The Best Post of the Week of September 29, 2013.

Smoking it up. . .

The other day, I started to watch the classic film Double Indemnity.  I had never seen it, and there was nothing else on.  It is a great film.

But what I noticed, in spite of myself, is that everyone is really smoking it up in the film.  Big time.  And I wasn't the only one who noticed it, my good friend Todd, living clean across the west from me, happened to be watching it also, and noticed the very same thing (plus the prodigious quantities of booze consumed in the film).  It may be a Film Noir, but the Noir may be caused by all the smoke blocking out the sun.  It's amazing.  Which caused me to recall a topic that should have been posted here long ago, but which I haven't.

Man, mid 20th Century, people really smoked.  A lot.

Oil soaked railroad worker, smoking.

People still smoke, of course. But not like they once did.  Everyone now knows that smoking is lethal, although a few diehards will continue to maintain that it isn't, based on strained arguments.  And everyone not only knows the risk of lung cancer associated with smoking, but all the other health risks it entails.  As much smoking as there is today, it's nothing like the amount there once was. . .

Today In Wyoming's History: October 4

Today In Wyoming's History: October 4:

October 4

Today is Cinnamon roll day in Sweden.

2013  Major blizzard shuts down central Wyoming.

Second major storm of the season.  Pretty much right on time.  Last snow came in just about exactly one week ago.

For a first snow, that's late.  And this started off as a rain storm, which is also atypical.  When I was a kid, we usually had our first storm in the first half of September.  I always worried about it at the time, as it might mean that we couldn't get out for sage chickens.

Smoking it up. . .

The other day, I started to watch the classic film Double Indemnity.  I had never seen it, and there was nothing else on.  It is a great film.

But what I noticed, in spite of myself, is that everyone is really smoking it up in the film.  Big time.  And I wasn't the only one who noticed it, my good friend Todd, living clean across the west from me, happened to be watching it also, and noticed the very same thing (plus the prodigious quantities of booze consumed in the film).  It may be a Film Noir, but the Noir may be caused by all the smoke blocking out the sun.  It's amazing.  Which caused me to recall a topic that should have been posted here long ago, but which I haven't.

Man, mid 20th Century, people really smoked.  A lot.

Oil soaked railroad worker, smoking.

People still smoke, of course. But not like they once did.  Everyone now knows that smoking is lethal, although a few diehards will continue to maintain that it isn't, based on strained arguments.  And everyone not only knows the risk of lung cancer associated with smoking, but all the other health risks it entails.  As much smoking as there is today, it's nothing like the amount there once was.

When smoking really took off in North America, I don't know, but it was no doubt pretty darned early. Tobacco, after all, was one of the first cash crops ever grown in North America.  You can't eat it, and you can't smoke it all yourself, so it was grown for money.  That makes it a bit of a unique crop in some ways, for the early history of the country, although it wasn't the only crop grown for cash.

Children of tenant farmer, working tobacco, circa 1916.

Tobacco actually fueled the early slave trade in the US more than cotton.  At the time of the Revolution, slavery was an economic institution in the South because of tobacco, not because of cotton.  It was partially for that reason that the founders were willing to put up with the horrific evil of slavery, as they presumed that it would decrease in a tobacco farming industry which would become increasingly the province of smaller farmers and demand increasingly fewer chained laborers.  Of course, they were wrong, but that shows that the time, smoking the continent up was already a pretty big deal.

I don't have a clue what percentage of the population smoked, or used tobacco in some other fashion, but by the late 19th Century, it was (still) pretty darned common.  Maybe a majority of men smoked.  They didn't all smoke cigarettes, however.  Indeed, most didn't. Cigarettes were somewhat uncommon. Cigars and Pipes were the norm for smokers at the time.

Banjo playing Union artillerymen during the Civil War.  Contrary to what people might generally expect, this pipe looks surprisingly 1950ish.

Civil War era cavalryman with rather long pipe.

