Tom & Ray Magliozzi (AKA Click & Clack) have launched a “Gentle Educational Campaign” against (you guessed it) Sport Utility Vehicles. The tagline is “Live Larger, Drive Smaller.” Why have they done this? Well, in their humble opinion, because SUVs are stupid! (4 min., 3 sec. RealAudio link.) We here at OS like to think long-term, and we’ll enjoy looking back on this era of irrational-vehicle fashion in 20 years and thinking to ourselves, “Look how right we were!”

Today is a good day to revisit one of our old saws: Poor Customer Service. Two personal experiences, just today in fact, of Poor Customer Service prompted these thoughts (I won't say where).

For about a year now, I've been doing something that I want to encourage all of you to do as well: wait for the person behind the counter (whatever counter that may be) to ask, "May I help you?" Over the course of the past, say, ten years, this polite and once ubiquitous custom seems to have gradually disappeared. But it shouldn't disappear--we're all still humans, aren't we? We still need to relate ourselves to one another, right? So I have resolved to not place my order (etc.) until I am asked.

This decision has, at times, resulted in long, nervous, awkward periods of silence--situations in which the person behind the counter and me stare at each other in an intense battle of will. It has also resulted in disdain from both the service worker and the other customers in line. But I don't care--I'm trying to make a point. Besides, it's fun dammit.

One thing to remember when you do this is that even though you're "fighting" something that's wrong, you should always remain polite. Being mean defeats the purpose. So, try this little social protest for yourself. You'll walk away with a wonderful sense of victory and tingly feeling of righteous indignation.

"You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life." Albert Camus, 1913-1960

New artist Jordin Isip uses the weathered, the stepped on, and the torn as raw materials in creating his beautiful, pensive, multi-layered illustrations.

Today's Working Assets Radio is on the good old subject of what chain stores do to local economies. They talked about a Super Target - a 150,000 square foot building meant to compete with Walmart. In response, Walmart has started builing 250,000 square foot stores - that's the size of six football fields not counting the space for parking.

Those with good memories might remember that not so long ago, Iraq was receiving aid from the United States. And you probably remember that Iraq used chemical weapons, too. If you are some left-wing wacko, or maybe a crazy conspiracy nut, you might have thought that meant that the Unites States knowingly aided a nation that was gassing people to death. And now it seems clear you were right, but it still doesn't feel good. (nytimes login: user-opensewer, password-iswatching)

Uh, hello everyone. Sorry for the lack of updates over the past few days—the people who run Opensewer are in a state of household flux. And some of those who help are on vacation. Continuity will resume before too long, don’t you worry!

What will the world look like in 10 years? Is what you're doing right now going to affect how we live in the future? How will it affect our lives? Are you making a difference? Do you want to?

Excellent post, Rose! The article you linked is so good that I simply must pull a "quote of a quote" from it:

...sentimentality is an excess, a distortion of sentiment usually in the direction of over-emphasis on innocence and that innocence whenever it is over-emphasized in the ordinary human condition, tends by some natural law to become its opposite. --Flannery O’Connor

Lost your job? Can't find a new one? Don't have health insurance? You must be a minority of one, if you listen to White House. Experts agree, everything is fine!

No, it's not.

So not only does the government want you to rat on your neighbor, they want you to tell it to Fox TV.

Today my post will contain both earnest commentary and just a little bit of media deconstruction. In the New York Times Magazine yesterday, Lisa Belkin wrote a mostly excellent article about coincidence and probability, and how these concepts relate to America’s current state of patriotic paranoia (user: opensewer; password: iswatching). In essence, I enjoyed this article, and thought it discussed an ordinarily arcane, counterintuitive subject in an objective and accessible way. It also appealed to me personally because of my interests in randomness and forecasting, and it reminded me of Spyros Makridakis’ insightful description of six key biases that one can fall into when attempting to think objectively or predict outcomes.

So on that front, it was a good article. However, I found myself disgusted by the shameless reference (read: plug) of the recent mediocre film, “Signs.” Belkin seemed to just force it into the seventh paragraph, and it looks suspiciously like someone paid her (or her editor) to do it. If that sentence hadn’t been in the article, it would have been a clip-n-save for me—but now it’s going straight into the trash. Like our own Josh mentioned here a couple of weeks ago, guerilla marketing is increasing in frequency, and it’s despicable. This growing trend makes critical thinking skills more important than ever, but unfortunately those skills seems to be increasingly rare among our compliant, starry-eyed, media-adoring youth.

Incidentally, why is the media pushing “Signs,” a lukewarm film by any standard, and its young director, M. Night Whatever, so hard recently? Is quality of work making the star director here, or hidden money and cronyism?

