craschworks

Q: Why did Jesus die on the cross?
A: Because he forgot the safe word.

[Stolen from . Original edited for increased humor value by .]

Make your own stove top still (among other things) using household materials.

Reload bullets in your own apartment.

Outdoor Gear Making Tips

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/1998/1228/6214104a_print.html

The tyranny of the diploma

AT 16 XAVIER DELACOUR dropped out of Albany Academy, a private day school. He went to work hawking Egghead software out of a store in Albany, N.Y. for $6 an hour. Explains Delacour: “My head was set more towards getting my career set up.” A quick learner, he was soon writing software code for a local car dealer. Delacour was only 17 when he was hired by a Marlborough, Mass.-based startup, Attune, LLC, where he's helping design a gadget that writes original music and plays it on the Internet in CD quality. Attune plans to license the gadgets to Web sites, which will sell them at $90 each.

At an age when most kids enter college, with their earning years still well in the future, Delacour, a soft-spoken teen, has his own apartment and should earn $50,000 next year, plus a 10% share of the company's profits.

Bill Gates did go to college, but for only three years. He dropped out of Harvard to devote himself full time to computer work. The time he saved from college — and additional years spared from grad school — gave Gates a head start in building what was to become the world's greatest fortune. It's not inconceivable that had he gone for a Ph.D., someone else today would be the world's richest person.

Dell Computer Corp.'s Michael Dell did graduate from college, but by all accounts he spent most of his time at the University of Texas at Austin building and peddling PCs.

Kenneth Johnson, 28, realizes that if he had not dropped out of Wichita State University he might not have founded Dial-A-Waiter, his restaurant delivery service. Some warned he would end badly without a sheepskin. “Now I can kind of laugh and say 'I told you so,'” he says.

Looking for something to do, Johnson noticed that few local restaurants would deliver to people after a hard day's work. He persuaded six Wichita restaurants to let him handle take-out orders, using for capital $20,000 of credit card debt. Today Johnson has ten drivers delivering everything from tacos to sushi for 40 Wichita restaurants. He charges customers the menu price plus $6. That surcharge plus a 30% to 35% discount from the restaurant covers his costs and leaves him with a nice profit, which he supplements by charging $7,500 a pop to show folks in other cities how to start Dial-A-Waiter outfits. “I sort of created my own career,” he crows.

Not all successful dropouts take the entrepreneurial route. Two years ago Yale-bred Federal Express founder Fred Smith tapped William G.

Fraine, then 38, as senior vice president for worldwide sales. Fraine joined the firm as a clerk in 1979 when he was 21. His only degree is a high school diploma from Don Bosco Prep in Boston. Today Fraine supervises 4,000 of the $13.3 billion company's employees in 211 countries, earns an estimated $300,000 a year and has vested stock options worth several million dollars.

Stories like these are causing some kids and their parents to have second thoughts about the necessity of that sheepskin. Sean Levatino was an Albany Academy classmate of Xavier Delacour. Sean's folks encouraged Sean, 19, to attend Worcester (Mass.) Polytechnic Institute. But now they wonder: “Are we doing the right thing to push him to get a college degree?”

His mother counts the cost: The degree could run Dr. and Mrs.

Levatino $120,000. If they were instead to invest that money in municipal bonds paying 5%, Sean would have a nest egg of $500,000 by his 50th birthday. That's far more than most college grads can hope to accumulate in that time. And the prospective income from that $500,000 is a lot more than the theoretical premium that college grads own over nongrads.

Nevertheless, the Levatinos and their son are doing the conventional thing. So are most of their contemporaries — including John Magennis, age 17, a high school senior in Dedham, Mass. He makes $65,000 a year from his own internet marketing company, yet still plans to go to Babson College next fall. “I need something to fall back on,”he says.

Since World War II the U.S. college population has risen sevenfold, to 15 million, converting higher education — a privilege only 15% of the U.S. population enjoyed before WWII — into a $200 billion industry serving the masses. Credit the higher-education industry with brilliant marketing. University economists wield numbers showing that each year of additional schooling ups earnings. They argue that a college degree is a hell of a fine investment. Few people dare challenge these numbers.

