And try to imagine the horror . . . or just go to http://finnsmulders.com/.
If you can’t get enough, here are some bloopers.
September 22, 2009
The Guild, Season 3 Episode 4
Truth in advertising?
Jim Davidson watches the new GM television ad . . . and pukes:
They used to advertise “that great GM feeling.” Nowadays it seems more like “that sinking GM feeling.” Case in point, car-neophyte Ed Whiteacre’s current ad campaign.
“Car for car when compared to the competition, we win. Simple as that,” he says in this bright new ad promoting his complete ignorance about automobiles.
Sure, the white haired old man looks alert and sentient as he parades through a nearly empty show room with strange other people wandering around not selling any cars. But the words make no sense.
Car for car when compared to the competition, GM sucks. And they gave up competing on cars when they went for the enormous taxpayer bailout. It isn’t simple as winning in a head to head car making competition. Remember? GM played that game and they lost. They lost all of their money, so they demanded all of our money.
Later he lies again, “So we’re putting our money where our mouth is.” No, you bastard, you stinking lackey of big government, you filthy thief, you aren’t. GM tried putting their money where their mouth is, and they lost. They went under. So now they are putting our money where their mouth is. He isn’t a nice old man, he’s an evil old liar.
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Retirement planning
Dark Water Muse had a post a few days ago about the troubles with retirement planning (he’s just gone through the process).
I guess what only just in recent days became DWM’s “trailer park” retirement lifestyle, which he can almost afford, becomes his “cardboard box” retirement lifestyle. Assuming the healthcare system can afford then to cover the costs of treating paper cuts.
The scary part. DWM is one of the “lucky” ones, in a really good position, according to financial advisors. If this is true then how can anybody, in the past 30 years, have realistically expected “average” North American to be able to afford to retire? Aren’t these the same bong puffers who have been trying to eradicate the poppy fields in Afghanistan?
I guess addiction really is an irrational behavior, even when you dress it up and call it economics.
I wrote a comment, and then thought it might be a useful thing to expand on it a bit here:
This is a multi-pronged problem that will yield to no single solution.
The mere existance of the Canada Pension Plan (and the regular payroll deductions that fund current retirees) lull far too many Canadians into thinking that they’re going to be receiving enough money from CPP to carry on their pre-retirement lifestyle. That’s a huge, unconscious reason for people to fail to save for retirement.
Many Canadians have pension plans that are tied directly to their current employer. For the tiny fraction who successfully keep working for that firm/organization all the way to retirement age, it’s a winning bet. For far too many, three years in one plan, five years in another, seven years in a third will yield three miniscule pension cheques (far less than the amount if they’d been fifteen years in a single plan), as most pensions are geared to long-term employment. Given the commonly quoted notion that most Canadians will have three careers between entering the workforce and retiring, planning on putting in 20-25 years of pensionable work with a big firm is a pipe dream.
The banks and other finance organizations don’t help, either, as many of their print and online offerings for potential customers over-estimate financial needs (“What? I need $3 million to retire at 55? That’s impossible!”).
Schools don’t even attempt to provide financial planning information for students, and even if they did, who among us thought about retirement before age 35? It would likely be a wasted effort, unless it was a mandatory part of the graduation requirements. And even then, everyone under 25 thinks they’ll either live forever or be dead by 30, so it wouldn’t make much practical difference.
I’ve been in the working world for nearly 30 years, yet I’ve only ever worked for companies that had pension plans twice. In neither case did I work there long enough to accumulate any worthwhile seniority in the pension scheme (and given that neither company is still around today, I probably didn’t lose much). Among the other companies I’ve worked for, only two had Group RRSP plans (I think the closest US equivalent would be a 401(k) account). . . which paradoxically have been great for my long-term financial health. The broker for the plan at the first company is still the guy I call to get investment advice (each of us has moved on to different firms more than once, but it’s the personal relationship that matters).
I lost a lot of paper wealth in the last 12 months (at the worst, I was down over 45%). My investments — my retirement savings, that is — are back up to about 85% of their peak. If I hadn’t had to withdraw cash during periods of unemployment, I’d be closer to 95%. I’m nowhere near the multi-millions that the bank “planning software” says I should have at this point in my career, but I’m not panicking, yet.
According to the Danish tourist agency, Danish women are easy
The Economist reports on a badly thought-out (and recently withdrawn) tourism-boosting campaign by VisitDenmark:
The film, shot in video-diary style, purports to be the work of a Danish woman with a baby: she says that the child is the result of a one-night stand with a foreign visitor and that she hopes the father will see the video and contact her.
It’s nicely acted, gently affecting, completely fake and unintentionally hilarious. This official advertisement for Denmark, meant to be “a good and sweet story about a mature, responsible woman who lives in a free society and shoulders the responsibility of her actions”, instead conveys the message that if you come to Denmark, you can sleep with attractive locals. Is that really the remit of the tourism agency?
Cloning
Gregg Easterbrook takes a quick look at the objections to cloning:
Human clones, it is widely assumed, would be monstrous perversions of nature. Yet chances are, you already know one. Indeed, you may know several and even have dated a clone. They walk among us in the form of identical twins: people who share exact sets of DNA. Such twins almost always look alike and often have similar quirks. But their minds, experiences, and personalities are different, and no one supposes they are less than fully human. And if identical twins are fully human, wouldn’t cloned people be as well?
Suppose scientists could create a clone from an adult human: It would probably be more distinct from its predecessor than most identical twins are from each other. A clone from a grown-up would have the same DNA but would come into the world as a gurgling baby, not an instant adult, as in sci-fi. The clone would go through childhood and adolescence with the same life-shaping unpredictability as any kid.
The eminent University of Chicago ethicist Leon Kass has argued that human cloning would be offensive in part because the clone would “not be fully a surprise to the world.” True, but what child is? Almost all share physical traits and mannerisms with their parents. By having different experiences than their parents (er, parent) and developing their own personalities, clones would become distinct individuals with the same originality and dignity as identical twins—or anyone else.
<sarcasm>Of course, the real argument against cloning is that your clone wouldn’t have a soul: everyone knows that the soul is indivisible, so unless you gave yours up (or time-shared it), your clone would be soul-less.</sarcasm>
Over-broad laws can be useful to silence critics
Richard Dawkins contrasts the scientific way of resolving disputes with the British libel laws:
It is a lamentable observation that because of the way our laws are skewed toward the plaintiff, London has become the libel capital of the world. Litigants are coming to England from another country to sue people who live in a third country over a book that was published in a fourth country – the excuse being that a handful of books were sold here too. A nice little round-the-world jaunt for lawyers it may be, but sensible or liberal it is not. Nor is it just.
Of course there must be redress if you are maliciously attacked in a way that damages you. But if such a law is cast too wide it has disastrous consequences on the public interest, not least in the area of science and medicine where the stakes are high, profits and reputations are guarded jealously, and the vulnerable need to be protected from unproven or fraudulent claims for cures, whether by “alternative” therapists or big pharmaceuticals.
H/T to Chris Taylor Chris Myrick for the link.
