 until I went
to college. The owner sold it to be turned into a shopping center in 1988.
It was a great place for people to gather. High school students would
gather at the back of the drive-in (pick-ups facing backward) and basically
wander from car to car. The movie really didn't matter.
My favorite memory from my time there is of walking out to the projection
booth in the back to in the middle of Summer to turn on the lights and
the radio. On the way back, it was like wandering through a field of
sterios -- 500 speakers all playing the same song, and not a soul in sight.
It was probablly the coolest job I ever had (which is really the saddest
part of the whole story).
Of course, now that it's closed, there's _really_ nothing for high school
students to do on weekends. Most of them go to the malls to hang out. The
local malls have had to hire more security guards to kick out the "mall
trollers".
And the kicker is that the planned shopping center never got built. One
of the other merchants in the area refused to sell, and the property reverted
to the original owner. Now the drive-in is used as a heavy machinery storage
site.
Doug Morris
Erich Schwarz
Dubuque) wrote:
> The second, and no
> less scientifically valid, deals with things that are *not* quantifiable,
> where experiments are not always possible and events are not always
> repeatable. Here we're dealing with things like evolution, plate
> tectonics...things that take place on historical time scales, where the
> further back you go the less data you have. All of these are no less
> "impressionistic" than S&H's research, yet scientists agree that (with
> possibly some dissent over things like punctuated equilibrium vs. straight
> Darwinism) these theories are serious and valid. The fact that you can't
> actually measure mutation of DNA half a billion years ago doesn't mean
> that it didn't happen. You can witness its effects if you take a
> broader--impressionistic, if you will--view of it....
Actually, an exploding frontier of evolutionary research is the
*quantitative* and *statistically rigorous* analysis of possible
phylogenetic trees using the *non-impressionistic* DNA sequences of living
organisms and computerized analysis of their differences.
Oh, and we can also experimentally induce a reversion of Diptera from
two-winged morphology to their ancestral four-winged morphology, in the
laboratory, using precise mutations in defined DNA sequences. And we no
longer need to worry about what came first in molecular evolution, the
protein (chicken) or the DNA (egg), since it has now been rigorously
demonstrated that RNA can be both a genomic and a catalytic molecule.
So evolution is starting to move from area "B" to area "A". As it
should.
If molecular biologists hadn't kicked evolution in the butt and
*forced* it to move, however, we'd still be listening to moosh about how
impossible the move would always be.
Let's get off our rear ends, stop making philosophical arguments in
coffee houses about why difficult topics will always be non-scientific,
roll up our sleeves, and invent some new rigorous sciences. It's harder
work than the coffee house, but in the long run, the rewards are genuine
knowledge and self-respect. Or if we can't do that, let's at least take
the science of society as seriously as Ptolemy took the science of
astronomy, 1900 years ago. OK?
--Erich Schwarz / schwarze...@starbase1.caltech.edu
Erich Schwarz
(Ian Williams) wrote:
> Um, I can't speak for my distinguished colleague in Buffalo, but what I
> believe Daniel was saying was that everyone around our age group has a
> vastly different way of looking at the world than those who are twenty
> years older, regardless of your own private notions. A sense of purpose
> and rationale - much like a Sense of Humor and Individuality - are
> qualities that very few will admit to Not having.
I've been having an extended argument for about eight weeks with a
close friend who has a very hard time feeling optimistic about anything.
So much for the ubiquitousness of optimism. My own deficit, IMHO, is the
Sense of Humor thing--which tends to make me produce massive posts on
issues that ought to get a Steve Conley-type one-liner :-)
--Erich Schwarz / schwarze...@starbase1.caltech.edu
Second thought: "humorless optimism." Now *there's* a GenX hang-up for
you!
--E.
Erich Schwarz
Mooney) wrote:
>
> In <1993Dec22....@spectrum.xerox.com>, r...@sentience.xis.xerox.com (Robert Cooperman) writes:
> > Well I was born in 1964, and the 70's were pretty formative.
> >
> > There were some formative elements in the late 60's though.
> > [...]
> > I was pretty into Earth day in 1970, and on boycotting tuna
> > because of the dolphins.
>
> You were politically active at six!? When I was that age, I was too busy
> playing with blocks and learning my one-plus tables to do anything even
> slightly Earth-saving.
Would you believe politically active at eight?
In 1972, I was *seriously* bummed when I saw the top-of-the-fold
headlines on the L.A. Times, announcing "Nixon Wins by a Landslide."
McGovern was Good, Nixon was Evil, and I had a horrible time facing the
prospect of four years (**half a lifetime**!) of President Evil.
