This is not actually bear-related, but it seems like something you should know about:

Procter & Gamble Co. must add little flecks of cartoon toilet paper to the backsides of its Charmin cartoon bears in future ads or risk the wrath of arbitrators. That follows a decision released yesterday by the National Advertising Division of the Council of Better Business Bureaus.

Acting on a challenge by rival Kimberly-Clark Corp., the NAD found that P&G; had indeed substantiated its long-running claim of leaving “fewer pieces behind” than the leading ultra-rippled brand, K-C’s Cottonelle.

“This case raises several disturbing questions,” notes Ad Age reporter Jack Neff, which, uh, NO KIDDING.

“It’s like Rasputin. It never goes away.”
New York governor David Paterson discusses the 2010 budget, which he signed into law last night after discovering that the bill he signed last week was actually an incorrect version mistakenly sent to him by the Assembly. Because, you know, this is New York.

by Carl Hegelman

At boarding school in the 1960s we had to go to evensong every Sunday. A few prayers, some chants and responses, four hymns, a couple of Lessons, the Nicene creed, a sermon and — at long last — the benediction (“The Lord make his face to shine upon you”). The sermon was the main variable in determining how long it would be before we could all go back to our Houses for supper. To make it more exciting and to help while away the tedium, there was sometimes a pool on how long the sermon would last. If the preacher was one of the staff — the Chaplain, the Headmaster (d. 1998), or the young Chemistry master, Dr. Kitwood (d. 1998) — the boy with the stopwatch had to be on his toes because the bets were tightly grouped around their known averages. Tom Kitwood was everybody’s favorite because he was quick — usually about nine minutes, sometimes as short as seven. The worst sermon in history was given by a visitor, a fat lay preacher who, aptly enough considering he was from the Gas Board, droned on for a record-breaking 45 minutes. The best was the Dean of St Paul’s, whose sermons were quite long but enormously entertaining, more like a standup routine.

There was one particularly memorable sermon which was a sort of TED-speech speculation about what the future would be like for us boys when we grew up. The theory was that machines were becoming so sophisticated and efficient that nobody would have to work more than a few hours a week. The machines would do everything, and the main problem would be maintaining social order because of the devil finding work for all the idle hands. This was an idea which resonated loudly in the teenage brain: I seemed by good luck to have stepped onto Planet Earth at just the right moment, at the dawning of a Golden Age. Strains of a heavenly choir singing.

I didn’t know it at the time, but it wasn’t a new idea, even back then. The aristocrat, pop philosopher, mathematician, conscientious objector, Wittgenstein-keeper and horn-dog Bertrand Russell wrote In Praise of Idleness in 1932:

Modern technique has made it possible to diminish enormously the amount of labour required to secure the necessaries of life for everyone. This was made obvious during the war [WWI, obviously]. At that time all the men in the armed forces, and all the men and women engaged in the production of munitions, all the men and women engaged in spying, war propaganda, or Government offices connected with the war, were withdrawn from productive occupations. In spite of this, the general level of well-being among unskilled wage-earners on the side of the Allies was higher than before or since.

And (actually echoing Benjamin Franklin about 150 years previously):

If the ordinary wage-earner worked four hours a day, there would be enough for everybody and no unemployment.

That was about 15 years before the invention of the first electronic computer (ENIAC, UPenn, 1946). By 1965, the brothers Paul and Percival Goodman (co-authors of “Banning Cars From Manhattan”, 1961) were claiming that we could cut back our working hours by 95% and still, in principle, satisfy our basic needs of food, clothing and shelter. That was about five years after the first microchip patent was filed, about 20 years before people started using PCs in any numbers and 30 years before Amazon. Productivity has taken giant steps. Granted, we have about twice as many mouths to feed globally (or 1.6 times as many in the US), but still we should all be doing about an hour a week by now.

So what the hell happened? Some 45 years have gone by since The Sermon and people are working longer hours for a living standard which, but for the invention of the microwave oven, would actually have gone downhill. What good is all this productivity? Where is Paradise on earth? Why didn’t it work out the way the preacher said?

