Fun Times in Kidland

I write sparingly about my kids, because that is not my audience. This ain’t no mommyblog. But I can be a filter, and when I discover something kid-cool that my adult readers could appreciate, I will pass it along. Here are two things that I have come across, as a dad, that I think grown folks would enjoy.

First is the Nickelodeon show, Backyardigans. As far as I know, this show has never won an Emmy, which is stunning. The well-crafted story lines are filled with details that pass over the heads of kids, but adults can appreciate. Sure, they are aimed at a kid’s intellect, but educational is educational and you’re are bound to learn something, or at least be entertained. And the music in each episode is spot on. Wikipedia tells me that Evan Lurie, of the band Lounge Lizards, is the music director. Each episiode is like a half-hour musical, and the singing and dancing of these CGI characters is as good as a Gene Kelly flick. So the next time you are channel surfing, or lying in bed sick, stroll on over to Nickelodeon and see if Backyardigans is showing. Also available on Netflix streaming.

Secondly, my kids are starting to reach the age where their toys are interesting to me, as well. The OK got gifted a K*Nex kit, recently, and it is a little bit over his/her age. No problem, dad dove in, and Dang! if this ain’t fun. I had a grand time building a roller coaster. It was as satisfying as if I were an old tar building a ship in a bottle. Kudos to K*Nex for their excellent instructions, which are well thought out and come in color 3-D. I’ve wrestled with so many “engrish” manuals – from wrist watches to furniture- that I really appreciate good instructions.

The #1 Reason to Fight Global Warming

Forget drowning polar bears. Forget dying coral reefs and an increasingly acidified ocean. Forget a Glacier Nat’l Park that is rapidly becoming Empty Vales Nat’l Park.

If you have a shred of humanity in you. If you have any membership as a denizen of our planet. If you were ever once a child. If you have ever celebrated a religious holiday, partaken in Halloween or Valentines day. If you are a hungry snacker, a woman, an epicure, an ice cream lover, a cake eater, a snack machine patron, then you…

love…

Chocolate.

(or at least like it).

Climate change is affecting the health of our world’s cacao trees. It seems they are unusually fragile trees requiring near perfect heat and humidity, well-drained soil and a location within 18 degrees of the Equator. They need to be hot – but not too hot – and they grow in flat tropical lands where there is no ‘uphill’ to migrate to if things get too warm. Well-drained soil is an oxymoron in the tropics, and changing climate might bring too much water. Or too little. Cacao is susceptible to the tiniest droughts and conversely to heavy storms that can knock their fragile flowers apart. And, of course, global warming can enhance the resilience of pests and fungus that make cacao’s life miserable.

So if you’ve ever snickered at a joke, melted M&Ms in your mouth but not in your hand; If you’ve ever visited Willy Wonka or gone bobsledding with Toblerone; If you’ve ever dated Little Debbie, had back-alley mouth sex with a Ho Ho, or eaten a pint of Ben&Jerry’s Double Fudge Brownie while watching the Creature from the Black Lagoon; If you’ve ever savored the silky bitterness of a gourmet dark chocolate bar or peeped at Lady Godiva’s luscious thighs; If you’ve ever sipped hot chocolate on a sleigh ride or sipped cacao juice before ritually killing an Aztec sacrifice; If you’ve ever bought band candy, given your sweetie kisses, or baked sensimilla brownies; If you’ve ever cleaned the pool just to munch on a Babe Ruth…

Then you need to save chocolate. Save the Earth, save chocolate. Stop global warming.

Alternatives to The New York Times and Apple Responds

[Updated to include cnet story, see below]

At the moment, Apple (and by extension a friend of mine), is being put through the wringer by the New York Times. I can empathize, having been through the wringer with the 2006 Duke Men’s Lacrosse Team. If the articles lambasting Apple turn out to be inaccurate Apple can likely expect no retractions or apologies from “America’s Newspaper of Record.” Been there, done that.