But anecdotal evidence is growing that there is a lot wrong with the numbers. Consider this: Fifty-eight members of The Forbes 400 either avoided college or ditched it partway through. These 58 — almost 15% of the total — have an average net worth of $4.8 billion. This is 167% greater than the average net worth of the 400, which is $1.8 billion. It is more than twice the average net worth of those 400 members who attended Ivy League colleges.

Could it be that the nongrads got such a head start in their careers that the others never caught up? Or are those numbers just a fluke?

Either way, there is growing evidence in the country that college diplomas aren't what they're cracked up to be when it comes to bringing in the bucks.

Educrats insist those men are exceptional. They cite the Census Bureau: College grads earn on average $40,478 a year, 77% more than high school grads ($22,895) and far more than high school dropouts ($16,124).

But economist Robert Reischauer of the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. puts a slightly different spin on these figures. He argues that they are skewed by the fact that smarter kids gravitate more easily to college than dumber kids and that this makes the profitability of higher education into a self-fulfilling prophecy. This so-called ability bias may account for as much as 30% of the college premium, admits Educational Testing Service economist Anthony P. Carnevale.

In a way, hiring practices in the government and in private industry almost force young people to go to college. Time was when a high school diploma was pretty good proof that the holder had received a basic education. No more. Too many high schools certify kids who can barely read or reckon, with the result that employers today want to see a college diploma as evidence of basic literacy.

Consciously or not, legislation pushes young people into college. In Abe Lincoln's time lawyers didn't go to law school; they apprenticed to practicing lawyers. In recent decades four-year college degrees have been made compulsory for architects, pharmacists, physical therapists and elementary school teachers.

In his 1962 classic, Capitalism and Freedom, Milton Friedman denounced this educational bloat as a drain on the economy. Other scholars have picked up on the message. “[College] became the licensing agency for Americans who wanted to enter the professions,” writes Marvin Lazerson in Annals of the American Academy of Political & Social Sciences. In the U.S., 23.6% of adults hold college degrees, against only 11.6%in Germany, 10.7%in the U.K. and 10.2%in France.

No wonder those extra years of education here seem to pay off according to the universally accepted numbers: The attendance is mandatory if you hope to practice many of the most lucrative professions. Would lawyers earn less if they could get their degrees in four years instead of seven? The question answers itself.

Today perhaps 30% of the work force is in jobs that by law or custom require at least a four-year college diploma. State and federal agencies also require degrees for better-paying jobs. No one can hope to get such a job without passing through the college gate and leaving a lot of money there.

By the law of unintended consequences the U.S. Supreme Court has contributed to this credentialism that forces young people to acquire a diploma by whatever means and of whatever quality. In Griggs v. Duke Power Co., in 1971, the court effectively outlawed the use of IQ tests in hiring. This left businesses to rely on possession of a college diploma as the basic proof that job applicants possessed at least rudimentary literacy and intelligence.

This might well have disqualified Bill Gates from working at most major U.S. companies after he dropped out of Harvard. It probably would have made getting a good job tough for Delacour. The institutional barriers are high for those without the sacred sheepskin.”I don't think they [noncollege grads] can get in the door,” admits Thomas Gallagher, 54, head of proprietary trading at Wall Street's CIBC Oppenheimer. He had a learning disability and quit college after six months. How did he get his foot in the door? He started as a runner for an odd-lot house and worked his way up. Today, for its entry-level training programs, Oppenheimer will consider only those job applicants who have a college diploma.

“In place of the bigotry of race has arisen a new bigotry of schooling,” writes George Gilder in Wealth and Poverty, calling this system “a schoolmarm meritocracy.” A more cynical interpretation is that it's hard to get a good job unless you buy an expensive admission ticket from the higher education monopoly.

However, in so greatly expanding their market, the panjandrums of higher education may have commoditized their product. More than 50% of Americans 25 and over who entered the work force in the past six years had college degrees. No surprise that the wage premium for graduates over nongrads has slipped. In 1992 it was 60% for men under 35. By 1996 the premium was down to 54%.

