Cat videos

With the trend of working from home one or more days a week now the norm for many companies, people have found new ways to take breaks, or worse, waste time. The internet and sites like YouTube are perhaps the chief culprit.

While working from my home office last week, I heard caterwauling from the room next door where my wife was browsing on her resplendent iMac, watching yet another cat video. It seems cats, and dogs too, are all the rage online, on YouTube, as well as reddit.com and imgur.com. Then I read about the employees at JC Penney's headquarters, in The Wall Street Journal:

"During January 2012, the 4,800 employees in Plano had watched five million YouTube videos during work hours, said Michael Kramer, a former Apple executive brought in by Mr. Johnson as chief operating officer. Thirty-five percent of the bandwidth at headquarters was routinely used for such loafing off."

According to msn.com, "That month had about 20 work days. So for 4,800 employees, that works out to about 52 YouTube videos each day while on the clock. In fact, about 35% of the Internet usage at the main office was used for goofing off."

52 YouTube videos each day? No wonder Yahoo's new CEO has repealed the company's work from home policy.

Ken Krimstein - The New Yorker

Sound of Silence

This November will mark 50 years since the assassination of President Kennedy.

According to today's edition of The Wall Street Journal:

"A popular tune by Simon and Garfunkel written after John F. Kennedy's assassination and Chubby Checker's 1960s dance hit "The Twist" will be among 25 recordings selected for preservation at the Library of Congress.

"These are just a few sounds of the 20th century being added to the National Recording Registry on Thursday for long-term preservation due to their cultural, artistic and historic importance. The library said Checker's rendition of 'The Twist' became a symbol for the energy and excitement of the early 60s after 'American Bandstand' host Dick Clark chose Checker to record a new version of the song.

"Later, the 1966 album 'Sounds of Silence' by Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel was a hit in its day but not before the duo struggled and split early on. Their song 'The Sound of Silence' from the aftermath of President Kennedy's assassination 50 years ago this year had initially flopped — but it became a hit after it was re-edited as a single. That prompted the duo to reunite and quickly record another album under a similar title."

Simon last performed the song at the funeral of a Sandy Hook Elementary School teacher last December.

The song that received the greatest number of public nominations by the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress was Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon.

Here's the original Simon and Garfunkel recording.

Eight B.I.

Can you remember life before the iPhone?

Saint Peter's Square ~ Associated Press

Living, fast and slow

Just watched this short film, New York Day, by Samuel Orr on kottke.org. The live action is accelerated, but doesn't life in the city usually feel that way?

New York Day from motionkicker on Vimeo.

It contrasts with these reminiscences about life at the turn of the 20th century, written in 1971 by my late grandfather, Mefford, to his sister, Frances. They grew up not far from New York City, and he later worked in midtown from the 1920s to 1960s.

"Frances was born on September 18, 1899 on the family farm in Stelton, New Jersey. There she joined me who had preceded her on this earth by a little over two years. She has tried but has never been able to quite catch up in wisdom and experience. At least that is my point of view, though I am sure many will disagree. The farm was a large one of 165 acres. There our parents, Franklin and Amanda, lived with our grandfather. The farm house had no running water, nor central heating, electricity or plumbing. It did have a wonderfully air conditioned outside Chick Sale, stoves to provide heat and kerosene lamps for light. We loved it.

"We walked to school in a one-room building about three-quarters of a mile away in the village of Stelton. It boasted a railway station, a post office and a sort of store in the Van Horne's house where you could buy baker's bread and nothing else on one or two days a week. To buy food we drove the horse and buggy three miles to the city of New Brunswick, or used the peddlers who came around irregularly and sold various edibles from the tail boards of their wagons.

"We saw our first aeroplane in flight from the school. Lincoln Beachy was trying to fly non-stop from Philadelphia to New York. Not to get lost, he was to follow the Pennsylvania Railroad tracks. We were all very excited and our teacher, Miss Fillips, who was a modernist and believed in simplified spelling and never used a letter that was silent in pronunciation, let us outside to see Beachy come over. He came, flying a one-man biplane at about 500 feet, and that was our introduction to aviation.

"Uncle Jeph, father's oldest brother, lived in Newark and manufactured bed springs. He had what I suppose was a stroke and came with Aunt Lucy to the farm in Stelton for a time. They thought it would be nice to have one of those new fangled contraptions called a horseless buggy. Of course we kids cheered. After all, none of our friends had such a thing. Father was persuaded to learn to drive it and we had some very nice rides around. Sometimes we went as far as 25 miles from home and every once in a while we would get back without having to fix a puncture on the road. The car was a red six-cylinder Ford, and not very powerful. The farm house was at the top of a short but steep hill which came up from where the road ran under the railroad tracks. Father could not get the car to climb the hill going forward. So he had always to turn around and back up the hill and into the yard. Just part of the fun of our first experience with an internal combustion engine.

"Aunt Mattie and Uncle Arthur lived in the fabulous city of New York and it was the height of our youthful enjoyment to go there for a visit once in a while. They lived in an apartment where we could ride up and down the elevator. And they took us to the Colonial and Palace Theatres where we saw wonderful vaudeville shows - comedians, jugglers, sleight-of-hand, artists, tumblers and so on and on; and to see animals at the Bronx Zoo, and to Coney Island where we rode on the Shoot the Chutes, the ferris wheel and so many other things. We were very much aware of the noise of the new subway which went right past the apartment at 92nd Street and Broadway. It never bothered Uncle Arth's sleeping but when he visited us on the farm he used to tell us that the noise of the leaves rustling in the breeze kept him awake."

 

White House to Public: Closed, Go Away

Meet the Prez ~ Michael Ramirez

Despite the White House and Cabinet members' best efforts to scare Americans with unfounded fears about budget sequestration, which cut just 2.6 percent from a $44.8 trillion budget, the planes kept flying, boats stayed afloat and firemen fought fires.

But that didn't stop the White House from making a cynical "stick in the public's eye" decision to cancel White House tours "until further notice" due to "staffing reductions."

Meanwhile, the White House's three staff calligraphers continue to earn a combined $277,050 this year to write invitations to State dinners.

Is it any wonder this administration doesn't know how to budget and live within some notion of means like everyone else? But they do know how to fundraise. Organizing for Action sets a new precedent for selling access to the oval office and president, and signals the perpetual campaign will continue, even in a second and final term.

This latest lesson in White House churlishness contrasts with our last tour, arranged by a friend with connections. We were privileged to get an evening tour of the West Wing by Mike McCurry, then press secretary for the Clinton administration.While talking in his office after the tour, he asked our then nine-year-old son, "Do you know whose house this is?" Upon hearing the answer "President Clinton's," McCurry replied, "No, it's yours, it's the people's house."

Scandalo

Excerpted from The New Yorker:

"Benedict’s term, in fact, has been characterized by an intensifying disapproval of would-be reformers. In a homily last spring, the Pope denounced the efforts of a reforming priest in Austria, where a hundred and fifty thousand Catholics have left the Church in response to revelations of sex abuse in that country, and called upon Catholics to embrace instead “the radicalism of obedience.” Last fall, the Vatican dismissed an American priest who had participated in an ordination ceremony for a woman. The Church is doctrinally immune from majority rule, so perhaps it doesn’t matter that, according to a 2010 Times poll, sixty-seven per cent of American Catholics think priests should be allowed to marry and fifty-nine per cent think women should be allowed to be priests. Yet surely a Church that expels a priest for advocating women’s ordination faster than it does men who have been credibly accused of raping children is in some kind of trouble.