And then Watergate came and Nixon got crowbarred out of the White House,
and two years after *that* Carter won. I felt sure at age 12 that a new
reign of virtue had descended on the world.
Flame if you will. I, meanwhile, will go away sulking, and listen to
old Tom Lehrer tapes while rereading _Fear and Loathing on the Campaign
Trail, '72_.
>
> > I don't really think I am nihilistic, but who knows, who cares.
>
> "What's the difference between ignorance and apathy?"
Maturity knows and cares. For apathy, subtract the latter. For
ignorance, subtract both. The Eighties were *definitely* an era of apathy.
--Erich Schwarz / schwarze...@starbase1.caltech.edu
P.S. If you think I'm genetically a Democrat, you're probably right! ;-)
Kyle Barger
> That's the best explanation I've heard yet for this strange inconsistency
> between the media and reality (imagine that, the media not being
> consistent with reality! the horror!). I can't wait for thirty years
> from now, when "Nobody is eating solid food anymore".
Or how about when "nobody is breathing anymore"?
As Garry Trudeau wrote in _Doonesbury_ several years back:
"How will we know when [the Boomers' generation] is over?"
"'Esquire' will run a piece on the hot new funeral homes."
:-)
--
Kyle Barger
kba...@cellar.org
Emily Way
>In article <2fcb9h$l...@tornews.torolab.ibm.com>, d...@vnet.ibm.com (Dave
>Mooney) wrote:
>>
>> In <1993Dec22....@spectrum.xerox.com>, r...@sentience.xis.xerox.com (Robert Cooperman) writes:
>> > Well I was born in 1964, and the 70's were pretty formative.
>> >
>> > There were some formative elements in the late 60's though.
>> > [...]
>> > I was pretty into Earth day in 1970, and on boycotting tuna
>> > because of the dolphins.
>>
>> You were politically active at six!? When I was that age, I was too busy
>> playing with blocks and learning my one-plus tables to do anything even
>> slightly Earth-saving.
>
> Would you believe politically active at eight?
> In 1972, I was *seriously* bummed when I saw the top-of-the-fold
>headlines on the L.A. Times, announcing "Nixon Wins by a Landslide."
>McGovern was Good, Nixon was Evil, and I had a horrible time facing the
>prospect of four years (**half a lifetime**!) of President Evil.
> And then Watergate came and Nixon got crowbarred out of the White House,
>and two years after *that* Carter won. I felt sure at age 12 that a new
>reign of virtue had descended on the world.
>
>--Erich Schwarz / schwarze...@starbase1.caltech.edu
When I was in first grade (1976), our teacher put photographs of Carter
and Ford up above the classroom blackboard before the election. Ford's
picture was on a red background, and Carter's was on a blue one. My best
friend asked me which one I thought should win. I said Carter. She said,
"But I thought you liked red better than blue." Sigh.
_____________________________________________________________
Emily Way, C/370 Information Development, IBM Canada Lab
"I think my body is as restless as my mind..." - Ani DiFranco
Greater Toronto Ladies' Knitting Circle and Terrorist Society
Kyle Barger
> I remember being HIGHLY pissed off about the Watergate hearings, because
> they kept pre-empting the cartoons and shows I wanted to watch.
Hey, me too! This is actually one of my earliest memories!
> I remember my mom being really happy when Nixon resigned. I didn't
> understand Watergate at the time myself.
Me neither. Though I did recognize Nixon, and knew he was president
(because my older brother had been given a metal wastebasket with portraits
of all the presidents--talk about kitsch!--and Nixon was in the center and
larger for everybody else since he was current), and one day Ford was on TV
and my grandmother told me "He's going to be the president now."
--
Kyle Barger
kba...@cellar.org
Rick Healy
Yes, but in the mean time we'll have to put up with Geritol ads,
the World According to AARP, prune juice, sepia toned Kennedy movies,
and Beatles retrospectives until Strawberry Fields is plowed over for a
Kmart.
-Rick
--
Richard J. Healy <cd...@nasagiss.giss.nasa.gov> (212) 678-5572
John Nagle
>> Those are some of my best childhood memories. The weird thing is that
>>people my age are probably the last generation to have these memories.
drive-bys.
John Nagle
Steve Conley
Erich Schwarz <schw...@starbase1.caltech.edu> wrote:
>My own deficit, IMHO, is the
>Sense of Humor thing--which tends to make me produce massive posts on
>issues that ought to get a Steve Conley-type one-liner :-)
Just who do you think I am? Kibo?
