A Little Light Linkage

Something from earlier this week I should have linked, but didn’t: From ReasonOnline… The Top 10 Most Absurd Time Covers of The Past 40 Years… Mr. Luce's mag does satanism, porn, crack, Pokemon, and more! There are some doozies in there, like this one:

8. August 6, 1984: The Population Curse

Why So Worried? Using an upcoming U.N. conference in Mexico City as its hook, Time engages in some Paul Ehrlich-style doom-mongering about overpopulation.

Cue Ominous Music: "The consequences of a failure to bring the world's population growth under control are frightening. They could include widespread hunger and joblessness, accompanied by environmental devastation and cancerous urban growth. Politically, the outcome could be heightened global instability, violence and authoritarianism."

Oh, Just Settle Down: Since Time's 1984 cover story, the world's population has increased from 4.75 billion to 6.78 billion people. This year, the World Bank's Poverty Analysis reported, "Living standards have risen dramatically over the last decades. The proportion of the developing world's population living in extreme economic poverty...has fallen from 52 percent in 1981 to 26 percent in 2005.... Infant mortality rates in low- and middle-income countries have fallen from 87 per 1,000 live births in 1980 to 54 in 2006. Life expectancy in [low and middle-income] countries has risen from 60 to 66 between 1980 and 2006." According to the peace advocacy group Ploughshares, the number of armed conflicts across the globe has generally been in decline since the mid-1990s (PDF). As for "authoritarianism," with the fall of the Soviet empire, a far greater percentage of the global population lived under such regimes in 1984 than do today. Even the massive population in China is freer (if not actually "free") than it was in 1984.

The format remains the same for the other nine articles, only the crisis du jour changes. Drugs were gonna kill us all on at least two occasions in the past 40 years… the tsunami of porn, also appearing twice… three times if you count the culture being cheapened by profanity… was only slightly less bad. Yet not a word about Islamic fundamentalists. Go figger. And print media wonders why their revenues keep dropping. I guess the answer to that is there aren’t enough waiting rooms in the civilized world to support all those magazines no one reads any longer.

The supporting links in the various items make for some good reading. I know I killed about an hour with this article.

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As you might expect, hockey fans are being overwhelmed with reading material (and videos!) on the eve of Game Seven. The three hockey blogs I follow… Puck Daddy, Snapshots, and Kukla’s Korner… have been instrumental in keeping me up to the minute, but MOST especially George Malik of Snapshots. The man is a veritable Red Wings information-gathering MACHINE. He was still posting stuff at 0315 hrs this morning. And I was awake to read it, as well. Both of us are jes a lil bit crazy.

The winner in the “most different take” category has to be the Wall Street Journal’s profile of the Red Wings… which draws parallels between the team, the city of Detroit, and the plight of auto industry. The lede grafs:

As the ailing Motor City rallies around the Detroit Red Wings, who face the Pittsburgh Penguins on Friday in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals, there is one tiny bit of irony: Michigan’s top team is powered more than ever by European imports.

Less than half the Red Wings’ roster comes from North America. The rest, and most of the team’s top talent, hails from Sweden, the Czech Republic, Russia and Finland. In all, five players are from the U.S.

Years ago, when the Big Three auto makers were allowing overseas competitors to pull ahead, the world was getting flat inside Joe Louis Arena. Starting in the 1980s, the Red Wings began building a dynasty by recruiting talent from Russia and adopting a new, European style of hockey.

The Red Wings’ success—they have won four Stanley Cups since 1997–paved the way for the rest of the league to follow. Today 30% of the NHL’s players hail from outside North America. The Red Wings are still the most international team, with 54% of their players hailing from overseas. This season, more than 80% of the Red Wings’ goals were scored by players born outside North America, up from 41.5% in the 1996-1997 season.

At the same time, the pool of available talent at home seems to be thinning. In Michigan, one of the nation’s top junior-hockey states, the struggling economy—and the high cost of junior hockey—is taking a toll on participation. USA Hockey says youth participation in the state has fallen 14% in the past three seasons.

It’s really a good article… the perfect read for the combination of Bid’niz Guy, Automotive Division and hockey fan. Who’d a thunk it?

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Today is The Second Mrs. Pennington’s birthday. She’s 53 today, and I have no compunctions about publishing her age. Real Women are proud of their age… the experience it brings and both the inner and outer beauty of maturity. I think TSMP falls into that camp. Or strides resolutely into it… whatevah.

So… in honor of the birthday girl… here’s a pic from the Way-Back; March of 1998, to be exact:

Happy birthday, Paula.

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Oh! One more thing…

GO WINGS!