Yet many college grads find themselves saddled with debts of $20,000, and even more if graduate school is involved. For graduates who don't earn top salaries, those loans are a heavy burden. Even by the arithmetic that the college establishment likes to use, a college education is no longer a great investment for many people.

A hefty 21% of all degree-holders who work earn less than the average for high school grads. That's especially true among service workers — waiters, ticket takers and daycare workers — which is what many college grads finally become. “It is the earnings of managers, sales representatives, lawyers and doctors that have caused college-educated earnings to rise,” says Educational Testing Service's Carnevale. He says that if these top earners were taken out of the equation, college grads would be little better off economically than high school grads.

“The B-minus student may be better off not going to college,” admits University of Tulsa history professor, Paul A. Rahe. What should they do? The Army, says Rahe, who ticks off the pluses:Getting paid rather than paying for something you're not using, learning a marketable skill, disclipline, and an opportunity to mature. “Perhaps even a challenge to mature,” he says.

Christopher Morrison didn't join the Army, Navy or Marines, but he did skip college. At 30, he is a co-owner of a Scottsdale, Ariz. software company called PLPDigital Systems.

At age 17 he left high school because he was too busy designing software for clients, like the $18 million (revenues) Barrett-Jackson classic car auction. Morrison also invented gadgets such as a battery- powered gizmo to track lawyers' billable hours.

At 19, he convinced client Michael Addison, a Harvard M.B.A., to back him with $15,000. “I don't think a college degree is either necessary or sufficient for success,” says Addison.

Ten years later PLP is housed in its own 11,000-square-foot building, does $6 million in revenues, has 36 employees and is debt-free. “I don't think I need to go back to school to achieve success,” says Morrison.

Okay, maybe you still want to see your kids or grandkids go to college. Maybe she has a burning desire to study something. Or maybe he wants to prepare for a career in a specialized field and needs the generalized knowledge.

But great investment? It's quite possible that Christopher Larson's 1981 Princeton degree may have cost him at least a billion dollars.

Larson was one of Microsoft's earliest employees and worked there during his summers off from high school. According to Gates, the biography by Stephen Manes and Paul Andrews, Gates begged Larson to drop out of Princeton and join the company full time. Larson denies anyone ever pressed him, though the option of dropping out was always there. Larson finished his degree and then joined. He got some founders' stock, but not as much as he might have.

If you know an ambitious kid who isn't sure about college, give her a copy of America's Top Jobs For People Without College, by J. Michael Farr (JIST Works). It's a useful antidote to the brainwashing we all get these days from the Education Industry.