Cigars became an increasingly big deal as time passed, and by the early 20th Century they were a pretty big deal.  In the first decade and a half of the 20th Century, it was really the cigar, not the cigarette, that dominated tobacco consumption.

Cigar workers.  Only children, that kid in the middle isn't smoking that cigar as a prop.

Criminal defendant Daisy Grace being escorted to court. She'd be found innocent of drugging and shooting her husband.  The officers in this pre World War One photo wear the classic summertime detectives outfit of the era, boaters and suits.  The officer on the left found it consistent with his duties to be packing a stogie.

Cigarettes weren't a big deal in this era.  They existed, to be sure, but most smokers opted for cigars, if they were going to light up.  What the appeal of cigarettes was at the time I don't know, but it basically seems to be that they were convenient under the circumstances, or that they were regarded as a bit edgy.

The captain is well dressed, and holding a cigarette that's burned right down to the end.  Why he's smoking a cigarette, and not a cigar, in this pre World War One photograph, is not apparent.

 "Cigarette Girl", that is a girl offering cigarettes for sale, prior to World War One.  Women in this time period did not smoke, and particularly did not smoke cigarettes, unless they wanted to be considered rather risque or avant garde.

 Women may not have smoked much, but they were exploited a great deal, in early cigarette advertisements.  Already sort of edgy, manufacturers appealed to men via women.  Women smokers weren't aimed at, but male ones were, through advertisements of this type..  As an aside, it's unlikely that anyone ever adopted such an unlikely hat in the history of hats.

 What exactly the appeal of this advertisement is, I'm not sure. This is a European advertisement for a brand that I've never heard of. How smoking cigarettes in Europe compares with the US, I have not a clue.

 Cigarettes very early on associated themselves with Turkey and Arabia.  Whether or not the Arabs were every big cigarette smokers I don't know, but of course the Turks are associated with water pipes.  This advertisement uniquely associates itself with "ambition."

It was World War One that really got cigarettes rolling in the United States.  Up until that time, they were relatively uncommon, but the war made them common. Easy to smoke and carry, they were also provided to troops by the manufacturers.  In a situation in which death was always seconds away, cigarettes apparently provided some small relief from a grim situation, at least until that situation revisited itself in  the rise of cancer some 20 years later, which was demonstratively indicated in medical statistics.

Cigarettes head for No Man's Land.

World War One brought cigarettes into the North American mainstream in force.  Thousands, probably millions, of men who would have only smoked the occasional cigar or pipe were pretty dedicated cigarette smokers by the end of World War One. And the Jazz Age of the 1920s only expanded it.  As it expanded, it expanded not only in the male segment of the population, but the female as well.  Starting off as a species of protest, the addictive cigarette crossed over to the female population pretty quickly.

Advertisements like this pre World War One cigarette advertisement were probably originally aimed at men, but by the 1920s they also came to symbolize youth in the Jazz Age. Women joined men as smokers.

By the 1930s, smoking cigarettes was really in.  Everybody was smoking.  A habit that had been male dominated, and centered on a means of conveyance that was somewhat impractical, pipes and cigars, had become common and convenient.  Everyone, male and female, smoked. The 1930s was Tobacco Road. 

By World War Two, this was even more the case.  Cigarettes were even included in C Rations.  But for the fact that the Germans were also smoking it up, and even smoking vile Russian cigarettes, the Allies could probably have been smelled coming over the seas long before the invasion fleet was visible on D-Day.

 Maybe "some smoke", but asbestosis, a fatal disease amongst those exposed to asbestos, is not only a problem that's pronounced amongst those who served in the Navy (where asbestos lining was common in ships) but it's much more pronounced amongst those who smoked.

 Women not only ferried aircraft in World War Two, they were dedicated smokers by the 1940s as well.

 The chance that a person might get shot by the Germans or the Japanese no doubt made concerns about smoking comparatively small to soldiers or, as depicted here, Marines.  As for the "T"Zone, well. . .

 They've "got what it takes", no doubt, but no doubt many later wished that it hadn't included cigarettes.