It’s funny how when we (Rose and I) go out of town we don’t blog—it’s so easy to do it from anywhere. I suppose the reason is that when we’re away, we really want to be away. Anyway, we’re back.

Go ahead and stick your head in the sand and keep telling yourself there's no way humans are affecting the global climate.

Just how many potential SUV owners do we have in this country now?

The latest trend of the supremely image conscious seems to have a frightening but ironic side effect. (nytimes.com - login:opensewer, password:iswatching)

In case you were wondering if they are listening...
Yep, they are.

Our military has now decided to ignore our civilian government. Martial law, anyone? Don't bother politely refusing.

Public opinion has swung in favor of revising some of the most ridiculous laws in the United States. It is now even reaching the legislators in New York, home to some of the most extreme sentencing rules.

Remember this- America using the UN as a cover to spy on Iraq? So we are going to attack soon, consequences be damned?

People may not have been aware of it before last fall, but some people in other countries don't like us here in the States. And it's not just because they are jealous of our freedoms, as some of our elected leaders might tell you. So instead of trying to work more in harmony with the rest of the world, we're just going to sell ourselves. You want some of Brand U.S.A. ? And when Europeans don't like our policies, are we just going to remind them that if it wasn't for us, they'd all be speaking German? Can we even consider just listening to world opinion for once before acting?

Imagine with me for a moment: You're in a bar and have just met an attractive person with a great personality. You're getting along great with this stranger when suddenly, their Sony Ericsson T68i phone rings and shows a picture of the incoming caller on its bright color display. Your new acquaintance smiles and before taking the call makes a point to tell you, "It takes pictures too!" You're impressed with this gadget, and as you wait the person to finish the call, you wonder if you need a new phone. Maybe you'll consider the Sony Ericsson T68i?

The next day you meet one of your friends for breakfast. While you're eating, they begin to tell you about a person they met last night at a bar - a completely different bar on the other side of town. This person intrigued your friend because they seemed interesting, but what was really interesting was that they had the most high tech phone with a bright color display that even took pictures.

Surprise! You've just become a part of Sony Ericsson's new marketing campaign! Welcome to the future: where marketing reaches a new level of deception.

Following up on Jason's post: While it's excellent that Ford decided not to build another generation of the Excursion SUV, Lincoln, another Ford company, is pushing their new Navigator. Starting at $48,000, it's an easy replacement for the Excursion, but unfortunately only a hair better in its green rating. You might have seen one of their new commercials showcasing the Navigator with the tagline, "There are those who travel and those who travel well." I say they change their tagline to "There are those who pollute and those who pollute in luxury."

Victory! Ford has decided not to build another generation of the horrid Excursion SUV. As a little eulogy, let's cite a few of the vehicle's best traits: 10 MPG, emits 130 tons of CO2 over its lifetime (compared to 23 for an average car), it's 7 feet tall, 19 feet long and at $45,000, a lousy seller. (NYT; username: opensewer; password: iswatching.)

We're probably not going to see the end of the SUV any time soon and in truth, to the extent that new models are created that do not harm the environment and do not present a threat to public safety (wishful thinking), let them be. That said, I do have hope for one thing: Perhaps the death of the most excessive SUV is a sign that the chasm between "what's good for the environment" and "what the market wants" will become narrower in the future. Every citizen of the world has to hope that in the very long run, what we want and what is good for us will become one in the same.

Ice-Cold Tragedy For Sale, Get Yer Tragedy Here!

The kind people at the Columbia Journalism Review have done an excellent job compiling who owns what in the media--what business interest controls your news. Take a look, you might be surprised.

Maya Lin: The Reluctant Memorialist.

This is a fairly trenchant prediction of how the economy and the stock market might relate to one another after the effects of the current economic “bubble burst” dissipate. Let me add one thing: We'll see a return to business models that *always* work. That is, create a product or service, and then sell it for a price greater than the sum of production, distribution, marketing and overhead. It seems so simple…why is it recently so elusive to large corporations? Why is cooking the books so much more appealing? The reason seems pretty obvious: It has a lot to do with the Wall-Street-driven obsession with quarterly profits. Real life doesn't operate on a quarterly basis, but for some reason the stock market expects it to.

From the New York Times:

When studies last year showed that the share of the nation's children living in single-parent households had declined in the late 1990's, many welcomed the results as signs that the 1996 welfare overhaul was working.

But new research underscores a smaller, unwelcome trend: a rising share of children, particularly black children in cities, are turning up in no-parent households, left with relatives, friends or foster families without either their mother or their father. (Username: opensewer; password: iswatching.)

Doin' it for the kids, are we? Just remember, if parties are outlawed, only outlaws will party.