Ian Williams
>>In article <2fcb9h$l...@tornews.torolab.ibm.com>, d...@vnet.ibm.com (Dave
>>Mooney) wrote:
>>>
>>> In <1993Dec22....@spectrum.xerox.com>, r...@sentience.xis.xerox.com (Robert Cooperman) writes:
>> Would you believe politically active at eight?
>> In 1972, I was *seriously* bummed when I saw the top-of-the-fold
>>headlines on the L.A. Times, announcing "Nixon Wins by a Landslide."
>>McGovern was Good, Nixon was Evil, and I had a horrible time facing the
>>prospect of four years (**half a lifetime**!) of President Evil.
>> And then Watergate came and Nixon got crowbarred out of the White House,
>>and two years after *that* Carter won. I felt sure at age 12 that a new
>>reign of virtue had descended on the world.
>>[,,,]
>>
>>--Erich Schwarz / schwarze...@starbase1.caltech.edu
>Emily wrote:
>When I was in first grade (1976), our teacher put photographs of Carter
>and Ford up above the classroom blackboard before the election. Ford's
>picture was on a red background, and Carter's was on a blue one. My best
>friend asked me which one I thought should win. I said Carter. She said,
>"But I thought you liked red better than blue." Sigh.
My first memory of politics was in first grade (I skipped kindergarten,
something I don't recommend AT ALL) when we would all clamp arms and sing
"McGovern, McGovern, he's our man ... throw that Nixon in the garbage
can!" or something equally mired in trochaic tetrameter. The other fetal
Republicans would do the same in inverse, and I suppose the game would be
equivalent to political Red Rover.
I love songs like that - they get passed from one elementary school class
to another, like the tales of the ancient bards. O, how I would love to
have been the student who invented the "Mine eyes have seen the glory of
the burning of the school..." lines. Much like the "Jingle bells, batman
smells" song, there are these little pools of knowledge that sit actively
in the minds of 1-5th graders, songs and sayings that are the venacular of
that age group only. The only time that information escapes and bubbles up
to the present-day conscious is, well, road trips at 3am and this here
newsgroup...
-Ian
--
The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Campus Office for Information
Technology, or the Experimental Bulletin Board Service.
internet: laUNChpad.unc.edu or 152.2.22.80
Ian Williams
Hans Lachman <lac...@netcom.com> wrote:
>In article <cdelaney-2...@chris.eng.sandy.novell.com> cdel...@Novell.COM (Christine Delaney) writes:
>>
>>Can you go into a little more qualitative detail on what you mean by
>>nihilism in the 1961 to 1964 group? Paint me curious.
>
>I'm from that time period and identify with the attitude, but
>when trying to explain it, I'm at a loss for words.
>
>Now do you understand? :-)/2 [half-kidding]
Well, Christine, I've been thinking of a quick way to explain it, but one
doesn't exist. Perhaps I just sense an exasperation among people who are
4-5 years older than me. Partly economic - society demands that they have
their act together by then, and more often than not, they don't feel like
they do. Partly cultural - I see their tolerance for the vagaries of our
accelerated culture as being lower than mine (i.e. a 31-year-old will like
Beavis and Butthead for about ten minutes less per episode than me), and
so on. I get this from my family, my older friends, older writers that I've
read and from irrational intuition. I'd go on, but then Carl would don his
Social Science Chicken McCrapwich Fez and accuse me of treading water in a
pool of subjective microgenerational fantasy!
=|;) <-- winkin' Lincoln
David Ian Salter
> I love songs like that - they get passed from one elementary school class
> to another, like the tales of the ancient bards. O, how I would love to
> have been the student who invented the "Mine eyes have seen the glory of
> the burning of the school..." lines. Much like the "Jingle bells, batman
> smells" song, there are these little pools of knowledge that sit actively
> in the minds of 1-5th graders, songs and sayings that are the venacular of
> that age group only. The only time that information escapes and bubbles up
> to the present-day conscious is, well, road trips at 3am and this here
> newsgroup...
This raises the same question about these childhood songs that
anthropologists have been trying to answer as regards human evolution:
did human beings all evolve from common ancestors whose descendants then
spread across the globe, or did separate groups of humans evolve
simultaneously in different parts of the world?
Similarly, do there truly exist the legendary songwriters, child
geniuses who composed these verses that then spread throughout the world
of American gradeschool kids, or did the same (or similar) lyrics occur
somewhat simultaneously to kids in different parts of the country?
We'll probably never know the answer to either question, but can you
imagine the accolades if some day some researcher is able to track down
the authentic original lyricist of "...Batman smells..." Of course,
he or she would probably be ancient by then.
--
David Ian Salter * "Do I contradict myself?
sal...@netcom.com * Very well then, I contradict myself;
Los Angeles (Hollywood) * I am vast, I contain multitudes."