 During World War Two "Lucky Strike" "went to war" and it package became green.,

All of which, I suppose, just goes to say that by the 1940s people were smoking everywhere.  Every house, every restaurant, every bar, and every office.  It was smokey.

I wonder how many people appreciate that now? Everything must have smelled like smoke. 

My parents didn't smoke.  Neither one.  That was pretty rare really, in their era.  I've never been a smoker either.  I guess that's always made me a bit sensitive to smoke, but I well remember an era when smoke in restaurants was very common.  My parents didn't smoke, but we had ashtrays at home, in case they had a party or gathering, as it would just be expected that people who were invited would smoke.  My kids are so unfamiliar with ashtrays that recently one of them, upon seeing one of the old ones from my folk's house, had to ask what it was.  They'd be surprised to learn that in grade school art one of the project we did was to make a pottery ashtray.

And in the 1980s, when I was a National Guardsmen, smoking amongst solders was extremely common. I well remember hearing the command "smoke 'em if you got 'em."  Certain Army classrooms, while I was in the Guard, were filled with vast quantities of smoke.  The aircraft I flew over to Korea on, in the mid 1980s, was so full of tobacco smoke that it looked like it was on fire, when we looked back down the plane. This was just the norm of the times.  When I first was practicing law, we had one secretary who routinely smoked in her office, as well as a lawyer who did the same.  One lawyer smoked cigars if he was approaching a trial.

Well, no more.  Now, there's no more smoking in office buildings.  No more smoking in cars either.  And even bars are often smoke free, based on the rare occasions when I happen to go in one.  The air smells like, well. . . air, most of the time.  

I don't mean to condemn anyone for smoking in years past.  But, man, what a change.  Now, it's hard to watch something like Double Indemnity and not think; "geez, everything must have reeked of smoke."

Okay, now this foolishness has gone far enough!

Due to the temporary shutdown of the federal government,
the Library of Congress is closed to the public and researchers beginning October 1, 2013 until further notice.

Today In Wyoming's History: October 1

Today In Wyoming's History: October 1:

.

 Depression era WPA poster.

The Federal Government shuts down, and its partially tied to health care. How did we get here?

As people deep in the Philippine jungles, or off the coast of Ceylon, where they remain without contact to the outside world even know, the U.S. Government has closed for business.  The government ran ashore on the second collision with funding in under a year, the last of which depressed our bonding status, even though we all know that they're not even debating actually paying all the bills they're racking up.  In essence the debate is about how much underfunded we'll be, a fairly pathetic state of affairs by most measures.

Part of this has developed as Republicans in Congress are taking another run at defunding the Affordable Health Care Act (like the act or hate it, I can't stand the nickname "Obamacare.")  What with all the debate on this issue, you'd think we be hearing about how we got to this point. That is, the history of this would seemingly be important.  Congress isn't saying too much about that, however, and I'd wager that both Democrats and Republicans in Congress are largely ignorant of it.  Those ignorant of history are subject to getting a dope slap from it, so perhaps some education is in order.

Americans like to think we have a fee market health care system, but we do not and haven't since World War Two.  What we really have is a health insurance based system, although it's breaking down by anyone's measure..  Prior to WWII, most Americans just paid as they went for health care, which had the collateral effects of making health care generally very service oriented on a person to person basis.  I.e., "family" doctors were the majority of doctors not just because of the times, but because if mostly "health care consumers" were average folks with average wages, that's where the work was, and it wasn't going to pay all that well as a rule either.  That doesn't mean that there weren't surgeons, etc., of course, and it doesn't mean the level of care, where received, wasn't very good.  Anyhow, the switch to an insurance based system, with health insurance companies regulated on a state by state basis, alters the free market system as the carriers determine what benefits exist and what they regard as a fair price, based upon actuarial concerns and analysis.  Whatever that price may be, it's not the same as an average person going in to the doctor, and of course people who are covered can go in for much, much more than they otherwise would be able to afford.