There’s a hint from a recent piece in the Financial Times entitled “Goodbye, American dream”:

… the annual incomes of the bottom 90% of US families have been essentially flat since 1973… having risen by only 10% in the past 37 years… Over the same period the incomes of the top 1% have tripled. In 1973, chief executives were on average paid 26 times the median income. Now the multiple is above 300.

This is a complicated question with no easy answer, but in the end it probably works like this: when somebody invents a new machine, he’s not thinking, “This is going to be great for mankind, people can finally have time to write novels”. What he’s thinking is: “I’m going to be rich”. Even if he doesn’t think that, the guy who gives him the money to build his machine does. Not saying that’s bad; not saying it’s good; just saying, in his place you would probably do the same.

Patents are filed. The machines get built. Productivity goes up. A couple of guys get rich. For the rest, life stays the same, except for the ones who got laid off because of the super-efficient new machine. So it turns out Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” is, after all, attached to a pickpocket. To put it a bit more formally: the benefits of increased productivity go to capital, not labor.

You can see the long-term problem here. Uncle George pays working stiffs to operate the machines. The machines turn out stuff. The stiffs who get paid to work machines buy the stuff, and Uncle George takes his profit and gets richer. But the more efficient the machines are, the fewer stiffs there are with paychecks to buy the stuff with. In the end, even Uncle George is going to feel the pinch.

It’s probably not a system that can work forever. I mean, just for instance, what happens when machines have got so efficient you don’t need anyone to operate them? If there are any jobs left that can’t be done by machines, they will be service jobs — butlers, footmen, chauffeurs, scullery maids, toadies and givers of blowjobs — for Uncle George. Also, bodyguards and a strong police force to protect him from irate stiffs. And there’s the problem: eventually, the peasants revolt.

Of course, George does have a way out: move the machines to China. There’s a lot more stiffs needing stuff over there, and a lot more stiffs to work the machines (for less money, too). George doesn’t really care whether it’s a Chinaman or a Chattanoogan who’s making him rich. It’s not a super-long-term solution, but it’s good enough for his lifetime.

There have been a few attempts to solve this problem in the past. Communism. Socialism. They didn’t really work. Various utopians have come up with some suggestions: a Brit by the name of C. H. Douglas, aided by Ezra Pound (yes, that one) and Buckminster “Geodesic Dome” Fuller, thought we should have a sort of National Corporation which pays every citizen-shareholder a GDP dividend. Milton Friedman, who everybody assumes was a straight-up conservative, thought everyone should have a minimum income, with a Negative Income Tax for people below the level. Quite a few people have suggested just cutting working hours so you have more people working for fewer hours — spread the poverty more equally, effectively.

I don’t know what the answer is, but I do know we’ve got a problem and somebody had better figure it out.

The Lord bless you and keep you;
The Lord make His face to shine upon you,
And be gracious unto you;
The Lord lift up His countenance upon you,
And give you peace.

Carl Hegelman (a pen name) is a corporate bond analyst and a connoisseur of leisure.

Rick Astley/Kylie Minogue producer Mike Stock on the current, depraved pop landscape: “The music industry has gone too far. It’s not about me being old fashioned. It’s about keeping values that are important in the modern world. These days you can’t watch modern stars — like Britney Spears or Lady Gaga — with a two-year-old.” Is that the level that we’re going for nowadays? Perhaps this bit of snippiness means that Stock is about to produce his own Kidz Bop featuring the music he produced for Divine and Samantha Fox and Angels Aren’t Airplanes!