(but Boston born-and-bred) * -Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself"
Christopher Frankonis
> Similarly, do there truly exist the legendary songwriters, child
> geniuses who composed these verses that then spread throughout the world
> of American gradeschool kids, or did the same (or similar) lyrics occur
> somewhat simultaneously to kids in different parts of the country?
This is the question I have about the old paper football game (featured
in "Dazed and Confused").
-- Kit
<>-------------------------------------------------------------<>
<>----------------<slo...@mindvox.phantom.com>----------------<>
<>-----------------<aj...@freenet.buffalo.edu>-----------------<>
<>---------------------<ad...@leo.nmc.edu>---------------------<>
<>-------------------------------------------------------------<>
<>---------------LIVING IN THE LAND OF THE LOST!---------------<>
JAMES E. GALL
>This is the question I have about the old paper football game (featured
>in "Dazed and Confused").
Does anyone remember the three-penny soccer game. One person makes a goal
by putting their first and pinky fingers on top of the desk. The other
person throws three pennies on the desk. You then advance by knocking any
one penny between the other two until you fail or make a goal.
In my school these games were real popular study hall activities until those
handheld, LED, blip football games came out.
Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner
>In article <Bw85ec...@mindvox.phantom.com> slo...@mindvox.phantom.com (Christopher Frankonis) writes:
>
>>This is the question I have about the old paper football game (featured
>>in "Dazed and Confused").
>
>Does anyone remember the three-penny soccer game. One person makes a goal
>by putting their first and pinky fingers on top of the desk. The other
>person throws three pennies on the desk. You then advance by knocking any
>one penny between the other two until you fail or make a goal.
>
>In my school these games were real popular study hall activities until those
>handheld, LED, blip football games came out.
In middle school, I used to play a paper version of Tank, where each side
draws a few boxes (and maybe a few obsticles) on a piece of paper. To move,
one would put a pencil on one of the boxes (which represented a tank), hold it
upright with one index finger, then let the pencil slide in the direction you
wanted to move in. Where the pencil line ended is where your tank ended up.
Shooting was similar, expect you started from the end of the gun, and if the
pencil line went though an enemy take, it was a hit and the tank was destroyed.
My friend and I came up with hundreds of variations on this.
-spc ("I hit you! See?"
"What are you, on drugs? The pencil line clearly stops here!"
"Look closer. See? Just barely visible ... " )
Erich Schwarz
Conley) wrote:
>
> In article <schwarze-2...@anise.bio.caltech.edu>,
> Erich Schwarz <schw...@starbase1.caltech.edu> wrote:
>
> >My own deficit, IMHO, is the
> >Sense of Humor thing--which tends to make me produce massive posts on
> >issues that ought to get a Steve Conley-type one-liner :-)
>
> Just who do you think I am? Kibo?
> Steve
Beats me, who's Kibo?
Did I mention, I also have a poor grasp of popular culture? Just
totally Out Of The Mainstream, that's me...
Of course, if the Mainstream's going to consist of denture ads for the
next 40 years, maybe that's a Good Thing.
BTW, have you listened to the ads on "classic rock" stations? I think
I first realized just how geriatric American culture was getting when I
heard a ad for hemorrhoid cream right after the Rolling Stones. Don't
trust anyone under 60!
--Erich Schwarz / schwarze...@starbase1.caltech.edu
Carl Beaudry
> Steve Conley) wrote:
> >
> > Just who do you think I am? Kibo?
>
> Beats me, who's Kibo?
It's Sheileigh M.B.E. O'Hare.
Or was she the woman whose lawsuit got prayer removed from schools?
Didn't they name an airport after her in Chicago?
--Carl
Carl Beaudry
> David Ian Salter writes:
>
> > Similarly, do there truly exist the legendary songwriters, child
> > geniuses who composed these verses that then spread throughout the world
> > of American gradeschool kids, or did the same (or similar) lyrics occur
> > somewhat simultaneously to kids in different parts of the country?
>
> This is the question I have about the old paper football game (featured
> in "Dazed and Confused").
Yes! This was the major totem of lunchroom status in my school. We did it
with pushed in milk cartons after every quality meal facimile(tm).
This became a problem when they nailed little ledges on the tables to
prevent us from scoring touchdowns. Of course that led to a greater
emphasis on the kicking game.....
Those cartons would really fly when you kicked an afterpoint too!
--Carl
Christopher Frankonis
> In article <Bw85ec...@mindvox.phantom.com> slo...@mindvox.phantom.com (Ch
>
> >This is the question I have about the old paper football game (featured
> >in "Dazed and Confused").