Sol 2: Good Morning, Good Morning, by the Beatles.
Sol 3: Oh What a Beautiful Mornin’, by Rodgers and Hammerstein.
Sol 4: Hail to the Chief, by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. (Presidential phone call.)
Sol 5: Satisfaction, by the Rolling Stones. (“I can't get no …”, Air bags not cooperating.)
Sol 6: Get Up, Stand Up, by Bob Marley. (Lift mechanism actuated.)
Sol 7: Da Da Da, by Casaca. (Brazilian song suggested by investigator from Brazil, RRGTM student that week from Brazil.)
Sol 8: Soak Up the Sun, by Cheryl Crow. (Laid-back sol.)
Sol 9: I Can See Clearly Now, by Jimmy Cliff. (Picture taking sol.)
Sol 10: Unchained, by Van Halen; Hit the Road Jack, by Buster Poindexter; Turn, Turn, Turn, by the Byrds. (Cable-cutting, backup on landing deck. start turn on deck.)
Sol 11: I Get Around, by the Beach Boys; Round and Round, by Ratt; You Spin Me ‘Round, by Thalía. (Rest of turn on landing deck.)
Sol 12: Born to be Wild, by Steppenwolf; Rawhide, by Riders in the Sky; Who Let The Dogs Out?, by the Baha Men. (Egress.)
Sol 13: Reach Out, by the Four Tops. (First robotic arm activity.)
Sol 14: You’ve Got The Magic Touch, by the Platters. (Touching robotic arm down on Mars.)
Sol 15: If You Love Somebody Set Them Free, by Sting; Roam, by The B-52’s; Good Times Roll, by The Cars. (Last engineering activities, first drive on the surface.)
Sol 16: After Midnight, by Eric Clapton; Trash Day, by Weird Al Yankovic. (Crew starts Mars day after California midnight, part of the sol dedicated to deleting contents of flash.)
Sol 17: We Will Rock You, by Queen. (First arm activities and observations on a rock.)
Sol 18: Sledgehammer, by Peter Gabriel. (Intended first [Rock Abrasion Tool] RAT sol, though ran into problems later, to put it mildly.)
Sol 19: S.O.S., by Abba. (Objective was to regain contact with Spirit after a loss of communications. We did.)
Sol 20: Baby, Talk to Me, from the musical Bye Bye Birdie. (Objective was to get Spirit to send data. She did.)
Sol 21: Satellite, by The Hooters. (A rousing lullaby for when we were trying, and succeeded, to get the rover to go to sleep.)
Sol 22: We Can Work it Out, by The Beatles. (Beginning debugging activities to get Spirit back to normal.)
Sol 23: Start Me Up, by the Rolling Stones. (Booting in crippled mode.)
Sol 24: Flash, by Queen. (Clearly a flash problem, continuing to debug.)
Sol 25: (You're The) Devil In Disguise, by Elvis Presley, and With a Little Help From My Friends, by The Beatles. (Continuing debug, got picture!)
Sol 26: I Want a New Drug, by Huey Lewis & The News. (Trying yet another recipe for getting task trace, still didn't work.)
Sol 27: Anticipation, by Carly Simon. (Seeing if the file deletes will do the trick or not. They did.)
Sol 28: On the Road Again, by Willie Nelson. (“Can't wait to get back on …”, back to normal use of the flash file system, itching to get going.)
Sol 29: Here Comes the Sun, by The Beatles. (More normal operations, Mars Express coordinated overflight.)
Sol 30: Lean On Me, performed by Club Nouveau. (Intended RAT brush sol, pressing RAT on rock, though activities did not complete.)
Sol 31: I Wanna Be Sedated, by the Ramones. (Very low activity sol to get the rover rested and ready for surgery on the following sol.)
Sol 32: Wipe Out, by The Surfaris, and We're Not Gonna Take It, by
Twisted Sister. (File system reformat.)
Sol 33: Back In the Saddle Again, by Gene Autry, and The Star Spangled Banner, performed by Beyoncé. (Back to normal operations, color flag picture on RAT.)
Sol 34: The Laundry Cycle: Pounded on a Rock, by The Bobs, and Bump N' Grind, by R. Kelly. (First RAT grinding.)
Sol 35: Up Around the Bend, by Credence Clearwater Revival. (Intended drive around lander to begin drive to crater. Didn't get anywhere though.)
Sol 36: Stuck On You, by Elvis Presley. (Drive didn't work yestersol — we've been stuck here for weeks. Drive did work later that sol.)
Sol 37: Proud Mary, performed by Tina Turner. (“And we're rolling, rolling, rolling on the river …”, first long drive, ended up being more than 20 meters.)
Sol 38: Runnin' With the Devil, by Van Halen. (HGA [High Gain Antenna] problem that sol, no activities, song played late in the sol.)
Sol 39: Hit the Road Jack, by Buster Poindexter. (Another long drive — yes, this is a reuse of that song.)
Sol 40: What a Wonderful World, by Louis Armstrong. (Mars, that is.)
Sol 41: Open Road Song, by Eve 6. (Driving song, though only did several inches of driving to position in front of rock.)
Sol 42: Lift Up Every Stone, by John Hiatt. (Observations of the rock “Mimi”.)
Sol 43: Livin' On a Prayer, by Bon Jovi. (Many sols tend to start with our fingers crossed.)
Sol 44: Way Over Yonder, by Carole King. (Heading for that crater.)
Sol 45: Touch Me in the Morning, by Diana Ross. (Touch and go sol.)
Sol 46: Wake Up Little Susie, by The Everly Brothers. (Generic wake-up song.)
Sol 47: Dig Down Deep, by Hot Soup. (Trenching sol.)
Sol 48: Working in the Coal Mine, by Devo. (Working in the trench.)
Sol 49: Coisinha Do Pai, by Beth Carvalho. (Brazilian song played on Mars Pathfinder, played again for Carnival weekend.)
Sol 50: Samba De Marte, by Beth Carvalho. (Brazilian song written by same artist inspired by use of previous song on MPF, this one is a “Mars Samba”, also for Carnival weekend. Starts off “Hello NASA!”.)
Sol 51: Chariots of Fire, by Vangelis. (Appropriate for slow-motion races.)