My friend rightly points out that my Samsung remote has been produced under unsavory working conditions. (How did he know my TV is a Samsung?? cue Twilight Zone music). And that’s just the thing. All, or at least most, of our consumer electronics are built overseas in Asia, and there is no getting away from buying technology that has human misery built into it. I’ll hazard the same goes for any gold necklace or diamond ring. As we wring our  hands over what American tech companies are doing about labor conditions in Asia, I honestly can’t remember the Chinese Government being mentioned. Where are they in all of this? Did the NYT contact the Chinese government about labor laws? I admit they may have, but it got lost in the rest of the story. China is the elephant in the room, and they have a culture that is worthy of criticism. A recent Diane Rehm show was discussing organic food. At one point they got off on a tangent about China, and the baby formula scandal from a few years back. Melamine was added to the formula to boost its protein signature resulting in renal failure and death for many toddlers. The company executives knew this would happen, but in a corrupt society the greed was worth more than the lives.

Anyhoo…good investigation (and science) requires more than one source. Apple has inspired what few other companies have – fan sites. And from these forums I am finding that Apple, i.e. Tim Cook, is responding to the NYT’s allegations.

Here is a MacRumors thread noting an all-employees email sent out by Tim Cook: Link

And another MacRumors thread discussing the just released 2012 supplier responsibility audit. It also contains a different email to employees from Tim Cook. An interesting quote:

No one in our industry is driving improvements for workers the way Apple is today. I encourage you to take some time to read more about these efforts, so that you can be as proud of Apple’s contributions in this area as I am. The details are online now at apple.com/supplierresponsibility.

This has great potential, because in fast food there is McDonald’s and then there is everyone else. It wasn’t until Mickey Ds started requiring more humanity from their beef suppliers that things started to change for cattle. Apple has great leverage to move the world here.

AppleInsider gives us an even tougher response from Tim Cook in this thread (although I am having a hard time verifying this, so take it with a pinch of salt). A relevant snippet:

Every year we inspect more factories, raising the bar for our partners and going deeper into the supply chain. As we reported earlier this month, we’ve made a great deal of progress and improved conditions for hundreds of thousands of workers. We know of no one in our industry doing as much as we are, in as many places, touching as many people.

If this is to be believed, then Apple is indeed taking the lead for improving working conditions, despite the tone of the NYT. Good on them.

I want to repeat something I said above…where is the chinese guvmint in all this?

Finally, a little nugget lost in this discussion actually has big ramifications for my desire that corporations do more to be citizens than merely pay taxes. My friend mentioned that his partner is insured. His unmarried partner. This is grand, and just the kind of citizenship I am talking about. I’m sure Apple isn’t alone in this, but I imagine it is rare, and some of the others are universities, not for-profit entities.

p.s. interesting to note that my mac corrected my capitalization of MacRumors.com.

[Update] here is an opinion from a CNet writer that really puts things in perspective. Money quote: In fact, everything you own comes from a supply chain that probably has multiple things you just don’t want to know about. You could swap out Apple in that New York Times story and replace it with almost any American corporate giant.

Sheesh, I Give Up

This morning I answered comments before reading the news. Thus it was that I wrote a response to a commenter that essentially asked for more citizenship from corporations, but was predicated on my feeling that Apple is basically good. Good, but I want them to do better. Then I turned to my news surfing and came across this damning article from the New York Times: In China, Human Costs Are Built into iPad. This is the second article in as many days taking Apple to task. If the NYT is writing a serial exposé, I didn’t get the memo, but if another shoe drops tomorrow I won’t be surprised.

My theme has been how can Apple (and other corporations) be better citizens, domestically, and especially hire more US workers. The latest NYT article concerns problems overseas (read: China), and I won’t talk much about that, as I want to stick with the domestic questions. However, this latest has me feeling stupid for thinking so highly of Apple. Two shattered expectations for me are that Apple, is in fact, not the greatest at fostering humane working conditions despite regularly auditing their foreign supply chain, and they do not have as enlightened views of free speech as I thought. If the article is to be believed, Intel and Hewlett Packard both do a better job, up to and including throwing more profits to their suppliers if that is the only way to foster humane working conditions. Considering the hipster, millennial cachét that sticks to Apple, but not to gray flannel Intel and HP, I did not expect that. I desperatly want an iPad, and my old pre-Intel iMac is on its last legs. Ignorance was bliss, but now I know, and now I have to think very carefully before I buy Apple. ATSRTWT (as they say read the whole thing), but the shite Chinese workers have gone through to supply iPads is astonishing.

I just got through complimenting Apple on how they let my friend talk about his company, freely, when I read these passages in today’s article:

The company’s supplier list does not disclose where factories are, and many are hard to find. And independent monitoring organizations say when they have tried to inspect Apple’s suppliers, they have been barred from entry — on Apple’s orders, they have been told.