Health insurance existed prior to World War Two, but most people didn't have it. But when wages were frozen during the war, for the first time a lot of companies started offering health insurance as a company benefit.  The law didn't allow employers to increase wages to compete with other employers, but they could sweeten the pot by offering health insurance.  For a long time after WWII health insurance benefits and retirement benefits were American employer norms for their employees.  Health insurance actually became increasingly common following the war, and was very common by the 1970s, as an employee benefit.  That's passing away now, however, as its become increasingly expensive for employers to provide.

In contrast to the US's history in this area, Germany introduced a type of national health insurance in the Bismarck era as a type of industrial insurance to combat the rising influence of Socialism and to acknowledge the increased danger of industrial work. The German model of health insurance is the model for at least one states Workers Compensation law, my state's, which provides it as a state benefit (no private carrier) and taxes employers accordingly.  The Germans seem to like their system, but there's always a lot of complaining about the same basic type of system here in the state, even though it actually runs fairly efficiently and pays for a lot of horrific injuries and their medical treatment.  It's interesting to note here that the Germans, whose political history is extremely different from ours, introduced national health insurance to combat socialism, when here its generally regarded as a type of socialism. That doesn't mean it is or isn't, but it's interesting to note that Bismarck took that approach in an effort to take the wind out of the sails of his primary opponents.  It worked fairly well too, in that the Socialist did not take over in Germany until the Weimar Republic, at which time they were the first, and ineffectual, party to govern under the Post World War One parliamentary system that fell in 1932.

The British NHS system, which most Britons seem to be quite proud of, also came about due to World War Two, sort of.  It was first proposed in its current form by the Labor Party in its 1945 platform.  As we all know, Churchill lost his position in 1945 at a time when most Britons believed a return to the Depression was inevitable.  Indeed, that was a very current view all over the world and generally assumed to be almost a certainty.

Stating that "Victory at war must be followed by a Prosperous Peace" the Labor Party proposed:

"By good food and good homes, much avoidable ill-health can be prevented. In addition the best health services should be available free for all. Money must no longer be the passport to the best treatment.

In the new National Health Service there should be health centres where the people may get the best that modern science can offer, more and better hospitals, and proper conditions for our doctors and nurses. More research is required into the causes of disease and the ways to prevent and cure it.

Labour will work specially for the care of Britain's mothers and their children - children's allowances and school medical and feeding services, better maternity and child welfare services. A healthy family life must be fully ensured and parenthood must not be penalised if the population of Britain is to be prevented from dwindling.

Sort of interesting, therefore.  Germany's national healthcare system came about when it was becoming a modern industrial power, in an effort to tamp the socialist down.  The US system came about as a way to skirt the wage freezes imposed during World War Two in order to attract workers.  The British NHS came about when Labor successfully argued that it could better protect the British against what was thought to be an almost certain return to Depression economic conditions.   Whether Labor successfully ran the government after the war is another question, but the NHS remains today and no British political party is going to touch it.

A national health care system was first proposed in the United States during the Truman Administration, but it failed to get very far.  Truman's presidency came hard upon the heels of FDRs and at the time the New Deal was pretty much accepted as having saved the United States from full economic collapse during the Great Depression. That proposition wasn't debated much (although it was always debated by Hoover, who remained a dedicated public servant even after the loss of the election to FDR) but it isn't nearly as accepted now, and really hasn't been since the rise of modern Conservatism starting in the late 1970s.  Even at that, however, Truman wasn't able to pass a national health care bill. The concept revived from time to time, under both Republican and Democratic administrations, without getting very far. Prior to Bill Clinton's attempt during his administration, spearheaded by his wife Hillary, the last really serious attempt had been under Richard Nixon.

Prior to Barack Obama's presidency nobody got very far with such ideas, as noted, in part because Americans were basically satisfied with the existing health care system, which had roots predating World War Two, but which had been heavily impacted by it, as noted.  People might asked what changed between 1970 and now, or 1990 and now, and the answer probably would be "personal experience."  And what that personal experience would likely reveal is a change in culture and in technology.