Opportunity's playlist:

Sol 2: So Happy Together, by the Turtles (First full sol with both rovers on Mars.)

Sol 3: The Spirit of Radio, by Rush (HGA release.)

Sol 4: n/a

Sol 5: Stand, by REM; I'm Still Standing, by Elton John (Standup.)

Sol 6: Lookin' Out My Back Door, by Creedence Clearwater (Revival.); Release Me, by Elvis Presley (Middle wheel release); Born to Run, by Bruce Springsteen (Wake up.)

Sol 7: I'm Free, by The Who (Cable Cut #3); Going Mobile, by The Who (Egress.)

Sol 8: You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet, by Bachman-Turner Overdrive (First dual surface nominal rover operation.)

Sol 9: I'm Coiming Out, by Diana Ross (IDD release.)

Sol 10: Pictures of You, by The Cure (First MI image.)

Sol 11: Please Please Tell Me Know, by Depeche Mode (First MB data readout of soil.)

Sol 12: I'm Leaving Here, by Motorhead (First drive since egress.)

Sol 13: Little Honda (aka First Gear), by the Beach Boys (Jaunt away from lander.)

Sol 14: Should I Stay or Should I Go, The Clash (We went.)

Sol 15: The Flintstones Theme Song, end credits, Version 2 from 1962 (For the arrival at the “bedrock.”)

Sol 16: Slip Slidin' Away, by Paul Simon (Large slips along drive up to the outcrop.)

Sol 17: Wake Me Up, by Wham (Touch and go.)

Sol 18: Running Down a Dream, by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (Drive along the outcrop.)

Sol 19: Here I Go Again, by Whitesnake (Repeat of sol 18 drive objective.)

Sol 20: I Like Dirt, by Red Hot Chili Peppers; The Pioneers of Mars, by Landa/Linsley (MI/MB and drive.)

Sol 21: Send Me On My Way, by Rusted Root; Desert Drive, by Tangerine Dream (Drive back to El Capitan.)

Sol 22: Invisible Touch, by Genesis (MI-MB placement.)

Sol 23: Spinning Wheel, by Blood, Sweat, and Tears (Right front trenching wheel.)

Sol 24: Trench Town Rock, by Bob Marley (Make use of the trench.)

Sol 25: Fascination, by Human League (Regarding the img return from the trench.)

Sol 26: Body Movin', by the Beastie Boys (Every rover part exercised.)

Sol 27: Touch and Go, by Emerson, Lake and Powell (Touch and go.)

Sol 28: I am a Rock, by Simon and Garfunkel (El Capitan target assessment.)

Sol 29: Riders on the Storm, by the Doors (Heavy weather at DSS-63 and DSS-14.)

Sol 30: Rock 'n Me, by Steve Miller Band (1st RAT on opportunity.)

Sol 31: Rock around the Clock, by Bill Haley and His Comets (APXS/MB.)

Sol 32: Let It Be, by the Beatles (Long MB integration — no IDD or mobility.)

Staging the Next Fantasy Blockbuster

January 25, 2004
By SARAH LYALL

LONDON

The unassuming man at the end of the eighth row slipped
quietly from his seat during the final applause for the
sold-out performance of “His Dark Materials” at the
National Theater. But he didn't get far. This was Philip
Pullman, 57, who wrote the thrilling books on which the
play is based, and he was quickly waylaid by a crowd of
young readers who seemed unable to believe their luck.

