Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Stossel, in his latest column Making It. He’s writing about the economy and asking people to keep just a little bit of old-fashioned perspective…
…Barbara Ehrenreich won fame by claiming that it’s almost impossible for an entry-level worker to make it in America. She wrote Nickel and Dimed, a book that describes her failure to “make it” working in entry-level jobs.
Her book is now required reading in thousands of high schools and colleges. I spoke to her for my ABC special “Bailouts, Big Spending and Bull.”
“I worked as a waitress and an aide in a nursing home and a cleaning lady and a Wal-Mart associate. And that didn’t do it.”
If you do a good job, can’t you move up?
“That’s not easy. Wal-Mart capped the maximum you can ever make.” But if you do a good job, you could be promoted to assistant manager, store manager.
“Well, I suppose.”
:
“I read Nickel and Dimed,” Adam Shepard told me. He was assigned her book in college and decided to test Ehrenreich’s claim.He picked a city out of a hat, Charleston, S.C., and showed up there with $25. He didn’t tell anyone about his college degree. He soon got an $8/hour job working for a moving company. He kept at it. Within a year, he told me, “I have got $5,500 and a car. I have got a furnished apartment.”
Adam writes about his search for the American Dream in Scratch Beginnings. It’s a very different book from Nickel and Dimed.
“If you want to fail, go for it,” he said.
Barbara Ehrenreich wanted to fail?
“Absolutely, I think she wanted to fail — and write the book about it.”
I asked him for evidence.
“She is spending $40 on pants. She is staying in hotels. I made sacrifices so that I could succeed. She didn’t make any sacrifices.”
I sure wish Stossel went to the universities and asked why, exactly, Nickel and Dimed was required reading. Not that he’d get an honest answer, but some of the tortured excuses might have been interesting. (Update: The DUmmies have more than a few things to say about this.)
Regarding the subject at hand, it really comes down to two fundamentally different ways of looking at the world: If one guy can’t make it somewhere, then nobody’s really guaranteed to get it done anywhere; and, if one guy can do something somewhere, then anyone else can do the same thing anywhere.
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I came to California in 1974 with a backpack, no mama-no papa-no college degree.
25 years later I had an apartment in Sausalito, a 20-year-old BMW, I’d made myself into an oratorio singer and I’d gone to two trade schools to become a techie. All by myself.
I call bullshit.
- rob | 05/09/2009 @ 12:31I moved out of North America with an open ended plane ticket and a few dollars in my pocket and a complete lack of clues and knowledge about anything.
There were (many) days when I less than a quarter to spend.
I stuck it out.
Now? Wife, family, property and a good business.
Those who want to succeed can do it if they work hard enough.
- pdwalker | 05/09/2009 @ 13:29The desperation/urgency involved in getting the Nickel/Dime out in the open where as many people as possible can take note of it, is mighty disturbing. What kind of creature invests this level of energy and passion into broadcasting to total strangers that they should not try to do things?
Thing I Know #94. There are a lot of people walking around who put lots of energy into telling others that something can’t be done.
Obviously it’s something I’ve been noticing for awhile. I have yet to form an adequate explanation of this human tendency, though. What drives it? What gives it even the appearance of being a productive or worthwhile thing to do? Is it the idea that past mistakes can be forgotten, explained away somehow, so there’s no need to admit to them?
- mkfreeberg | 05/09/2009 @ 13:51Der
- mkfreeberg | 05/09/2009 @ 13:52