>
> Does anyone remember the three-penny soccer game. One person makes a goal
> by putting their first and pinky fingers on top of the desk. The other
> person throws three pennies on the desk. You then advance by knocking any
> one penny between the other two until you fail or make a goal.
Yes, I remember the soccer game. My sister and I were thinking about all
these things just recently, after I saw D&C.
We had another thought about the paper football game. Does anyone
remember that weird four-sided fortune thingy that was usually being used
by girls, it was all folded up and they had to go back and firth a given
number of times and then open the right flap up to get a fortune or
something? My sister was trying to make one, and we found that the strip
of paper left over was just the right size to make a paper football. It
seems as if you can make both items from one sheet. We figure that the
girls must have been making the fortune-thing, and the boys would take
the leftover strip and make something they could use. I guess we were
recycling even back then.
er...@stein3.u.washington.edu
>Yes, I remember the soccer game. My sister and I were thinking about all
>these things just recently, after I saw D&C.
>We had another thought about the paper football game. Does anyone
>remember that weird four-sided fortune thingy that was usually being used
>by girls, it was all folded up and they had to go back and firth a given
>number of times and then open the right flap up to get a fortune or
>something? My sister was trying to make one, and we found that the strip
>of paper left over was just the right size to make a paper football. It
>seems as if you can make both items from one sheet. We figure that the
>girls must have been making the fortune-thing, and the boys would take
>the leftover strip and make something they could use. I guess we were
>recycling even back then.
Yeah, I remember those. I remember making those thingies. We always would
put in the fortunes that we wanted, of course. But naturally this didn't
mean that any of them were useful :/ I guess it's one of those "wimminz
mysteries" eh?
Erynn Laurie
er...@u.washington.edu
Robert Cooperman
>>> In 1972, I was *seriously* bummed when I saw the top-of-the-fold
>>>headlines on the L.A. Times, announcing "Nixon Wins by a Landslide."
>>>McGovern was Good, Nixon was Evil, and I had a horrible time facing the
>>>prospect of four years (**half a lifetime**!) of President Evil.
>>> And then Watergate came and Nixon got crowbarred out of the White House,
>>>and two years after *that* Carter won. I felt sure at age 12 that a new
>>>reign of virtue had descended on the world.
>>>[,,,]
I don't remember election 1972. I followed Watergate in 1974, though.
I also, sized up Ford as an idiot, the day he became president.
Election day 1976 was a bright day. We got rid of that idiot
whose response to inflation was to sell WIN buttons (Whip Inflation
Now). Also, living in New York City, the big Daily News headline
when Ford refused to bail out the city, when it went bankrupt, was
"Ford To City; Drop Dead". Well we got him back, if New York went
his way, he would have won the election. Carter started out as a
mysterious but sincere unknown, who said he would never lie to us.
(As far as I know he never did, except during the planning of the
Iran rescue mission.)
Election day 1980 (I was 16) was a horrible experience.
I was tired of some of the excesses of 1970's liberals,
and a little dissapointed in Carter, but the prospect
of Reagan being president and a Republican Senate was horrible.
If I could have voted, it would have been for John Anderson.
Elections 1984 and 1988 were the same thing. I wanted Reagan and
Bush out, but the Democratic party, picked the lamest possible
opponents. Mondale was out of his league. He might make a good
advisor, but did not have any leadership ability. I liked Gary Hart,
but the public decided that what was much more important that a
candidates foreign and domestic policies were his extra-curricular
domestic track records (with pictures).
Dukakis was a worse nightmare. Here in Massachusetts, we knew he was
a bad governor. Sure, he got a lot of the vote for Governor in 1986,
but he ran unopposed in the Democratic primary, and he did not have
a serious Republican opponent. We all had a general loathing of him
here, and his home state support for his presidential run, were from
people who figured that if he became president, we would get rid of
him as governor. Also, a lot of the mid level politicians figured
that he'd take a bunch of prominent local pols with him to DC,
opening up some state positions.
He was out of his element. Bush, and his advisors, ran a superb, but
nasty, campaign. Dukakis did not understand the simplest elements of
school yard brawls.
1992. Finally, with Clinton a presidential candidate I actually
liked. Well I did vote for Tsongas in the primary, but mainly
because I figured that Clinton would get Gary Harted before
November. I also liked Tsongas's story. A man who recovers form
cancer, and decides that he has a mission to save the country. A
true independent person, who has faced his own death, and will not
be sucessfully pressured or threatened by anyone.