“His Dark Materials,” which began as a trilogy of
young-adult novels with extravagant themes but humble
commercial expectations, has turned into a serious
international phenomenon and bestowed on its author the
sort of celebrity that prompted him to move to a house with
an unlisted address. The books, luminous adventures that
address life after death, religious faith and the
complicated intermingling of good and evil, have been
translated into 37 languages and sold more than 7 million
copies in Britain and the United States alone.

Anyone who has seen the “Harry Potter” or “Lord of the
Rings” movies, or even just noted their success, can guess
what is happening now: the books are being moved into
position as the next blockbuster fantasy franchise. In
London, the National has staged a lavishly ambitious,
sold-out, $1.4 million, two-part, six-hour adaptation. And
New Line Cinema, which released the “Lord of the Rings”
mega-movies, has bought the rights to Mr. Pullman's trilogy
and hired Tom Stoppard to write the screenplay.

But “His Dark Materials” is a far more challenging
proposition than its cinematic predecessors, and not only
because of the complexity of its philosophical and
scientific underpinnings. The books make a breathtakingly
subversive attack on organized religion and on the notion
of an all-powerful god. The trilogy has already been
criticized by church organizations alarmed at its
preference for humanism and for its depiction of a cruel
fictional church that is obsessed with what it regards as
the sexual purity of children but blinded by its own lust
for power. Among other things, the books feature a
church-sponsored prison camp for kidnapped children, a pair
of renegade male angels who are touchingly in love and a
god who is ancient, weak and exhausted, yearning more than
anything for the merciful release of death.

A movie director will be hired in the next month or so and
filming should start in about a year. With a skittish eye,
perhaps, on the power of religious groups in the United
States, New Line's executives say they will probably insist
that the books' repudiation of religion be softened into
more of a meditation on the corruption of power in general.
Mark Ordesky, executive vice president and chief operating
officer of New Line Productions, said in an interview that
“the real issue is not religion; it's authority – that's
what's really the driving issue here.”

Mr. Ordesky pointed out that the figure who most represents
God in the books is known as “the Authority” and said that
the core of the story is about “people who are striving to
be free and have free will, who are in conflict with forces
of authority and totalitarianism.”

What the studio likes about the trilogy, Mr. Ordesky said,
is the same thing it liked about “The Lord of the Rings”:
the story. “Big-budget, big-spectacle, visual-effects
movies are in themselves of no interest to audiences,” Mr.
Ordesky said. “What resonates is when you take all that and
have a compelling human story beneath it.”

The chances for fabulous effects are pretty good, too. The
books take place in multiple parallel worlds, including
current-day Oxford and a sort-of Oxford from some
undetermined time in the past. For those who care to look
for the references, the books allude to Milton, Blake,
Coleridge, Ruskin, the Bible, Homer, Norse mythology,
quantum physics and string theory, but they are also
suffused with a richly compelling plot and fantastic
characters. There are two beguiling young human
protagonists, Lyra and Will, but there are also armored
bears, scheming academics, terrifying harpies, fierce, tiny
spies that travel by dragonfly, cosmically powerful but
physically wispy angels who long for bodily form, witches
with racy love lives, corrupt clerics, gentle mammals that
travel by wheels and, best of all, daemons, the animal
embodiment of an individual's soul that leaves the person's
side only in death.

Even at a time when books for young people, with their
strong narratives and enthusiastic suspension of
imaginative disbelief, have been taken up eagerly by
grown-ups, Mr. Pullman's work, at its heart a retelling of
Milton's “Paradise Lost,” stands out for its unapologetic
sophistication. In 2002, “The Amber Spyglass,” the final
novel in the trilogy, became the first children's book to
win the $45,000 Whitbread prize for the best book of the
year in Britain. (The first volume in the series, “Northern
Lights” – called “The Golden Compass” in the United States
- was published in 1995. The second, “The Subtle Knife,”
was published in 1997 and “Spyglass” in 2000.) If the Harry
Potter stories succeeded in making grown-ups (and not just
fantasy-genre readers) interested once more in worlds of
endless possibility, “His Dark Materials” reminded them
that the best children's books are literature of the
highest quality.