“While I really can only speak for myself — and, to an extent, for my friends Josh Cagan and Storm DiCostanzo, the other two initial developers of the meme — I would say (hopefully in a slightly more civil manner than a couple of the other commenters) that these cartoons weren’t intended to be seen out of the context of the associated hashtag. So that you couldn’t *not* know that they were Kanye West tweets — just like you couldn’t not know they were New Yorker cartoons. And as such, they’re not *intended* to be funny outside of that context/label, because the humor is entirely *based* in the context, and not in some innate “meaning” beyond the mashup itself. If any of the mashups ended up being “actually” funny outside of that context, it’s mostly by accident, at least on our part — because even the best matches between caption and image (a couple examples: http://twitpic.com/2bbn1a / http://twitpic.com/2b19sl / http://twitpic.com/2b1cci ) were still only mildly funny without the context. So we instead mostly concentrated on mashups that intentionally *didn’t* match well (the example you posted above; others like: http://twitpic.com/2b17f4 / http://twitpic.com/2b0yi2 ), the humor then being the incongruity of New Yorker cartoons’ traditional measured, aloof, wry tone and Kanye’s stream-of-consciousness, raw, unfiltered Twitter musings. The vast majority of followers of the meme on Twitter seemed to inherently understand this. Put more simply: Twitter, the hashtag, and knowledge of both Kanye’s tweets and New Yorker cartoons basically *are* “the joke” (to grossly mis-apply McLuhan, “the medium is the message”); to divorce them of that context and then accuse them of not being funny is inherently unfair.”
-Paul Sabourin, originator of the popular Kanye West Twitter/New Yorker cartoon mash-up

meme, defends his creation against accusations of humorlessness made by an actual New Yorker cartoonist. It’s the kind of Internet-only debate that makes you wish everyone, including yourself, were dead illustrates the vibrancy of this new digital culture in which we all participate.

The more one reads the Times’ Styles section, the more one is convinced that it is a week-in, week-out exercise in trolling — giving bloggers topics to opine on and get lathered up about, as predictable in call and response as the Barbra Streisand references in the old Saturday Night Live sketch “Coffee Talk.” That silly article on Sunday about the completely publishing-devised nontrend of “Formerly Hots” was but the most egregious example of the Times trying to get the self-appointed commentariat riled up — and succeding. And don’t think the Wall Street Journal, which has been attempting to gain ground on the Gray Lady, hasn’t noticed! Indeed, today both papers have pieces that seem tailor-made for spiking comment-section traffic all around the Web, with one looking at why teenagers get Botox (NYT) and the other examining babies who have been forced into skinny jeans by their parents (WSJ). How do the stories stack up against each other in stoking outrage? Let’s see!

THE PRICE
NYT: “$800 Botox procedure” … “the treatment is about $100”
WSJ: “At babyGap and GapKids, prices for skinny jeans range from $19.50 to $39.50.”
OUTRAGE EDGE: At least your $39.50 skinny jeans can be handed down to other kids. The botulism? Not so much.

THE WAY LIFE IS DIFFERENT FOR KIDS
NYT: “’A lot of teenagers tease each other about things that as adults we may not consider as important,’ Dr. Lam said, adding that he has performed cosmetic surgery on teenagers, including nose jobs and an operation to create creases in the eyelids of minors of Asian descent.”
WSJ: “For skinny jeans, ‘we talked for a long time about how much stretch, what should that feel like?’ [Michelle DeMartini, senior vice president of Old Navy kids and baby design and merchandising] says. ‘Adults might want to forgo comfort for fashion, but children will not.’ “
OUTRAGE EDGE: The Times is victorious here by a mile, if only because of the way the doctor’s statement can serve of a searing reminder of how horrible adolescence can be, thus allowing you to get mad at society all over again!

THE EXPERT OPINION
NYT: “Even the celebrity blogger Perez Hilton was apoplectic, pronouncing what Ms. Pempengco had done, ‘SICK!!!’”
WSJ: “’I have pretty normal-sized kids,’ says Nora Leibowitz, of Portland, who does not wear the style. ‘That means they’re not skinny in any way.’ Ms. Leibowitz, a senior policy analyst for the state specializing in federal health reform, says comfort is her main goal in dressing her 5-year-old daughter and 1-year-old twins.
OUTRAGE EDGE: The Journal, because shut up Perez.

