Author: Dan Dickinson

"My voice is a signal calling out"

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Let’s see, what’ve I been consuming lately?

  • The season finale of True Blood was pretty good, but I’ll be curious to see if they can keep it up another season.
  • I don’t even know why I still enjoy Entourage (beyond the obvious Piven-ness) but I do.
  • The new Fembots album Calling Out is very good.
  • As much as I can’t wait to watch the final two episodes of The Shield, I really don’t want it to end.
  • I’ve watched four movies in the past couple of weeks: Monkey Warfare (very Parkdale-indie), You Kill Me (ridiculous and implausible, but fun), L’Enfant (realistic, troubling and bleak) and Rails & Ties (predictable, melodramatic and wooden at times).
  • Lots of hockey and basketball too, but both my teams are slumping right now, so…yeah. Lots of Wii tennis.
  • The Future of Management by Gary Hamel was a very good book if you’re ever wondering why we’ve spent the last century innovating new business practices, but not new management practices.

Time: the revelator

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Yesterday a friend asked, via Twitter, “Where were you 45 years ago today?” I hadn’t quite woken up yet so it took me a second to place the date: November 22. It was 45 years ago yesterday that JFK was assassinated.

History has a funny way of messing with your perception of time, particularly when something is still very much part of popular culture the way that Kennedy (and his assassination) is. That event always feels much older to me than how I perceive 45 years. While it happened before I was born, it’s not as if I’m unfamiliar with it…I’ve consumed a lot of films, documentaries and books about that assassination. In fact, when I thought about it yesterday, I found it mildly surprising that I was born only 12 years after John Kennedy’s assassination. I hadn’t thought about it in those terms before, and the two events seemed decades apart in my perception.

That thought stayed with me as I continued to read the first pages of Richard Evans‘ The Coming Of The Third Reich (amazon). He’s currently describing how antisemitism was alive and well, even fairly organized, in Germany in 1908, well before the start of even the first world war. 1908…that’s 100 years ago. It won’t even be for another six years that we hit the first anniversary of the beginning of WWI.

WWI seems like a big marker. We’re all taught so much about it that, to me, it seems like the starting point of what we perceive as ‘recent’ history; anything beyond that is just labeled history, full stop. I used to think recent history was whatever had transpired in the past hundred years or, when I was younger, whatever had happened earlier in the current century. WWI was that milestone for me, and probably for my father too, but I suspect it won’t be long until it fades and WWII becomes the new starting point. That’s strange for me, as I’ve been reading so much about WWI lately that it’s far more prominent and memorable, if that’s the right word, to me. History is delineated in our perceptions not by years, but by milestones, and their prevalence in our minds tricks us about their age.

Another example: it seems equally hard for me to believe that Nevermind by Nirvana was released 17 years ago as it is to believe that the one hundredth anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic is still nearly four years away.

This is what happens when you let Ashlee Simpson name people

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From the wonderful Malene Arpe at the Toronto Star:

Ashlee Simpson and Pete Wentz welcomed a son yesterday. His name is Bronx Mowgli Wentz, which will assure him a painful childhood full of taunting and school yard beatings. There is as of yet no photos of the little guy (something I’m confident will be rectified by People Magazine in short order), so instead, here are, well, The Bronx and Mowgli.

Less Joe Mauer. More Ryan Howard.

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I’m still trying to get some work done — brilliance often strikes around midnight, right? — so no interesting blog topics tonight. This week has been bad for imagination and insight. Too much happening at work, not enough brain downtime at home, let alone time to get non-work stuff done. We haven’t had groceries in the house since Sunday morning. We’ve been on subsistence pizza for days.

Meanwhile the weather’s turned to shit, which normally would turn my mood black as pitch, but it’s not like I’m paying attention to what’s outside. Still, though…I don’t hate my days. I hate some of what happened at work today, but not most of it. I think having the right co-workers, and especially the right boss, makes up for a lot of down.

That’s it. Enough. I’ve been trying to hit for average all week. Tomorrow I’m swingin’ for the fences.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand there goes the paycheque

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Oh yes, this is just what I need: unfettered access to Canali.

Just a few years ago, Harry Rosen Inc. found that consumers weren’t ready to buy its luxury men’s wear online. They worried about using credit cards on the Internet, and didn’t like to purchase clothes without trying them on first.

Lately, however, the retailer’s research has found attitudes have come around, so by next April the chain plans on finally launching an e-commerce site. One factor working in the company’s favour is that new, younger customers are already comfortable purchasing online and they’re at ease buying shoes and jeans, items that used to be a hard sell owing to sizing standards. Perhaps the most compelling thing Harry Rosen’s research came up with was that it could generate up to 10-per-cent more business with an e-shopping site.

That last sentence has a mistake in it. It should read ‘…it could generate up to 10-per-cent more business from a single IP address in downtown Toronto with an e-shopping site.’

Oh, and…’e-shopping’? What is this, 1996? Maybe Marina Strauss should’ve mentioned how Harry Rosen plans to get on the information superhighway.

"Unfortunately I have fallen in love with my Fatherland. I cannot live in these times."

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Having just finished The Future Of Management (amazon) by Harvard prof Gary Hamel, I’m moving on to The Coming Of The Third Reich (amazon) by Richard Evans. That should keep me loose and cheerful on chilly mornings, no?

Actually, I bought that book — along with The Dark Valley: A Panorama of the 1930s (amazon) by Piers Brendon — after I began looking for a WWII equivalent to The Guns Of August, and found an answer in this AskMetafilter thread. I want to understand the run-up to the war, but it seems pointless to do so without focusing on the most puzzling part. For most of my life it had seemed inconceivable that Germany could take such a murderous turn, but in recent years I’ve seen enough to know that it’s probably not as improbable as I’d like to think. Anyway, I reckon if ever there’s an enemy worth knowing, it’s the rise of Nazism.

“Of course the people don’t want war. But after all, it’s the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it’s a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.” –Hermann Goering

"Why bail out the car companies when they bailed out on us?"

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Much has been written about the possible bailout of Detroit auto manufacturers — by Greg Mankiw, The Economist here and here, Baseline Scenario, Salon and Richard Florida here and here, to name just a few — and nearly everything I’ve read points to the bailout being a terrible idea. The American car manufacturers have been classic examples of mismanaged companies (see the chart above from Professor Mark Perry) who would rather lobby against change than profit from it.

This could be the first big test of character for soon-to-be-president Obama. If he bails out Detroit without serious conditions attached (he’s made preliminary statements to this end, but nothing at all concrete) it would only be for political reasons

Except maybe Nutchos.

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A lot of things remind me of Christmas, and a lot of them are obvious: wreaths, carols, wrapping paper, and so on. Over the years these things have turned into indicators of the Christmas shopping season, and not particularly pleasing to me. What still makes me smile are memories of past Christmases, especially from my childhood, which were fairly unique to my family. My mom’s chocolate-covered peanut butter balls. The spruce tree we’d get when most people got fir or pine. My Dad’s homemade ice cream. The light-up porcelain decoration, now long gone, that Mom left on the old TV one year, melting a hole through the plastic top of the TV case. And maybe strongest of all…

Toffifee.

I never think about this stuff, and we never have it anymore, but as a kid we’d have it every Christmas, and I loved it. When Esquire wrote about it today it instantly made me want Christmas. It’s not the strongest memory indicator of Christmas I get, but it might be the only one that reminds me only of Christmas and nothing else.