“Few recent works have succeeded more abundantly than
Philip Pullman's trilogy in achieving the first things we
ask of a work of art,” wrote Alastair Macauley in The
Financial Times. In The Daily Telegraph, the critic Charles
Spencer said that Mr. Pullman's books transcended the
obvious comparison to the Harry Potter series. “While J. K.
Rowling's books about the boy wizard seem increasingly
derivative, formulaic, flatly written and ridiculously
long, Pullman's magnificent `His Dark Materials' trilogy
offers both hours of spellbound wonder and sudden moments
of deep emotion that cut at the heart like the subtlest of
knives,” Mr. Spencer wrote.

Mr. Pullman, a former schoolteacher, has long had an
impressive literary reputation, but none of his earlier
works have had anything like the success of “His Dark
Materials.” Opinionated and outspoken, he has championed
children's literature as a way to express themes and ideas
that, he mischievously argues, are too large to be depicted
in adult fiction. He has also been a forceful proponent of
what he calls the Republic of Heaven, in which life is
lived fully because there is nothing more – no prospect of
an afterlife to wait for. By the same token, he has
criticized C. S. Lewis's “Narnia” books for what he says is
the divisiveness of their Christian message, in which those
who cling too enthusiastically to the physical world are
consigned to hell. (Mr. Pullman may have a chance to face
off, in a way, with Lewis, who died in 1963: next year, the
BBC will begin filming the first of five movies based on
the “Narnia” books, with Andrew Adamson, of “Shrek,”
directing.)

Mr. Pullman's books, in turn, have already been condemned
by a chorus of religious groups here: The Catholic Herald
has pronounced them “truly the stuff of nightmares”; the
Association of Christian Teachers recently said that adults
should think carefully before letting children read them.

“We don't want this book on the bookshelves of primary
schools,” Rupert Kaye, the group's chief executive, said of
the trilogy in an interview. “It's one thing to say, `The
church has got things terribly wrong and I'm going to hold
it up to the light of day,' and it's another thing to have
a book in which every Christian character is evil or
selfish or power-hungry.”

Mr. Pullman said in an interview that although he has
strong feelings about religion, readers should draw their
own conclusions from his books. “If I were to say, `This is
the only way to read it,' I would be putting myself in the
same position as the evangelicals – that is, telling people
how to read and what to think,” he said. “The very last
possible thing on earth I want to be known as – with the
single exception of `pedophile' – is `guru.' I'm not in the
business of doing that. What I'm doing is telling a story.”

Nicholas Hytner, artistic director of the National Theater,
came to “His Dark Materials” on a colleague's
recommendation. Impatient with children's theatrical
standards like “The Wind in the Willows” (a production of
which he had directed some years ago), Mr. Hytner was
looking for projects based on contemporary books for young
adults.

“What seemed immediately stageable were the series of
archetypal, highly emotional family conflicts, which I
thought were powerful and dramatic and would hold a theater
full of people,” Mr. Hytner said of the trilogy.

It took 18 months of workshops and rewrites for the
playwright, Nicholas Wright, to whittle the 1,300 pages of
“His Dark Materials” down to a manageable script. One of
the central problems of staging was how to depict the
characters' daemons; the answer was to hire the puppet
designer Michael Curry, who collaborated with Julie Taymor
on “The Lion King.” The resulting daemon puppets – a
treacherous golden monkey for Lyra's mother; a haughty snow
leopard for her father; a collection of birds for the
Oxford professors; reptiles for members of the church
hierarchy – are manipulated, bunraku-style, by actors
dressed in black. The play, directed by Mr. Hytner, uses 30
actors and features a dizzying 110 set changes that make
fine use of the unusual revolving stage in the National's
Olivier Theater.