“We’ve had this conversation hundreds of times,” said a former executive in Apple’s supplier responsibility group. “There is a genuine, companywide commitment to the code of conduct. But taking it to the next level and creating real change conflicts with secrecy and business goals, and so there’s only so far we can go.” Former Apple employees say they were generally prohibited from engaging with most outside groups.

“There’s a real culture of secrecy here that influences everything,” the former executive said.

Some other technology companies operate differently.

“We talk to a lot of outsiders,” said Gary Niekerk, director of corporate citizenship at Intel. “The world’s complex, and unless we’re dialoguing with outside groups, we miss a lot.”

If you work for Apple, maybe you better not comment on this post.

I am keen to see how Apple responds to these NYT articles. I guess when you post quarterly profits measured in the billions you become, “a target rich environment” for investigative journalists. It is likely that if they just wait it out for a news cycle, or two, then it will all fade into the dust. Apple seems to be very talented at “no comment,” and that can be a very effective technique. I have a hard time visualizing millennials giving up their iPhones out of sympathy with Chinese workers. But I hope to be surprised.

My Treasonous Charge Gets Squashed

Annie, aka the cgig, gives a well reasoned counterpoint to my diatribe about Apple:

[...], why is it considered treasonous in this case for the corporation to go overseas for workers? They were “born” here, partly due to the opportunities that the US provides…education supporting the creators; governmental regulations in their favour; etc. From there, they have expanded to an international company. It would be nice for them to stay in the US then, and continue to foster the economy (and give a bit back), but you mention that they now do business with 100 companies worldwide. Once they have expanded that network, why are they obligated to keep the jobs in the US? Who are they obligated to be patriotic to, if they have shareholders and clients all over the globe?

Not to get all Personhood on you here, but let’s compare this to an individual. Think of it as a person who was born in the US, and moved overseas for work. Possibly because the job market in the US wasn’t that strong. Is that treasonous? In both cases, the person/organisation is doing what is selfishly economically beneficial to them. The person was educated in the US and received all the benefits of growing up with this particular society’s way of fostering growth. Should they feel obligated to stay in the country and give back to it, both through taxes and staying engaged in the community and doing public service? It would be nice if they did, but hardly anybody would consider it selling out their country if the person went overseas.

Well, said. To paraphrase A Street Car Named Desire – I’ve always depended on the kindness of friends to bring me out of my tree. Also I confess I don’t understand the T. Pratchett reference, so you’ll have to explain.

Perhaps we can imagine a spectrum. Let’s construct a selfishness/citizenship spectrum: If there are people on one end of the spectrum that would sell out their country for nothing but money (not even ideology), and fascists on the other end, with an über sense of nationalism, then reasonable, logical folks should be somewhere in the middle. There just is no point in having a corporation with no selfishness at all, otherwise you’re not making money. I ‘get’ that many corporations had a choice of move over seas or close up shop. You can’t even argue about the morality or amorality of Apple if they no longer exist. (Well, I suppose you can, but…)

So now we get to those devilish details. Just where on the spectrum should corporations fall? I feel like they have drifted too far towards the selfish end of the spectrum. Most Americans vote, pay taxes, serve on juries, and generally follow the law. One of the things that warms my patriot heart is the post I had awhile ago about how furriners view America. A whopping number of comments concerned the honesty boxes you see by rural highways selling firewood or potatoes. Foreigners, especially Britishers were amazed. Now, in the great honesty box of life, how well do I think corporations treat honesty? Not very.

Anyway, your point is well taken, so now it is just a matter of what corporations should be doing to be at a good point along the selfishness/citizenship spectrum. Which brings us to your next part:

Let’s see if we can’t find a mutually beneficial arrangement…the best way forward might be to provide the corporations an economically desirable way for them to do what we want. [...] Who in China provides the training? They must be acquiring their qualifications somehow. Presumably it is part of the state-sponsored education system? If so, then perhaps the US should offer that same sort of training. (This is different than sending people back to school to better compete for jobs that currently exist, since that still ends up with the same number of people employed. This is about making companies want to create new jobs in the US.)

I guess all this comes down to a question of approach. Is it going to be “this is the way people are, how do we deal with it?” or “this is the way people are, how do we change them?” (out-of-context credit to T. Pratchett) The changing them gets hard. They will always act for their own self-interest, whether that is the individual or the corporation. But if we can align their self-interest with ours, maybe we can deal with them.