THE ‘OH, HONEY’ MOMENT
NYT: “Some teenagers mistakenly think that Botox can prevent wrinkles.”
WSJ: “Children’s clothing fills an important spot in the life cycle of some trends: After reaching young women, fads often swing downward to tots, and then back up to their parents. That’s because many moms are more willing to be fashion-forward with their young children than with themselves, Ms. DeMartini says.”
OUTRAGE EDGE: Yeesh. Call this a draw. Also, can everyone grow up? Thanks.

THE POTENTIALLY MITIGATING CULTURAL FACTOR
NYT: “At the heart of Ms. Pempengco’s ‘Botox apocalypse,’ as one headline from the Philippines dubbed it, is ‘a collision of cultural norms,’ said Dr. Richard G. Glogau, a clinical professor of dermatology at the University of California at San Francisco. Reshaping the lower face with Botox is ‘not an uncommon goal if you happen to live in Southeast Asia or China,’ he said.”
WSJ: “’People tend to put their kids first,’ says Mark Breitbard, executive vice president of GapKids and babyGap. ‘They’ll pass on something for themselves to make sure their kids are still looked after.’ “
OUTRAGE EDGE: Are you being culturally insensitive by sneering at this Botox-for-teens thing? That uncertainty will sure put a damper on your outrage!

THE KICKER
NYT: “’A 16-year-old in New York getting a rhinoplasty, it’s a birthday present,’ said Dr. Glogau, a paid researcher for the makers of Botox and Dysport. ‘If you told teenagers in Southeast Asia that, they’d probably be aghast. It would never occur to them.’ “
WSJ: “In the pipeline: Jeggings for babies.”
OUTRAGE EDGE: WE MUST STOP THE JEGGING CRAZE BEFORE IT BECOMES INESCAPABLE. Uh, I mean, the WSJ!

THE WINNER
The WSJ came on strong at the end there, but this one has to go to the Times. Sorry, Journal. Next time, maybe you should try and find a target that’s a little bit more injectable!

[Pic via]

Okay, the clip is called “Sewer rats terrorizing Akron toilets.” Do I really have to give you any more? I do not. But I will say that the way the reporter intones the words “the toilet” at the :53 second mark takes this thing to a whole other level. It is no longer just a story about sewer rats terrorizing the toilets of Akron; it is now a struggle for existence against the toilets themselves. Those toilets are evil. EVIL. Or at least they are the way this guy makes it sound. I think from now on when I leave a room I’m going to say, “You’ll have to excuse me. I’m going to… the toilet.” Gotta be good for a couple of laughs, right?

Ah, bonjour, Mademoiselle La Science! What tidings do you bring us this fine morning?

“It is a question that has taxed the world’s greatest scientific minds for centuries. But now French scientists have finally worked out exactly how to pour the perfect glass of bubbly. Through exhaustive testing the team discovered that pouring champagne at an angle and down the side of the glass is best for preserving its taste and fizz.”

What is that you say? Also, it is best served chilled? Comment magnifique! You have changed my life in ways you will never know! I may need to perform some experiments of my own this very second! Au revoir!

Kanye West has made it official: The Twitter-happy MC will return to the Video Music Awards in a semi-official capacity next month, when MTV’s pioneering effort in making the world’s media pay close attention to things that are completely made up celebrates its 27th anniversary in Los Angeles. West, of course, spawned global outrage (and hundreds of thousands of super-hacky jokes) when he rushed the stage during an acceptance speech by Taylor Swift during last year’s broadcast, an incident that I’m still not sure wasn’t entirely planned, executed, and disseminated for the purposes of MTV attracting eyeballs to what was shaping up to be a pretty lackluster show. And hey, it really worked! Which means that the current over/under on the number of times said incident will be referenced on Sept. 12 is somewhere around 23. (Mostly I just hope that West’s appearance will put to bed any and all uses of the phrase “Imma let you finish,” because let’s face it — “#ITSAPROCESS” is so much more versatile as a punchline.)

“Top 10 Canadians in Hollywood: The New Guard”