…at the new job. Big task today involves figuring out backup server software and getting a program in place to make sure everything gets backed up routinely. A good idea, and actually a core criterion of whether I’m doing my job. Me, I’m counting on Leopard to take care of all my personal backups going forward. I just have to sort out the dog’s breakfast of hard disks and server systems at home (and my server systems, I mean the one iMac that everything’s plugged into).
Anyway…
I stumbled across an article by John Rogers. If you don’t know him, he’s most famous these days for being the first-draft author of that abysmal orgy of Hollywood idiocy called Transformers. Someday he may live that down, and when he does, it will be based on such trenchant observations as are made in this piece. Such as the fact that there are four times as many Americans living in urban areas as rural areas. Or four times as many people in New York City alone as there are farmers in the whole country. There are half again as many people in computer and mathematical jobs as there are in farming. And yet, the default notion of what is “Middle America” is rural, agrarian, and completely out of step with what the actual median lifestyle is in this country. This is why all these stories about “real Americans” make me want to spit nails. I’ve lived in the exurban South, the suburbs of Washington DC, and the heart of Silicon Valley. THIS is real America. Car commutes, satellite TV, Starbucks by the quart, straphanging on the Metro, public notices in three languages. That’s every bit as American as a bunch of pickup trucks circling the Dairy Queen all night on the weekend – in fact, by the numbers, it’s four times as American.
Put that in your corncob pipe and smoke it.
Very soon after the rest of the U.S. figures this out, I hope the Senate and Congress will finally get rid of the friggin’ electoral college. Not only are there four times as many urbanites than ruralites (forget, she’s rolling), but the ruralites get more say in Congress and in presidential elections. Now that *really* chaps my hide!