Prior to World War Two the country was much more rural than it is today.  Indeed, the rural nature of the country, which was predominate up through World War One, has declined steadily since that time and is mostly a memory, if that, for most people now. But that isn't that long ago in historical terms, and its an important aspect of this story.  "Rural" doesn't mean "everyone lives on a farm" like people tend to believe.  But agriculture heavily impacts everything about a rural society, and part of what that impacts is the nature of towns and cities in rural areas.

In that more rural era, doctors were principally general practitioners and generally had solo practices.  Over time this has steadily changed to where today group practices are likely the norm.  At any rate, in that earlier time, health care was very direct and personal.  It was also much less technical. Given that, being that it was less technical and more direct, it was priced accordingly.

That doesn't mean everything was wonderful.  Less technical equates with an era when a great deal less was known on every medical topic.  My grandfather, for example, who was born on this day, died from a stroke when he was 47 years old. There was just nothing that could be done for his condition.  He had high blood pressure and that equated with a type of death sentence really.  One of my partner's father's shared the same fate.  Today, they'd probably both have lived on a great deal longer.

At any rate, technology and an evolving practice model, funded mostly by insurance, has provided us with wonderful health care, but it's also become very expensive.  From World War Two, and increasing on through the 1970s, this was largely funded by health care which was purchased by employers. Some people bought their own health insurance, which was affordable at the time. Those without insurance paid as they went, which was inconvenient for most, and bad for some, but generally workable.

Now, expenses have reached the point where many cannot afford to pay themselves and health insurance has gone from being a workplace benefit to a near necessity for most.  People actually keep jobs just for the insurance.  I've known, for example, of one person who kept a job she wanted to leave to return to school for just that reason.  As a practical matter, the government has become the insurer of last resort for many who have no insurance and who end up using the hospital, in emergencies, as their health care provider.  Increased private medical competition, in the meantime, has become an increasingly common feature of health care as the large dollar amounts that are present in the industry naturally has resulted in private competition.  County and state facilities, therefore, end up in competition with each other, with the practical result of that often being that county and state facilities end up becoming more and more in the nature of public clinics in some ways.

And people have an expectation of health care, which is not abnormal, nor greedy, in a generally affluent society.  That's true of our views on a lot of various things, and its particularly true of health care.  People generally feel that anyone ought to, and even should, seek the health care that they need, when they need it, and there's a feeling of distress when a certain percentage of the population cannot afford it.  Put another way, back in the 1940s if a person was afflicted with a stroke died, it was probably the case that this would have occurred no matter what.  If they were unable to secure health care for some reason for that condition, the result probably would have been the same as if they did.  This would not be true, of course, for every sort of condition, but what that does mean is that there was an overall greater acceptance that if economic conditions prevented treatment, that this was part of the nature of life, rather than being something that would be regarded as deeply unfair. And, for that matter, the medical community made a dedicated effort to include those who could not pay in their practices. They still do, but the nature of that society wide had become different.

I note all of this not to promote or discredit any particular health care system.  It does, however, inform a bit of the background of the debate, and it might explain why the system that is presently being debated is an insurance based system.  That is, the AHCA is actually an insurance centric national system, which was probably a natural route given our history in this area, although its certainly been a controversial one.

The Big Picture: Dyersville Iowa

Dyersville Iowa, where my father's father was born.

Courthouses of the West: Still Open For Business

Courthouses of the West: Still Open For Business: This is an announcement e-mail message generated by Court action through the CM/ECF system. Please DO NOT RESPOND to this e-mail because ...

Sandwich Monday: The Woody Allen : The Salt : NPR

Sandwich Monday: The Woody Allen : The Salt : NPR

That is one fine looking sandwich.

Percentage of U.S. Soldiers in Europe in 1944 who only had a grade school education.

33%

Including Maj. Gen. Raymond S. McClain, commander of the XIS Corps.

Percentage of U.S. Soldiers in Europe, 1944, with high school degrees

25%.

Perentage of Dentist conscripted in World War Two by 1944

1/3d.