As for “why is it the US that needs to solve the problem”–because it is OUR responsibility to stay relevant in a changing world. Let’s take a good long look at our strengths, and an equal one at our weaknesses, and figure out what niche we can best fill in the future.

If you watched the State of the Union last night, then I think President Obama and you are singing from the same page, which is nothing to be ashamed of. But I disagree with him. If corporations are not pegged at the selfish end of the spectrum, then what kind of ‘citizenship’ things could they be doing? Reagan republicans love to privatize things, and what could be more perfect than corporations setting up their own training centers rather than depending on community colleges? In fact, isn’t this some of the history of our current school system? Forward facing rows, punctual start and end times, homogeneous rote learning all to benefit the industrial revolution (I admit that ‘history’ may be apocryphal, but still…). I would argue that contributing to the training of your own workers is a win-win and also contributes to your contribution as a good citizen.

Again, if we give corporations stable transportation, patent laws, domestic security, tax relief, financial incentives, yadda yadda, what are we getting in return?

Fun With Names

Apropos of nothing, I’ve imagined up with some fun names that I will probably never use. So I will write them down here and make a post about them. Might as well, can’t dance. File this under wtf?

• Jack Lumber, Private Eye
• The Liver Spots, an elderly punk band
• Nelson Gazpacho, provocateur romantique

Got any fun names you’d like to broadcast?

[UPDATE about an hour later] OMG, I can’t believe I fergot anonynurse’s awesome coinage:

• K. Sprinkle-Spratz, Herr Doktor uf der Kooky Science

Good, Bad, Ugly, Inc.

Yesterday I read a fascinating NYTimes article about why Apple makes their iPhones in China instead of the US. The theme of the article is why can’t we build those products here, and begins with an anecdote of President Obama having a roundtable dinner with several IT CEOs, including Steve Jobs, and asking just that question. The consensus of the CEOs was, “Gee we really are doing wonderful things for America, pay no attention to that minor detail of how few products are built here.”  Then I came to this sentence, and I was incensed:

“We sell iPhones in over a hundred countries,” a current Apple executive said. “We don’t have an obligation to solve America’s problems. Our only obligation is making the best product possible.”

I find this deplorably un-patriotic. What does it mean to be a part of a country, if you’re…well…not part of the country? This may be one of the few nexus(es) between the Tea Party and the Occupy movement. (What is the plural of nexus?)

Then my mind started to play around with the notion of morality. Let’s say there is the moral (good), the amoral (bad), and the immoral (ugly); as a leftie I tend to fall in step with the corporations are immoral view. However, what if I were to look at corporations not as immoral but as amoral, where we define amoral as neither good nor bad; the absence of morality; outside of morality. It breaks our heart to watch a wolf kill and devour a baby deer, but this isn’t immoral, it is amoral. It is what it is.

So let’s assume that the situation is amoral: Apple (or any corporation) has no obligation to do anything but make money for shareholders (in fact, making a superior product is incidental, just make a serviceable product). Fine. But two can play at that game. If Apple has no obligation to solve America’s problems, then likewise, America has no obligation to solve Apple’s problems. Apple should no longer be able to use the FBI or the State department to counter software piracy overseas. Need more H-1B visas? They no longer exist. Have overseas profits you can’t bring into the country because of  tax issues? Fine, the status quo stays. I mean, I just don’t get why corporations are so oblivious to the fact their existence is a two-way street.

To be fair, reading the history of Apple shows it was often good (moral). It was the last tech company to ship jobs overseas, and it doesn’t just build so-so products, but really great (though expensive) products. Also, why is it that Apple gets picked on when the corporate world is rife with BPs spewing ugly into the forest primeval?

Then The Atlantic piled on with a sycophantic review of the NYT article. The opinion writer takes up the reins, and referencing the original article, lays the fault at America’s feet. He notes from the original article that American labor costs would only add $65 to the cost of an iPhone. However the real advantage of China is their “middleskill” technicians:

China’s labor advantage goes well beyond the low-skill workers who do the menial task of stuffing parts into iPhones. The country also excels at educating middle-skill “industrial engineers.” These aren’t Stanford graduates capable of designing the next iteration of the iPad. Rather, they’re akin to alums from your local community college who have the technical skills to manage the iPad production line. As the Times notes:

Apple’s executives had estimated that about 8,700 industrial engineers were needed to oversee and guide the 200,000 assembly-line workers eventually involved in manufacturing iPhones. The company’s analysts had forecast it would take as long as nine months to find that many qualified engineers in the United States. 