The production is to return to the National next December
for another four-month run; the complexity of its staging
makes it highly unlikely that “His Dark Materials” will
transfer to another theater, Mr. Hytner said. But when it
does come back it will likely be in a somewhat altered
form. Reviews have been mixed, with many critics praising
Mr. Hytner's ambition but concluding that the play
ultimately fails to capture the magic of the novels. In
general, though, the critical response does not appear to
have dampened the buoyant passion of actual audiences.
Despite its length, the production has attracted a large
number of children, who can be seen earnestly explaining
the fine points of the narrative to their parents during
the intermissions.

Meanwhile, Mr. Pullman is at work on an unrelated
children's book, “The Scarecrow and His Servant,” which he
expects to finish by the end of the year. But he has not
left “His Dark Materials” – the phrase is from “Paradise
Lost” – behind. (He recently published “Lyra's Oxford,” a
small teaser of a book containing a short story about the
trilogy's heroine, and is at work on “The Book of Dust,” a
prequel.) He now gets so much mail that it takes him and
his wife, working together at home in Oxford, two days a
week to answer it all.

Earlier this month, Mr. Pullman was interviewed onstage -
in front of another sell-out crowd that filled every one of
the theater's 1,110 seats – before the curtain rose on the
second part of “His Dark Materials.” He answered the usual
questions about where he gets his ideas and what sort of
daemon he would have (a magpie or a jackdaw, he answered,
“one of those birds that steal bright things”).

He did not talk about death, though it is a central aspect
of his grand vision. Indeed, even critics who didn't like
the production have loved the scenes that take place in the
prison-like World of the Dead, where the downtrodden,
suffering deceased are gently released into the outside
world, where they feel a moment of unspeakable ecstasy
before dissolving gratefully into the earth and the air.

“It's astonishing how uncompromising it is in introducing
kids to an alternative mythology of death,” Mr. Hytner
said, “how it finds a harsh consolation in the notion that
death is death and that the worst possible thing, the most
desperate thing, is that there is some kind of afterlife.
It's thrilling to see kids as young as 9 and 10 sitting,
riveted, by that and feeling perhaps relieved by the notion
of oblivion.”   

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/25/arts/theater/25LYAL.html?ex=1076055348&ei=1&en=e896eb24fa2636b2

[Some of you may be wondering about the recent pattern of "emergency preparedness" links I've posted recently. Mostly, they've been for fun--I enjoy disaster scenario planning. However, pragmatism plays a role as well -- the U.S. government is bankrupt, and the most likely way I think it will try to meet its debts is to inflate the currency. Brazillian-style hyper inflation is quite likely in the next 20 years. (See the link below for more detail). Historically, bankrupt nations have often collapsed into war or revolution. Therefore, I think it prudent to be prepared should the worse case scenarios be realized.]

Via Marginal Revolution:

Going Critical: American Power and Consequences of Fiscal Overstretch by Niall Ferguson and Laurence J. Kotlikoff, The National Interest, Fall 2003, Vol 73.

“….The scale of this implicit insolvency was laid bare this summer in an explosive paper by Jagadeesh Gokhale, a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, and Kent Smetters, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Economic Policy at the U.S. Treasury and now an economics professor at the University of Pennsylvania. They asked the following question: Suppose the government could, today, get its hands on all the revenue it can expect to collect in the future, but had to use it, today, to pay off all of its future expenditure commitments, including debt service. Would the present value (the discounted value today) of the future revenues cover the present value of the future expenditures? The answer was a decided no: according to their calculations, the shortfall amounts to $45 trillion. To put that figure into perspective, it is twelve times larger than the current official debt and roughly four times the size of the country's annual output.

Gokhoale and Smetters also asked how much taxes would have to be raised, or expenditures cut, on an immediate and permanent basis to generate, in present value, $45 trillion? Their answer takes the form of a “menu of pain” with four unpalatable dishes to choose from. We could either, starting today, raise income taxes (individual and corporate) by 69 percent; or we could raise payroll taxes by 95 percent; or we could cut Social Security and Medicare benefits by 56 percent; or we could cut federal discretionary spending by more than 100 percent (which, of course, is impossible)….”

Army field manual FM 10-16 : General fabric repair

See also The Renaissance Tailor

World Database of Happiness: for all your happiness related research needs.