Average U.S. Soldeir, hieght and weight, 1944

5'8".  144lbs.

Rick Atkinson, The Guns At Last Light, page 19.

Prostituting their image

I'm not a fan of children's television, and I'm particularly not a fan of television aimed at "tweens."  Generally, it's well established that that children tend to watch television which the producers of which have aimed at an older demographic, so TV aimed at tweens really hits a younger demographic than that, just as the teenage soap dramas that television loves to slop out tends to hit tweens. 

Most of the tween TV is incredibly vapid.  The plots are all stamped out of a mold, and the shows are overall extremely irritating.  It'd be better, in numerous ways, if the entire genera didn't exist at all.

Of of the tween television that's been around in recent years, one of the very worst, in my view, was Hanna Montana.  I hated it, but my daughter simply loved it when she was a little girl.  This isn't surprising.  Overall, Hanna Montana had a huge following amongst girls.  For those so fortunate as to not know what the show was about, it centered on a early teenaged country music star who lived a double life, being Hanna Montana while on the stage and being Myley while not.  It was stupid, in my view, but it was relatively harmless, and it wasn't at the chemical weapons grade level of irritation that the Suite Life of Zack and Cody were.

I mostly dislike these shows because I hate how stupid and predictable they are.  I frankly think that they grossly underestimate the intelligence of children, but I have to confess looking back that when I was in grade school, when we went home, we'd watch Gilligan's Island, McHale's Navy or Hogan's Heroes, shows of equal stupidity that were aimed at adults.  At any rate, my dislike, therefore, is largely personal and perceptional.

But, amongst the other reasons to dislike this genera of television, indeed to hope for its demise, is what it apparently does to its starts, the young actors who are featured in these shows, and what that in turn does to our culture.

Popular entertainers are, in general, seemingly uniquely plagued by personality problems.  Perhaps that has something to do with why they entered those fields in the first place.  There are people in any sort of performing art who are stable as can be, but for those who are singularly focused on the regions of those fields that produce fame, there seem to be a lot of truly messed up people.  And our culture has become so debased that for those who need to feed off of constant fame, the depths to which they need to reach down to are increasingly deeper.

For that reason, I'm often amazed that anyone thinks anything that people in the entertainment industry does is interesting or avant-garde.  Most of it is just "look at me!"  This is particularly the case when they take up a cause, as the basic nature of their personalities is such that what ever cause is trendy at the time, which they can fallacious claims as avant-garde, they will.  In other words, if Hollywood is protesting for you, you are probably yesterday's news.  If an entertainer really wanted to shock, the most shocking thing they could really do would be to espouse orthodoxy on something.

Indeed, given that this class of people, while famous, seemingly uniquely plagued by peculiar problems, it further amazes me that anyone is really interested in their personal opinions on anything.  Take any number of actors who run through spouses and housemates like cats run through kibble and ask yourself, why would I listed to this screwed up person's opinions on politics?  But I digress. . . .

Back to child actors, one of the things that being a star, young, in these fields seem to do is to create a massive dependence on news media attention in the souls of these people.  But translation of childhood success into adult success, as an entertainer, has always been against the odds.  Most don't make it.  But, up until recently, most seemingly tried to make the transition and faded away, with some never adapting very well to the spotlight's glare growing dim.

Now, however, with our debased focus on the vulgar and obscene, these declining personalities have hit on the truly pathetic, the prostitution of their image.

This seems to have really started to be noticeable, in its current form, with Lindsey Lohan, who started off as a child actress and then went into her teens as sort of a troubled soul. Right about that time, she took up a lot of public bad behavior, and then finally, in an attempt to get back into the public eye, determined to show all she had in Playboy magazine.  So, an actress associated early on with "identical cousins" in the renewed Parent Trap, or high school glamor girl in other shows, now was bearing it all for inspiring lust in glossy print.  Pretty sad decline, but apparently one that didn't serve to reverse the declining fortunes of ossified creepster Hugh Hefner's sagging empire.  Apparently the bloom was already off her rose.