Well anyway, after the primaries, it was Mister "Don't Stop Thinking
About Tomoroow" (with his trusty sidekick), versus Mister
Billionaire Psycho "I'm for the working people of this country"
(with his General "We established rules, like what we would not tell
them unless they tortured us"), versus Mister "I'll do anything to
win this election" (with his bodyguard "You can't shoot me, or
you'll have Quayle").
I was in Amsterdam election day (I voted absentee first), basically
thinking that I would come back if Clinton won, stay away if Bush
won, and come back if Perot won, but have escape plans. For some
reason all the Dutch people I spoke to were impressed by Perot.
Bob Cooperman
r...@xis.xerox.com
Any views expressed are my own and are not intended to
represent my employer.
warr...@news.delphi.com
Since the whole Generation X/twentysomething story broke, GenX has
been growing in influence.
Politics: On September 8, 1992 Knight-Ridder newspapers released a
poll on presidential choice. GenX was out in front for Clinton (with
seniors following closely and boomers in Bush's camp). The polling on
November 4, Election Day, showed all generations favoring Clinton (GenX
foremost, Boomers last)
Zeitgeist: The July 22, 1990 Time Twentysomething article depicted a
generation looking for simplicity, stronger families, and substance over
style. Now, commercials for luxury automobiles emphasize airbags,
politicians have increased their "family values" posturing, and yuppies
are dead and disgraced.
Music: "Grunge" made Time (throwing much of Seattle into fits), and
postboomers are flooding into jazz and classical music as well (as
pianists at the Van Cliburn competition flock to Bach to great critical
praise).
Meanwhile, GenX directors emerge every few months, Beavis and
Butt-head (though created by boomers, enjoy great popularity in GenX)
become national bywords, the country follows Michael Jordan through the
murder of his father and his retirement, and George Will scolds Jan Wenner
(editor of Rolling Stone) on national television as Wenner flies into
Boomer triumphalism - the scolding is joined by David Brinkley.
Thirtysomething dies.
In summary, over the last few years, Generation X has been taking the
reins of popular culture, moving into high culture, running several
months ahead of American political debates, and mapping the course of the
zeitgeist.
Now, let's see how beneficial these changes are...
Robert E. Wray III
|> "What is Greatness?"
|>
|> What does "Greatness" mean in the present time? Is it different now
|> from what it meant in past times? What kinds of people (or specific
|> from now, who will history say were the Great Persons of our time?
|> notion of Greatness?
A couple of thoughts on this subject (and all IMHO!):
1. It will be very difficult for anyone to achieve "Greatness" in our time
if greatness is defined as it has been previously/historically. In general,
those who were great have been viewed as if faultless. I remember a
history teacher in junior high almost refusing to let us discuss Thomas
Jefferson's slave ownership -- a great man can do no wrong. Similarly,
some of my older (read: boomer) friends won't discuss the possibility of
JFK's reputed indiscretions (with Marilyn or anyone). According to them,
he was a GREAT one, the GREATEST of this century, and any admission of his
"extracurricular activities" seems to be beyond them. With the intrusiveness
of media today, it seems unlikely that anyone who attracts its attention
will remain untarnished and thus the semblance of "greatness" will not evolve.
Although I used political examples, this is not limited to politicians --
just look at the way the press harangued Michael Jordan over his gambling
or is crucifying Michael Jackson over reputed child abuse. (I know that joint
from the eighth grade will keep me out of the Oval Office -- I inhaled!)
2. Regardless of the media, however, most of the X'ers I know (including myself)
are just too cynical to actually have faith in much, especially GREAT people
(BTW, I admit it's hard to imagine this attitude developing without a
surfeit of negative media). Since I don't speak for anyone but myself, I'll
just say that when anyone begins to tell me how GREAT someone is, I always
wonder just what they have hidden in their closets, what horrible history or
psychology they have that reduces them to simple, fallible humanity like me.
3. Our (US) society seems too diverse (or fragmented, depending on your opinion
of the diversity) for someone to be GREAT. I would suggest that another
characteristic of greatness is that it transcends social, ethnic and sexual
identity. Since most of the (recognized) GREAT people of American history
have been heterosexual (or discreetly-closeted homosexual) white men, this
point may indeed be false. However, if not, it seems unlikely that given our
society's current fixation with sub-group identity, anyone will rise beyond
such identifications. Examples abound: "Spokesperson for the African-
American Community", "Writer for the Women's Movement", "Gay Activist", etc.
4. If one accepts the above (and feel free not to!), then it would appear that,
as a generation, no one will recognized as GREAT. However, what I have been
observing in friends and family is a much more personal recognition of
greatness. For example, a cousin told me this year at Christmas that our
grandmother was her hero. This probably isn't remarkable except that it seems
to be becoming the norm among my friends This more private recognition of
greatness is accompanied by little deification; the preface to my conversation
with my cousin her acknowledgement of our grandmother's (many) weaknesses.
