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Are You a Major Contributor to Unemployment?
We're shooting ourselves in our own economic feet.A significant part of our unemployment can be traced to the loss of entry-level and low-mid-level jobs in the service industries. These jobs have been replaced, not by clever automation and smarter workers, but by consumers who are inexplicably willing to take over the work for which corporations would normally have to pay a worker. Case in point: service station attendants. When I was growing up, a lot of high-school kids and graduates had jobs at local service stations pumping gas, cleaning windshields, checking oil and tire pressure, and helping people. Today, in most states at least, you can hardly find a station that will pump gas even for a handicapped driver who cannot pump his or her own. (I'm told Oregon has a law against people pumping their own gas. Good for them.) So we, the buyers, get out of our cars even in the nastiest weather, fiddle with pumps that are sometimes recalcitrant and differ from station to station, all the while putting one or more people out of work. Then we get back into our cars and drive to a club or a bar or a restaurant or an office where we bemoan the unemployment rate. Case in point: grocery checkers. In our area, Safeway has begun adding self-checkout systems to their superstores. My daughter lives in a San Jose neighborhood where Safeway recently opened a remodeled store that has two -- count 'em two! -- cash registers staffed by cashiers and a bunch of self-check stations. Cashiering used to be a decent-paying job with a future for people who didn't need a college degree. Now we the customers are doing their jobs for them, saving their corporate masters millions of dollars and increasing their profits while our friends and neighbors stand in unemployment lines. In the first case, we were sold a bill of goods about cheaper gas. In the second, we're being told we'll get through faster and save time. That turns out to be bullpucky, by the way, especially if you're buying anything that doesn't have a barcode on it, like produce. If you really care about unemployment, stop doing the work for which others can be paid, even if it means you spend a few more cents or dollars to do it. If you sacrifice your concern and compassion for others on the altar of greed and convenience, stop blaming the government and other people when the economy tanks. You're a big part of the problem.
Avatar: Two Opposing Movies Wrapped in Brilliant 3D
My wife and I went yesterday afternoon to see "Avatar" in 3D. The 3D was astonishingly good: well-executed, not overdone, often surprising. The feel of being in the story was compelling. (Plot spoilers follow.) Unfortunately, neither the story nor the characters were. Compelling, that is. The humanoid characters (the Na'vi) would have been more engaging if they had been less human. Director James Cameron did some great modifications (blue color, reshaped nose, tail, and seven-foot height) but it was pretty easy to slip into a human vs. human, us vs. them kind of mindset because the characters were insufficiently alien. The non-Na'vi life forms were often quite well done but none of them was imbued with any particularly intriguing or endearing characteristics that made them objects of interest, support or sympathy. But compared to the storyline, the characters are masterpieces. A barely disguised retelling of "Dances With Wolves" with more spectacular violence, Avatar fails to satisfy either of the two audiences Cameron appears to have had in mind. Those who, like me, enjoy positive, uplifting films with spiritual and moral lessons and content (a la Spiritual Cinema Circle), the first 60% or so of the movie came close a few times to excellence and insight. There are, in fact, two or three insightful events or comments in this first part of the film, but they are few, far between, and a bit didactic in their expression. The film then devolves into the American-Indian Wars on an alien planet with the outcome reversed. It is interesting that both political extremes have expressed anger or disappointment with the movie. The Right thinks it's awful to portray Americans as warlike, blood-thirsty and planet-raping. Even though that's clearly a major dimension of the reality. The Left thinks Cameron could have left out the entire military angle and the combat, which is way too idealistic for today's movie-going American audience. Having blown through $300 million in production cost and half that in marketing expenses, Cameron and the studio were obviously not going to produce a feel-good movie and hope against hope to recover their investment. All in all, this move is a 6 on a scale of 10, increased to 7.5 because of the great 3D effects.