More recently, we've been unwilling participants in Amanda Bynes efforts to run out in front of us and show us everything.  Bynes was a child actress and the focus of her own show, which was so bad that I wouldn't let it be played in the house.  Past her prime, apparently, she's' been unable to handle it, and has been taking nearly topless photos of herself and tweeting them..  By all accounts, she's troubled, but a lot of that trouble may be based on an inability to just handle reality.  Being young and well off isn't a bad thing.  You'd have the luxury to devote yourself to worthy pursuits.  But apparently the drug of fame, or what being in the entertainment industry does to you, is too corrupting to address.

As bad, weird or pathetic as the Bynes example is, we're now all spectators in the more calculated efforts of Myley Cyrus, the Hanna Montana of old, who now has is repeatedly showing us all she has in a manner that's nearly inescapable.

Cyrus has been becoming increasingly trashy in her public personal for some time, in what seems to be a calculated effort to shed her childhood actress persona. The chosen method has been to be as brazen as possible, thereby seemingly set to destroy the old image with a new one that's as wantonly sex driven as possible. Not too long ago Cyrus appeared sans clothes in a campaign to draw attention to skin cancer, but which tended to serve to draw attention to Cyrus as well, and not in a good way. This past week she went a step further and performed Blurred Lines on a televised music awards show. Blurred Lines is already in the trash category and Cyrus adopting it for a species of striptease, sort of, isn't surprising, except as an illustration of how far down the latter we've climbed.  Apparently the performance was so prurient that it could not be shown in its entirely on the morning news shows.

A person can pretend that this is all artistic self expression, but they'd be pretending. This is simply a desperate effort to get a "look at me" reaction from somebody whose fame was indelibly associated with a childhood role. And she shouldn't do it.

Cyrus, like others of her ilk, want fame, but the fame they have now comes only due to a childhood image.  If they no longer wish to be associated with that image, that's their right, but they don't have right to pretend that they have any other claim to it, and they shouldn't prostitute it.  That is what they are doing. Their image is based on a childhood portrayal of innocence, and they use that association, which they seek to escape, in order to draw attention to themselves.  They're trading on their former fame, exchanging memories for leering glances.

When they do that, they destroy the image, in some ways, for the thousands who were attracted to it as children in the first place.  Fame is conferred, not owned, and in this case they are seeking to grasp a continued hold on something by wrecking it. 

When I was in high school the J Geils Band had a popular song on the charts entitled Centerfold. The song centered around the shock of a young man finding that a girl he had a crush on in high school was now a centerfold. Satyric and comical, the song used a central theme of shame that would be almost inconceivable now.  Portrayals like Cyrus' have made it so.

If Cyrus et al really want enduring fame, they have a brief window of opportunity to build on that fame conferred by a childhood role.  A few managed to do that, most do not.  It requires smarts and exceptional talent, however.  Simply parading nearly naked isn't going to do it.  It does damage to them, and to us.  By doing it the fame they achieve will be a species of infamy in a real sense, and the positioning that gave them the ability to trade for it shows itself to be corrupted in some fashion by its impact.  And with each nearly naked former childhood actress on the television, the overall culture becomes that much more cheapened.

Epilogue

Since writing this, Myley Cyrus has reentered the public eye, quite literally, through photographs associated with a single she is releasing entitled "Wrecking Ball."  Not to be outdone by Thicke's parading around of naked models, Cyrus apparently decided to parade herself around naked, apparently, further debasing herself.  Wrecking Ball would seem to be an apt name too, as she appears to be intent on wrecking herself.

On this, I can't help but think of an automobile advertisement of a few years ago, I think it was by Volkswagen, in which some parents buy a toy for some kids at a gas station. Advertising the mileage of the car, we next see the family when they finally stop again. The toy was a "Rapping Ball", which repeats, over and over again "I'm a rapping ball!"  The parents are sick to death of it when they stop.  I suspect that's generally what will be happening to Cyrus.  Or already is.