But still she saw in her strength and integrity she admired. Thus, it may be
that our generation introduces a new concept of GREATNESS that is more
inclined to accept foibles in a GREAT one (it does seem more healthy).
I would be curious to know if others agree/disagree. It certainly seems that, as
a society (and not just a generation), we lack heroes (perhaps a different
take on GREATNESS as it was first presented?) and that we need them. I am
reminded of a few lines from a song by the Counting Crows:
"Believe in me.
'Cause I don't belive in anything,
And I want to be someone who believes."
_________________________________________________________________________________
Bob Wray | "The lost horizons I can see
University of Michigan | Are now resigned to memory;
Elec Engr & Comp Sci | I never thought I'd still be here today..."
wra...@eecs.umich.edu | -- Gin Blossoms
er...@stein3.u.washington.edu
>In article <lachmanC...@netcom.com>, lac...@netcom.com (Hans Lachman) writes:
>|> "What is Greatness?"
>|>
>|> What does "Greatness" mean in the present time? Is it different now
>|> from what it meant in past times? What kinds of people (or specific
>|> persons) currently represent our current notions of Greatness? Years
>|> from now, who will history say were the Great Persons of our time?
>|> Does our society effectively foster and support Greatness in its people?
>|> Should it? How? ObGenX: Will GenX bring about a shift in society's
>|> notion of Greatness?
>3. Our (US) society seems too diverse (or fragmented, depending on your opinion
> of the diversity) for someone to be GREAT. I would suggest that another
> characteristic of greatness is that it transcends social, ethnic and sexual
> identity. Since most of the (recognized) GREAT people of American history
> have been heterosexual (or discreetly-closeted homosexual) white men, this
> point may indeed be false. However, if not, it seems unlikely that given our
> society's current fixation with sub-group identity, anyone will rise beyond
> such identifications. Examples abound: "Spokesperson for the African-
> American Community", "Writer for the Women's Movement", "Gay Activist", etc.
Can one be recognized as "great" within a subcultural group? I think so.
The hero worship of dead white males is pretty much imposed by the way
the educational system works, I think. After all, if we didn't have the
school system telling us that Jefferson and Kennedy were "Great Men," how
many people would believe it?
While greatness in a subculture sense would be "smaller," there are still
culture heroes out there who, despite being recognized as fallible
beings, are treated with respect, f.i. Harriet Tubman.
>4. If one accepts the above (and feel free not to!), then it would appear that,
> as a generation, no one will recognized as GREAT. However, what I have been
> observing in friends and family is a much more personal recognition of
> greatness. For example, a cousin told me this year at Christmas that our
> grandmother was her hero. This probably isn't remarkable except that it seems
> to be becoming the norm among my friends This more private recognition of
> greatness is accompanied by little deification; the preface to my conversation
> with my cousin her acknowledgement of our grandmother's (many) weaknesses.
> But still she saw in her strength and integrity she admired. Thus, it may be
> that our generation introduces a new concept of GREATNESS that is more
> inclined to accept foibles in a GREAT one (it does seem more healthy).
I suspect that you're correct about this.
>I would be curious to know if others agree/disagree. It certainly seems that, as
>a society (and not just a generation), we lack heroes (perhaps a different
>take on GREATNESS as it was first presented?) and that we need them. I am
>reminded of a few lines from a song by the Counting Crows:
> "Believe in me.
> 'Cause I don't belive in anything,
> And I want to be someone who believes."
>Bob Wray | "The lost horizons I can see
I agree at least in large part with your thoughts here, but I believe
that there may be a different take on greatness by the time history takes
the time to judge our generation. Nobody will be presumed perfect, but
perhaps greatness will be determined as a quality shared by those who
overcame overwhelming odds to acheive something identified as
"important," whether an advance in scholarship, a technological
breakthrough, or a societal "good."
Erynn Laurie
er...@u.washington.edu
Paul C Duggan
>
>murder of his father and his retirement, and George Will scolds Jan Wenner
>(editor of Rolling Stone) on national television as Wenner flies into
>Boomer triumphalism - the scolding is joined by David Brinkley.
Could someone provided more details of this? I missed it.
--
"I met a girl today, and I think she likes me." paul + | +
-- Gene Wolfe, "Westwind" --|--
+ | +
pdu...@world.std.com
Jennifer Taub
Robert E. Wray III <wra...@ocular.eecs.umich.edu> wrote:
>In article <lachmanC...@netcom.com>, lac...@netcom.com (Hans Lachman) writes:
>|> "What is Greatness?"