In China, it took 15 days. 

Those sorts of statistics should bring into cold, clear focus why America’s education system is at such a disadvantage when it comes to manufacturing. The problem isn’t a lack of elite graduates. We have those.

[...]

China has learned to produce graduates with mid-level technical skills[...]. The United States (my emphasis – middlerage) needs to learn to do the same if it wants to remain a manufacturing force in the future.

Why is it the United States that needs to solve the problem???

Why can’t Apple and the others, contribute as citizens to the training of a domestic workforce? I live in a southeastern megalopolis with some severally depressed areas populated by disadvantaged minorities. Nobody thinks to set up technology training centers in our gawddam backyards. Family first for fuck’s sake, but no, corporations have no obligation to America. It is America’s responsibility to set up the education of a viable workforce, and if we don’t then corporations fuck off to distant shores. Except for the fact that the Supreme court has determined there is corporate personhood for the sake of political speech (a decision most Americans rightly despise), corporations seemingly have no other civic duties. If I sell out my country I will be tried for treason, if a corporation does (and I contend they do routinely) they are simply practicing amoral bizniz as usual. It is what it is.

Music Fridays – Battle of the Divas

This Music Fridays pretty much writes itself: Rest in Peace Etta James, d. Jan 20th 2012.

Like a million other unoriginal wedding couples, the lovely one and I danced our first dance to the Etta James version of At Last (with all the obituaries in the news I am learning that James was not the original singer, as I had thought, but her cover is the defining version of the song). Nevertheless, we truly love the song and chose it with purpose.

Years later there was a minor dustup in pop culture when James, always known to speak her mind, allowed as how the recent Beyoncé version was not all that great. In fact, Beyoncé was playing the role of Etta James for the movie Cadillac Records (A biopic of the founding of Chess Records).

So for funzies, I’m putting up  videos from both divas for my dear readers to judge for themselves. Personally, I’m hands-down an Etta guy. Her version, despite the scratchy old 1950s sound, gives me the chills. Beyoncé sings okay, but just doesn’t have that gravitas, that husky, R&B sound. Leave your opinion in the comments.

The Great Recession is Three Years Old*…

…but Wealthy Manipulations Are Three Decades Old…

…or, This Train Wreck Has Been A Long Time Coming…

…or, yet another book to go on my to-read list…

A while ago I posted a manifesto calling out our lack of power and how you have no political voice because you have no money. Now it seems like everyone’s favorite gentleman-leftie, Bill Moyers, is on the case.  I found this long (sorry) video of Moyers interviewing the authors of  Winner Take All Politics via here (I like to credit where I find stuff – this from a blog at the Atlantic.).

Anyhoo…here is the 40 minute video. It’s a clear-eyed, intellectual, non-hyperbolic exploration of our wealth disparity, so clear your schedule, and while you’re at it, take some time to go back and read my earlier post, and the excellent comments from anonynurse. In a couple of months it’ll be Spring and as the weather warms I hope to see the Occupy Wall Street movements wake from hibernation.

*The dismal scientists declared the recession over in 2010 based on their measurements of many indicators, but I say pshaww. The Great Recession is over when 99weekers** go back to work enmasse with good white collar jobs with good benefits.

**99weekers: n. folks who have been out of work so long they have exhausted their unemployment benefits, which in the hardest hit counties maxed at 99 weeks.

A Creepy Sentiment

Near my house is one of those Mega-churches. You know the ones – giant glittery edifice, glittery SUVs in the parking lot, folks with glittery hair-dos attending to hear about a glittery god who wants you to make glittery money.

They had a sign out front for a special event, “Faith Harvest!”

Now I understand the point they are trying to make – bringing in new souls, and the comforting imagery of bounty and spiritual food.

But as I drive past that sign I can’t help picturing a reaper, scythe in hand, cutting down the fatihful in bloody heaps. Shiver.

Can anybody say Jim Jones? Or the California Heaven’s Gate cult? They knew a thing or two about faith harvest.

Now, if I just knew how to photoshop some pious people into this picture…