Epilogue II

I have to give Cyrus credit for having a unique talent for destructive self promotion.  Every time I think she, and therefore in this overbroadcasted world the rest of us, have hit rock bottom, she proves me wrong.  Not even a week or so has gone by in her clothless self promotion of her latest musical release when we now awake to find out that the news is reporting that she has had "rolling stone" tattooed on her feet.

I suppose this is some sort of odd shout out to the old phrase "a rolling stone gathers no moss", although I think relatively few people even know that there was such a phrase and think, instead, it's simply the odd name of a British rock band.  But it is such a phrase.  Of course, all rolling stones eventually come to rest and are reabsorbed by the earth or crushed into dust, so the ultimate lesson of the phrase isn't really cheery, in so far as that goes.  But as a phrase endorsing low material attachments, I suppose it has its merits.

It seems, however, that Ms. Cyrus is gather a lot of moss.  Perhaps stones that roll through a bog do gather moss.  Or rather she isn't so much a rolling stone as she is some poor creature caught in a swamp.  I suppose to really avoid those sort of attachments, and indeed to be a real rebel in this day and age, you'd actually probably have to enter a religious order with a high attachment to poverty.  There are such orders, of course, but I don't expect Cyrus, or Lady Gaga, to any such person, really be a true radical by taking such a course of action.

At any rate, I hope for a week with no Cyrus news soon.

Epilogue III

I happened to read the USA Today this morning and found that it had an article relevant to this discussion.  The article, moreover, is both revealing and not too surprising.

It turns out that almost all of the really libertine music popularized by young female musical performers recently has been written by, you guessed it, men.  Indeed, the whole exploitation of the female image, both musically and in terms of the video presentation of it is male in origin.  Basically, as the article concludes, what we're seeing and hearing isn't a female image of this topic at all, but rather a middle age male fantasy of it.  Women's aspirations and feelings in this arena remain quite traditional.  I suppose male explotation of females is, unfortunately, traditional also.  In other words, pimping remains male.

Over time, it seems that some musical artist exploited in this fashion have objected to it,  but not enough to prevent it.  Olivia Newton John apparently objected to the video for Physical, but not enough to keep it from occurring.  And Fiona Apple was horrified about the release of a video some years ago that depicted her nude, which she was pressured into doing.

So, not surprisingly, these videos are both destructive to females, and the product of males regarding women in a cartoonish way.  All the more the shame.

History of Enlisted retirmement

The U.S. Army's FM 7-22.7 provides:

Enlisted Retirement

In 1885 Congress authorized voluntary retirement for enlisted soldiers. The system allowed a soldier to retire after 30 years of service with threequarters of his active duty pay and allowances. This remained relatively unchanged until 1945 when enlisted personnel could retire after 20 years of service with half pay. In 1948 Congress authorized retirement for career members of the Reserve and National Guard. Military retirement pay is not a pension, but rather is delayed compensation for completing 20 or more years of active military service. It not only provides an incentive for soldiers to complete 20 years of service, but also creates a backup pool of experienced personnel in the event of a national emergency.

I wonder if this is correct?  I thought the 30 year retirement system pre dated 1885, and the 20 year one came in at the start of World War Two.

Electronic Boarding Passes

Yesterday I used electronic boarding passes for the first time.

Man, they're great.

I'd thought of using them earlier, but for some reason I couldn't get the Apps that I downloaded in order to do that to work correctly and download the passes, and I was reluctant to try them in case they didn't work correctly.  Even on this occasion, I downloaded two paper passes, but I just packed them away.

Most changes of this type leave you wondering if they're really that much of an improvement, and if they are, there's still a period of time in which you get used to them. I still feel that way, quite frankly, about the cell phone, which I regard as a mixed blessing really.

But electronic boarding passes are great.  By the time of my return flight I was already amazed by how many people "still used" paper, which was everyone I could see but me.

I even found emailed boarding passes to be a little questionable at first, and would still check in at the desk for quite a while thereafter, even though I didn't need to.  But with electronic boarding basses, instant success in my book!