>|>
>|> What does "Greatness" mean in the present time? Is it different now
>|> from what it meant in past times? What kinds of people (or specific
>|> persons) currently represent our current notions of Greatness? Years
>|> from now, who will history say were the Great Persons of our time?
>|> Does our society effectively foster and support Greatness in its people?
>|> Should it? How? ObGenX: Will GenX bring about a shift in society's
>|> notion of Greatness?
>
History always shows things in a different light than the present. We
cannot possibly know now who or what will be seen as "great" in the
future. Given that, historical events are also interpreted in a
subjective manner by whomever is interpreting them....there fore, Xers
are bound to have some influence on how the events of our time will be
portrayed in the history books, CNN reels, etc.
In a brief moment of shining optimism, I think a few of the following
will go down as "great":
Thurgood Marshall
Noam Chomsky
Susie Bright (ok - I admit I am totally biased...)
Frank Zappa, who in the words of a local writer...
"...he will be remembered not only as a great musician and social
thinker, but as a model American citizen. He was a man that produced
over 50 albums in 25 years without the benefit of radio airplay; a man
who knew the US Constitution inside & out and used it to the best of his
advantage; a man who encourgaed young people to take part in our
political process, and loved this country (mercilessly) and everything it
claimed to stand for beyond the comprehension of most of its elected
officials"
Any other nominations?
- Jennifer
Jonathan Priluck
Richard Feynman- the embodiment of true genius
and
Eli Weisel- for his essential humanity
The Inventor
--
* Jonathan Aerospace Materials Corp., 41 Naples Road, Brookline MA 02146 *
* Tel (617) 731-3637, Internet: jam...@world.std.com *
* Developers and future manufacturers of Lattice Block Materials ... *
* the world's strongest and lightest materials. *
David Ian Salter
> BTW, have you listened to the ads on "classic rock" stations? I think
> I first realized just how geriatric American culture was getting when I
> heard a ad for hemorrhoid cream right after the Rolling Stones. Don't
> trust anyone under 60!
All of the Boomer self-indulgence we've had to put up with over the
years is almost entirely made up for by the thrill of watching ads for
"Depends" suddenly blanket the airwaves.
--
David Ian Salter * "Do I contradict myself?
sal...@netcom.com * Very well then, I contradict myself;
Los Angeles (Hollywood) * I am vast, I contain multitudes."
(but Boston born-and-bred) * -Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself"
Currently working on: "Harts of the West" (CBS Saturdays)
Brian Upton
|> d...@vnet.ibm.com (Dave Mooney) writes:
|>
|> >> Does this mean that someday there will be Ralph Lauren(tm) caskets?
|>
|> >Not at all. Ralph Lauren [tm] Cryogenic Capsules, maybe.
|>
|> I hope they don't expect *us* to thaw them out! :)
Two words about cryogenic boomers:
Soylent Green
|>
|> --
|> ________________________________________________
|>
|> This is a test of our high-pitched, whiny sound.
|> ________________________________________________
--
+-----------------+--------------------------------------------------+
| Brian Upton | "It's not the bullet that kills you, it's the |
| UNC Chapel Hill | hole" -Laurie Anderson |
+-----------------+--------------------------------------------------+
JAMES E. GALL
>All of the Boomer self-indulgence we've had to put up with over the
>years is almost entirely made up for by the thrill of watching ads for
>"Depends" suddenly blanket the airwaves.
Here's a question that I've pondered off and on for a while. Remember when
the Beatles' "Revolution" was used in a Nike ad? The first time I saw it, I
thought it was a great commercial. Shortly, thereafter, the Boomer Beast
rose to its feet and complained about the rape of its cultural heritage.
Here's my question (as always, gross generational generalizations are
encouraged): Despite the ability to see through the manipulative aspect
of commercials, gen x-ers appreciate a damn good commercial and will even
support a product that puts on a good show. Whereas, boomers clothe their
purchasing power in idealistic terms and would deny that commercials have
any effect. Oops, I forgot this was supposed to be a question. Does anyone
agree or disagree?
Jennifer Taub
David Ian Salter <sal...@netcom.com> wrote:
>Erich Schwarz (schw...@starbase1.caltech.edu) wrote:
>> BTW, have you listened to the ads on "classic rock" stations? I think
>> I first realized just how geriatric American culture was getting when I
>> heard a ad for hemorrhoid cream right after the Rolling Stones. Don't
>> trust anyone under 60!
Hey, lighten up, man! It doesn't have to be old to be a classic. And
now we're gonna start off our block-party weekend with a triple shot of
Jethro Tull....
- Jennifer